1. Group Work: In groups of 3, discuss the cyborg you have chosen
What do they have in common? What are their differences?
What do these differences and similarities tells us about the figure of the cyborg (in popular culture, when actually realized in the “real world”)
Can they tell us anything about gender?

2. How is Haraway using “blasphemy” and why. And Irony
How is Haraway using “blasphemy” and why? And Irony? (“At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg” p.149)

3. Marxist / Socialist Feminism vs. Radical Feminism
Marxist/socialist feminism based largely on the fight to show value in “women’s” work – both culturally and economically based (think “the personal is political”)
Radical feminism: feminism focused on the destruction of the patriarchy and exposing patriarchal systems of power. (Doing away with male supremacy). Haraway focuses on Catharine MacKinnon – whom she says is dangerous as she makes women disappear (they exist only as a product of men’s desire)

4. Ontology: what is it? Epistemology: how do we know?

5. “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of science fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction.” 149

6. “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machines and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.” 150

7. “The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world…” 150

8. THREE CRUCIAL BOUNDARY BREAKDOWNS (151)
Animal/human
Animal/machine
Physical/non-physical ….. “Modern machines are quintessentially microelectronic devices: they are everywhere and they are invisible”

9. “Taxonomies of feminism produce epistemologies to police deviation from official women’s experience. And of course, ‘women’s culture,’ like women of colour, is consciously created by mechanisms inducing affinity.” 156-7

10. “Homework Economy”
“homework economy” p. 166 –originally conceived of by Richard Gordon, jobs previously thought of as female jobs, originally only done by women, largely in the home (new technology making these more common, making them more commonly performed by men – a ‘feminization of the work force’

11. Donna Haraway: ”A Cyborg Manifesto”
Are there any actual “cyborgs” in this essay (where are the cyborgs?!)
How does this essay apply directly to the time period it was written in, and how does it apply to today? How have things changed and yet not changed? Was Haraway ahead of her time, behind it, both?
What is the main argument here? Is there one?
Is Haraway pulling any punches?
Be aware of how Haraway is dealing with intersectionality
What are the politics of gender and third-world labor? How is Haraway addressing this?
How does new technology affect labor practices? How does this in turn affect class divides, and does this affect gender politics?