Cyborgs! According to Wikipedia, Cyborg is defined as “a portmanteau of cybernetic organism, is used to designate a creature which is a mixture of organic and mechanical parts. Generally, the aim is to add to or enhance the abilities of an organism by using technology.” Well then! Obviously throughout this reading she discusses how everything basically relates back to science.

On page 2269, Donna Haraway says “Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices…” What I get from this is that medicine is produced by using bacteria and essentially machines which are man made in certain senses. Let me try to explain that better- An organism is a living thing, such as mold, and many medicines are made of bacteria, such as amoxicillin. What the medicine is doing is putting bacteria in your body to make you immune to it. If you add to medicine, it is not organic, so many Doctors are trying to come up with something to enhance medicine to make it better. Basically, medicine is full of cyborgs because it is being touched and altered in hopes to benefit people who are ill.

I thought it was really interesting, on page 2275, where she says “Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in “essential” unity. There is nothing about being “female” that naturally binds women.” I don’t know if this is completely off base, but I though of Butler when I read this. Is Haraway saying that women have worked so hard to get where they are, but women shouldn’t be in their own category? Women are equal and can do anything anyone else can, so people shouldn’t refer to women as a group. Does that make sense? She says there is a ” political myth called ‘us.’ ” Us referring to all women. Then where she mentions that “there is nothing about being female that naturally binds women.” Is she saying that women can choose to be whoever they want, and be whatever gender they choose, and be attracted to any gender of their choice? And being female, usually comes along with duties- such as taking care of the house and children.. so just because someone is a female, all of those terms don’t necessarily relate to a female? Sorry if this is confusing, I just confused myself..

On page 2280 it says “But sexual objectification, not alienation, is the consequence of the structure of sex/gender. In the realm of knowledge, the result of sexual objectification is illusion and abstraction. However, a woman is not simply alienated from her product, but in a deep sense does not exist as a subject, or even potential subject, since she owes her existence as a woman to sexual appropriation.” Ok, let’s see.. so I think what Haraway is saying is that many women are seen as objects.. especially in the eyes of men. Women aren’t always taking seriously because (she doesn’t come out and say this, but for example) they are nearly naked in music videos and usually seen as “arm candy” for men. Yes, no, maybe?!

All of this biology talks bring me back to Deleuze and Guattari and how they discuss biology, relating metaphors of/to literature. They’re the ones who talked about the body without organs.. Is this all leading back to how society has a structure but the world doesn’t?

On page 2283, I thought this quote really stuck out.. “No objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language.” In other words, can everything/everyone essentially be “broken down?”