A Study On Donna J. Haraway ’s Cyborg Theory

With the great reforms of humanities and social sciences,ontology and dualism in postmodernism philosophy are widely questioned.The capitalist society has encountered unprecedented crisis.The decentralization and pluralistic value orientation of postmodernism had gradually led to a chaotic social situation.Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory was proposed in such a times background.Donna Haraway pointed out that with the rise of postmodernism,there are three critical boundaries breaking,namely the boundaries between human and animals,organisms and machines,materialities and immaterialities.It is the breaking of these three critical boundaries that led to the redefinition of the social orders of postmodernism.Based on the breaking of these three critical boundaries,Donna Haraway proposed the "postmodern body"-cyborg,which closely combined human beings with technologies,which formed her own unique cyborg theory.This thesis attempted to comprehensively comb Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory and to inquiry origin and the basic connotation of this theory.Through the critical reflections of this theory,new sights on solving current social problems were proposed.Besides introduction and conclusion,this thesis was divided into four chapters.The first chapter traced the theoretical origin of Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory from three aspects,the times background,the formation of Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory,and the position of the cyborg theory in Donna Haraway’s ideological system.In the second chapter,the connotation of Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory was investigated by analyzing important concepts,namely the breaking of three critical boundaries,identity breaking,and integrated circuit females.This chapter also regarded that the future development of Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory was going towards the research of companion species.The third chapter started with the reconstruction of scientific objectivity problems by situational knowledge,discussed the relationship between situational knowledge and Donna Haraway cyborg’s feminism,and tried to explain how Donna Haraway cyborg’s feminism disintegrates feminism.The fourth chapter looked forward to cyborg in the post human era from the perspective of post human,and critically reflected on Donna Haraway cyborg theory from the perspective of body science and ethics.