Cast off the shackles!!!

A Manifesto for Cyborg's is a chapter written by Donna Haraway which was poorly received in my film 4002 class. Most felt that her argument was circular, and that she forced the reader to fill in vast gaps, but mostly, that her argument was not properly enunciated. This may be true. I'll confess it took me a few tries to get through her article because I felt it was disparate, and stringy, but I liked her metaphor. The use of the cyborg as a symbolic stand in for both women and technology was quite clever, or so I believe. A cyborg is a representation of a merger of two foreign, once viewed as incompatible entities; machine and organics. The notion of a cyborg breaks down a serious border, and suggests that man can be more than simply organic, and machines can be more than lifeless technology. The amalgamation of man and machine rejects essential ism and forces new definitions, new parameters, and new ideals to be instigated, which I believe is what Haraway is advocating for.
It is quite profound because it also briefly touches on fears of the past that are once again fears of the future.
"Contrary to orientalists stereotypes of the 'oral primitive', literacy is a special mark of women of colour, acquired by US black women as well as men through a history of risking death to learn and to teach reading and writing" (Haraway, pg 34).
As the cyborg is also a symbol for the coloured woman this section identifies a past fear that is still circulating. A fear of the unknown. It was considered wrong for coloured people in the past to be literate just as it seems wrong today for humans to mutate, or enhance themselves into cyborgs. The crossing of cultures, this breaching of borders is called to attention in Haraway's article.
Kevin Warwick is pushing this border with his experimentation with the "neuro-surgical implantation of a device into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly to a computer in order to assess the latest technology for use with the disabled" (Kevin Warwick's home page). He considers himself a cyborg and he believes, as he had pointed out in many interviews, that humans cannot remain merely human. Once again the class was uncomfortable with Kevin's ideals accusing him of being paranoid, but perhaps he was simply being revolutionary.
He is placing advanced technology into his arm to help him and others function in an enhanced fashion, which may be the future, or not. The point is, like Haraway argues, he is out there doing something to break down the essentialist borders mankind has established. Though Haraway's chapter has more of a feminist tone and Warwick a commercial or technological advancement tone, they both strive to cast away fears of amelioration and step into a new world.