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Cyberfeminism, Xenofeminism, & The Cyborg Manifesto
In this episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive deep into Donna Haraway’s 1985 “A Cyborg Manifesto” — a text Grimes called “one of the greatest things ever written” and a foundational (yet strangely forgotten) work that sparked cyberfeminism, xenofeminism, and black cyberfeminism.Why have so few people actually read the essay that’s cited more than almost any other in feminist theory and science & technology studies? How did a response to a socialist-feminist call during the Reagan era become a poetic, blasphemous celebration of blurred boundaries — human/machine, male/female, organism/technology — and a rejection of rigid identity politics?We explore:1. The Cyborg as a metaphor for post-gender, post-origin-story politics2. Haraway’s call for “affinity” coalitions over essentialist identities3. How the manifesto was twisted into new identity-based feminisms (cyberfeminism → xenofeminism → black cyberfeminism)4. Why the original text feels closer to pronatalist, post-identity futurism than to modern progressive frameworks5. The Santa Cruz / Bay Area cultural context that birthed this fever-dream masterpiece6“ Terra Nationalism,” 7. Post-cyberfeminism vs. xenofeminism.If you love Grimes, transhumanism, feminist theory, online culture, or just wild 1980s philosophy that predicted our AI-saturated present — this episode is for you.🔗 Full text of A Cyborg Manifesto: https://web.archive.org/web/20120214194015/http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
Episode Outline
* I saw a post on X by Grimes recently in which she refers to A Cyborg Manifesto as “one of the greatest things ever written.”
* She added: “What’s crazy abt cyborg manifesto is even if you pretend it has nothing to do with feminism it’s still a masterpiece of general philosophy and is filled with banger poetry”
* So I checked it out
* Because she is also the person who turned me on to Iain Banks’ Culture series and it changed the way I view AI and the future of humanity
* And the rabbit hole commenced
* It turns out “A Cyborg Manifesto”—originally published in 1985—is so well known in certain academic circles, it is almost never discussed as it’s assumed to be such tacit knowledge
* As @ALilInternet puts it: “Its seen as a kinda cliche reference in academic contexts or lectures, because it’s assumed everyone has already read it, which is prob why u don’t encounter it — I think in general it’s a shame with this happens to important works, because young ppl etc might NOT know it.”
* It is considered to be one of the most influential essays in feminist theory, science and technology studies (STS), and posthumanities.
* And it is one of the most cited essays in the humanities and social sciences worldwide.
* Basically, it:
* Argues that the cyborg—a hybrid of machine and organism—is a powerful metaphor for breaking down rigid boundaries: human/animal, organism/machine, physical/non-physical, male/female, nature/culture.
* Rejects essentialist identity politics and traditional socialist-feminism in favor of “affinity politics” (coalitions based on shared interests rather than fixed identities).
* Embraces irony, partiality, and blasphemy against origin stories (both religious and secular).
* Key quotes that are endlessly repeated:
* “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.”
* “The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labor, or other seductions to organic wholeness.”
* “We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism.”
* And this manifesto gave birth to cyberfeminism, which gave birth to xenof
Published on 1 week, 2 days ago