This Article Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Web of Science (3) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Shields, R. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Flânerie for Cyborgs

University of Alberta

As a literary figure or conceit, Haraway’s cyborg is kin to Dumas’ and Balzac’s flâneur. As a social science fiction, crossing and mixing categories, the cyborg is an abject quasi-body who does not fit the Enlightenment model of the political subject and actor. The ‘Manifesto’ has a geography of sites - Home, Market, Paid Work Place, State, School, Clinic-Hospital and Church - which this article updates and to which it adds the Body and the Web. However, Haraway’s ‘cyborg-analysis’ directs attention to the nanotechnological scale of biotechnology. The spatialization implied in the ‘Manifesto’ is more like a surface, a site of regeneration, not a space of the body or of rebirth or the space of institutions such as the Market or School. The cyborg cannot be an Enlightenment political actor, but challenges the traditions, scale and space of the public sphere even as she carries ethical qualities and potentials for less normative forms of politics.

Key Words: biotechnology • cyborg • ethics • feminism • flâneur • Haraway • literary • metaphors • nanotechnology • politics • spacialization • spatial scale

Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 23, No. 7-8, 209-220 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0263276406069233


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?