writing cyborg/queer/hybrid histories by Mariza Daouti

writing cyborg/queer/hybrid histories

Investigating writing technologies in Judith Butlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gender Trouble and Bruno Latourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s We have never been modern

Marisa Daouti Bartlett School of Architecture | MA Architectural History 2016-17 Critical Methodologies Module | January 2017

Writing is a powerful mechanism, that not only communicates ideas, but also transforms them in the process. For Donna Haraway, there is ‘no thinking process outside of some materiality’. Could we then approach a text as a physical space of knowledge production? At the same time, writing, or better literacy, contains power, because it tends to be assumed as normative for human expression and thought. But when disruptive and destabilizing theories emerge, how can writing technologies manage to retell the story? In order to investigate the implications of troublemaking ideas, and because ‘it is the simultaneity of breakdowns that cracks the matrices of domination and opens geometric possibilities’, Donna Haraway, Judith Butler and Bruno Latour are brought together to demonstrate how cyborg/queer/hybrid histories can be written. The schema that is developed in the essay, examines two fundamental texts through the lens of Haraway’s cyborg writing, as a means of introducing to their interpretation the idea of language politics. Acclaiming Gender Trouble and We Have Never Been Modern, as pieces of cyborg writing, we will investigate the possibility of the cyborg identity of the authors. The essay will then look into the textual technologies that the authors employ to establish their views. It will examine the texts in terms of structure of the argument, accessibility, tone, density of information, fluidity, relationship between reader/author, etc. By way of conclusion, we will examine the agency of a writing technology, and thus a cyborg writing, for architectural history.

Cyborg writing By employing the metaphor of the cyborg, a hybrid of machine and organism, Haraway offers a critique of identity politics in traditional feminist discourse and postulates the urgency to transgress established boundaries in the light of the emerging world order. At the center of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg.1 In other words, the manifesto aims to formulate a new politics, capable to overhaul the old constitution that reproduces the dominant myths of the West, and to bring about fundamental change. As she states in a later interview the manifesto ‘is a feminist theoretical document – a coming to terms with the world we live in and the question what is to be done. Manifestos provoke by asking two things: 2 where the holy hell are we, and so what?’ . In the final chapter of the essay, Haraway interrogates the possibility of a cyborg identity through the readings of two separate group of texts: constructions of women of colour and monstrous selves in feminist science fiction. The authors of these texts are storytellers, voices of pollution in the modernist tradition, who, by retelling origin stories, strive to subvert and displace the persistent dualisms that have structured the Western self. The replication of these binaries has been ‘systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers, animals – in short, domination of all constituted as others, whose task 3 is to mirror the self’ . Haraway states that language politics are

I have consulted the revised version of the article published with the title ‘A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’ in Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2004. The Haraway Reader. 1st ed. New York: Routledge. p.7 2 Gane, N. 2006. "When We Have Never Been Human, What Is To Be Done?: Interview With Donna Haraway". Theory, Culture & Society 23 (7-8): 136 3 Haraway, Donna Jeanne. The Haraway Reader, p.35

diffused in every emancipation history, and stresses the importance of stories about language to contemporary feminist writers, such as Cherrie Moraga. For them, literacy projects are equal to freedom projects. Cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates the whole meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism.4 Thus, writing, has attained a special significance for all colonized groups who engage in the political struggle. As the western technology of domination– a technology that writes the world – writing 5 grants access to the power to signify (‘a very,very old story’) . Writing has been crucial to the Western myth of the distinction of oral and written cultures, primitive and civilized mentalities, and more recently to the erosion of that distinction in “post-modernity” theories attacking the phallogocentrism of the West, with its worship of the monotheistic, phallic, authoritative, and singular words, the unique and perfect name.6 Hence, literacy becomes a tool of liberation and empowerment. In the emerging political myth, writing becomes the preeminent technology of the cyborgs, whose texts talk ‘about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to 7 mark the world that marked them as Οther’ . Haraway, like Derrida, Cixous, Irigaray and others, introduces a form of writing that aims to resist and foreground the authoritative apparatus of the production of bodies, meanings and power.

ibid., 34 Olson G. 1996. “Writing, Literacy and Technology: Toward a Cyborg Writing”. JAC, Vol. 16, No. 1, p.5 6 Haraway, Donna Jeanne. The Haraway Reader., p.32 7 ibid., 33 5

Acclaiming the cyborg identity of Butler and Latour We did not originally choose to be cyborgs, but choice grounds a liberal politics and epistemology that imagines the reproduction of individuals before the wider replication of ‘texts’.8 Haraway has declared herself a cyborg intra- and intertextually. The venture of this essay is to examine Bruno Latour and Judith Butler as fellow cyborg authors, through their prominent works, We have never 9 been modern and Gender Trouble respectively. The hypothesis that brings the three eminent thinkers together, while being aware of their 10 divergences , aims to study the implications of the cyborg point of view, in the writing technologies that the two authors deploy. There are three principal concepts expressed in the Cyborg Manifesto, that establish a common ground: pollution, rewriting, emancipation.

ibid., 34 In the rest of the text: NM and GT 10 There are several disagreements, i.e Latour’s distaste for the postmoderns, Haraway’s opposition to Deleuzean theories,etc. 9

Pollution In an interview commenting on the manifesto, Haraway emphasizes 11 that ‘the cyborg is from the start a polluted category’ . So, in what terms Latour’s and Butler’s texts could be considered as polluted? The critique that can be applied here is that both authors occupy an ‘unmarked’ category of identity. However, their writing is strongly resisting the hegemonic traditions of the western narrative, while at the same time they fully acknowledge that they operate within the authority that produces them as subjects. In the preface of GT, Butler refers to the aim of the production of text, which is to unlock possibilities for gender, and states in an evidently self-referential manner: One might wonder what use “opening up possibilities” finally is, but no one who has understood what it is to live in the social world as what is “impossible,” illegible, unrealizable, unreal, and illegitimate is likely to pose that question.12 The consciousness of this mediating condition, is translated in NM as hybrids, those mixed-up creatures of nature, culture and discourse. Studying the hybrids, is a means to multiply the stories but also the actors who tell them. Despite the relegation of science studies by their contemporary intellectual circles, Latour and his collaborators insisted 13 on ‘noise and advocate pollution’ : Hybrids ourselves, installed lopsidedly within scientific institutions, half engineers and half philosophers, 'tiers instruits' without having sought the role, we have chosen to follow the imbroglios wherever they take us.14

Olson G. “Writing, Literacy and Technology: Toward a Cyborg Writing”. p. 4 Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble. 1st ed. New York: Routledge. p.vii Haraway, Donna Jeanne. The Haraway Reader, p. 34 14 Latour, Bruno and Catherine, Porter. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. p.3 12 13

Rewriting the myth Cyborg writing contains the effort of broader inclusion, as well as the awareness of the authoritative narrative that historically and ontologically constitutes it. Hence, within the cyborg writing exists this double agency of the myth that is inherited and the release of the repressed narratives that contest the myth. For Haraway, this double agency is extended to the technological. Departing from linguistic literacy, Haraway argues that, in the techno-scientific world where we live, in order to resist the systems of domination, it is vital to acknowledge as well, how the technical and scientific intermingle with the political. In a way, writing includes all forms of inscriptive technologies, that constitute our contemporary material world. The silicon chip is a surface for writing; it is etched in molecular scales disturbed only by atmoic noise, the ultimate interference for nuclear scores. Writing, power, and technology are old partners in Western stories of the origin of civilization, but miniaturization has changed our experience of mechanism. 15 GT and NM on the other hand, confront self-evident truths (myths) that often become vehicles for ideological assumptions. The task is to 16 ‘reconstruct inheritance’ : for Latour, challenging the notion of modernity and perceiving the world as a network of hybrids, for Butler questioning the formation of identity and subjectivity, and particularly revealing the processes by which we become subjects. Yet, both suggest that alternative modes of description can be met within existing power structures. Butler affirms that ‘GT sought to uncover the ways in which the very thinking of what is possible in gendered life 17 is foreclosed by certain habitual and violent presumptions’ . Her

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. The Haraway Reader, p.12 Olson G. “Writing, Literacy and Technology: Toward a Cyborg Writing”. p.10 17 Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. p.viii 16

reconstruction not only reverses the fixed truths about gender, but remains open and welcomes diverse interpretation, by leaving space for further editing or debate. Latour’s narrative, by decrying the stale notions inherited by the Copernican revolution, aims to put forward the argument that we have never been modern, because we have never made the purifying split between humans and non-humans. ‘So then the question is can we play another game? Can we redefine the task of the intellectual so 18 that it is no longer denouncing from one of two poles?’ . While the coherent myth of modernity is falling apart, the question of the relationalities with what is non-human or non-living emerges. Latour however, does not construct a new myth, but in turn suggests a new outlook that aims to perceive the world through the operation of actants.

Latour, B. and Crawford, T. 1993. “An Interview with Bruno Latour”. Configurations, 1(2), pp.258

Histories of emancipation The myth of the cyborg is unambiguously political. Haraway accentuates that the stories told by cyborg authors are about survival, in other words, they are histories of emancipation. Through the process of writing, which becomes a political act, the cyborg authors inhabit the reclaimed space, since ‘the cyborg is a figuration but it is 19 also an obligatory worlding’ . The notion of politics is deeply embedded in GT, as well as in NM. Butler on one hand, underscores that ‘within feminist political practice, a radical rethinking of the ontological constructions of identity appears to be necessary in order to formulate a representational politics that 20 might revive feminism on other grounds’ . Tracing and reconsidering radically the processes of ‘subject formation’ – the task she is performing in GT, but also in her later work– could provide the theoretical framework for the political qualification of subjects that are in the minority or the margins. By challenging the hegemonic structures that oppress these groups, she raises the political necessity for survival. This intention, that characterizes Butler’s philosophy, is stressed out in a response that she gives in a much later interview, when she is asked about Antigone constituting a paradigm for feminists. We should be able to live in a world in which our demand for justice do not cost us our lives. We want to survive; we want to make such claims and survive. So, the question that Antigone raises for me is, what kind of world would it have been or could it be in which Antigone could survive?21

Gane, N. 2006. "When We Have Never Been Human, What Is To Be Done?: Interview With Donna Haraway". P.139 ‘This is like Bruno Latour, but I give more space to the critic in the basement than Bruno Latour’. 20 Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. p.8 21 Reddy V. and Butler J. 2004. “Troubling Genders, Subverting Identities: Interview with Judith Butler”. Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, No. 62, African Feminisms Volume 2,1: Sexuality in Africa, p.123

Latour on the other hand, fights a similar battle from a different perspective. He concedes that politics, are resolutely intertwined with the scientific project. This conviction is evident in NM, where he intends to reveal the structures that set up our world, through the emancipation of the hybrids (or quasi-objects) that are being repressed under the modern Constitution. In this case, where does the political transformation lie? For Latour, the political project is to reconsider the status of the human subject in terms of networks of actants and then, to make these networks visible. Undoing the split, can accomplish the desideratum:

Half of our politics is constructed in science and technology. The other half of Nature is constructed in societies. Let us patch the two back together, and the political task can begin again.22

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. p.144

Alignment I would like to justify their selection to a hypothesis of a sort of ‘alignment’. Firstly, they both represent samples of the early theoretical research of the authors - GT is the second book by Butler and NM the fourth by Latour - which have had nevertheless, major influence in their fields – queer theory and science studies respectively – and are now considered fundamental. Furthermore, there is a kind of synchronization of their publication that appeared very attractive. GT is published in 1990, whereas NM is published inn 1991 in French and in 1993 in English. Along with other texts (by Haraway, Bhabha, Zizek, Spivak) they seem to reify a moment of turn of thought in Western philosophy. This timeliness of recognizing shifts, might also explain the reason for their wide appreciation. Another point of convergence, is the fact that the two books represent 23 theoretical orientations that are later reconsidered. Indeed, in their more recent work, both Butler and Latour question the constructionist path that they followed so far – Butler more tentatively, Latour more boldly-, and they search for alternatives: Butler abandons linguistic constructionism to delve more into the ontological implications of identity, whereas late Latour inclines towards an empirical- philosophical method. The last argument, and the one that will enable me to move forward to the next chapter, is that the texts that are going to be examined – Subjects of sex/gender/desire and Crisis – are each the first chapter of the book, hence a crucial one because they function as an introduction to their theories. Consequently, I am going to investigate what kind of writing technologies the authors deploy in order to introduce us to their radical ideas.

Haraway’s work presents a similar shift, moving from epistemology to ontology, especially after Modest Witness

Subjects of sex/gender/desire The first chapter of GT, examines the implications of the distinction of sex/gender and the philosophical grounds of the formation of the category of ‘women’ as the subject of feminism. Butler’s rhetorical dexterity is transferred in her writing and a first it ‘may seem repetitive, interrogative, allusive and opaque, leaving you asking yourself after a 24 few pages, why read Butler at all?’ . The response that has been recurrently given is that Butler’s prose style is not merely a vehicle for 25 politics, but effectively enacts the politics that it describes . Butler gives her own response to why she appears textually queer: ‘I think that style is a complicated terrain, and not one that we unilaterally 26 choose or control with the purposes we consciously intend’ . So, what is exactly the technology that Butler uses to interrogate the fixed, immutable gender identities? Two prevailing literary devices can be identified: returning to and rephrasing fundamental theses of criticism, and a persistency to address questions. The tendency to repeat and rephrase concepts becomes evident very early in the text. In a way, it manifests, that Butler is aware of the intellectual effort that 27 is required for understanding her text, and serves as a ‘pedagogic’ technique that allows the reader to process the concept by returning to it with modified terms. The domains of political and linguistic ‘representation’ set out in advance the criterion by which subjects themselves are formed, with the result that representation is extended only to what can be acknowledged as a subject. In other words, the qualifications (the criterion) for being a subject (subjects

Salih, Sara. 2002. Judith Butler. 1st ed. London: Routledge.p.12 ibid., 14 Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. p.4 27 Birkenstein C. 2010. “We Got the Wrong Gal: Rethinking the "Bad" Academic Writing of Judith Butler”. College English, Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 273 25 26

are formed) must first be met before representation (set out in advance by the domains of political and linguistic representation) can be extended. 28 Accordingly, certain key concepts re-appear regularly through the text, as Leitmotivs. While exploring the various philosophical accounts, Butler keeps revisiting them and informing them with the acquired knowledge. Moreover, Butler’s texts are characteristically formed by questions. They have a double agency: they organize her argumentation, but also function as a thinking mechanism: she introduces topics that she plans to elaborate upon (What is the metaphysics of substance, and 29 how does it inform thinking about the categories of sex? ), but also, she postulates several questions that remain unanswered, aiming to cause a problematizing rather than to predispose the reader to the impending answer (What kind of subversive repetition might call into 30 question the regulatory practice of identity itself? ). In addition, they give rhythm to the text, by pausing the, in other respects, incessant rhetoric, and encourage reflection. Another aspect, is the ambivalence about the purpose of her meticulous analysis. Threading her way rapidly and through complicated theoretical concepts, Butler might seem ambiguous about whether she means to agree with these ideas or to contradict them. The tone of the text, doesn’t help either, since it contains few if any, traces of deviation from the formality of academic writing. A typical example of Butler expressing her opinion is the following:

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. p.4 ibid., 14 30 ibid., 42 29

(criticism/the outcome of the reasoning:) Indeed, the question of women as the subject of feminism raises the possibility that there may not be a subject who stands ‘before’ the law, awaiting representation in or by the law. Perhaps, the subject, as well as the invocation of a temporal ‘before’, is constituted by the law as the fictive foundation of its own claim to legitimacy. (suggestion of perspective:) The prevailing assumption of the ontological integrity of the subject before the law might be understood as the contemporary trace of the state of nature hypothesis, that foundationalist fable constitutive of the juridical structures of classical liberalism. (consequence/return to inform the criticism:) The performative invocation of a nonhistorical ‘before’ becomes the foundational premise that guarantees a prosocial ontology of persons who freely consent to be governed and, thereby, constitute the legitimacy of the social construct. 31 Her view is conveyed discreetly, as suggestions to reconsider established truths, whereas it is structured, so that her reasoning is solidified. However, Butler has been frequently accused that she ‘bullies the reader’. Even though reading GT is certainly challenging, it would be unfair to overlook the methodical structure of Butler’s argumentation strategy, that not only offers sharp insights into complex theoretical ideas in a succinct and substantive manner, but also allows, if not encourages debate. Starting from the pre-given, Butler attempts firstly, to locate her subject through references to established regimes of truth or contemporary debates. Then, her argument is built on deductive reasoning, where the information that is obtained, leads to either a

ibid., 5

conclusion or opens a new topic of concern. Typically, as she develops the argument, she often disrupts the linear elaboration to inject extra layers of information. Butler’s strategy in the third section, Gender: The circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate, can be summarizes as follows: Butler introduces her subject by addressing a major topic of concern, 32 that recurs throughout the text multiple times : “Is there ‘a’ gender which persons are said to have, or is it an essential attribute that a person is said to be, as implied in the question ‘What gender are 33 you?’” She carries on with further questions about the construction of gender and its theoretical ramifications. Next, she juxtaposes Beauvoir’s views on gender construction, always under close examination. Beauvoir’s conception of the body as a situation, enables Butler to move to the body as a medium, which in turn contributes to the primary question. These observations lead her to the way that language formulates the limits of the imaginable domain of gender. Here, the first stage of argumentation is completed, and the final comment, opens the way to the next part which is about the feminist accounts on the mark of the gender. Again, the introductory paragraph offers an overview of the preponderant views about the signification of gender, which will later be debated by those of the French feminists. Devoting a generous part to the analysis of their theories, Butler returns frequently to the primary question to examine how it has been informed. Reflecting upon these conflicting views, the need to move to a greater scale to interrogate the categories of identity, is established. The last part of this section aims to examine the notion of the identity of the subject in

The ontology of gender is one of the ideas that problematize Butler and refers to her central argument of performativity 33 ibid., 11

a juxtaposition of Beauvoir and Irigaray, and is concluded with a reflection. Against the odds, Butler’s writing seems to be a democratic model of a many-sided dialogue that prevents closure and chimes with the theory of becoming that she proposes.

Crisis Latour very quickly impresses the reader as a proficient rhetorician: concise arguments, witty comments, powerful ideas, a nonchalant attitude. NM is enjoyable to read and unexpectedly comprehensible. Crisis, the first chapter, explains what kind of facts and observations led him to declare that we have never been modern. Its style is playful, compelling, but at the same time simple and unsophisticated. If we are to look for literary technologies, it is hard to miss Latour’s extensive use of the performative capacity of language. Without doubt, this is one of the strongest assets of Latour, as he manages to convey matters of high complexity through a very accessible and intelligible mode. Speaking in the first person, addressing the reader (Press the most innocent aerosol button and you’ll be heading for the 34 Antarctic… ), using metaphors, irony, sarcasm, imagery, the texts forms a casual bond with the reader, who is treated as a conversational partner. Moreover, although he avoids sophisticated vocabulary, Latour chooses carefully words for their exhilarating quality: That a delicate shuttle should have woven together the heavens, industry, texts, souls and moral law - this remains uncanny, unthinkable, unseemly.35 His personal view is loudly echoed in his writing, straight from the introductory section. As he may agree to the use of the language, he is not beating around the bush. Throughout the text, he postulates his views either bluntly (we are always attempting to retie the Gordian 36 knot ), or sideways, while being ironic or sarcastic (Is it our fault if the networks are simultaneously real, like nature, narrated, like discourse,

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. p.2 ibid., 5 36 ibid., 3 35

and collective, like society? ). He tells us how things are and how they should be, very often in a caustic manner (‘Either we have to disappear, we bearers of bad news, or criticism itself has to face a 38 crisis because of these networks it cannot swallow’ ), but he certainly makes sure that we can’t miss the point. Latour’s claim, the exposing of the asymmetry that modernity has imposed on us, is delivered in a peculiar, but convincing reasoning. Latour is leading the reader to the central argument through observations about the lived reality that call into question the established truths (the newspaper articles, the events of 1989), and a kind of defensive criticism against theories that reinforce the assumed split of modernity (‘We may glorify the sciences, play power games or make fun of the belief in a reality, but we must not mix these three 39 caustic acids’ ). However, a delving into the analysis of the argumentation, can provide a clearer insight. Although textually challenging I will attempt to outline the diagram of the argumentation. Latour begins with an extensive account of the articles he encounters in the daily newspaper, remarking on the constant blending of nature and culture and the insistent unwillingness of the moderns to recognize it.(1) He goes on, making clear that he and his colleagues, do recognize these hybrids, yet their work is not acknowledged, because it does not conform to the established disciplines and thus, has caused major misunderstandings. Visiting each misunderstanding in sequence, he provides an answer to the critics, by referring to examples of the work of him and his collaborators in science studies. (2) He takes advantage of the tension that is created between the incompatible perspectives, that is an ‘either-or’, to search within the established disciplines, for a to justify his claim. Anthropology

ibid., 6 ibid., 6 39 ibid., 6 38

provides the desired reiteration. Concluding that only a major event (‘Fortunately, we are being assisted by some major events that are 40 burying the old critical mole in its own burrows’ ) can make the intellectual culture reconsider its positions. (3) That gives him the opportunity to move on to his key supporting argument, which is the ‘double debacle’ of 1989. He then is qualified to postulate the critical question ‘What if we had never been modern?’ (4) Are these sufficient arguments to sustain the view of the symmetrical history and in fact, subvert the notion of modernity? Could it be that the argumentation is based only on the narratives that are available to him? The empirical element is indeed inseparable of his writing, although yet his philosophy remains in the constructionist side. As a writer, he feels more affiliated to the writing style of philosophers like Sartre, Serres or Bachelard;; he writes concretely, sharply, densely, and with honesty. Despite the certain degree of incoherency or logical leaps in the argumentation, Latour is indeed an author that relies on the power of his words to transform the world, and it appears to be working.

ibid., 8

Dora Budor, The Architect, Mind Falls Apart

Formal or witty, heavy or digestible, referential or empirical, Butler’s and Latour’s linguistic identities are a fascinating topic to be studied. The choice of words, the tone of voice, the sentence construction, even the conformation or not to the grammar are not merely instrumental elements, but indicators of the reality that is constructed through the process of writing. But, are these language politics consciously performed? And could there be place for their cyborg identity in the writing of architectural history? Having comprehended my subject’s intentions, I will not conclude with a single statement;; there are multiple stories being told. Architecture, as part of the physical realm, is inscribed with meanings, symbolisms and history. Without doubt, it works as a receptacle of myths, but also as a circulator and amplifier of their reproduction. Architecture in this sense, can be considered a technology that writes the world. The task of the architectural historian is highly demanding;; not only the context of the physical object should be evaluated, but also what qualifies as an architectural subject in the socio-historical context. Could we then treat architectural practice, as a knowledge production site? Indeed, architecture is a physical site where technology, science, aesthetics and ideology meet. Latour’s statement could be helpful here: ‘My long-term project has always been to visit successively and to document the different truth production sites that make up our civilization: science of course, but also techniques, 41 religion, law. etc.’ Latour’s project of the emancipation of knowledge could find a new field of research in architecture. Yet writing is a technology, not only because of it calls for the use of tools (alphabet, syntax, grammar) and equipment (pencil, typewriter, laptop), but more importantly, because it enhances human potentials. Per Haraway, writing is the powerful tool for destabilizing the status

Ihde, Don and Evan Selinger. 2003. “Interview with Bruno Latour”. Chasing Technoscience. 1st ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p.16

quo. In fact, she believes that the ‘material density’ of language itself operates against the conception of communication as a generator of transparent or clear statements. Should we then, pursue ‘cyborgian’ modes of writing? On one hand, architecture is surely an enormous field of consecrated myths, from within the discipline, or from the socio-political environment. On the other hand, regarding what is being written about architecture, we can ascertain the existence of a hegemony that privileges digestible language (and ideas), and leaves little space for deviation. Considering this, we can turn to cyborg writing as a useful concept of language, discourse and ideology. Cyborg writing is the technology that enables cyborg identities to inhabit the hitherto despised place. It is the power that generates potent subjectivities and supplants the matrix of dualisms with the 42 ‘dream of powerful infidel heteroglossia’ . Heteroglossia undoes the pre-social claim for clear communication, and allows for the unpredicted to emerge. Cyborg writing then, can perform as a discursive mechanism in a way that surmounts the dualities inherited by the Enlightenment and give space to multiple subjectivities that enhance thinking. Writing, as a socio-material entity, is a site of possibilities. It works bidirectionally, in the sense that it communicates, but also restructures thought. The cyborg myth encourages us to ask ourselves, what kind of histories can be written? Reminds us that as writers, we should insist on the descriptive and theoretical work that shows, how, in the particular histories we are talking about, different subjects are represented. And after all, that if we start writing differently, we might have access to things that are not yet available to us.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. The Haraway Reader, p.39

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