Haraway wrote that, "illegitimate offspring are exceedingly unfaithful to their origins." And so, for Haraway illegitimate children are in between barriers; not a part of the mother or father's family or culture. However, Cyborgs have never had a culture in order to enter into this limenal space between cultures where it simply doesn't exist for illegitimate children. The means of getting to a place without culture or social norms is the difference between a Cyborg and an illegitimate child because the child made a choice to not take on either way of life fully. For example, in Shakespeare's Much Ado About nothing (a great play and a surprisingly good movie) the character of John the Bastard is evil and obviously illegitimate (thus the name). Of course, as the one character with no emotional attachments to any one of the others he causes havoc and ruins the marriage of Hero. If we are in fact going by Haraway, John the Bastard is in fact a Cyborg ruining the lives of many because he is free of the chains, which an unequal society had placed upon. First, if someone had just told Benedict or even John's brother either 1) we wouldn't have a play or 2) John would have found out that every one else had found out that he was a Cyborg and in the night he would have stolen Hero away and climbed bare handed to the top of the chuch tower, beating his chest like a mourning Roman woman vowing to keep the woman for himself. Personally, I like Shakepeare's plot much better because John the Bastard isn't a Cyborg. John is simply jealous of his brother because John will inherit nothing of value and has no social standing. He has a knowledge of the culture (the upper class Italian culture), which he is fighting against unlike a Cyborg, who wouldn't have a historical basis to fight against. Moreover, the entire view of Haraway that Cyborgs are in a middle place between human and machine is absolute ridiculousness. If anyone can name many times in history where people were in perfect balance with nature, government, themselves (excluding the philosophy of Stoicism and the religion of Buddhism, which guide human life but are not integral to human nature.), then please tell me I'll write my senior thesis on it. Until then, there's that cliche symbol of the pendulum (which I completely believe in) that guides movement in history. Thus, in 1789 when the French Revolution started no one could have predicted that the pendulum would swing and Robespierre would slaughter thousands and start a state God (Maybe Robespierre was a Cyborg...hmmmm...). Moral of the story, humans don't stay in the middle road, gray area, limenal space, or whatever you want to call it too long because of emotions and uncontrollable outside forces (going a little Naturalistic... I hate Naturalism...too many predictable characters and endings). Thus, John the Bastard was in fact just a Bastard not a Cyborg, Robespierre was also not a Cyborg (he's a tricky one), and just because illegitimate have a lack of cultural exchanges within the community does not make them Cyborg.
N.B. Because I am in an and especially terrible mood, I can't hold back my anger at the pun Haraway cracked about monsters and the verb demonstrate. Demonstrate and monster come from the Latin verb monstro, monstrare, monstravi, monstratus (1035 things--and counting--that 4 years of Latin is good for, which is 1034 more things than a physics class is good for...eep...Physics), which means to show. Obviously monsters show us their characteristics very violently. And so, there is no need to say that monsters do things "about showing" because it is already embedded in the meaning of the word and there is no reason for a woman, who is so well respected, to be so redundant. (I can picture my best friends giving me the evil stare for letting my geekness shine so brightly but I must put that aside for this pun-maker must be stopped before she bungles more than two languages at once.)
No comments:
Post a Comment