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drjacvick's review against another edition
4.0
Although The Cyborg Manifesto is anything but easy to get through, the ideas are worth unpacking! The hard work of decoding and deciphering what Haraway means really does pay off.
ghoulkeats's review against another edition
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
breadandmushrooms's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
ellioth_mess's review against another edition
5.0
Librazo acerca de la conformación de un paradigma cientÃfico y su improcedencia.
savaging's review against another edition
3.0
This book includes some of Haraway's earliest work. Because I resonate so deeply with her theory, it was a joy to see some of her first elaborations of it. But whew this is a dense and academic tome. Where her later writing feels like play, this feels like a furrowed brow.
comradec's review against another edition
3.5
I could have definitely understood more of what was being said in this book, Haraway is no Sagan when it comes to science communication. I have liked the other stuff I have read by Haraway much better. I picked out many threads that I could see developed her more recent work "Staying with Trouble" (which I loved).
Probably wouldn't recommend this book to most people, only theory nerds.
Despite all that, there was some good theory presented in this book and I am sure even more that was lost in translation to me. Here are some of my favorite passages;
"We must however, be acutely aware of the dangers of using old rules to tell new tales... Such theories still elude us, because we are now engaged in a political-scientific struggle to formulate the rules through which we will articulate them."
"Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other. The tools are often stories, retold stories, versions that reverse and displace the hierarchical dualisms of naturalized identities."
"Perhaps the world resist being reduced to mere resource because it is-- not mother/matter/mutter -- but coyote, a figure for the always problematic, always potent tie of meanings and bodies."
Probably wouldn't recommend this book to most people, only theory nerds.
Despite all that, there was some good theory presented in this book and I am sure even more that was lost in translation to me. Here are some of my favorite passages;
"We must however, be acutely aware of the dangers of using old rules to tell new tales... Such theories still elude us, because we are now engaged in a political-scientific struggle to formulate the rules through which we will articulate them."
"Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other. The tools are often stories, retold stories, versions that reverse and displace the hierarchical dualisms of naturalized identities."
"Perhaps the world resist being reduced to mere resource because it is-- not mother/matter/mutter -- but coyote, a figure for the always problematic, always potent tie of meanings and bodies."
torridgambit's review against another edition
i tried i really did.. i got halfway which is so much farther than i can be expected of. but damn the author wrote this book for one type of reader and one type of reader only.
line_so_fine's review against another edition
5.0
Modern feminist theorist Haraway's essays on biology and human culture that mixes traditional Marxist thought with postmodernism.
levitybooks's review against another edition
2.0
I read The Cyborg Manifesto and found it long, convoluted, contradictory and so abstract that I questioned the practical use of it. I am really surprised and suspicious of the popularity of this book. Does it only matter to people that it's a radical polemic for liberating women, and not that it's mostly incoherent and contradictory? I am not against inspiring a revolt that is justified in the very least by benefiting those who revolt, but for me this book proposes no clear aim or result but only to disengage with society.
My understanding of the Cyborg Manifesto was:
1. Past feminist theories have been too sure of representing one woman's experience as the collective woman's experience.
2. Past feminist theories have not escaped patriarchal or other forms of societal institution oppression due to the fact that they hold beliefs to the female sex, a binary system.
3. Therefore, if women became more like the cyborg by first removing binary sex/gender distinctions from their identity and associated objects, and second by removing the belief that their individual experience correlates with their biological makeup, then this will liberate more people from societal oppression.
4. Instead cyborgs should act on affinity (as in, desire) rather than identity (as in social labels of gender/class/race).
----
The review by the The International Journal of Primatology on Haraway's Primate Visions is a better articulated version of how I feel when reading or listening to anything by Donna Haraway:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02547559
My understanding of the Cyborg Manifesto was:
1. Past feminist theories have been too sure of representing one woman's experience as the collective woman's experience.
2. Past feminist theories have not escaped patriarchal or other forms of societal institution oppression due to the fact that they hold beliefs to the female sex, a binary system.
3. Therefore, if women became more like the cyborg by first removing binary sex/gender distinctions from their identity and associated objects, and second by removing the belief that their individual experience correlates with their biological makeup, then this will liberate more people from societal oppression.
4. Instead cyborgs should act on affinity (as in, desire) rather than identity (as in social labels of gender/class/race).
----
The review by the The International Journal of Primatology on Haraway's Primate Visions is a better articulated version of how I feel when reading or listening to anything by Donna Haraway:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02547559
teghan's review against another edition
5.0
soooooo brilliant. Her 'Cyborg Manifesto' changed my life. It was the most important thing I read in university. Whoa.