What do you think Haraway et al. would make of this: http://www.communistrobot.com/viewblog.php?id=591?

Beginning D&G's Anti-Oedipus, I was struck by the invocation of orphans, atheists, and nomads as categories that gesture towards rhizomatic thinking and living, because it reminded me very much of Harraway's similar use of the language of seemingly 'disenfranchised', 'fringe' groups to open the discussion about the cyborg rupture. I-and judging by the last twelve hours on the blog I'm not alone in this- see strong parallels between rhizomatic thinking/being and cyborg epistemology/ontology. I see some differences, however, in the ways the becoming-processes for either.

I've noticed several posts wondering where rhizome theory leaves the individual, or at least where exactly this theory manifests itself in "real world."

In the same way that the Haraway essay answered a lot of my questions about what it means to be an individual agent in postmodernity--how agency and the atomizations etc., of postmodernity are fully compatible and not mutually exclusive--I think that essay has a similar clarifying potential for what a rhizomatic person might look like: a cyborg.

This sort of a collective response to ideas brought up by Bumpkins, CA92075, morefuntocompute, and snaggle regarding identity of the female, appropriation of negation, and the role of the avant-garde therein.

I was just wondering what people thought of Haraway's discussion of Richard Gordon's concept of the "homework economy" and what it means to be feminized and if anyone thought it paralled to any other concept we've talked about before.

I found Haraway's discussion of Chela Sandoval's theories of 'oppositional consciousness' and the woman of colour very interesting. Haraway talks about how 'women of color' is a name that "constructs a kind of postmodernist identity out of otherness, difference, and specificity" (155). In this article, Haraway discusses largely about how boundaries between categories are being blurred and transgressed in the postmodern society. Therefore, I understood his view of 'women of color' as one which has very blurry distinctions.

There were two points that struck me kinda hard, both on page 159 of the Haraway reading:

1. Feminism practice is the construction of this form of consciousness; that is, the self-knowledge of a self-who-is-not.

2a. To be constituted by another's desire is not the same thing as to be alienated in the violent separation of the labourer from his product.

2b. ... Feminists' consciousness of the non-existence of women, except as products of men's desires.

I was intrigued by the techniques Haraway used to present her "Cyborg Manifesto." Within the first paragraph Haraway tells her readers that her "political myth" should be regarded as "blasphemous" and "ironic." It is not often that authors call attention to their flaws before even presenting their thesis. While reading this piece, I realized the many ways in which postmodernism is conducive to feminist thought.

I accidentally put this up as a reply to Anon's related post, but it was intended to be an independent post. Anyway, here it is again.

I am very interested in Haraway's call for a reconstitution of the ways in which we organize ourselves as an act of political transgression - and moreover, recentering of the marginalized in postmodern space. Haraway encourages us to name the fictionalization of the 'identities' to which we currently cling as our social markers, then to move past these constructed delineations. In calling for an oppositional unity constituted by "affinity, not identity" (p. 154), she is asking us to reposition ourselves against history, to bring forward that which has been systemically neglected.