ABSTRACT
Mary Ann Doane argues, from a perspective rooted in psychoanalytic theory, that Donna Haraway’s rejection of ideas of origin means that her essay risks losing sight of the importance of loss in feminist theory. She suggests that the manifesto lacks a real theory of subjectivity; it is too caught up in the utopian “myth” that Haraway describes. Joan W. Scott focuses on “traces of an older mode of analysis not entirely displaced” in the essay: an implicit economic or technological determinism* and a romanticization of women of color, both of which she associates with traditional socialism. The interview with Constance Penley and Andrew Ross is a useful reference point for Haraway’s response to early criticisms of the manifesto, since it shows her both open to revising parts of it and dogged about some of her premises.
