HARAWAY, Donna

Born 6 September 1944, Denver, Colorado

Daughter of Frank O. and Dorothy Maguire Haraway; married B. Jaye Miller, 1970 (divorced)

Donna Haraway is a science historian whose works range from treatises on the study of primate behavior to thoughtful expositions on the influence of technology in our daily lives. Haraway has also written extensively on the concept of the cyborg and contributed to the cyberpunk culture. Her writings have influenced science fiction writers like Philip K. Dick and Octavia Butler.

Haraway attended Catholic schools in her hometown of Denver and received a Boettcher Foundation scholarship to study at Colorado College. She graduated from college in 1966 with a major in zoology and philosophy and went to Paris on a Fulbright scholarship to study different theories of evolution. She received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1972 for an interdisciplinary dissertation on the functions of metaphor in shaping research in developmental biology in the 20th century. Haraway was an assistant professor of general science at the University of Hawaii at Honolulu from 1970 to 1974 and an assistant professor of the history of science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1974 to 1980. Since 1980 she has been a professor in the history of consciousness department at the University of California at Santa Cruz. In addition to teaching feminist theory and science studies in her own department, she is also affiliated with the women's studies, anthropology and environmental studies departments at UCSC.

Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1990) stems from Haraway's ten-year investigation of the various studies of monkeys and apes that have been conducted in the 20th century. In this monumental and loosely chronological account of the history of primatology, Haraway notes the evolution of scientific views toward primates. She asserts monkeys and apes, which were once seen as nonhuman primates, are now viewed as our ancestors in part because of our embarrassment in claiming marginalized "others," like primitive African tribesmen, as ancestors. She asserts "the commercial and scientific traffic in monkeys and apes is a traffic in meanings, as well as in animal lives." This complex theoretical argument is grounded in case studies of American, British, Japanese, and Indian researchers and their differing methods and philosophies. Haraway also discusses the concept of feminist primatology and the ways in which women researchers have taken a different approach from their male counterparts. The concluding chapter, "Reprise: Science Fiction, Fictions of Science, and Primatology," includes a reading from Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series.

Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1992) is a partly autobiographical account of what Haraway describes as the transformation of a "socialist-feminist, white, female, hominid biologist" into "a multiply marked cyborg feminist." The 10 essays comprising the book were adapted from various articles published between 1978 and 1989. The essays in the first and second parts of this collection explore the definition and role of gender in scientific discovery and the ways in which the concept of both nature and the human body has been invented, altered, and redefined during the last several decades. The third section consists of "The Cyborg Manifesto," arguably Haraway's best and certainly her most infamous piece of writing. "A Cyborg Manifesto" discusses the problems contemporary men and women face as a result of their skewed perspective on society. Her solution, which she calls "cyborg embodiment," is to be found in the dual perspective earned by a psychic melding of man and machine, the organic and the inorganic. Haraway insists that understanding the significance of technology in shaping our lives and identities is the only way to mold technological change for worthy and emancipatory purposes. She points to the androgynous status of the cyborg as a victory for femininity.

Haraway describes Modest Witness @ Second Millennium: Femaleman Meets Oncomouse: Feminism and Technoscience (1996) as "a landscape of cyborgs, patented lifeforms, computer-mediated representations, reproductive technologies, genetic engineering and nuclear research." These essays explore the far-reaching cultural associations in the information and life sciences and question the boundaries between what we call "nature" and "science" and "culture" as well as the boundaries between scientists and laypersons. Along the way, she discusses such diverse aspects of science and technology as biology textbooks, computer simulations, science fiction, the Human Genome Project, the ability of science to effectively cloak racism in technical language, and the origins of copyrights and trademarks.

Other Works:

Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology (1976).

Bibliography:

Reference works:

CA (1978). Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the Untied States (1995).

Other references:

Futures (Nov. 1991). Nation (5 Nov. 1990). PW (11 Jan. 1991). Science (18 May 1990). Technical Communication (Aug. 1998). Zygon (June 1996).

—LEAH J. SPARKS