Cyborg identity, as described in Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" is very closely tied to many of Sherry Turkle's ideas. She too sees the positive aspects of an identity that is constructed, fluid, and fractured. In her essay she attempts to manifest a cyborg myth based on both science fiction and social theory. While her creation of a cyborg consciousness stems from a feminist perspective, Haraway asserts that the cyborg is post-gender and therefore an identity that can be embraced by all. In fact, she goes so far as to assert that we are already cyborgs, "... chimeras, theorized fabricated hybrids of machines and organisms" (150).
Cyborg identity, much like MUD identity, is constructed. Haraway sees the ability to construct consciousness as liberation (149). Cyborgs create themselves out of what is not other. They define themselves by what they are not. This has its basis in oppositional identity, a term coined by Chela Sondoval. Oppositional identity is a framework for those who do not fit into the "natural" categories of race, sex, class, physical type that are frequently used as identifiers and foundations in identity construction. She sees such categorization as inherently limiting and forced. People feel they do not fit into existing categories, so they begin to construct new categories for themselves, further fragmenting themselves in the search for unity.
Haraway recognizes the fragmentary nature of identity. She warns away from trying to fully define, and suggests instead recognizing and accepting the partiality and contradictions cyborg identity contains. To her, the cyborg myth that is being constructed should attempt to dissolve current ideas of organic wholeness, since she sees such unifying theories as fictional (152). She calls her cyborg myth ironic, which she defines in terms of "... the tension of holding incompatible things together because... all are necessary and true" (149). Because of this turmoil cyborg identity is not about unity, but about uneasy truths. The key to the creation of such an identity is the overthrow of what has been defined as "natural" up to this point. Haraway wishes to replace this natural order with a new order based on affinity. Cyborg personal and social identity manifests itself not in blood and physical appearance but in choices and attractions.
The evolution of the cyborg identity is based in a series of border wars. Cyborgs stand at the borders between man and animal, animal and machine, physical and non-physical. Haraway sees the cyborg as taking pleasure in the confusion of these boundaries, because it is the product of such confusion. Modern communication technologies and biotechnologies are the cyborgs tools for crossing these borders. It can no longer be argued that we are completely human creatures. On my eyes I wear artificial lenses to correct my vision. I have titanium plates in my face left over from jaw surgery. A friend of my father has the heart valve of a pig. These are all startling boundary transgressions that we now accept as part of daily life. As one Haraway interviewer remarked, "being a cyborg isn't about how many bits of silicon you have under your skin ... it's about ... going down to the gym ... and realizing that [you're] in a place that wouldn't exist without the idea of the body as high-performance machine" (Kunzru 157).
Of the several borders Haraway examines in her essay, the ones that are of the most interest to me are the borders between the physical and non-physical, and between humans and machines. The Internet is a place where both of these boundaries are breached on a daily basis. As we explore the Internet, we sit in front of our computers with the same rapt attention William Gibson marked in teenagers playing video games.
"You had this feedback loop, with photons coming off the screen into the kids' eyes, the neurons moving through their bodies, And these kids clearly believed in the space these games projected" (McCaffery 272).
Haraway recognizes this merger of human and computer as "a heightened sense of connection to our tools" (178). We can no longer make strong distinctions between humans and computers as computers become extensions of our bodies. By giving me access to email and web pages, my computer is extending my ability to interact with the world in a way that is increasingly dissimilar from the contact lenses I wear in my eyes. Both are ways of "extending [myself] through cyborg couplings" (Turkle 170).
Science is doing more to displace the boundaries between human and machine. Scientific research like the Human Genome Project is leading us to think of ourselves more and more as programmed creatures, while computers themselves are being used to model and human intelligence. Haraway sees both machines and organisms as "coded texts; tools for accessing the world. This concept of textualization treats both silicon and identity the same as paper. All are surfaces for writing. Like Turkle, she recognizes the true power of words. It is the classifying power of words that labels cyborgs as other, and therefore liberates them to write their own identities. Cyborgs must become masters of language, while at the same time avoiding perfect communication, as this is one of those unifying myths Haraway finds so dangerous.
The power of words is most evident in environments where the word has become the vessel of identity. The cyborg is, after all, a creature that has its origins in literature. It is an ironic truth that the cyborg is a literary concept that becomes embodied even as we leave our bodies to merge our identities with our computers. MUDding is one aspect of this cyborg merger, much like fiction writing before it.
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