ABSTRACT
Donna Haraway’s manifesto was influential in various fields of feminist inquiry, especially those having to do with labor and work, science and technology, and identity politics in general. Part of Donna Haraway’s point in “A Cyborg Manifesto” was that “using” the figure of the cyborg involved necessary tensions and difficulties. The idea of hybridity and a porous boundary between human and nonhuman have been used to help explain the concept of posthumanism, notably in Katherine Hayles's work, even though Haraway has herself been critical of the term. Similarly, theorists of cyberfeminism drew on the manifesto’s critique of technophobia and systematically misinterpreted it as a justification of the idea that “it’s possible to construct one's identity, sexuality, even gender.” Haraway cites Chela Sandoval’s concept of oppositional consciousness extensively in her essay. In the manifesto, Haraway treated the cyborg as a potentially useful figure for rebellion and resistance, but one that was already implicated in control, domination, and colonization.
