iAnorexic: Haraway’s Cyborg Metaphor as Ethical Methodology

Abstract

The burgeoning connections between the human body and technology have opened space for disenfranchised “others” to take up alternative lived experience, such as the exclusively online pro-anorexia movement. Haraway’s (1991) cyborg metaphor, characterised by organic/machine hybridisation, speaks to the blurring of the boundaries between taken-for-granted binaries that “other” women and their experiences of their bodies. Through a study of pro-anorexia online, we illustrate how cyborg theory enables a nonpathologising understanding of women’s embodiment. In this article, we discuss cyborg metaphor as an ethical methodology for new engagements with pro-anorexia and women’s embodiment, privileging transdisciplinary movement, simultaneity, and contradiction.

Keywords:

• cyborg metaphor
• cyborg theory
• ethics
• hybridity
• online research
• pro-anorexia
• women’s embodiment

Notes

1. In light of the speed at which pro-anorexia sites are dismantled and re-emerge, we do not assume that the sites selected for our study are still active. As we prepare this article, Pro-Ana-Nation no longer exists.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Geneva Connor

Geneva Connor is a PhD candidate in the School of Psychology at Massey University, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her research interests lie in critical feminist psychology, particularly in alternative methodologies and metaphor and their implications for embodiment.

Leigh Coombes

Leigh Coombes is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology/Te Kura Hinengaro Tangata, Massey University, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her research is theoretically and methodologically committed to social justice, especially issues of gender and violence. Central to this are concerns with the context of social inequities and their transformation, including historical, social, and cultural conditions of gender and the effects of colonisation on particular communities.

Mandy Morgan

Mandy Morgan is Professor of Feminist Psychology at the School of Psychology at Massey University in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her research is broadly located in critical feminist psychology. One area is concerned with theoretical psychology, especially poststructuralist feminism. A second area is a programme of critical and discursive projects on the ways in which domestic violence service and intervention providers and clients understand their experiences.