Cyborg feminism draws on the ideas of Donna Haraway, a feminist theorist originally trained as a primatologist. It emphasizes the notion that women are suspended in multiple entanglements that blur the boundaries between nature and technology, where one is always in the process of becoming the other. It also questions the distinction between individuals and their environmental contexts, suggesting that we exist primarily in relation to our multiple entanglements with the world rather than through coherent and distinct identity categories. In general, it is a post-structural approach to feminism that prioritizes mixture over binary thinking; the former is identified with coalitional politics and the latter with forms of oppression. The cyborg is taken up as a figure representing multiple intersections appropriate to feminism in a digital age. The contemporary relevance of the figure of the cyborg (and its continued use in a variety of theoretical discourses not limited to feminism) is somewhat remarkable, considering that Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" was first published in the mid-1980s -- prior to the emergence of the internet and related digital technologies. A pdf of "Cyborg Manifesto" can be found online for download.

i find this interesting because i keep reading contemporary feminist scholarship that keeps referencing this "cyborg feminism" and it's relation to capitalism. Like, there are some people who think that this deconstructive and post-structural approach to being has a way of unsettling systems of oppression. however, as we can see in regards to things like cultural appropriation where privilaged whites consume the culture of blacks, yet despite popular representation and consumtion amongst the main stream, blacks are still disproportionately murdered by the police.

we can see similar behavioral expressions within TRAs, where they adopt a cloak of womanness, demanding preformative validation for their one-dimensional displays of femininity, while turning a blind eye to fact that global female oppression is rooted in our biological capabilities for reproduction and all the stigma associated to our bodies and its functions.

i don't know. i think it's interesting that this notion of the cyborg is interesting, because it advocates for this weird "appropriating" mentality that ignores actual problems in order to satisfy this neoliberal desire for infiniate accessories to customize and rebuild our selves.

thoughts?