Janelle Monae’s songs in the album explore many of Haraway’s ideas from Cyborg Manifesto. One topic that connects with Haraway’s essay is cyborg as a metaphor. Monae also uses her character, an android, Cindi Mayweather as a metaphor. These two think similarly by using cyborgs and characters to represent the boundaries of human and machine-changing human identity. ArchAndroid critiques societal structures of race, gender, and identity, challenging the structures by advocating for more inclusivity. Haraway has the idea from Cyborg Manifesto critiquing traditional feminism encouraging the pluralistic view of gender and identity creating a difference in society. This relates to Monae’s album because she explores intersectionality highlighting various identities and how the factors contribute to being viewed as an other. When it comes to Haraway’s idea of blurring of boundaries the difference I see there is Donna mentions 3 key boundaries human and animal, organism and machine, physical and non-physical, while Janelle mentions the character of human and machine. A question to think about is how can Janelle introduce the two other key boundaries in her narrative of her albums. Social and Political commentary from ArchAndroid represents racism and gender oppression expanding that technology is a tool of corporate control, but racial power structure, while on the other hand, Haraway’s essay mentions the disruption of power structures because of new identities that constraints the traditional political categories. Lastly, I wanted to cover how Monae expressed throughout her album the duality of technology with oppression and liberation. She does this by combining liberation and oppression with her character, Cindi Mayweather breaking free from societal chains, but using technology to support marginalized voices. Donna Haraway expresses how technology is beneficial for liberation and oppression because of the improvement of technology creating new identities and narratives to overturn traditional power structures.
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