Say Goodbye
to Rand McNally.

Op-ed submitted by Robin Locke Monda
to The New York Times, August 6, 2007.

“So my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work.... From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defense, and the final appropriation of women’s bodies in a masculinist orgy of war (Sofia, 1984). From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints. The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point.... Cyborg unities are monstrous and illegitimate; in our present political circumstances, we could hardly hope for more potent myths for resistance and recoupling.”

—Donna Harraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” 1991.

AMERICAN BORDER ISSUES:
A CYBORGIAN PERSPECTIVE
It is a difficult time in American and world politics, a time dominated by dichotomous ideas. Nation states are threatened by a growing swath of gray that bleeds out between the clear and the haze of things. Unofficial, unrecognized and unaccepted groups of people move across the planet, filtering into and out of the supposedly clear-cut grid of internationally recognized boundaries. It isn’t “citizens” and “non-citizens” anymore (if it ever was); it is “guest workers,” “temporary workers,” “refugees,” “foreign nationals,” as well as stateless states (Palestine), remixed states (Bosnia and Herzegovina, formerly part of Yugoslavia), and renamed states (Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire).

In America, a significant influx of undocumented immigrants has irrevocably changed the nature of our country. It is a rough justice of sorts that Americans must grapple with the unbalancing of their economic, linguistic, social and political landscape by people coming from the countries most adversely affected by exploitive American economic and trade policies. In this moment of crisis, Donna Haraway’s still timely “Cyborg Manifesto” challenges America’s image of itself. Are we a definable, unique and independent people whose borders have been violated? Haraway suggests a different reality:

“By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of “Western” science and politics — the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the production of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other — the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. [I argue] for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction.”

“A confusion of boundaries.” Consider the commonly held belief that the United States is as intact and concrete as the land it claims. We picture a Rand-McNally line etched neatly across our plains, through our lakes and over our mountain ranges. Now picture those lines fading into the landscape. Citizenship and the nation state are quickly passing into something... other… something cyborgian.

Chris Hables Gray, in The Cyborg Handbook, writes:

“We live in a world that is changing before our eyes. Corporations transcend particular countries and are now global, no longer really “centered” anywhere. Nations are breaking apart and reforming, and peoples are often far flung in diasporas across different continents.... Increasingly, large groups with identities based on the nation state are dispersed across the world, as guest workers, economic or environmental or war refugees, displaced people within nation states that no longer include them.... [The] nation’s body is no longer identical with its territory.”

Setting aside the problem of overarching corporate interests, how do we cope with the influx of undocumented “foreigners” who place strains on our national identity and integrity? A place to begin would be to research and name what is happening within and without our national borders. This seems obvious enough, but how can accurate information be gotten regarding the nature of the people affecting the American economic system if we cannot agree to acknowledge their existence? If they don’t exist they cannot be counted, consulted, considered or engaged in dialog. Without dialog, there is no chance for finding workable solutions, or for having a viable political conversation.

What constitutes citizenship?
It has been argued that illegal aliens, since they are not citizens, do not deserve consideration in our national dialog. I would propose moving from that unconstructive position. Let’s consider illegal aliens as potential citizens — or citizens in practice. They are, after all, seamlessly woven into our society by virtue of their labor and their spending, as well as by their presence in our schools, our medical offices, our streets and our businesses.

America’s “citizens in practice” are already in dialog with us. Intimate dialog. They raise our children, care for our sick and our elderly, build our homes and serve us our food. They clean our houses, make small businesses possible, water our lawns and unload our trucks. This is dialog, embodied. The discourse is actual, present and ongoing. These are people who have earned their right to be here by virtue of their “sweat equity.” And since they come from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Central and South America, why not consider them (and ourselves, for that matter) citizens of the planet?

Does recognizing the existence and legitimate status of American non-citizens solve our problems? Certainly not. But it is a beginning.

The Mexican–American
Inter–National State
Consider the relationship between the United States and Mexico. The southern border of the United States is geographically vulnerable. In fact, it is wide open. That is why many Americans want to build physical barriers. They see danger in such exposure, and there are legitimate reasons to be concerned. If our borders are so unregulated that anyone can enter, we will not be able protect ourselves from criminal and terrorist elements. On the other hand, there is no real way to close the southern border without turning America into a police state. It is physically impossible, and politically and militarily unworkable.

A cyborgian approach to the southern border problem would be to look at the United States and Mexico as an interlocked, inter-national body. At the risk of oversimplification let’s posit — on the basis of its technological underpinnings — that the United States is the “machine” portion of this body. On the basis of Mexico’s predominantly agricultural society, let us consider it the “biological” portion. The resulting cyborg would appear to be lopsided because of America’s technological hyper development, corporate reach and monstrous economic power.

Mexico would seem to be the weaker aspect of this hypothetical cyborg organism. It has less access to technological power, less economic power and very little leverage to influence America’s economic decisions. Nevertheless, Mexico’s citizens have altered the course of American politics, history and economy by migrating across the official U.S. border in large numbers. Undocumented workers have put strains on our social services and educational systems, though they have also bolstered American business interests by taking low-paying jobs eschewed by most Americans. Dollars earned by unrecognized Mexicans leave the U.S., bringing prosperity to local Mexican economies. Who is the injured party here and who is the aggressor? This inter-national body is limping — working at cross-purposes. Yet it is working. In true cyborg manner, the U.S. – Mexico interstate is a functioning amalgam of contradictory and incompatible realities.

Haraway argues for a “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction.” The pleasure in the co-mingling of our people and cultures has been spoiled by a refusal, on the part of politicians in both the United States and Mexico, to deal with the realities of U.S.–Mexican relations. Mexico and the United States must recognize their partnership and their culpability in the mutual exploitation of their neighbor’s people and resources.

And it is time for the alarmists in our midst — those who would cast undocumented immigrants as either criminals or saints — to recognize the close resemblance between so-called illegal aliens and the majority of Americans. Like Americans, Mexicans do not see themselves as criminals, though there are criminals among them. Like Americans, they want the opportunity to raise their children, provide for their families, and sustain and defend the systems that support the orderly maintenance of their lives. It is time to recognize the common interests of Americans and Mexicans.

As the United States and Mexico necessarily adjust to the realities of their political and economic relationship — as the shifting and sifting of peoples continues to re-sculpt nations and cultures all over the world — definitions of selfhood, belonging and citizenship will be revised. Many of these revisions will conflict with a growing threat we had earlier identified: the global corporate organism.

The multinational corporation is the nightmare cyborg. It has woven itself seamlessly, though not silently, into the four corners of the world. It has done so in concert with, or independent of, government co-conspirators. For instance, while we laugh at Paris Hilton, diddle our i-Pods and play fantasy football, U.S. dollars have been sucked out of America’s infrastructure and into the pockets of self-interested corporations, via the war in Iraq.

More and more, the goals of the State have become the goals of the Corporation. This is the real threat to America, not illegal immigration. In fact, it can be argued that Washington inaction on “the illegal immigration problem” serves a greater (though less publicized) corporate agenda. If the U.S.–Mexico interstate is to survive, its people must be equally empowered and retooled to deal with multinational and transnational interlopers. Aging myths of sovereignty, independence and autonomy must be set aside in favor of a new realism. Let’s come to terms with our imperfect cyborgian nature and move forward.

—Robin Locke Monda
—Staten Island, NY

EDITORS’ NOTE:
Read Donna Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto.