ABSTRACT
This chapter presents Judith Butler's postmodern, anti-essentialist theory of gender as a social construct and her view of gender as something "one does" rather than something "one is". It also presents Donna Haraway's cyborg figuration and her theoretical notion of "situated knowledge". Although the cyborg is always a product of its time, it has theoretical potential in other contexts. It serves as a starting point for investigating the fusion of body and technology and its implications for our view of gender and identity. The chapter juxtaposes Butler's social constructivism with Haraway's transgression of it. Butler's Gender Trouble and Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" criticise classic feminism and its focus on woman as a singular subject and identity politics that emphasise similarities over differences in a way that brings about exclusive categorisations and practices. Despite their differences, Butler and Haraway seem to share an ontological foundation in the idea that objects of science are always products of material and discursive processes of creation.
