ENGLISH 312

LITERATURE AND FILM "THE DYSTOPIAN IMAGINARY"

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Cyborg - Haraway

 Based on the reading, a Cyborg is " a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and  organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is  lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction"  (Haraway Par. 2). In other words, a cyborg is a creature or an organism that works/lives  by itself like a real living person. But it cannot act or live identical to an organism similar  to a human. It is not fully artificial like a robor or 100% natural like a human being,  hence the name cyborg. The positive side to a cyborg is that it can have all the good or  positive sides/characteristics of a human beging and avoid all the negative or bad ones.  Some bad characterisits would contain obesity, diseases, sicknesses, cancer, weakness,  hunger. Specific detailed CLASSES, like in London's novel do not exist in cyborg's,  because they are all perfect creatures, all falling under that same one class. But at the  end of the day, a cyborg is not an organic material like a human being and is man made. "The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as  women's experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death,  but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion"  (Haraway Par. 2). When the author spoke of women's experience, he meant all the  duties that women have. But these so called given experiences are what men have  created, it is something that us, as a society has come up with and accepeted to which is  what creates roles/classes.  I believe cyborgs will terminate classes, and struggles within classes because they are  artificial beings, who perfrom tasks in perfect manners.

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