The Haraway Questionnaire

Class discussion of The Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway will be --insert date here-- Your responses need to be POSTED to this wiki by the beginning of that class session(Make your own page as you answer these questions! This page will link to your answer pages! Format your page title as you see it below).

1. Who is Donna Haraway? What is her field of study/background? How does she identify herself within TCM?
2. What does DH mean when she says 'Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously?' How does this stylistically set up the rest of the essay?
3. Explain how DH manipulates language in TCM (i.e., 'affinity group'). What does is read/sound like?
4. How do you define a cyborg? How does DH define a cyborg? (the rest according to DH) Do cyborgs exist in 'real life'? Who/What are they? Where do they exist (in what realms of society)?
5. What does DH mean when she writes, 'The cyborg is outside of salvation history.'? Who is she critiquing here and why? Where are there other examples of indirect/institutional critique within the essay?
6. Why does the cyborg present an "illegitimate promise" for feminism? Relate your answer to our in-class discussions regarding the development of feminism w/n the visual arts, and to modernism/postmodernism. And what is DH's beef with 'nature'?
7. What is DH's general critique of feminism/identity? Relate this to her field-of-study, and pay attention to her bracketing of terms such as 'us', 'them', and 'we'.
8. Describe the 3 boundary breakdowns that makes DH's 'political fictional (political scientific) analysis possible'.
9. What does DH mean when she writes that 'the goddess' is dead?
10. What is 'The Homework Economy'? How would DH view the Helva character from The Ship Who Sang by Anne Mc Caffrey in light of this idea?
11. Using DH's concept of 'networking' (i.e., 'weaving is for oppositional cyborgs), describe a difference between a net (or 'The Net' a la Trouble and Her Friends), and a network.
12. DH cites the writings of Octavia Butler, among many others, as a basis for her cyborg manifesto. In what ways does Butler's story Speech Sounds provide a basis for TCM (in terms of language, identity, class, 'techno-impact', groupings, etc.)? Cite specific examples from both texts.