Trying to Make Sense of the Readings for January 30th, 2008

This picture clearly displays my reaction to the first reading...

The piece by Donna Haraway entitled A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century not only fonfused me thoroughly but frustrated me in a sense because I couldn't understand what it was that I was reading. The second sentence into the reading I was thoroughly confused. The sentence saying “Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification.” First I had to look up blasphemy to gain a better understanding, then I looked up reverent to only see that it means to show deep respect or love for. And after going back and trying to better understand it again… I still didn’t understand. After trucking ahead with the rest of the reading I instantly wanted to move on to the next one and say “skip or bump this one” but I kept reading hoping that maybe in the end it would make a little better sense. It didn’t. I will at least say that I did appreciate the little explanations here and there like the one found on page 362 explaining what a cyborg is and then explaining terms found within the definition of a cyborg. But then what I didn’t understand is on the following page (363) Ms. Haraway goes into a more thorough explanation of a cyborg and why she was using or making the analogy to a cyborg that she was using. So after further reading and trying to get myself through this reading I started to wonder if her reference to cyborg’s meant that she is looking into the future and see’s all of us floating around or going around as little robots almost. Just like the Jetsons. I came up with this from where on page (365) she was speaking in terms of “control strategies” and how human beings also must contain the proper standard, the proper code, for processing signals in a common language. Then on page (366) she made a reference to the cyborg being a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and person self meaning to me that we take in so much information and in order to process it we must disassemble and reassemble again a better cyborg maybe?!?

The next reading by Evelyn Fox Keller entitled Making Gender Visible in the Pursuit of Nature’s Secrets I found to be not only quite an easier read but thoroughly intriguing. I especially like when Ms. Keller made mention to the fact that women are visible but on the interior we are invisible in reference to our “innermost and most vital parts” (pg. 485). This statement made me think of so many things. First being that of a trophy wife and of course she is not visible because the main reason is to have her there to look good on the males arm; however, her feelings, her emotions, her thoughts and intelligence are unable to shine through and be made visible. Also I secondly thought in terms of reproduction and how genitalia are are contained within vs. a males being outward. This reading was incredibly thought provoking in the sense that I have never thought to think about biology let alone science in the way of secrecy and feminist theory. Just as in the reading it goes to show that every subject is inter-changeable and relatable.

**By the way what is a chimera (found on page 362 in the second paragraph).