A Cyborg Manifesto

Haraway spends the first section of A Cyborg Manifesto introducing her idea of a cyborg. While the word “cyborg” commonly refers to a science fiction being that is part-human and part-machine, the cyborg of Haraway’s essay is “an ironic political myth” (5). Haraway will go on to outline several different definitions and applications of her idea of a cyborg, but at its core, the cyborg is a metaphor she uses to illustrate several concepts and arguments relating to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Haraway admits that her essay is “ironic” and even “blasphemous,” acknowledging that parts of it might seem to contradict.

Exemplifying this contradictory irony, Haraway explains that cyborgs are both fictional and a part of lived reality. Though many people tend to think of them as aspects of fictional books or movies, like The Terminator or Darth Vader from Star Wars, Haraway believes that the line between fiction and reality is blurrier. She argues that it’s impossible to fully separate fiction from reality, since the fictional content we create influences our lived reality, and vice versa. 

This is the first mention of one of the key themes of the essay,