feminist beachcombing (7 pages, typed double-spaced, around 2000 words) Go out into the world and find an example from our contemporary culture that embodies an idea of woman as espoused by Luce Irigaray, Patricia J. Williams, or Donna Haraway (choose ONE theorist). Your cultural example need not be a real person; fictional characters from novels, films, art, etc. are just as good for this assignment as public figures like actors, musicians, politicians, etc. However, DO NOT choose a personal acquaintance or family member. In the essay, demonstrate a comprehension of the theorist as well as a your own individual engagement with her ideas. Then, use that theoretical reading as a tool to perform an analysis of your cultural example, articulating how they complicate/elaborate/contradict/support the theorists idea of woman. I chose Donna Haraway as one theorist and the reading for Donna Haraway is attatched in this order. Please use an example that is famous around the world. These are ideas we talked about in class and directions that I want for this essay. It’s not much but please read them thoroughly! For the introduction, instead of talking about general feminism, please just dive right into the idea of cyborg and stay within the subjects or ideas you are going to talk about in the essay. In class, we talked about how girls are treated as a thing so maybe you can make connections between thing and cyborg first as a start and then focus on cyborg and feminism and the analysis. One of the big ideas we discussed in the class was how Haraway explains cyborg as a creature of social reality + fiction. Fiction holds the idea of potential and possibility which suggests made-prediction of women that constitutes women’s experiences. Cyborg is a substitution of organic organization / a feedback system / post-gender / parts into a higher unity / no soul or origin. Helpful quotes are “They are wary of holism, but needy of connection…” and “Cyborgs… are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism…exceedingly unfaithful to their origins.” Haraway also talks about 3 different boundaries that are now have blurred distinction – Human and animal / Organism and machine / Physical and non physical. (Riding a car is also being a cyborg since the person is using a machine to transport its body when the organic form is walking). Haraway uses cyborg ontology to re-conceptualize women away from the idea of reproduction. She says, “cyborgs are ether, quintessence” which means ‘form of nothingness.’ Being nothing is a process of feminization can also be an identification. (femininity = technology) Another idea is ‘identity’ and ‘affinity group.’ Temporary moments of connections form a partial identity. In order to have an identity, it has to have a conceived idea by others before. Identity integrates origins and individuals and locates the sameness. On the other hand, affinity group is formed by a certain feeling or partial sense of belonging.
