The “Cyborg Manifesto” is a story that deals with social feminism in the late twentieth century in relation to science and technology. There are numerous outcomes of what could happen next, but in my opinion, what will happen next is the return to the previous phase of human existence.
Albert Einstein said that the last world war will be fought with sticks and stones and I support that opinion about where the future is taking us. Of course there is a lot of time before that, but in general the world has to be destroyed in order for it to regenerate itself. There has been a lot of destruction on Earth and people are not using the technological progress as something useful. They are using it for their own short-term selfish pleasures.
Haraway tried to “build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism” (291). Feminism deals with the role of women in modern society and with what is considered to be feminine in the modern society. Socialism tries to explain what is happening with humanity and materialism is connected to the culture obsessed with possession.
The cyborg is a creature that is self-sufficient and it is the mixture of a machine and organism. The new world order will need cyborgs because life is reduced to work and premeditated expectations. There are jobs that have been feminized no matter whether they are done by men or women.
“To be feminized means to be made extremely vulnerable; able to be disassembled, reassembled, exploited as a reserve labor force; seen less as workers than as servers” (Haraway 304). This means that this kind of society needs people who have no gender. It doesn’t matter whether they are male or female as long as they work. It would be best if they were artificial beings, such as cyborgs who are deprived of humanity and are only interested in work which has become dehumanized.
There is a hint that a small group of people rule the world and that their interest was to create a genderless society that works in their favor. They can gain more and more power and wealth and artificial creatures will work for them.
There have been many films and books created on this topic. In this works of art cyborgs are used to help people, heal them and work for them. Haraway is writing about people who have become cyborgs. It only means that they have lost their humanity and that the world encourages such an order of things.
I’ve chosen to respond to the reading this way because I believe that what happens next is that a group of people who are rebels will unite against such a society where cyborgs are dominant civilians and restore the world making it a better place as it was supposed to be from the beginning. This text is ironic, but it is true that the world has begun to revolve around gaining material goods. Therefore its citizens have become cyborgs. This order is not sustainable and that is why everything will have to change.
Since the dawn of humanity, there have been many civilizations in the world. That is what makes us believe that people are creatures with souls. There has been much evidence of human creativity from the times when people lived in caves. Each person needs to be able to express themselves and cyborgs are not expected to be creative. That is why the civilization will go back to its roots. The technological progress is good, but only when it is used for progress and for the benefit of the majority of people. Modern production will have to be sacrificed in order to restore spirituality.
Works cited
Haraway, Donna, “A Cyborg Manifesto Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Print.
