Tag: BP03

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Identity

Community

In Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” community was a big aspect in the book. Haraway talks about how building a community was important because it could be used to challenged power structures. The community becomes really important especially within the marginalized groups. Monáe’s album Dirty Compute talks about the important of community too. In the songs I Like That and Americans she talks about how communities should embrace unique identity. She also mentions in the songs that the community should fight against systemic oppression. In Monáe’s album Dirty Compute she talks more about celebrating and embracing the different communities.

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Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto imagines a future where identity is no longer defined by categories like gender or race, allowing for a fluid self. In a similar way, Janelle Monáe’s album The ArchAndroid introduces the character of Cindi Mayweather, an android who defies societal expectations and fights for her right to be free. Both Haraway’s cyborg and Monáe’s android question the limits society places on individuals and push for a more inclusive vision of identity.

Haraway’s cyborg isn’t confined to the usual labels of human or machine, male or female. Instead, the cyborg represents the ability to exist beyond traditional categories. Monáe picks up this theme where her android character rebels against control and breaks out of the boxes society tries to put her in. In songs like “Cold War” and “Locked Inside,” Monáe explores the struggle against oppression, similar to Haraway’s cyborg vision of resisting systems of power. Both works ask important questions about how technology and society interact—sometimes limiting us, but also offering new ways to break free.

Monáe goes deeper by exploring the idea of what it means to be “real” or human. Cindi Mayweather’s story mirrors Haraway’s idea that identity can’t be fixed or easily defined. The android represents the freedom to be complex, shifting between different roles and identities, rather than being trapped in one version of the self. This connects to Haraway’s message that we should embrace hybrid identities and reject the pressure to fit into categories.

Both Haraway and Monáe challenge us to think beyond the boundaries that society sets for us. They remind us that identity is complex and that true freedom comes from embracing that complexity instead of conforming. Haraway and Monáe push us to imagine a future where we can exist as part human, part machine, part something entirely new.

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Image of cyborg in a ruffled pink apron in a kitchen. This image was generated with the help of Artifical Intelligence using NightCafe Creator.

By Kaitlyn Murray

In Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway imagines cyborgs as an entity transcending traditional human, animal, and machine boundaries. The cyborg is not locked down to societial pressures of gender and race, yielding a fluid and flexible identity. In Dirty Computer, Janelle Monáe tells the story of Jane 57821 a “dirty computer” that struggles as she attempts to break free from societal norms and expectations.

In the song, “So Afraid,” a song on the Dirty Computer album, Monáe switches all the traditional roles of animal, male, female, and child. She begins the song by saying:

“all the kids run around

playing free and fun

While the dogs lap around the can

Falling down, climbing trees, swiming in the river”

Monáe gives imagery to this radical posthumanism idea, where the cyborg exists in this state of hybridity where the conventional boundaries of human and animal, nautral and artifical are challenged. She embraces the intersectionality of technology, human, and animal, giving way to this idea of the advancement of technology creating a space of liberty for new forms of existence that transcends society’s label. This aligns with Haraway’s cyborg—a symbol of fluidity and hybridity, where binaries and boundaries are dismantled to yield to expansive forms of being.

Monáe then says:

“Daughters sharpen their knives

and they hunt for food

Others watch their children grow”

Much like Haraway’s cyborg, Monáe’s characters use their non-conformity as a tool of liberation. She switches the gender roles as usually the man hunt for food and the women take care of the children. However, in this new world Monáe created, they are rejecting this patriarchal structure as they refuse to abide by the norms. Additionally, her word usage for those of a male gender as “other” illustrates Monáe’s characters reclaiming their own power and embracing their “dirtiness,” as percieved by those who give power to predetermined categories. This is similar to how Haraway’s cyborg challenges the systems that seek to control them.

In conclusion, Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto envisions a world where the rejection of binaries and the embracing of complexity can lead to a reconstruction of society’s systems. Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer deeply resonates with Haraway’s themes, particularly in the exploration of fluid identities and the resistance to oppressive societal norms. Both works challenge traditional notions of identity, embracing the power of non-conformity, and envision technology as both a site of control and a space for liberation. As robot useage increases, with MIT enginners replacing chefs with robots and house-cleaning-robots, the distinction between “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs” begins to fade. In a world where machines hold no gender, could this spark a new wave of feminism and liberation for women? How might the future of gender roles shift as technology continues to reshape the workforce? In the future, could we see ourselves living out Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto and witnessing the imagery Monáe evokes in “So Afraid”?

Works Cited:

Hitti, N. (2018, May 22). MIT engineers replace chefs with machines at “world’s first” robotic kitchen [Review of MIT engineers replace chefs with machines at “world’s first” robotic kitchen]. Dezeen.com; Dezeen. https://www.dezeen.com/2018/05/22/mit-engineers-replace-chefs-with-machines-in-worlds-first-robotic-kitchen/

Donna Haraway. (1985). 1985. Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto. Science, Technology, And Socialist Feminism. In Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/1985.-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto.-science-technology-and-socialist-feminism

D’Souza, A. (2021, April 15). Cleaning Robots Helps in Cleaning the Floor and Lawn. KBV Research Blog; KBV Research. https://www.kbvresearch.com/blog/cleaning-robots-helps-cleaning-floor-and-lawn/

Janelle Monáe. (2018). So Afraid [Song]. On Dirty Computer. Atlantic Records.

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In Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”, many of the concepts that are major issues and factors today are not as important and even transcended. When thinking about gender and biology, the idea of a cyborg goes past those forms and surpasses gender as a whole. Things like race and species become blurred and identity becomes a fluid concept. In that way, Haraway uses Cyborgization as a way to overlook these categories and to focus on technology and the changes that the world would experience rather than staying conformed to gender, sexuality, and etc.

In Monae’s album “Dirty Computer”, Monae also explores what Haraway does in her manifesto but in the way that those who do not conform to the norm are abnormal such as if a device was malfunctioning and needs to be corrected. Many of the songs on her album challenge the norms that we are stuck in due to things such as sexuality, gender expression and more not fitting within those context. It also focuses on identity and how complex one is rather than just being there biological gender and race but also the implications that that has within the system.

Overall, both works share a similar passion in the way that they both want to defy the standards set within the context that we are held in today. As a cyborg, things like gender and race are not the focus and there’s more than just what categories one fits in. Then also that being different that what is normal to people is not a crime and that expressing oneself and being different is okay rather than being seen as in the wrong. In both works, both Haraway and Monae envision a world where people can transcend being held back and to truly be free to be without borders and boundaries.

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Haraway’s essay “Cyborg Manifesto” introduces a vision of a post-gender world where identity is fluid. Fluid identity in the essay encourages the fluidity between gender and humans/machines. Similarly, Janelle Monáes’s album Dirty Computer discusses ideas of fluid identity. Monáe explores how fluidity across gender, race, and sexuality can be both a form of resistance as well as a target for oppression. Haraway’s essay is set in a post-human and post-gender society while Dirty Computer is set in a dystopian society where non-conforming individuals are oppressed. Specifically, gender and sexuality are highlighted throughout the album. While Haraway doesn’t pose those two concepts as central themes, they discuss cyborg resistance in which the oppressed groups must defy social norms to be liberated. Both works emphasize that liberation comes through challenging boundaries and societal norms. 

In her album Monáe created characters called “ dirty computers” that represent individuals who defy societal norms whether it be race,gender,or sexuality. These characters must resist their oppressor to keep their unique differences. In contrast, Haraway depicts a world where the boundaries of those intersectionalities are already being challenged.Both the album and the essay introduce visions of cyborg resistance that encourage identity fluidity.These multifaceted works illustrate how resistance is how you battle oppression. The marginalized groups would remain marginalized without resistance and would therefore perpetuate dystopian societies.Although these works have different settings and character types,they have overlapping themes.

Given that Monáe is an African American queer artist, this album is probably a representation of her story. Sexuality is and has always been a debate that puts non-conforming people in a group that subjects them to oppression. African Americans are also historically marginalized and oppressed. Monáe used this album to express her personal struggles in a way that includes African Americans and queer people in the cyberpunk genre.

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Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto from 1985 is a revolutionary critique of identityᅳa declaration that calls for us to reject the limiting binaries that have shaped gender, race, and power for far too long. ⁤⁤Haraway invites us to embrace our hybrid, fluid selves, unbound by the rigid categories that try to confine us. Fast-forward to 2018 and the album Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe, which picks up this theme of defiance, mixing in futuristic visions with raw personal narratives that challenge conceptions of conformity. Both Haraway’s cyborg and Monáe’s “dirty computers” act as icons of resistance in worlds where non-conformity is viewed as one of the most dangerous yet powerful attributes. It is within Dirty Computer that I feel Monáe brings about a dystopian world which criminalizes identity, branding those who fall outside of the frameworks as “dirty” or broken. That is a fear similar to what Haraway attempts to overcome in her manifesto. For Haraway, the cyborg-a human-machine fusion-becomes a liberatory figure, one that denies male/female, human/machine, or natural/artificial. Characters in Monáe’s art also work with that very energy as cyborgs: the outcasts among those who would rather delete their queerness, their race, and their sexuality. On songs like “PYNK” and “Django Jane,” Monáe proudly harnessed in the power of beauty in one’s ability to disturb cultural order by claiming one’s spaces as fluid, not fixed.

For Dirty Computer, Janelle Monáe is celebrating queerness, blackness, and femininity as an act of resistance in concert with Haraway’s invitation for a critical disruption of the essentialist view of identity. “PYNK” becomes the love letter to womanhood in all its forms and the blurring between biology and culture that Haraway’s cyborg concedes no fixed notion of gender. But on “Screwed,” the explosive track, Monáe shows and criticizes the systems that try to control the bodies and identities, the sexiness now held captive by the rebellious energy of the cyborg as she reshapes sexuality into one more site of power.

According to Haraway, the cyborg is more than a metaphor borrowed from science fiction; it is a question about how we might reimagine our boundaries and not be afraid of the messiness of existence. And in Monáe’s “dirty computers,” there are similar acts of resistance against a dystopian force that seeks to rid them of what makes them different. In both worlds, liberation comes from impurity, from rejecting the fit of boxes, not from purity of observance to the rules, but from those very things that make us “messy”. Haraway’s cyborg and Monáe’s outcast characters both provide radical visions of a future where identity is singular and not given. Where we can be unapologetically, gloriously human or even more than human.

⁤Ultimately, Cyborg Manifesto and Dirty Computer converge on a shared idea: freedom is found in embracing the things that make us complex and contradictory. ⁤⁤Whether through cyborgs or dirty computers, both Haraway and Monáe challenge us to reject the binaries that divide us and instead celebrate the fluidity and multiplicity that make us who we are. ⁤

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=11403a0c534b4088&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIKgQc6uQnjYInBXfGh2LEYLpDGc6Q:1727584404252&q=cyborgs&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0Aa4sjWe7Rqy32pFwRj0UkWd8nbOJfsBGGB5IQQO6L3J_86uWOeqwdnV0yaSF-x2jrJh7Dt5wV71ckxEPe_0GQyc61_Jkg5ZI9z4zNW20fWd2tUn_HrTAULuFP7u75dytEkiWC15l7moHi_nYsx6bYU7gYxjHncfuRcjwgxByi-2dbm91Px5JKg1Jotj8vdUSEMemJ8XA6RB42LqHkYBEFrl5n20w&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiumfC1qeeIAxWtMlkFHSycCyIQtKgLegQIERAB&biw=714&bih=778&dpr=2

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In Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway advocates for a post-gender world where rigid categories such as male/female, human/machine, and natural/artificial are disrupted. The cyborg, for Haraway, is not just a technological entity but a metaphor for the dissolution of binary boundaries. It represents the possibility of existing outside of traditional structures, particularly those imposed by gender, race, and species.

Monáe’s Dirty Computer echoes this notion of fluid identity, blending science fiction with themes of personal and collective liberation. The album’s protagonist, Jane 57821, lives in a dystopian world where individuals who do not conform to societal norms—whether related to gender, sexuality, or individuality—are “cleaned” or erased. Like Haraway’s cyborg, Monáe’s characters challenge these constraints by embracing their complexity. Songs such as PYNKcelebrate the fluidity of both gender and sexuality, rejecting the idea of binary categories, while Q.U.E.E.N. directly critiques societal pressures to conform, encouraging resistance to those expectations.

Through Dirty Computer, Monáe invokes a vision of identity that mirrors Haraway’s cyborg: one that is hybrid, undefined by rigid social structures, and capable of existing in multiple forms at once. Central to Haraway’s manifesto is the idea of resistance to systems of domination. The cyborg, as an entity that crosses borders between the natural and artificial, represents defiance against patriarchal, capitalist, and technocratic forces. For Haraway, the cyborg is a figure of radical resistance, existing outside the boundaries of human and machine, male and female.

Monáe’s Dirty Computer similarly centers on themes of defiance. Set in a dystopian society where non-conformists are punished, the album’s characters fight against a system that seeks to erase their uniqueness. Tracks like Django Jane serve as declarations of resistance, with Monáe asserting her power as a black, queer woman in a world that tries to contain and limit her. Much like Haraway’s cyborg, Monáe’s narrative resists societal categorization, instead celebrating the diversity of experiences and identities that do not fit within prescribed norms.

The characters in Dirty Computer embody Haraway’s ideal of the cyborg as a figure of rebellion, pushing back against the forces that seek to erase non-conforming identities. Both Haraway and Monáe celebrate this act of resistance as an essential element of liberation. Both Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto and Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer challenge traditional notions of identity and explore the relationship between the individual and systems of power. By embracing the concept of the cyborg, Haraway imagines a world where fixed categories no longer apply, allowing for greater fluidity and resistance to oppression. Monáe’s Dirty Computer brings these ideas to life through music, using the metaphor of the “dirty” computer to represent non-conforming individuals resisting societal control.

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In a world increasingly defined by rigid categories of identity, Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer emerges as a powerful critique of societal norms, echoing the revolutionary ideas presented in Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto. Written in 1985, Haraway’s essay envisions a post-gender future where identities are fluid and transcendent of traditional binaries. Monáe’s album, released in 2018, plunges into a dystopian landscape where individuals who defy normative identities face persecution, making her exploration of identity not only timely but also deeply resonant. By weaving together themes of technology, identity, and resistance, both Haraway and Monáe challenge us to rethink the boundaries that society imposes on who we can be.

Monae’s work reflects Haraway’s ideas, particularly in tracks like “PYNK,” where she celebrates fluidity and self-expression. The visuals and lyrics in this song emphasize a sense of freedom and solidarity among marginalized identities, paralleling Haraway’s vision of a future where hybrid identities can flourish outside societal constraints. As Haraway posits that cyborgs transcend traditional classifications, Monáe’s celebration of diverse sexualities and gender identities illustrates this transformative potential.

In “Django Jane,” Monáe further embodies Haraway’s call for coalition-building among marginalized groups. The song serves as an anthem of empowerment, pushing back against oppressive systems and advocating for the recognition of varied identities. Monáe’s portrayal of herself as both a cyborg and a political figure resonates with Haraway’s assertion that the cyborg is a means of resistance against fixed identity categories.

Ultimately, both Haraway and Monáe challenge the rigid structures that define identity. Monáe’s Dirty Computer not only echoes the themes of the Cyborg Manifesto but also emphasizes the ongoing relevance of Haraway’s ideas in contemporary discussions about identity and technology. This connection invites a critical reflection on how we navigate and embrace fluid identities in a world that often seeks to impose strict categorizations.