gender terrorist: Just like people

Donna Haraway, a Cyborg Manifesto

There is nothing about beeing 'female' that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as 'being' female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. Gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.

And who counts as 'us' in my own rhetoric? Which identities are available to ground such a potent political myth called 'us', and what could motivate enlistment in this collectivity? Painful fragmentation among feminists (not to mention among women) along every possible fault line has made the concept of woman elusive, an excuse for the matrix of women's dominations of each other. For me - and for many who share a similar historical location in white, professional middle-class, female, radical, North American, mid-adult bodies - the sources of a crisis in political identity are legion. The recent history for much of the US left and US feminism has been a response to this kind of crisis by endless splitting and searches for a new essential unity. But there has also been a growing recognition of another response through coalition - affinity, not identity.

......

Cyborg imagery can help express two crucial arguments in this essay: first, the production of universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake that misses most of reality, probably always, but certainly now; and second, taking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology means refusing an anti-science metaphysics, a demonology of technology, and so means embracing the skilful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all of our parts. It is not just that science and technology are possible means of great human satisfaction, as well as a matrix of complex dominations. Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the supersavers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.

"...Είμαστε εδώ για το πολύ συγκεκριμένο εν δυνάμει των σωμάτων μας. Είμαστε εδώ για να υπερβούμε αυτά που μάθαμε, την ενοχή, την ντροπή, την αδικία, το μίσος του εαυτού και είμαστε εδώ για να φτιάξουμε συλλογικά μια καινούρια γλώσσα, καινούριους τρόπους του υπάρχειν, νέες μορφές που δεν διαχειρίζονται τα περιεχόμενά μας, αλλά τους δίνουν χώρο και λόγο.

Είμαστε εδώ για τη συλλογική ύπαρξη, για τη χαρά του να φιλιέσαι και να αγγίζεσαι Σάββατο βράδυ στο κέντρο της πόλης, είμαστε εδώ για να αντιπαρατεθούμε στις "συνειδήσεις" που προστατεύουν αυτόν τον κόσμο της βίας, των απαγορεύσεων, του ελέγχου, των εξουσιών, της ασχήμιας.

Έναν κόσμο φοβικό που πνίγεται μέσα στα σκουπίδια που παράγει. Είμαστε εδώ απόψε για να φιληθούμε στο δρόμο. Για να μάθουμε την ελευθερία και να διεκδικήσουμε την επιθυμία. Τα σώματά μας, τα ελεύθερα σώματα, θα αρθρώσουν αυτήν την επιθυμία, θα γίνουν επικίνδυνα σώματα. Ένα φιλί ποτέ δεν είναι απλώς ένα φιλί.

Σάββατο βράδυ, 14/3/09
έξω από τη λυρική"

gender terrorist

Τετάρτη, 15 Σεπτεμβρίου 2010

Just like people

3 molotov:

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Donna Haraway, a Cyborg Manifesto

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