Haraway Notes

In Haraway we see a skilled critique of naturalistic rhetorics (e.g., Heidegger's might be seen as indulging in this naturaliast rhetoric)

Cyborg Manifesto: goal is to create an "iconic political myth" that is a materialist & socialist feminism (sort of a Levi-Straussian self-denigration?)

cyborg is "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" which is equated with the political and the fictional

we are all cyborgs

argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries & for responsibility in their construction (


breakdown of distinctions between human/animal; organism/machine; inorganic/organic

p.176 "Writing is pre-eminently the technology of cyborgs [....] the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism"

phallogocentrism: preference of the masculine in the construction of the meaning of meaning itself(?)/in defining the means of the construction of meaning itsel
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NOISE! SEE JACQUES ATTALI's connection between music and economics
(an outline of personal interest in the role of number in poetry, something which is both masculin et feminin)

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big problem with Haraway's utopic vision is that a networked structure does not preclude hierarchies
in fact it may reinforce them
first of all, a network if viewed at a certain scale may represent a local hierarchy
secondly, the linkages may have ordering properties by nature
e.g., Jim and John are connected is a network graph of the relationship between Jim and John
but perhaps the conenction is a hierarchical one, maybe Jim has a lien on John's property
finally the ability to understand and leverage social networks is a privileged position that promises rapid enhancement of privileged position along with a layer of disinfo obfuscating the hierarchical nature of the seemingly value-neutral "connection" relation

another problem is, well, can't help my phallocentricm here but the analysis seems to lack method, focus, seems entiurely more like worship than blasphemy (to borrow from Haraway's intro)