Simians, Cyborgs, and Women The idea that nature is constructed, not discovered - that truth is made, not found - is the keynote of recent scholarship in the history of science. Tracing the gendered roots of science in culture, Donna Haraway's writings about scientific research on monkeys and apes is arguably the frnest scholarship in this tradition. She has carefully studied the publications, the papers, the correspondence, and the history of the expeditions and institu tions of primate studies, uncovering the historical construction of the pedigrees for existing social relations - the naturalization of race, sex, and class. Throughout this book she is analysing accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs (cybernetic organ isms: systems which embrace organic and technological components). She also looks critically at the immune system as an information system, and shows how deeply our cultural assumptions penetrate into allegedly value neutral medical research. In several of these essays she explores and develops the contested terms of reference of existing feminist scholarship; and by mapping the fate of two potent and ambiguous words - 'nature' and 'experience' - she uncovers new visions and provides the possibility of a new politics of hope. Her recent book, Primate Visions, has been called 'outstanding', 'original', 'brilliant', 'important' by leading scholars in the field. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women contains ten essays written between 1978 and 1989. They establish her as one of the most thoughtful and challenging feminist writers today. Donna Haraway is a historian of science and Professor at the History of Consciousness Board, University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her doctorate in biology at Yale and is the author of Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors ofO rganicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology and Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World ofM odern Science. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women The Reinvention of Nature J. DONNA HARAWAY Routledge / New York Published in 1991 by Published in Great Britain by Routledge Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue 2 Park Square New York, NY 10016 Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OXI4 4RN © 1991 by Donna J. Haraway Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group Transferred to Digital Printing 2010 International Standard Book Number-IO: 0-415-90387-4 (Softcover) International Standard Book Number-I3: 978-0-415-90387-5 (Softcover) Library of Congress Card Number 90-8762 No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature / by Donna J. Haraway. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-415-90386-6. - ISBN 0-415-90387-4 (pbk). 1. Sociobiology. 2. Feminist criticism. 3. Primates-Behavior. 4. Human behavior. I. Title. GK365.9H37. 1991 304.5-dc20 90-8762 informa Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com Taylor & Francis Group and the Routledge Web site at is the Academic Division of Informa pic. http://www.routledge-ny.com Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent. For my parents, Dorothy Maguire Haraway (19 I 7-1960) and Frank O. Haraway Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Part One Nature as a System of Production and Reproduction Chapter One Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic: A Political Physiology of Dominance 7 Chapter Two The Past Is the Contested Zone: Human Nature and Theories of Production and Reproduction in Primate Behaviour Studies 21 Chapter Three The Biological Enterprise: Sex, Mind, and Profit from Human Engineering to Sociobiology 43 Part Two Contested Readings: Narrative Natures Chapter Four In the Beginning Was the Word: The Genesis of Biological Theory 71 Chapter Five The Contest for Primate Nature: Daughters of Man-the-Hunter in the Field, 196cr8o 81 Chapter Six Reading Buchi Emecheta: Contests for 'Women's Experience' in Women's Studies 109 Part Three Differential Politics for Inappropriate/d Others Chapter Seven 'Gender' for a Marxist Dictionary: The Sexual Politics of a Word 127 Chapter Eight A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century 149 Chapter Nine Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective 183 Chapter Ten The Biopolitics ofPostmodern Bodies: Constitutions of Self in Immune System Discourse 203 Notes 231 Bibliography 255 Index 277 Acknowledgements M any people and many publishing practices made this book possible, beginning with the anonymous referee for Signs for my first published essays in feminist theory. This generous and critical person turned out to be Rayna Rapp, who has been a personal, intellectual, and political support and inspiration for me ever since. Catherine Stimpson was the editor for those papers, and her theoretical work and editorial skill have enriched my writing and that of many other contributors to contemporary feminism. Constance Clark and Stephen Cross, then graduate students at Johns Hopkins, will see their pervasive influence. Robert Young's ground-breaking writing and commit ted comradeship showed me that the history of science could be both political and scholarly without compromise. lowe much to his work and that of many others, especially Karl Figlio, Ludi Jordanova, and Les Levidow, associated with Radical Science Jou1'7llJI, Science as Culture, and Free Associa tion Books. Friendship, ongoing critical conversations, and published and unpub lished intertextualities with Judith Buder, Elizabeth Fee, Sandra Harding, Susan Harding, Nancy Hartsock, Katie King, Diana Long, Aihwa Ong,Joan Scott, Marilyn Strathern, and Adrienne Zihlman everywhere inform these chapters. I also thank Frigga Haug and Nora Rathzel frOID the feminist collective of Das Argument and Elizabeth Weed of differences. Jeffrey Escofier was a persistent gadfly and gende midwife for the Cyborg Manifesto (Chapter Eight). Scott Gilbert, Michael Hadfield, and G. Evelyn Hutch inson taught me about embryology, ecology, the immune system and much else in the culture of biology. Extraordinary people whom I first knew through the History of Con sciousness Board and graduate seminars at the University of California at Santa Cruz contributed explicidy and implicidy to this book. I am especially grateful to Gloria Anzaldua, Bettina Aptheker, Sandra Azeredo, Faith Beckett, Elizabeth Bird, Norman O. Brown, Jim Clifford, Mary Crane, Teresa de Lauretis, Paul Edwards, Ron Eglash, Barbara Epstein, Peter Euben, Ramona Fernandez, Ruth Frankenberg, Margo Franz, Thyrza Goodeve, Deborah Gordon, Chris Gray, Val Hartouni, Mary John, Caren Kaplan, Katie King, Hilary Klein, Lisa Lowe, Carole McCann, Lata Mani, Alvina Quintana, Chela Sandoval, Zoe Sofoulis, Noel Sturgeon, Jenny Terry, Sharon Traweek, and Gloria Watkins (bell hooks).