Webliography

Annotated Webliography
Question: Haraway’s Manifesto is a political text generated from social feminism of the 1980s. In what ways have feminists taken up her radical ideas since then?

Donna Haraway: Live Theory by Joseph Schneider

This book critiques, in detail, Haraway’s Manifesto and outlines her views and ideas about feminism, providing many direct quotes and phrases direct from her work. Haraway insinuates that women should stop associating themselves with other oppressed groups and individuals in attempt to move forward. Haraway argues against ecofeminism, the linking of humans and nature, environmentalism and feminism.

Haraway also argues against identifying too much with other oppressed women “there is nothing about being “female” that naturally binds women together”. She discusses how women have typically been restricted in terms of technology, as it is a male created domain. However Haraway stresses “Women need modems” encouraging women to embrace technology and the liberation that it encompasses.

Haraway’s cyborg allows us to hope for a world without gender, where we have an ability to construct our identity online and reconstruct our identity in real terms. Therefore, we can consider that if we are all constructed beings, surely our “natural” duties such as child bearing, mothering tendencies, natural weakness, are all figments of cultural socialisation, not actually of true identity? And if this is the case, then we should be able to reconstruct ourselves, as cyborgs, and in effect, choose our identities, rendering gender redundant. A gender free world?

Cyborg and ecofeminist interventions: challenges for an environmental feminism by Stacy Alaimo

This article primarily expands on Haraway’s aversion to ecofeminism in her Manifesto, as briefly mentioned in the previous source. Alaimo defines ecofeminism as a branch of feminism “seeking to strengthen the bonds between women and nature by critiquing their parallel oppressions and encouraging an ethic of caring and a politics of solidarity”. The article then establishes that Haraway’s Manifesto seeks to deconstruct the “dualism” or nature and feminism, and negates the tendency to view nature and feminism as similar entities under the same oppressive regime.

This articles’ value lies in the way Alaimo eloquently describes the way Haraway believes identity should be constructed. In attempting to remove ourselves from gender constraints (i.e. recognising ourselves as cyborgs) why would we maintain a connection with another oppressed identity? Haraway believes that we should take a pro-active approach in defining ourselves, an identity outside the constraints of sex, gender, nature and all that these encompass...be our own person in the fight against our oppressors. Haraway’s appeal is that we should be less interested in forming alliances with other females, and should instead focus on our own individuality and our own rebellion against the forces.

Rethinking Ecofeminist Policies by Janet Biehl

Shortly after Haraway’s Manifesto a series of books and articles were written critiquing ecofeminism in a similar way to Haraway. A feminist named Janet Biehl wrote one such book on ecofeminism following Haraway in 1991. Biehl argues that ecofeminism is a “woman-nature identification is a male ideology and a tool of oppression which must in itself be overcome”. This supports Haraway’s distaste for ecofeminism, as she and Biehl both believe that associating women with nature’s limitations subjects women to the same limitations, repressions that women have successfully fought against in some cases but nature are yet to overcome. Therefore, by associating the two together, women invalidate their social conquests. “It [ecofeminism] does not bode well for women-especially those who regard themselves as more than creatures of their sexuality-to follow this regressive path”

The same applies for Haraway’s argument of women’s quest to be “gender-neutral”. Identifying with nature is in effect identifying with “Mother nature”. This ideology of “natural” motherhood and consequentially identification with such is what Haraway pledges must be avoided. This book presents two examples where Haraway’s work has been taken up by subsequent feminists, building on her idea of straying away from the constraints of gender through a disassociation with nature.

Feminist Theories of Technology by Judy Wajcman

In 2008, a feminist called Judy Wajcman wrote a journal article that discussed women’s altered relationship with technology. Wajcman writes of the liberation technology offers women “the internet spells the end of the embodied basis for sex differences”. Wajcman also discusses how approaches to technology have changed “If feminists of the 1980s were rather pessimistic about the prospects for women offered by the microelectronic revolution, there was a much more enthusiastic response to the dawn of the digital age”.

Wajcman stipulates that Haraway’s controversial Manifesto which portrayed technology as empowering for women, sparked a new idea that technology could possibly transform gender relations, changing the fundamental relations in society “Haraway’s ground breaking work opened up new possibilities for feminist analyses to explore the ways in which women’s lives are intimately entwined with technologies”.

This article shows the ways contemporary feminists have adopted Haraway’s views. That is that technology is not particular to men, it is cathartic as it allows women to assume alternative identities, defying the controls of gender. This leads on to the point of the integration of human and technology, the recognition of the cyborg defined by Haraway, as instigating a world where gender is fluid and regressive, and therefore of little significance?

Women, Sex and the Internet by Sandra Risa Leiblum

The burgeoning phenomenon of the internet and women’s ever increasing interaction with such is discussed in this article by Sandra Risa Leiblum. Leiblum explains that the contemporary woman is embracing technology in a modern age “women are going online in ever-increasing numbers and finding much to entertain, educate and enlighten them”.

This article, in part, deals with the way women construct their identities online, with particular reference to their sexual identities “chat rooms are a way [for women] to try on different sexual persona and explore unrealised aspects of their sexuality”. This supports Haraway’s appeal of technology deconstructing the concept of identity. For women who have led real lives of sexual conservatism and traditionalism, the internet provides them with the opportunity to reconstruct themselves as sexual beings, an identity through which they can explored their sexuality in a virtual realm.

The medium of the internet leaves much to the imagination. “A woman’s physical attributes do not determine her initial impression”. This is liberating in itself as a woman can escape societal judgment standards, where you are validated on your appearance, and convey her worth through the power of her words alone. This collaborates with Haraway’s idea that embracing the integration of oneself and technology, cyberfeminism, leads to the freedom to explore oneself and who one can potentially be, thorough an identity of an individual, not a gendered being.

References

1. Schneider, J, 2005, Donna Haraway: Live Theory, MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall
2. Alaimo, S, 1994, Feminist Studies, 5-9-2010, [http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=95162816]
3. Biehl, J, 1991, Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics, South End Press, Boston
4. Wajcman, J, 2008, ‘Feminist theories of technology’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 34, No. 1, p.p. 143-152
5. Leiblum, SR, 2001, ‘Women, sex and the Internet’, Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Vol. 16, No. 4, p.p. 2-18