Donna Haraway: the digital cyborg assemblage and the new digital health technologies

This chapter introduces the work of the influential American feminist techno-science studies writer Donna Haraway and shows how it may be used to theorise the new digital technologies used in the health and medical sphere. Haraway’s concept of the cyborg has particularly inspired cultural theorists who have written about the implications of technologies for human embodiment and subjectivity. She argues that all individuals in contemporary Western societies have become cyborgs (a term that melds ‘cybernetic’ and ‘organism’) in their interaction with technologies, blurring the distinction between human and machine. She further uses concept of the cyborg as a metaphor for political contestation and action.