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Haraway’s key arguments in the “Manifesto for Cyborgs” includes:

1) the cyborg cannot be avoided as it blurs the boundaries and is our ontology (way of being). The cyborg is still “illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism and socialism” but they are viewed by Haraway as subversive as they undermind power disciplines (i.e. nature vs. culture). Thus, the cyborg can be used to imagine a world free of gender demands and categories.

2) the cyborg represents the breakdown of human-machine and human animal boundaries as it appears in cultural myths about the natural world and technology. Haraway states that “culture cannot escape biology as it seems to in some arguments (there is no simple cultural determination)” (Murphie & Potts, p.116).

3) the cyborg also represents the breakdown of the boundary between the physical world of visible objects and non-physical, or invisible “processual worlds.” “Invisible worlds” are defined by Haraway as consisting of information, electricity, or invisible computer chips.

4) there is the potential for subversion in a life “where people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines” (Murphie & Potts, p.117).

5) Haraway opposes the hierarchical dominations of “white capitalist patriarchy” (the rule of wealthy Caucasian men) and instead proposes a new cyborg conception of politics called “Informatics of Domination.” This new cyborg conception consists of optimal communications, with small groups as subsystems and perfection is optimization. Stress management replaces hygience and the family wage is replaced with integrated circuits of comparable worth. Genetic engineering and reproduction becomes replication as it replaces sex. Artificial intelligence or robotics replaces labour.

6) machines can become “friendly selves” and nothing in this networked world is natural. The world instead is defined as “a problem of coding” wherein communication and biotechnologies are critical to “recraft our friendly selves.” (Murphie & Potts, p.118).

I thought it was interesting that Haraway points out that we will realize as these boundaries become so blurred that nothing has ever truly been pure as it is connected to everything else. She is concerned with the future in terms of the human body, machines, feminism, socialism, cultural function of metaphors and discourses and oppressed women workers. According to Haraway, the cyborg is born out of social reality and is also a “creature of fiction.” Thus, a cyborg is both a series of real connections between bodies and machines (i.e. a pacemaker implanted in the human body) but also it offers us metaphors or new ways of negotiating cultural aspects.

References
Haraway, D. (1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149-181). New York; Routledge.

Murphie, A., & Potts, J. (2003). Culture and techology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.