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`` A Cyborg Manifesto `` By Manfred E. Clynes And Nathan S. Kline

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The cyborg figure is a common fixture in both science and science-fiction. The term, coined by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in 1960, refers to an organism with enhanced functionality due to the incorporation of a mechanical component (Clynes and Kline, 27). The animal-machine hybrid was a figuration and embodiment of the modern era’s lust for technology as a means of pushing the human towards what was often militaristic and capitalist ideals. However, in her groundbreaking essay “A Cyborg Manifesto”, Donna Haraway appropriates the patriarchal cyborg figure for feminist purposes, drawing on its composited ontology as a model for female liberation. Her essay posits a psychological escape from the dualisms that hamper the female sense of self, through its account of boundary breakdowns and its rejection of totalized identity. This psychological escape becomes active politically when applied to challenge the authority of the physical acts of oppression where these dualisms often manifest. However, the manifesto’s inability to entirely account for cultural differentialism within feminism causes it to fall somewhat under Haraway’s goal of promoting the particular female self.

First published in 1985 as part of The Socialist Review and later updated in 1991 as part of her anthology of essays Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (the latter of which will be the version analyzed), Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” constructs a feminist call to action by situating a myth of the
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