blog 6

Dona Haraway defines a cyborg in her chaper “A cyborg Manifesto” as a cybernetic organism. She goes one to state that a cyborg also “is a hybrid of machine and organism, and a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (475). Cyborgs relation to the Western tradition is that is has no origin story unlike in the Western tradition where we are able to see traditions like racism, male-dominante capitalism, and progress which are all traditions audiences are able to view in Western traditional movies. The idea that cyborgs bring nontraditional thoughts and ideas into science fiction movies through the use the imagination rather than tradition allow cyborgs to not follow the Western tradition.

The three boundary breakdowns that give cyborgs their political potential would be the boundary between the human and animal; the animal-human and machine; and the physical and non-physical. The boundary between the human and animal over the last couple of centuries has become almost less necessary. With advances in Biology and evolutionary theory Americans have realized as Haraway states “produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals” (477). The boundary between animal-human and machine over the years has grown more together in the way that machines are acquiring more human like characteristics. A good example of this would be the Terminator who is a machine taking on human looks and characteristics. Lastly the boundary between the physical and non-physical is considered very imprecise for us as Americans. Cyborgs, cybernetic organisms, have not only broken off from the Western traditional ideas, but changed the way people view the boundary breakdowns of cyborgs.