A Cyborg Manifesto

A Cyborg Manifesto is an essay written by Donna Haraway. Haraway began writing the Manifesto in 1983 to address the Socialist Review request of American socialist feminists to ponder over the future of socialist feminism in the context of the early Reagan era and the decline of leftist politics. The first versions of the essay had a strong socialist and European connection that the Socialist Review East Coast Collective found too controversial to publish. The Berkeley Socialist Review Collective published the essay in 1985 under the editor Jeff Escoffier. The essay is most well known for being published in Donna Haraway's 1991 book Simians, Cyborgs and Women. In Donna Haraway's essay, the concept of the cyborg is a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating ""human"" from ""animal"" and ""human"" from ""machine."" She writes: ""The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust.""The Manifesto criticizes traditional notions of feminism, particularly feminist focuses on identity politics, and encouraging instead coalition through affinity. She uses the metaphor of a cyborg to urge feminists to move beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics. Marisa Olson summarized Haraway's thoughts as a belief that there is no distinction between natural life and artificial man-made machines.