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Donna Haraway (September 6, 1944 - present)
Donna Haraway was born in Denver, Colorado on September 6, 1944. She trained as a scientist majoring in biology and minoring in philosophy and English at the Colorado College. By 1970, she completed her Ph.D. in biology at Yale. In 1980, she became the first tenured professorship in feminist theory at the University of Santa Cruz. She published “A Cyborg Manifesto: Haraway, Donna "Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s", Socialist Review, 80 (1985) -
Donna Haraway (September 6, 1944 - present)
Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th century” in 1985 as an assignment for the Socialist Review. This came at a time when feminist philosophers were tackling the current situation. Women were no longer on the outside but were embedded in the patriarchal system and being exploited and being (maybe unknowingly) complicit.
The Cyborg Manifesto challenged the “settled politics” that binary or gender
[Cyborg Manifesto summary video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnY9TGbvIXA -
Donna Haraway (September 6, 1944 - present)
assignments are natural distinctions. This was a thought experiment by Haraway that sought to show how the cyborg image of half human, half technology could encourage women to move beyond the limitations of gender. She sought to show that a collective consciousness made up many voices, that were not labeled by gender, race etc., could create limitless knowledge that can create socio-political change through altruism and affinity.
The cyborg image was used specifically to show how technology had -
Donna Haraway (September 6, 1944 - present)
already created affinity bonds by connecting people across continents. It was also used to take the focus off our physical bodies and look more at the information it holds. This imagery resonated for many and I believe it is just as important today.
She has written various articles on feminism and philosophy and is an advocate for animal equality and currently is addressing the climate crisis. She stated "I've never been humanist. We live in a huge nonhuman world." We forget that too often!
