Donna Haraway

Das Theater der Vorahmung wird durch die feministische Repräsentationskritik von Donna Haraway und Karen Barad beleuchtet. Der Begriff der Mimesis erhält hierdurch einen neuen Vektor. Mit Hilfe eines Begriffs von Transkulturalität lässt sich ermessen, ob ein Theater der Vorahmung als emanzipative, kulturelle Praxis das Theater der nächsten, großen Transformation sein kann.

Science fiction is a genre in which anything is possible. It therefore comprises the perfect litmus test of any given culture’s prevailing hopes and fears about the future. One such source of anxiety that has been particularly conspicuous in works of fiction since the Industrial Revolution is the development of automata and other machines – specifically, whether they might eventually become strong or intelligent enough to overthrow their creators. As I will try to elucidate in this essay, fears about some sort of robot uprising fit into a more general worry among dominant groups about a reversal of fates between them and an oppressed group. The cyborg character, however, complicates this formula because it is a hybrid of human and machine, a boundary figure. This is a clear, perhaps uncomfortable reminder that the Other is also the Same.
In this thesis, I will be looking at five key examples from the last five decades of literature about cyborgs, namely: The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey; ‘The Girl Who Was Plugged In’ by James Tiptree Jr.; Proxies by Laura J Mixon; ‘Silently and Very Fast’ by Catherynne M Valente; and Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Though these texts I will seek out ways in which cyborgs might disrupt binary understandings of identity and thereby challenge real-life social hierarchies. Most important to this investigation is the potential of cyborg disembodiment – that is, any kind of cybernetic separation of the consciousness from an organic body – to confuse how identities are perceived and constructed.

This paper examines a variety of cyborg figures in science fiction and art, and investigates how these posthuman subject’s perceptual capacities are altered through their “cyborging,” how this might lead to greater intersubjective understanding and empathy, and advocates an embodied phenomenology for these figures. The cyborg and the posthuman are not necessarily synonymous but share similar political and ethical goals in theory: to radically redefine the human and the humanities, in order to see a way to better intersubjective and interspecies relations.
Ghost in The Shell, Anne McCaffrey, Neil Harbisson.

Enclosed is the syllabus and course notes from the upper division course I teach in PostModernism and Post-Marxist Critical Theory. It occurs to me that some of these essays--ranging from Horkheimer and Adorno, Baudrillard, Foucault, and the feminist post-modern theorist Donna Haraway may offer some insight and some tools for comprehending the dark times in which we live. While these essays may not be directly aimed at understanding the rise of phenomena like the Alt-Right, toxic masculinity, and particularly violent forms of patriarchy, I think they can show us something about the ideological trends that set us on out current morally troubling path.

Thinking posthumanly – from a post-Enlightenment, critical, new materialist perspective – things, including concepts, become more permeable and topological – they leak and stretch. Freed from limiting notions of agency, things behave. Rivers have established the same legal rights as humans in New Zealand  and India,  stones have been reported slithering across the desert floor in California,  an electrical power grid in the USA has revealed a unique agential dexterity  and walls have been spotted walking over mountains in the UK’s Lake District.  Thinking with a posthuman partiality, we begin to witness a democracy of objects rather than an anthropocentric dictatorship over inorganic materials. If agency is reworked into an ‘enactment’ as opposed to something that is ‘held’,  conceivably humans and other biological organisms are not necessary for agency (or life) to emerge as inorganic material agency erupts from unchoreographed assemblages of spacetimematter(ing). And if cognitive and dermatological boundaries are no longer organ-ised by an Enlightenment prescription, how might pedagogies perform differently and more equitably?
This article draws on the empirical materials from two psychogeographic walks that agitate lithic spaces with a posthuman affection. Part One examples a radical mobile classroom that I undertake regularly with university students where the use of it-narratives exposes the distributed agency of buildings. I explore what a posthuman gaze might do to/for performative pedagogies as my students attempt to interview a building. Part Two offers an example from my previous post-qualitative PhD inquiry which – by manipulating the practices of psychogeography and schizocartography – highlights how a shopping centre assemblage called Liverpool ONE diagnosed itself with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), thus reinforcing the notion of inorganic agential distribution. The pedagogic implications of this posthuman diagnosis are discussed.

In light of cultural discourses that position femininity at odds with technology, I was inspired by the work of
Donna Haraway to examine how women amputees experience and negotiate feminine embodiment with
prosthetic limbs. In her germinal Manifesto for Cyborgs, Haraway theorised the cyborg as a feminist symbol of a
utopian “post-gendered world,” asserting that techno-hybridity has the potential to destabilise embodied gendered
subjectivity—prompting a rethinking of sex, bodies, gender and humanity. In this paper, following a critical
discussion of Haraway’s work, I argue that the cyborg continues to be a provocative concept in feminist sociologies
of the body, enabling us to explore the complex new subjectivities that are made possible through feminine
techno-embodiment. Trough an empirical exploration of women amputees’ experiences of living with prosthetic
limbs, I found that women can embody and incorporate prosthetic technologies into their feminine selves in
multiple, complex, gendered ways. My fndings indicate that cyborgian hybridity may have the potential to
destabilise some aspects of gendered embodiment and performance for women with prosthetic limbs, which can
be experienced as both limiting and liberating.

Etyka troski rozwija teorię uogólnionej troski poprzez wyjście od naturalnych (biologicznych) praktyk opiekuńczych. Jednak ze względu na jej uwikłanie w naturalizm (stanowisko głoszące, że natura jest źródłem ładu ontologicznego, etycznego i politycznego) efektem
często jest zarówno wąska definicja kobiecości, jak i wąskie rozumienie troski – może ona dotyczyć tylko ludzi. Przyjęcie opieki nad dzieckiem jako paradygmatu sprawia też, że etyka troski powiela reprodukcyjny futuryzm (termin Lee Edelmana) – fantazmatyczne ujęcie
polityczności jako jednolitej wspólnoty ucieleśnianej przez postać Dziecka. By pokazać, że etyka troski nie musi być naturalistyczna, konfrontuję ją z postulatem Donny Haraway, by ograniczyć reprodukcję w imię dbałości o inne niż ludzie istoty, oraz z pojawiającym się
w powieściach Octavii Butler motywem opieki nad dzieckiem, które nie jest ludzkie – „potwornego macierzyństwa” – by zarysować nieantropocentryczną etykę troski.

O trabalho pretende responder se os humanos clonados artificialmente na série televisiva Orphan Black são tratados como commodities ao explorar discussões no campo da bioética que envolvem clonagem humana artificial. Para tal, serão descritos debates prévios e presentes sobre a clonagem artificial, assim como a condição em que o humano seria colocado caso a clonagem humana artificial obtenha sucesso. As visões de Jean Baudrillard e Donna Haraway serão comparadas. A metodologia empregada será a análise de episódios de Orphan Black, junto à revisão bibliográfica.

""This introduction to the special issue on the history of power forwards the anthropological concept of “purification” as a means of drawing together disparate histories of psychology that invoke notions of power. Drawing on the work of Mary Douglas, Bruno Latour, Michel Foucault, and Donna Haraway, I argue for a history
of psychology that links the carving up of people up into their properly natural and enculturated parts with keeping people in their place, the purification of interpretation by scientific representation, the maintenance of the body politic of the discipline, and the role of psychology in making up power in modern nation states.""

I opened this chapter with a short story produced during one of our workshops because it encapsulates our mission to project the archive of the Peckham Health Centre (PHC) in the Wellcome Collection into the future. The Art Assassins and I never tried to be objective witnesses, nor did we imagine ourselves meticulous scholars. We were never going to plough through the entire PHC Collection. We did not want to stop at the question of what the PHC was — we wanted to speculate on what it could still be. More precisely, we explored what it could be for a group of young South Londoners discovering it today for the first time. Our approach was in tune with what Donna Haraway calls ‘SF methodology’, where SF stands for String Figures, Science Fact, Science Fiction, Speculative Feminism, Speculative Fabulation and So Far. Each one of these formulas speaks to the research we undertook

The care sector in Denmark is undergoing rapid change and facing severe challenges due to the increasing number of elders and cuts in social welfare. The political response is welfare technology aiming on efficiency and replacement of care workers. Welfare technology is presented as a quick fix to a welfare state in crisis. In these times of change it is important to obtain more knowledge about what care work consists of, and how it is changing.

Care research has mainly focused on the paradigmatic shifts in the sector and working conditions. In a movement beyond discourse this thesis approaches care work by identifying how multiple modalities, including discourse and materialism, affect and human and non-human actors intra-act in the constitutive processes of care practices. Framed by an analysis of policy documents on welfare technology, I analyse interviews with care workers. The thesis is an analytical experiment inspired by Lis Højgaard and Dorte Marie Søndergaard’s framework for analysing multimodal constitutive processes in empirical research. Further it is inspired by feminist new-materialist theory, including Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism and Sara Ahmed and Dorthe Staunæs’ insights on affect. This approach enables an analysis of how care practices are constituted in a complex intra-action of human and non-human actors, including affect, body, gender, technology, mundane technologies, time, skills, work regulations, as well as local, institutional and societal discourses.

I find that care workers apply a variety of strategies, negotiated in relation to discourses of good care, in order to target the care recipients’ needs and influence affective transformations. Needs are identified through multi-sensory hunches seeking information from available sources: voice, facial expression, furniture, life history etc. Motivation, medication and mediation through language and use of mundane technologies are some of the other strategies applied. The strategies are constantly reshaped in relation to the context, colleagues and care recipients. The demented represent an inappropriate post-human challenge to the ideal of care. In facing this challenge care workers apply a somatic and relational approach and try to restore the self of the demented. The practices are shaped by bodily, gendered and affective subjectification of the care worker related to the hazards of the demanding work, sexual harassment and violence.

I find that there is a gap between the discourses on welfare technology and the care work practices. As a reaction to cuts and technologisation the care workers struggle for recognition and a revalorisation of their skills and the importance of humane skills in conducting care.

Resumo Frente a cada computador, tablet ou celular vemos nosso reflexo opaco numa tela preta. A tecnologia, a técnica moderna, se faz presente em cada parte do nosso cotidiano. O humano interage com a máquina, mas a pergunta contrária se faz válida-e tenta ser respondida pela ficção. O presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar a relação do ser humano com a inteligência artificial através do episódio " Be Right Back " , da série televisiva de cunho distópicoBlack Mirror, exibida atualmente pelo Netflix. A série tem o objetivo de apresentar e discutir resultados de excessos da tecnologia no cotidiano dos humanos, ainda que apresentado como sendo num futuro, porém possível. O episódio em questão trabalha o relacionamento entre o ser humano e a inteligência artificial num modo de substituir um outro e suprir seus papéis. Serão contrastados os pensamentos de Martin Heidegger sobre o dasein e a natureza humana e estudos derivados com a perspectiva de Alan Turing sobre Inteligência Artificial e humanidade, com o objetivo de discorrer brevemente as perspectivas acerca do pós-humanismo e transhumanismo, bem como suas implicações sociais; adentrar na questão do que é o ser; e discutir a alteridade e sua presença numa inteligência artificial. Assim, pergunta-se, nesse artigo, como é possível entender a alteridade encontrada entre Martha, a protagonista do episódio, e uma Inteligência Artificial que é criada com a função de substituir seu falecido noivo, Ash. Para esse estudo, partiremos de certos pressupostos a respeito do que é o ser e sobre a questão da técnica na concepção heideggeriana de dasein e na visão da técnica como um modo de ser vigente na pós-modernidade.

Posthuman Suffering investigates the core assumptions of posthumanist discourse via philosophy, cultural studies, psychoanalytic theory, and close textual and filmic readings of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Steven Spielberg's film, AI: Artificial Intelligence, bringing the more ontological and epistemological implications of posthumanism to the forefront. In the age of technology our own limitations are legitimized as unique to the human condition.

Este trabalho procurará analisar a representação de clones humanos na série televisiva Orphan Black com base nas obras de Donna Haraway e Jean Baudrillard, ao ponderar aproximações e distanciamentos entre as abordagens propostas pela série e os dois pensadores citados. Para tal, as ideias de clonagem humana artificial e biotecnologia retratadas em Orphan Black serão analisadas, com ênfase nos campos da bioética, transhumanismo e individualidade. A partir desses aprofundamentos, a pesquisa discutirá como Orphan Black traz informações pertinentes a respeito da biotecnologia para seu público. A metodologia empregada será a análise de episódios de Orphan Black baseada em conceitos dos Estudos Culturais Críticos propostos por Kellner (2001). A revisão bibliográfica se também se faz necessária, tendo como base as obras de Jean Baudrillard e Donna Haraway.

This essay proposes a cybernetic conception of the human body and uses the System Theory to offer a perspective of the body as a sympoietic system. A sympoietic system develops itself through interactions with other systems. The body is constantly in relation with objects, technological devices, machines, institutions, etc., that expand or reduce its capacity of action. This essay thinks the problem of freedom in the context where life is each day further connected in networks.

https://non-milleplateaux.de/a-cybernetic-conception-of-intelligence/

Resumo: Lacatumarea Silicata é uma espécie de criatura que, como a Siphonora Ovulares, pode ser que habite uma das Ilhas Flutuantes que Beatriz Chachamovits fez emergir nos seus desenhos. As Ilhas têm seus contornos mal definidos e é impossível afirmar que os animais feitos por Beatriz vivam ali. Não é uma questão factual, certamente; mas esse mundo – de Beatriz, da Lacatumarea, da Siphonora e das Ilhas – conta uma história e existe por causa dela. É na relação entre a artista e suas criaturas que todos os atores emergem. A relação é, de fato, a menor unidade de análise possível. Depois da manifestação do ciborgue, é " a espécie de companhia " , não " o animal de estimação " , que melhor contesta o binarismo natureza/cultura e que talvez possa, de modo mais produtivo, " informar políticas e ontologias mais vivíveis nos atuais mundos de vida " .

Este trabalho visa, em linhas gerais, apresentar as perspectivas acerca do gênero encontradas nos trabalhos das teóricas feministas Donna Haraway e Judith Butler. Para isto, utilizei como base os textos "'Gender' for a Marxist Dictionary", de Haraway, e "Gender Trouble" (principalmente o primeiro capítulo), de Butler. O texto se divide em três partes, que abordam temas distintos, mas correlacionados: a primeira parte trata da problemática que relaciona o sexo e o gênero tanto nas teorias feministas anteriores aos trabalhos de Butler e Haraway, quanto no âmbito do marxismo; a segunda parte pretende discorrer acerca da questão da universalidade identitária, das críticas a esta noção e sobre o tema da interseccionalidade; a terceira parte, por fim, apresenta as propostas de ação política de cada uma das duas autoras, as suas sugestões práticas e metodológicas para as teorizações feministas, em acordo com as problematizações feitas acerca da questão sexo/gênero, bem como com as críticas realizadas acerca da tentativa (como veremos, insuficiente) de universalização de uma única "subjetividade feminista".

Palavras-chave: feminismo, gênero, sexo, interseccionalidade, subjetividade, autoconstrução, subversão.

[Este texto ainda não foi publicado em nenhuma revista, mas foi apresentado em uma comunicação no "IX EREFIL-SUL (Encontro Regional Sul dos Estudantes de Filosofia) - Filosofia em tempos de crise" (25-27/IV/2019), realizada na Universidade Federal do Paraná, no dia 27 de abril de 2019]

Las prácticas culturales en su conjunto están enmarcadas en y atravesadas por un contexto informacional que traza el camino por el que transita el siglo XXI. Pero ¿cuál es la entidad de este ser al que llamamos información? ¿Bajo qué rostros se muestra? Pensar la información hoy es pensar en las tecnologías digitales y el lugar que ocupan en la organización de las sociedades actuales, pero también es pensar en el sentido común que la asocia a las noticias, transmitidas diariamente por los medios de comunicación, e incluso en las implicancias que se desprenden de su propio nombre: in-formación, proceso que in-forma o que da forma.
Nosotros comenzaremos con el que creemos el primer aporte teórico/práctico de peso para comprender la sociedad de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, lo que se conoce como la Teoría Cibernética de la Información. Weiner y Shannon constituyen los primeros investigadores que elaboran un plan en el que el ser humano funciona como una variable regulatoria de los medios de información y comunicación, y no como el actor de peso en el espectro mediático. El filósofo Marshall McLuhan tomará la posta y construirá, a su manera ecléctica, la primera Teoría Auténtica de los Medios de Vinculación de Masas.
Aquí, en este punto de partida, se abren una gran cantidad de sendas por donde recorrer el devenir mediático de la sociedad postmoderna (la llamamos postmoderna, pero podríamos denominarla de diferentes maneras: tardocapitalista, postdisciplinaria, postfordista o postindustrial, de la comunicación, de la información, líquida, etcétera). Nosotros elegimos la que creemos central, porque su “objeto” había sido el Objeto privilegiado del siglo XX: el sexo y la sexualidad. La liberación de la representación de la sexualidad —que no es lo mismo que la liberación del sexo: más bien podría interpretarse como la inauguración de un nuevo tipo de sexualidad, y con él de un nuevo tipo de ser humano, de un ser post o transhumano— da cuenta de la transformación social y política radical que estaba viviendo en esos años. Nosotros consideramos a todas estas transformaciones o liberaciones como signos de un acontecimiento incluso más importante. Hace más de un siglo Friedrich Nietzsche sentenciaba en una famosa fórmula “la muerte de dios”. Para nosotros el fin de la era metafísica, que él también anunció y tantos otros tomaron la antorcha, recién se concretó con el traspaso del código de registro analógico al digital. El siglo XX fue el siglo del programa de desmontaje no sólo de la metafísica sino de la sociedad y la estructura mental que la metafísica traía consigo. La trampa reside en que todavía debemos recurrir a esa estructura para poder reflexionar sobre las condiciones de existencia en la sociedad de masas postmetafísica.
Con el fin de la metafísica termina una era demasiada humana de por lo menos dos mil quinientos años, pero no termina el régimen capitalista. Termina una estructura mental cuyo medio hegemónico era el libro, pero no termina ni la producción masiva de libros (más bien ésta se multiplica exponencialmente) ni las condiciones económicas y sociales que la producción de libros en particular, y la producción de cualquier mercancía en general, implican. Sólo que esas condiciones de producción, circulación y consumo también cambian. A este estadio del capitalismo nosotros le damos el nombre de Capitalismo Afectivo, porque hace del afecto la última mercancía a producirse masivamente. La afectación del capital toma formas diversas, siendo la mediación audiovisual uno de los modos más efectivos de pregnancia. Si bien la lógica de lo audio-visual está atravesada de pantallas, no es sólo el sentido de la vista el que se afecta ni la percepción visual la que se trastoca; también el entorno sonoro y la percepción auditiva entran hoy en manifiesto disloque: desde el sonido móvil de los reproductores portátiles hasta la ubicuidad del uso de la música como fondo de un sinfín de actividades cotidianas, el escenario info-comunicacional forja un nuevo mapa de la cultura sonora, re-estructurando el sentido -del oído en particular y del cuerpo en general.
El Capitalismo Afectivo o postmetafísico, cuyo modo de vincularse es a través de alguna modalidad del código digital, conoce un despliegue de vinculación y registro sólo limitado por la capacidad tecnológica, es decir ninguna ética ni ninguna intencionalidad humana parecen jugar algún rol más o menos relevante a la hora de decidir el destino de la deriva tecnológica. En este sentido habría que considerar al ser humano una plataforma de despegue o de aceleración de la vinculación mediática que se está llevando adelante. Ésta es la hipótesis que de algún modo el presente Seminario tratará de poner a prueba y someter a discusión.

Resumo: O artigo propõe uma aproximação teórica entre a análise de discurso e os estudos de gênero a fim de se pensar uma teoria materialista (até então impensada) transfeminista. Para tanto, serão mobilizados conceitos ou objetos teóricos como discurso, corpo e sujeito. Um especial enfoque será dado para as metáforas de Michel Pêchuex e Donna Haraway, respectivamente, sobre máquinas discursivas e ciborgues. Concluímos que a aproximação entre feminismo e os estudos sobre discurso constitui um campo profícuo para, em seus entremeios, conceber teorias e práticas de resistência transfeministas.
Palavras chave: Análise de discurso; Estudos de gênero; Transfeminismo.

Abstract: This article proposes a theoretical approach between discourse analysis and gender studies in order to think a transfeminist materialistic theory (hitherto unconsidered). For this, we mobilized concepts or theoretical objects as discourse, body and subject. A special focus will be given to the metaphors of Michel Pêchuex and Donna Haraway, respectively, to discur-sive machines and cyborgs. We conclude that the approchement between feminism and discourse studies is a fruitful field to conceive transfeminists theories and practices of resistance.

Feminist geographers have criticized affective and non-representational geographies for not taking into account social differences. This paper brings feminist accounts of emotion and affect into dialogue with affective and non-representational geographies in order to develop a feminist more-than-representational geography. In a first step, three shared commitments of a non-representational research agenda are presented: (1) a focus on everyday practices and the body, (2) a focus on the unconsciousness, and (3) affect as a more-than-human force. In a second step, I summarize feminist geographies‘ critiques of non-representational geographies. Drawing on an ongoing research project on the transnational market of surrogacy, I then discuss the benefits and challenges of a more-than-representational agenda for geographical research.

For Donna Haraway, a tentacular life is relational and sticky, a moving-creating-living with that is at heart sympoietic and entangled. Wilding, as a speculative pragmatic and ten-tacular practice, involves thinking about the world in ecological terms-that is, neither a world of objects or one of fixed and separated subjects with a distanced perspective of the world. Instead, wilding involves a tactic of embracing an entangled and multi-storied approach to thinking. In this article the question of the possibility of ecological rather than individualized consciousness is speculated upon through the tentacular. Drawing on William James' impersonal conception of consciousness and contemporary biology's insights into the relationality of life and thinking, this paper asks: what would a sympoietic concept of consciousness mean? How would this shift the valuing of intelligences towards activism and allow us to learn from those, human and nonhuman, traditionally denied intellectual value?

Most contemporary scholarly work on posthumanism and transhumanism rests on the idea that both perspectives are part of an ontological continuum. This article, however, acknowledges and explores the differences between them. In order to prove that evident theoretical –and, therefore, practical– differences exist between both positions, a genealogy of their development from the 1980s is proposed. The definition of the two different ontologies associated to each of the discussed positions is followed by an analysis of the consequences that this theoretical separation would have for research. This paper also lays out a revision of their epistemologies and their ethical and practical implications. To conclude, we offer a contextualized justification of why the two discussed positions are actually antithetic, and how considering them as such would be useful for future research in the field.

John Berger’s warnings around the gaze in Ways of Seeing and the discourses surrounding NASA’s Blue Marble, the 1972 image of the whole Earth from space, propose a visual practice based on vision as inculcating an alienating objectivity. I return to these foundational texts from 1972 in order to produce symptomatic readings that suggest a background for certain attitudes around digital images. Introducing Donna Haraway’s notion of diffraction multiplies the interpretive identities of such texts and pushes against over identifications that limit a text’s contemporary resonance, as I explain through my discussion of Ways of Seeing and then model through various approaches to Blue Marble. My analysis identifies how attributes of each object contribute to the disappearance of the image as something one looks at, but by reclaiming vision, a new kind of critical visuality becomes available, particularly as it applies to digital culture, as I address in my conclusion.

In this piece I attempt to address the ways in which Gloria Anzaldúa, in Borderlands: La Frontera (2007), negotiates the idea of the border as having both discursive and material dimensions. In creating a new mestiza consciousness from the borderland, which is the space that is affected by the borderline, Anzaldúa develops concepts and ideas that can be linked to Donna Haraway’s articulation of the cyborg and to Karen Barad’s theory of an agential realist ontology in the sense that Anzaldúa engages creatively with contradicting parts of her identity in a cyborgian fashion, and sees the enactment of borders as both limiting and empowering, as having emotional and material effects. Anzaldúa then addresses these effects and demonstrates how she applies them in the fabrication of a new consciousness, the consciousness of the new mestiza. In this work, therefore, I explore how the border makes itself physically present in Anzaldúa’s Borderlands and how the discursive meets matter; and I do this by finding common threads and possible connections among the works of Anzaldúa, Haraway, and Barad.