Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto Essay -- Science Technology Social Femini

Donna J. Haraway’s "A Cyborg Manifesto Haraway’s provocative proposal of envisioning the cyborg as a myth of political identity embodies the search for a code of displacement of "the hierarchical dualisms of naturalized identities" (CM, 175), and thus for the breakdown of the logic of phallogocentrism and of the unity of the Western idealized self. Haraway defines the cyborg as "a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction" (CM, 149). Her argument is introduced as "an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism" (CM, 149). She claims blasphemy and irony as her vantage tools. Blasphemy invokes the seriousness of the stance she adopts, as well as her distancing from the moral majority without breaking with the idea of community and connectivity, and "irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true [†¦]. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method" (CM, 149). Thus, she posits the embracing of difference and partiality as a different perspective on identity, while the "Manifesto" of the title evokes notions of political commitment and avant-garde activism, alongside with historical reverberations of Futurists’ acclamations to the new machine-age. Haraway’s cyborg is a blending of both materiality and imagination, pleasure and responsibility, reality and the utopian dream of a world without gender and, maybe, without end. We are all hybrids of machine and organism. The cyborg is our ontology, a creature in a post-gender world with "no origin story in the... ...and involvement of the female writers into the questioning and subversion of objective transparency. Finally, the prominence of the visuality and corporeality of/inside the Literary Annual openly challenges the masculine illusion of modesty. Abbreviations CM: "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century". MW: Modest_Witness@Second Millennium. Works cited Haraway, Donna J. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century". Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books, 1991. ---. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge, 1997 Hunt, Leigh. "Pocket-books and Keepsakes". The Keepsake. Ed. William Harrison Ainsworth. London: Hurst, Chance & Co., & Robert Jennings, 1828.

Wilfred Owens Poetry and Pity of War Essay -- Wilfred Owen War Poems

Wilfred Owen's Poetry and Pity of War Through his poetry Wilfred Owen wished to convey, to the general public, the PITY of war. In a detailed examination of three poems, with references to others, show the different ways in which he achieved this Wilfred Owen was born in Oswestry, 18th March 1893. He was working in France when the war began, tutoring a prominent French family. When the war started he began serving in the Manchester Regiment at Milford Camp as a Lieutenant. He fought on the Western Front for six months in 1917, and was then diagnosed with War Neurosis (shell shock). Because of this he was sent to Craiglockhart Hospital for treatment. In his stay at Craiglockhart Hospital Wilfred Owen met Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon was also a poet, and the two became good friends. The two friends compared and edited their poems, and Sassoon introduced Wilfred Owen to some publishers. Whilst he was in Craiglockhart he wrote such poems as "Dulce et Decorem Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth." He used his poems as a cathartic experience to help him forget and overcome his experiences on the battlefield. Through a detailed examination of the poems Dulce et Decorem Est,Disabled and Anthem for Doomed Youth with reference to other poems by Wilfred Owen, it can be seen that, although he uses different political forms, styles, and devices, and he addresses his readers from different authorial stances, evoking feelings from great anger and bitterness to terrible sadness; the end result is always the same: he shows the pity of war. Dulce et Decorem Est was written by Wilfred Owen whilst he was having treatment at Craiglockhart, it is one of his most famous poems. Stanza one sets the scene. Owen takes his ti... ...there is no glory involved. This poem gets across the madness of war, and that it must not be continued. Owen expresses feelings of bitter hatred for the war, and he lets those feelings out in Dulce et Decorem est. He is angry that war is allowed to be continued, that the public are lied to, and the conditions the soldiers have to cope with. He was in the war himself, he knew what he was talking about. Owen has a very strong use of imagery, which I think helps get across his message. Although sometimes I feel he can be a bit too bitter, and lose the plot slightly, his poetry is extremely effective. He is asking his reader just to take some time to think about the war, ignore the propaganda and see what is really happening. All of this put together conveys the pity of war, by using graphic imagery, metaphors and similes, and often use of onomatopoeia.

A&P by John Updike Essay

The short story entitled â€Å"A&P† by John Updike was published in 1961 and confirmed the author’s reputation as a master of detail. In reality, the author merely expressed the spirit of the 1960s, which includes decadence, transformations of polity and society, which ascended certain people, but spiritually impoverished others, as well uncertainty in the next day. The short story thus reveals multiple contexts, all of which can be tied to its title. The present paper is intended to discuss the narrative in relation to its short and simple title.   The plot of the short story takes place in a provincial grocery store â€Å"A&P† and is narrated by the protagonist, 19-year-old Sammy, who works there as a checker. â€Å"One Thursday afternoons the store is empty for the most part. The only people that inter the store are old woman and woman with six children whom he refers both to as sheep, when three girls walk in dressed with nothing more that bathing suits. This catches his eye and he watches them closely and studies each one of them with great detail† (Luscher, 1993, p. 168). Furthermore, the youth distinguishes the leader of the group and refers to her as Queenie, as she seems to behave with great self-confidence and social competence, and the two other girls simply follow her. . Sammy is aware of the fact that the girls violate the rules of this store concerning outfit, but doesn’t begin confrontation until his manager Lengel, who informs the girls abut the internal rules of â€Å"A&P†. Queenie states that they are not doing shopping, as they seek to purchase only one product, but Lengel still continues blaming the girls for the abuse of the regulatory policy. Queenie responds that they are decent and do not intend to abuse the other customers’ convictions concerning morality. Sammy finally allows them to make a purchase, but observing the manager’s behavior, he concludes that he is not going to work for this shop any longer and announces that he   is quitting. Thus, the idea of the short story circles around the transition from adolescence to adulthood and the growth of the ability to make one’s own moral judgments, which can be free and independent from any redundant formalities (Luscher, 1993). The period of adolescence is usually associated with the formation of role models, which might dictate behavioral patterns to follow (Luscher, 1993). In this sense, both his professional identity as an employee of the A&P and his self-awareness have been nurtured under the influence of two adults: Stokesie, a major breadwinner in his family, and Lengel, the store manager, whose career began in this place. Sammy, in this sense, seeks to imitate the relaxed behavior, demonstrated by Stokesie, who exclaims â€Å"Oh Daddy, I feel so faint!† (Updike, 2007, at http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/). Similarly, â€Å"Sammy whittles away his days looking at pretty girls and thinking about the ways of people. He hardly realizes that this is how he will spend his entire existence if he doesn’t soon get out of this job. During this day that will prove to change his life, he makes the step towards his realization† (McFarland, 1983, p. 95). In fact, he originates from a working-class family, as his parents served at cocktail parties, and at first he decided to make a career, connected with the service sphere, but on the day of argument with the three girls,   the youth begins to build his own superstructure over the foundation of convictions, imposed by parental desire to penetrate into middle class and by the corresponding values, which view job as the sense of existence, regardless of the agent’s attitude towards this employment (McFarland, 1983; Luscher, 1993). Thus, his competition for store manager’s position finally appears to him pointless, similarly to the movements of the â€Å"sheep†, who make purposeful actions (do shopping) in order to satisfy their basic and not always conscious needs. Sammy, on the contrary, begins hard cognitive work on his own goals and makes his first conscious decision to leave the job. Furthermore, the young man seems to realize the responsibility he should take for his actions. In fact, his second role model, Langel, influences this decision in the most notable way (McFarland, 1983; Porter, 1972). After Langel’s appearance at the scene, Sammy concludes that he doesn’t wish to grow into such snobbish and arrogant manager, who regards himself as the last resort in all moral dilemmas and successfully combines preacher’s duties with his professional responsibilities.   Langel highlights one phrase in his admonition: â€Å"This isn’t the beach† (Updike, 2007). Sammy believes the way the executive firmly repeats this phrase look â€Å"as if it had occurred to him, and he had been thinking all these years the A&P was a big sand and he was the head lifeguard† (Updike, 2007). As Porter notes, â€Å"his â€Å"sand dune† is the world of work, whereas the girls’ is the world of play† (Porter, 1972, p.1156). As one can understand, the first approach to the interpretation of the title derives from the central idea of the short story. In this sense, the A&P appears a place, where the protagonist’s psychological maturation takes place, so   the emphasis upon the name of the shop can be alleged as the author’s natural desire to prioritize the settings, including the social context (the desirable shift from one social class to another), which puts the main character on his path to the insight. Another approach to the title is aesthetic or spatial. The author might have sought to prioritize the place itself rather than the most important idea, primarily – in order to provide the reader with sample environment, in which contemporary teenagers perform their working duties. This means, the concept of the A&P as shop, which stores not merely goods, but also human fates and aspirations, is also valuable and deserves a more detailed examination. Due to the fact that this approach requires focusing upon senses and perception, it is important to include the atmosphere, depicted by the author. As McFarland notes, â€Å"to a large extent, the aesthetic pleasure in â€Å"A&P† depends upon the reader’s sensing this dramatic irony. Sammy’s words resonate and gain meaning through a larger artistic context out of which he comes (Updike’s knowledge and imagination) but of which he, the fictive character, is unaware† (McFarland, 1983, p. 96). Importantly, two scholars, McFarland (1983) and Shaw (1986) compare the method of building the relationship between the imagery and the protagonist’s inner world to the allusion, depicted in â€Å"The Birth of Venus† by   Sanrdo Botticelli. Similarly to all Renaissance paintings, it depicts a nude woman, who comes from sea spirit. The protagonist also focuses on the appearances of three females, who have merely bikinis on and therefore to great extent resemble to Renaissance patterns of depicting female body. Furthermore, Sammy concentrates his attention on the leader of the group, who appears a queen in his eyes, because of her unique step, movements and gestures. The protagonist thoroughly fixes all these details about the girl and she seems a source of aesthetic pleasure for the protagonist, rather than merely a person, who belongs to the opposite gender (Shaw, 1986) Sammy soon begins to describe the nature of femininity and indicates that girls’ inner life is always a puzzle for him. He upgrades his perception of the girl, as the essential aspect of their appearance is the alteration of the atmosphere and the emergence of the spirit of freedom in the air, rather than merely the girls’ clothing and the way they communicate with one another. In Sammy’s opinion, Queenie fills the store with her aura, comprised by charm, self-determination and ingenuousness. In order to improve the reader’s understanding of all these emanations, which saturated the accommodation, Sammy poetically describes the young girl: â€Å"If it hadn’t been there you wouldn’t have known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders† (Updike, 2007). The protagonist’s description of Queenie to certain degree reminds Venus by Botticelli: white body, high shoulders, bare feet and pride in the eyes.   When the girl brings her purchase to the cashier, Sammy feels as if he has just been chosen by Fortune (Shaw, 1986): â€Å"Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy cold: Kingfish Fancy herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: 49>. Now her hands are empty, not a ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where the money is coming from† (Updike, 2007). The thorough depiction of all details, associated with the girls’ visit to the shop implies that the event was so meaningful to the protagonist that he memorized it completely, primarily, because of the surrealistic alteration of the place into the scene or arena of theatrical performance. After Langel confronts the girl, the sense of theatricality reinforces, as the manager explicitly plays hi professional role, whereas the girl behaves naturally and appears a â€Å"positive character† of the play. The girl, similarly to the Greek goddess in the ancient literature, inspires the protagonist and brings him into a different dimension of cognition, primarily through   participating in the affected episode, initiated by the executive, which in fact occurs at the workplaces like the A&P. Sammy thus understands that the service area turns employees into dull puppets, which perform uncreative job and inhibit inspiration, embodied by Queenie (Shaw, 1986). After the girl leaves, Sammy begins to feel the pressure of his workplace and finally decides to quit the job. The final interpretation of the title derives from the protagonist himself, especially when taking into consideration the fact that he is a teenager, who uses to simplify his life and at first doesn’t disclose any deep reflection. In this context â€Å"A&P† points to the teenage perception of the event, i.e. if a 19-year-old man like Sammy wrote this story he would probably given it this title. The reminder about the protagonist’s teen age can be found in the vocabulary he uses. As Grainer suggests, the narrator is defined primarily by his â€Å"tones and vocabularies† (Grainer, 2007, at http://www.enotes.com/and-pa/11435). Furthermore, â€Å"No one else supplies background information or details to round out character [†¦] when he [Sammy] describes the girls, we wonder if his lyrical flights of language expose the inadequacy of his slang as he stretches to show why these teen-agers deserve his sacrifice† (Grainer, 2007).   Furthermore, beyond the typical colloquial language, the protagonist behaves as impulsively as teenagers often do when they suddenly discover something fundamental and make corresponding decisions. Thus, the title perfectly fits the protagonist’s personality and the psychological features of his age. To sum up, the essay has outlined three major perspectives, from which the title can be interpreted. Firstly, the viewing the title through the prism of the central idea, the A&P appears a place, where the protagonist’s philosophy of life evolves. Secondly, approaching to the title in terms of the atmosphere in the store, one can conclude that the author also attempts to describe an ordinary shop, as a place which determines human fates. Finally, the short title matches the teenage psychology and the author’s simple and understandable reasoning. Works cited Greiner, J. â€Å"Sammy’s Colloquial Voice in â€Å"A&P†Ã¢â‚¬ . Retrieved   April 17, 2007, from: http://www.enotes.com/and-pa/11435 Luscher, R. John Updike: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1993. McFarland, R. â€Å"Updike and the Critics: Reflections on ‘A&P’.† Studies in Short Fiction, 20 (1983): 94-100. Porter, M. â€Å"John Updike’s ‘A&P’: The Establishment and an Emersonian Cashier†. English Journal, 61 (1972): 1155-58. Shaw, P. â€Å"Checking Out Faith and Lust: Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’; and Updike’s ‘A&P’†. Studies in Short Fiction, 23 (1986): 321-23. Updike, J. A&P. Retrieved April 17, 2007, from: http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/