Carrier Bag Reading Group Session 3: Beyond the Body – The Contemporary Cyborg
event • 23 Jan 2020 6pm–8pm
Who cyborgs will be is a radical question; the answers are a matter of survival. — Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women
In the third session of The Carrier Bag reading group we will consider science fiction and its relationship to the body, focusing on cyborgs and the different representations in which they manifest.
The term cyborg was popularised in feminist theory in Donna Haraway’s 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” in which she uses the concept of a cyborg, without rigid boundaries, to criticise traditional feminism and call for a rethinking of identify politics.
Whilst the essay became a cult text within feminist theory and literature it has also been the subject of criticism, with Haraway even calling for us to update our understanding of the cyborg and develop our reading into our contemporary political understanding.
In this session we will look at how the concept of a cyborg has been looked at within crip theory and afrofuturist theories and consider what a contemporary cyborg is and how our understanding of the cyborg needs to be updated. We will consider what the potentials of the cyborg are within creating an intersectional feminist discourse and how we may use this within politics today.
Readings:
Alison Kafer – “The Cyborg and the Crip: Critical Encounters”, 2013.
Tiffany E. Barber – “Cyborg Grammar? Reading Wangechi Mutu’s Non je ne regretted rien through Kindred”, 2016
Marge Piercy – He, She and It (excerpt), 1991
