Research On Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Theory

Donna Haraway(hereinafter referred to as Haraway)is a famous multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary scholar in contemporary western philosophy history.She has been engaged in the study of zoology,evolutionary philosophy,biology,women,and history of consciousness.She has published a great deal of papers in journals such as Signs,Radical History Review,and Feminist Studies,and several books and has got significant research results.In these works,the A Manifesto for Cyborgs:Science,Technology,and SocialistFeminism in the 1980s(hereinafter referred to as A Manifesto for Cyborgs)has caused a sensation in the whole society,which has led to extensive discussion and research in academic community.The announcement of A Manifesto for Cyborgs marked the birth of the cyborg theory.In this paper,cyborg theory is taken as the object of study.By using the ways of comparative study,literature study and logic analysis,the author firstly traces the historical background of cyborg theory from the theoretical origin and realistic background.Specifically speaking,the cybernetic thoughts proposed by Norbert Wiener laid theoretical basis for cyborg theory.The impact caused by the third scientific and technological revolution on social production relations in the whole world laid realistic foundation for proposing the informatics of domination based on high-techs technology in cyborg theory.At the same time,the widespread attention on the relationship between man and machine and popularization of fictional works regarding robots provides rich imagination as the resources of creativity to Hareway.Then the author elaborates the rich meaning of cyborg theory from five aspects: the definition of cyborg,the image of cyborg,the breaking of boundaries,the new identity of man-machine chimera and the network system.Finally,the research significance of the study is discussed in detail and at length and the philosophical evaluation are made and the rationality and shortcomings of the cyborg theory are pointed out.This study finds that the cyborg theory has important implications on promoting the innovation and change of human cognition and it provide a wholly new methodology for studying the relations between folks and science and technology.It also provides a unique feminist postmodern perspective for us to think about today’s science and technology and its applications.But the theory still inevitably has certain limitations,for example,it exaggerated the political function of technology and lacked of scientific logic analysis and theoreticalproof and so on.