WATCH: Gucci bewitches crowd with heads and snakes at Milan’s Fashion Week https://t.co/SMdNO4UvwF pic.twitter.com/OIoaOH9VS9

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) February 22, 2018

Two days ago, Gucci’s creative director staged a visual interpretation of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto.” As I looked at the weird and wonderful designs making their way down the runway, I thought of Haraway’s metaphorical cyborg, which is at the same time, “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality, as well as a creature of fiction” (149).  Rejecting much of the thinking of socialists and feminists of her time, Haraway’s ironic “monster” embraces science and technology and breaks boundaries between humans and animals, animals and machines, and humans and machines. Gucci’s runway show evidenced the vibe of this 1980’s cyborg, which came into being during the technical development of an enormous U.S. defense system build-up. There was no evidence of today’s digitalized cyborg, but the clothes and accessories indicated that each model represented many different outlooks and styles, for instance separates from different cultures were combined, and clothes for different occasions were worn together. This can perhaps be interpreted as the “heteroglossia” that Haraway envisions in her feminist cyborg. It is interesting to note that the runway show used the modern term “pluriversity,” to indicate that plurality is embedded in the identity of their cyborg.

This is an indication that times and technology have both changed dramatically since Haraway’s article. For instance, Amber Case in her 2010 lecture, “We Are All Cyborgs Now,” explains that today’s digital tools “are an extension of the mental self.” She points to the fact that we have external memory in multiple digital locations. I found it interesting that the fashion show models holding their own severed heads were said to be representing the question of identity in regard to Haraway’s cyborg. In view of Case’s arguments, the severed head can also represent the memory we constantly carry around in our cell phones. In fact the symbolism of the head and cell phone can be seen as interchangeable (although I won’t be switching my iPhone for my head any time soon). In this regard, Sherry Turkle in her TED Talk Alone Together states that”modern technology has become like a phantom limb, it is so much a part of us.” Of course, this refers to more than cell phones: encompassing all digital capabilities that are extensions of ourselves.

Haraway’s idea that the cyborg is multi-layered is still evidenced today. For instance, in “Can Cyborgs Fall in Love,” Craig Malkin states that, ” When we talk about our cyborg self . . . what we’re really describing is the as yet crude admixture that emerges from the blend of human needs, desires, motivations, and perceptions and the projected self we know through cyberspace. The second self isn’t at all the same as the human self, precisely because who we are is limited and shaped by the cyberspace in which it dwells.” Because of developments in digital technology and psychology, there is a possibility of developing a more specific and refined view of of the separate parts of ourselves.

A more detailed definition of a modern cyborg is provided by Katherine Hayles in How We Became Post Human: “central to the construction of the cyborg are informational pathways connecting the organic body to its prosthetic extensions. This presumes a conception of information as a (disembodied) entity that can flow between carbon-based organic components and silicon-based electronic components to make protein and silicon operate as a single system” (2). Video games and movies have both contributed to visual interpretations of this definition, in which the human body appears altered by systems that provide extra-human capabilities. An example of such a cyborg is Vic Stone from Justice League.

Turning to today’s cyber-feminism: the development of fourth wave feminism is something that Haraway could not have forseen. This movement relies on the use of technology to form networks especially towards the goals of opposing sexual harassment, and seeking social justice. Recent examples have been #MeToo, the 2017 and 2018 women’s marches, and websites such as http://feministing.com/.  In this respect, women are seen as taking on a variety of roles, which morph and change as individuals, rhyzomes and situations demand, and effectively incorporating technology into their lived experiences.