Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”an infographic series by Mary Franke

Mary FrankeEnglish 271Spring 2015

This project attempts to use information from Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto,as inspira-tion for a series of infographics. In order to successfully present her

arguments in a visually appealing way, I relied on theories

from renowned design scholars David McCandless and Edward Tufte. McCandless relies on the form of data that he is analyzing to inspire the type of infographic he will

create and his art helps the reader to makes sense of the many different data sets that exist in our world. I followed his path and let the information from Haraway’s chapter guide my design.

Tufte writes about how displaying information in a clear way makes it functional, due to its viewer’s ease of understand-ing. In order to present information clearly, Tufte writes about the “craft” of art vs. “chart junk”. Craftsmanship doesn’t include useless information, while chart junk involves el-ements that may obscure the information. One of his ma-jor rules of thumb is what he refers to as “layering and separation”. In order to accomplish this, the design elements should be of substantially different colors and weights in order to present information clearly to the viewer. My goal with these infographics is to show a synthesis between

McCandless’ focus on creating visually stimulating work and Tufte’s focus on conveying clear ideas. One major challenge was extracting data sets and statistics from Haraway’s arguments— in tackling this issue, I chose to zoom in on smaller concepts and zoom out on big picture themes. This allowed me to dig deeper into the essay’s elements, as well as look at the essay as a whole and

recognize its materiality.

“combine the language of the eye with the language of the mind”

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WORDFREQUENCYmary franke

To introduce A Cyborg Manifesto, I designed two separate infographics which both display the frequency of words used in Haraway’s essay.

The graphics were designed to be able to stand on their own, as well as work together. They operate under the assumption that the viewer wil l be able to decipher the meaning of the dif ferent colors, shapes and sizes in

both images. The graphic on the left is more inspired by Tufte’s thinking in i ts clari ty and the graphic on the r ight by McCandless in i ts aesthetical ly

pleasing design elements.

“see a pattern, shape a

story”

wage

illegitimate

economy

electronics

mother

reproduction

survival

apocalypse

biology

community

revolutionary

pleasure

dualism

marxist

primitive ideological

classfamily

nature

white

state

man

modern

consciousness

privilegedream

innocence

naturalanimal

industrial

black

struggle

warimagination

experiencehuman

unitypeople

radical

reproductionman

raceculture

western

gender

myth

fiction

power

life

socialboundary

domination

identitylabor

organic

sex machine

body

woman

world

politics cyborg

technologyfeminist

science

- Dave McCandless, “The Beauty of Data Visualization” Ted Talk 2010

While bri l l iant, Haraway’s essay is long and has i ts moments of density. The metaphors and symbolism used in her writ ing is a lot to wrap one’s head

around. Through displaying her key words in the easi ly digestable format of the infographic, her work takes on a new and less daunting l i fe. Likewise,

viewing her work on a macro level puts into focus the main ideas presented in A Cyborg Manifesto , allowing the reader to remember what is important.

FALSE DICHOTOMIESPROBLEMS

DICHOTOMY: A DIVISION OR THE PROCESS OF DIVIDING INTOTWO ESPECIALLY MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE ORCONTRADICTORY GROUPS

M

F

A SURVEY FOUND THAT48% OF TRANS PEOPLE

UNDER 26 SAID THEY HADATTEMPTED SUICIDE, AND30% SAID THEY HAD DONE

SO IN THE PAST YEAR,WHILE 59% SAID THEY HAD

AT LEAST CONSIDEREDDOING SO

16

LIBERAL OR

CONSERVATIVE

NUMBER OF DAYS THE U.S.GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

LASTED IN 2013

"YOU'RE EITHER

OR YOU'RE AGAINST ME "

with meI.E.

LEFT BRAINANALYTICAL

MATH & SCIENCE

CREATIVE

MUSIC & ART

right brain

&DANGERS

classification makes students less ambitious and less likely to try new things

l o g i c a l l y f a l l a c i o u s . c o mt h e g u a r d i a n . c o mh u f f i n g t o n p o s t . c o m

BY

MA

RY

FR

AN

KE

“The dichotomies between mind and body, animal and

human, organism and machine, public and private, nature and culture, men and

women, primitive and civilized are all in

question ideologically” (Haraway, 302).

In this infographic I attempted to zoom in on the concept of “dichotomies” and dualisms, in order to elaborate more on

Haraway’s point. This infogrpahic contains common dichotomies that are not only perpetuated by society, but are also often found to have detrimental consequences on

their subjects. I relied on Haraway’s style of using “comfortable old hierarchical dominations” when choosing

the information to present.

FALSE DICHOTOMIESPROBLEMS

DICHOTOMY: A DIVISION OR THE PROCESS OF DIVIDING INTOTWO ESPECIALLY MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE ORCONTRADICTORY GROUPS

M

F

A SURVEY FOUND THAT48% OF TRANS PEOPLE

UNDER 26 SAID THEY HADATTEMPTED SUICIDE, AND30% SAID THEY HAD DONE

SO IN THE PAST YEAR,WHILE 59% SAID THEY HAD

AT LEAST CONSIDEREDDOING SO

16

LIBERAL OR

CONSERVATIVE

NUMBER OF DAYS THE U.S.GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

LASTED IN 2013

"YOU'RE EITHER

OR YOU'RE AGAINST ME "

with meI.E.

LEFT BRAINANALYTICAL

MATH & SCIENCE

CREATIVE

MUSIC & ART

right brain

&DANGERS

classification makes students less ambitious and less likely to try new things

l o g i c a l l y f a l l a c i o u s . c o mt h e g u a r d i a n . c o mh u f f i n g t o n p o s t . c o m

BY

MA

RY

FR

AN

KE

Haraway’s feminism breaks down boundaries set forth by society in order to become a “Cyborg”. The cyborg banishes the constructions of race,

gender, and class hierarchies in order to become her best a truest self.

Haraway’s manifesto challenges its readers to break free from the

oppressive dualisms of Western Society

Human + Machine

32.3 hrs35.3 hrs 43.5 hrs

average timespent on theinternet per month

ONLY

OF AMERICANSWALK OR BIKETO WORK

THE AVERAGEAMERICAN SPENDS

3.4 %93%

87%6%

INDOORS

IN AUTOMOBILES

96.4 mins/day texting

48.5 mins/day e-mailing

38.6 mins/day facebook-ing

34.4 mins/day internet browsing

26.9 mins/day listening to music

TIMEAMERICANSSPEND DAILYON SMART

PHONES

AVERAGE TIME SPENTPER DAY WITH MAJORMEDIA BY U.S. ADULTS

IN 2013

12 hrs 5 mins

PERCENT OF THEYEAR INSIDE

For this infographic, I wanted to create something that was more like the classic infographics that I am familiar with.

Inspired by Haraway’s desire to dissolve the barrier between organism and machine, I chose to convey how much time we spend with and truly rely on ma-chines on a day-to-day basis.

This infographic shows the stat that the average U.S. Adult engages with media for over half of their day-- perhaps we are more machine than human?

“a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social realations, our

most important political construction, a world changing fiction.”

- Haraway, 149

“I’d rather be a Cyborg than a

goddess” -Donna Haraway

My final infographic makes the difficult attempt to map out Donna Haraway’s conception of “Cyborg

Feminism”. In the center of the infographic I chose to put a list of many different types of feminism in true Haraway style. Although the graphic contains sparse words and is smaller than the other ones, I believe that it works to convey the grand idea

present in her essay.

“turn information into a landscape,then provide maps” -David McCandless

Amazon Analyt icalAnarchist Atheist Black Chicana

Christ ian Conservat ive Cultural CyberDifference Eco Equal i ty Equity FatFrench Global Individual ist Is lamic

Jewish Lesbian Liberal L ipst ick MarxistMaterial Maternal Mormon Neo New

Postcolonial Postmodern PoststructuralPro-l i fe Proto Radical Separat ist Sex-

posit ive Social Social ist StandpointThird world Trans Transnational

Womanism

CYBER FEMINISMDONNA HARAWAY

CAPTIALISM COLONIALISM

PATRIARCHY GENDER

CLASS

RACE

question hierarchies

& powerstructures

REALIZEIDENTITYIS A MYTH

BECOME A

CYBORG

RECOGNIZE THE CONTRADICTORY

SOCIAL REALITIES...

...THAT CONSTRUCT OUR

PERCEPTIONS OF

BREAK

DOWN

BOUNDARIES

“turn information into a landscape,then provide maps” -David McCandless

Sources:

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto”

David McCandless, “The Visual Miscellaneum”

Edward Tufte, “Envisioning Information”