Pro-Creation-Haraway's "Regeneration" and the Postcolonial Cyborg Body

Bibliographic Data

ID5771054
AuthorsDenise Handlarski (York University, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume39
Issue2
Pages73-99
Publication date2010-01-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueWomen s Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0049-7878 • E-ISSN: 1547-7045
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00497870903459291
OpenAlexW2009356173
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited15

Notes 1This "elsewhere" is alluded to and explained at other points in this article. 2Haraway says in her essay "The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others" that "repeatedly this essay turns on figures of pregnancy and gestation" (69). In this article where she identifies and expands on the uses of regeneration as a concept, she uses the language of pregnancy, gestation, regeneration, procreation, in order to highlight her point that these ideas are connected more than peripherally to so much of our understanding as Western theorists. I use terms like concept, adopt, create, (re)produce, etc. in the same vain. 3Referred to from here on as "PM." 4Hereafter, "Cyborg Manifesto" or "CM." 5SF is a term I am using to signify science fiction as well as elements of fantasy. There are broader connotations to the term (e.g., speculative fiction) that I do not have space to elaborate on here, but certainly comprises much of the "elsewhere" mentioned above that Haraway chases. 6It is a term I adopt from Foucault's History of Sexuality purposefully. Just as he argues a repressive attitude toward sex led to a discursive explosion about sexuality in the Victorian era, I believe that we (re)traumatize ourselves with our preoccupation with trauma. The re-memory/remembering process is, after all, always a process that we engage with in order to be able to forget. 7While I do not mean to imply South Africa has become a utopic space, I do believe that there is something akin to regeneration that is happening there. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided one example. The fact that tours of Robben Island are now given by former prisoners and their former wardens/guards is another. 8See Judith Butler's Bodies that Matter. 9Of course, the root of concept is "conceive." Like in "Promises of Monsters," this article "turns on tropes of reproduction" frequently. 10I realize there is (academic) debate about how one situates oneself in academic writing. Here I use "I" where I feel personally implicated, "they" where I do not, and "we" to either intentionally draw connections between me and my reader, or to emphasize a sense of community where necessary. 11There are many different "feminisms" and "womanisms" that are all in dialogue here. The aspects of feminist/womanist theory that I invoke are common to all strands: a desire for an end to sexist oppression. Most contemporary femin-isms/ists acknowledge that this is an impossible goal without also combating other forms of oppression, such as racism and imperialism, as well. 12Haraway returns to this research in many of her texts. This section of my article comes mainly from "Apes in Eden, Apes in Space: Mothering as a Scientist for National Geographic" in Primate Visions. 13In my particular location as a high school History teacher in Toronto, Ontario, it is necessary to use this phrase "West and the World" in order to critique it. In Ontario high schools, the two upper-level history courses "Western Civilizations" and "World History" were converged into one course "The West and the World," when the curriculum was changed by a Conservative provincial government. Besides the obvious effects of highly privileging "the West" over "the World" in terms of course content, I find it an amazing configuration. In the title of the course, as well as in the curricular content, "the West" is at once removed from, and dominating force over, "the World." It is more apt a construction than the government may have realized, and can provide the framework for subversive teaching. I chose to include this tangential discussion here, as opposed to in the section dealing directly with "History," because it is reflected and nuanced in much of this discussion regarding "the matrix." 14Hill Collins describes "Bloodmothers, Othermothers, and Women-centred networks." There is also a section entitled "resisting the matrix of domination," which reflects both Haraway's use of the language of motherhood/matrix, and also her call to resistance. 15Adele Clark calls this "boutique medicine" (146), and its consequences are far-reaching. 16References to Monsanto are key because of this company's international profile as a bully with influential ties to the WB/IMF and WTO. One example of many is President Bush's appointing Linda Fisher, former Monsanto Vice President, to be the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Also important is the effect this company has on growth and "nature." In striking contrast to regeneration, Monsanto has trademarked the world's first self-destroying seeds so that farmers must reinvest in crop annually. See for example: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/suicide-seeds. Genetic modification of food is a cyborgean issue with huge ties to the global economic order. 17For more on how the slashing of these services increases women's unpaid labor see Broadhead. 18In a cyborgean fashion, much of this organizing and information sharing happens online. See www.narmada.org, for example. 19The work Butler does in Bodies that Matter is more complex than this, and is all relevant to this discussion. Due to constraints of space, it is only alluded to, as opposed to fully articulated, here. 20Zoe Wicomb, South African writer and critic, argues that strategic nationalism can indeed be effective. But the question is "what to do with the unwieldy monster" it produces? 21Think of the multiple meanings of "matrix." 22She opens CM with a discussion of blasphemy; her deconstruction of grand narratives certainly includes Western religions. 23A more detailed discussion of Haraway's ideas about "survival" will be discussed below. 24The construction of "activist" as a white, middle-class, young, often male, often student, radical is a problem that I do not have time to expand upon here. I believe though that it is a problem of perception that affects the political mainstream much more than those who are activists and do not fit/are disinterested in this privileged model. 25In PM she discusses privileging the idea of affinities over identities. In Western activist movements, especially large demonstrations and actions, people organize into "affinity groups" around common goals. Another very practical reason for forming affinity groups is that those who are isolated in these demonstrations are often picked off for (sometimes illegal and brutal) arrest. This resonates in the much larger contexts I discuss here. 26For the passage from which this mis-approximated paraphrase comes, see http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Features/dances_shulman.html. It is significant to note this type of transmission in activist oral history. The fact of the misquoting is the fact of the quote's power and pervasiveness. It also speaks to regenerative cyclical reproductions. 27The link was/is direct and literal. Bakhtin's idea was intentionally used and cited by organizers

Aesthetics · Art · Biology · Regeneration (biology) · Sociology · Cell Biology · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction

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