A Cyborg Manifesto

Haraway begins this section by building on the idea she ends with in the last section—that the time in which she writes this essay (the 1980s) is a unique era characterized by the impact that emerging technology has on society. She now sets out on a discussion of cybernetics, and she lays out a number of concrete examples of how societal structure has shifted from “organic” to “informational.” The essay includes a lengthy chart, including more than 30 concepts falling under “Organics of Domination” and their equivalent ideas corresponding to the more updated “Informatics of Domination” (28).

Notably, the first pairing, or development, Haraway lists on her chart is that of “representation” to “simulation.” This pairing almost seems to predict the future, as the manifesto was written in 1985 and, 40 years later, this is arguably a more apt comparison to make. It’s important to understand the context of Haraway’s ideas and how they differ from the lenses of current readers who might think of virtual reality or AI when thinking about “simulation.”

“Representation” is a broad term in general, but Haraway uses this word to refer to the way human ideas can be represented by art and politics, or how groups of people can be represented by a single idea or person.