“A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway” by Dave Brennan: Summary and Critique

Introduction: “A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway” by Dave Brennan

“A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway” by Dave Brennan first appeared in A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway (2025), published by Punctum Books. In this chapter, Brennan reinterprets Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto by blending personal narrative, medical technology, and speculative fabulation to explore how cyborgism extends beyond science fiction and into the lived realities of illness, care, and storytelling. Drawing on his experience as a father caring for a chronically ill child, Brennan reframes the cyborg not as a grotesque mash-up of machine and flesh in the vein of Darth Vader or Robocop, but as a figure of boundary dissolution where human, nonhuman, technological, and narrative dimensions merge (Brennan, 2025). By emphasizing Haraway’s notion of “speculative fabulation,” he demonstrates how storytelling is essential in navigating uncertainty, particularly within the medical sphere where technology and imagination work together to sustain life. The chapter also critiques patriarchal traditions of storytelling by highlighting Haraway’s provocation that “fathers, after all, are inessential,” showing how cyborg narratives displace hierarchical authority and foreground interdependence (Haraway, 2016, as cited in Brennan, 2025). The importance of Brennan’s work in literature and literary theory lies in its extension of posthumanist and feminist critiques into embodied, affective spaces, illustrating how cyborgism reshapes identity, authorship, and the politics of narrative. Through its interweaving of theory and autobiography, the chapter demonstrates how literary fabulation destabilizes rigid binaries and opens up possibilities for more inclusive and imaginative forms of cultural and critical discourse.

Summary of “A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway” by Dave Brennan

🌸 Main Ideas from A Cyborg’s Father

🌱 Storytelling and Child Imagination

Brennan begins with his daughter Syl’s storytelling, where physical and imaginary boundaries blur.
Syl creates hybrid worlds where “a plush bear milks a paper cow” and “a young witch magics a swimming pool” (Brennan, 2025, p. 171).

This blending mirrors Haraway’s idea of fluidity and boundarylessness in cyborg identity.
✨ Key Point: Childhood imagination models Haraway’s vision of merging species, technology, and identities.

🤖 Reframing the Cyborg

Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto imagines a world where boundaries—human/machine, species, gender—collapse (Haraway, 2016, p. 10).

Brennan contrasts popular sci-fi depictions of cyborgs (Darth Vader, Robocop, Seven of Nine) with Haraway’s practical cyborgism.
“Here the cyborg is not a centuries-distant mash-up of parts but a reckoning with what bodies and tools and stories are at hand” (Brennan, 2025, p. 172).
🌍 Key Point: Cyborg identity is not futuristic fantasy but a lived, embodied condition.

⏳ Fatherhood, Care, and Medical Cyborgism

Brennan’s role as a father becomes entwined with technological care for Syl’s chronic illness.
He calls himself a “timekeeper” who monitors insulin, meals, and blood sugar: “I have never loved numbers; now I find myself always counting” (Brennan, 2025, p. 172).
Medical technology (CGM, pumps, boluses) situates him as part of Syl’s cyborg system.

❤️ Key Point: Care work itself becomes cyborgian, fusing body, machine, and narrative.

🌌 Speculative Fabulation and New Narratives

Haraway’s concept of speculative fabulation emphasizes re-seeing what is already present.
Brennan asks: “What stories have always been present that simply haven’t been told?” (Brennan, 2025, p. 173).

He draws on Eva Hayward’s “fingery-eyes” and Craig Foster’s My Octopus Teacher to show how interspecies and cross-boundary relations open new forms of storytelling.
🌀 Key Point: Cyborgism invites us to narrate unseen relationships and denormalize human-centered history.

🧪 Medicine as Storytelling

Brennan redefines medicine not as pure science but as narrative-making amid uncertainty.

He notes: “Now I see it is a storyteller’s craft, ever circling the unknown, a melodrama of resolution and crisis” (Brennan, 2025, p. 174).
Medical cyborgism means constructing stories to explain inexplicable bodily-machine failures.
📖 Key Point: Medicine and fabulation are both narrative responses to uncertainty.

🚹 Haraway on Fathers and Storytelling

Haraway provocatively states: “For cyborgs, fathers, after all, are inessential” (Haraway, 2016, p. 10; cited in Brennan, 2025, p. 175).
Brennan reflects on how patriarchal traditions of fathers as storytellers must give way to decentered, interdependent narratives.
Cyborgs, excluded from “reductive, racist, misogynistic, narcissistic, power-hungry fabulations,” become the new storytellers shaping an “extra-human future” (Brennan, 2025, p. 175).

🌈 Key Point: Cyborg storytelling challenges patriarchal authorship and embraces interdependence.

🌟 Conclusion

Dave Brennan’s chapter blends memoir, theory, and narrative to reinterpret Haraway’s cyborg.
It emphasizes:
- Storytelling as survival.
- Medical technology as part of embodied cyborg identity.
- Fabulation as a tool for reimagining futures.
- A feminist, posthumanist critique of patriarchal storytelling.

Ultimately, Brennan shows how cyborgism reshapes not only theory but also family, care, and literature itself.

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway” by Dave Brennan

🌟 Theoretical Term/Concept	📖 Reference from Chapter	🔎 Explanation & Importance
🤖 Cyborgism	“Here the cyborg is not a centuries-distant mash-up of parts but a reckoning with what bodies and tools and stories are at hand” (Brennan, 2025, p. 172).	Brennan reinterprets Haraway’s cyborg beyond science-fiction tropes (e.g., Darth Vader, Robocop) and frames it as a lived, embodied reality. Cyborgism is about the collapse of human/machine, body/technology, and physical/imaginary boundaries. It represents posthuman identity and interdependence in daily life.
🌌 Speculative Fabulation	“What Haraway’s vision/metaphor of the cyborg pushes us toward… Haraway terms this speculative fabulation” (Brennan, 2025, p. 173).	Speculative fabulation is Haraway’s narrative strategy for re-seeing what is already present. It asks: “What stories have always been present that simply haven’t been told?” Brennan shows how fabulation enables storytelling that enlarges perception, challenges human-centered history, and explores interspecies connections.
🩺 Medical Cyborgism	“Now I see it is a storyteller’s craft, ever circling the unknown, a melodrama of resolution and crisis” (Brennan, 2025, p. 174).	Medical cyborgism refers to the fusion of chronic illness, medical devices, and narrative-making. Brennan, as a father caring for Syl, becomes part of the cyborg network of health management (insulin pumps, CGMs, timed injections). Medicine shifts from science to storytelling under uncertainty.
🕰️ Timekeeping & Care as Cyborg Practices	“I have begun to understand myself as… one microchip in the machinery that maintains her health and existence. I am the timekeeper” (Brennan, 2025, p. 172).	Care is framed as cyborg work, where counting, monitoring, and managing devices turn the father into part of the technological system. This redefines fatherhood as embedded in interdependent cyborg relations rather than patriarchal authority.
🧩 Boundarylessness	“Physical and imaginary for her read as one continuous text; everything is fluid, merged, boundaryless” (Brennan, 2025, p. 171).	Syl’s imaginative play mirrors Haraway’s cyborg ontology: a world without rigid separations between categories such as human/nonhuman, body/machine, or physical/imaginary. This embodies Haraway’s call to embrace fluid, hybrid identities.
🚹 Cyborg Fathers as Inessential	“Haraway writes that for cyborgs, ‘fathers, after all, are inessential’” (Haraway, 2016, as cited in Brennan, 2025, p. 175).	Haraway’s provocation undermines patriarchal traditions of fathers as the central storytellers. For cyborgs, storytelling shifts to collective, interdependent, and non-patriarchal voices, shaping an “extra-human future” beyond traditional authority.
🪸 Interspecies Relationality	“I am reminded of the documentary My Octopus Teacher… an interspecies relationship that wrenches him out of the dark narcissism of human existence” (Brennan, 2025, p. 173).	Brennan extends Haraway’s fabulation through examples of interspecies connection (cup corals, octopus). These narratives de-center the human and highlight nonhuman agency, aligning with posthumanist and ecological thought.

Contribution of “A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway” by Dave Brennan to Literary Theory/Theories

🤖 Posthumanism

Reference: “Here the cyborg is not a centuries-distant mash-up of parts but a reckoning with what bodies and tools and stories are at hand” (Brennan, 2025, p. 172).
Contribution: Brennan reframes Haraway’s cyborg as a present, embodied figure rather than a sci-fi fantasy. By embedding his fatherhood and medical caregiving into cyborgism, he contributes to posthumanist thought by showing how technology, bodies, and stories are already entangled in daily life.

Impact on Theory: This expands posthumanism from abstract philosophy to lived narrative practices of care, illness, and interdependence.

👩‍🎤 Feminist Literary Theory

Reference: “Haraway writes that for cyborgs, ‘fathers, after all, are inessential’” (Haraway, 2016, as cited in Brennan, 2025, p. 175).
Contribution: By engaging Haraway’s rejection of patriarchal storytelling, Brennan critiques the authority of fathers as narrators in cultural history. His account decentralizes the male figure and highlights relational, interdependent storytelling.

Impact on Theory: This supports feminist theory by destabilizing patriarchal narrative authority and emphasizing alternative, non-hierarchical voices—particularly those of children, caregivers, and cyborg subjects.

📖 Narratology / Storytelling Theory

Reference: “Now I see it [medicine] is a storyteller’s craft, ever circling the unknown, a melodrama of resolution and crisis” (Brennan, 2025, p. 174).
Contribution: Brennan aligns medical practice with narrative-making, showing that stories emerge to manage uncertainty, failure, and crisis. His use of Haraway’s speculative fabulation broadens narratology by integrating imaginative, interspecies, and technological narratives.

Impact on Theory: He contributes to literary narratology by blurring boundaries between fiction, autobiography, science, and medicine—making narrative central to survival and meaning-making.

🌍 Ecocriticism / Interspecies Studies

Reference: “I am reminded of the documentary My Octopus Teacher… an interspecies relationship that wrenches him out of the dark narcissism of human existence” (Brennan, 2025, p. 173).
Contribution: Brennan’s reflections on octopuses, corals, and children’s imaginations extend Haraway’s interspecies relationality into ecocritical discourse.

Impact on Theory: This supports ecocriticism by re-centering nonhuman agency and showing how interspecies encounters disrupt anthropocentrism and enrich literary imagination.

🩺 Medical Humanities

Reference: “Medical cyborgism is an effort of fabulation… narratives constructed from unanswerable questions” (Brennan, 2025, p. 174).
Contribution: Brennan shows how chronic illness transforms medicine into a narrative practice, where technological failures and bodily mysteries generate new storytelling forms.

Impact on Theory: Adds to medical humanities by situating illness and treatment within posthuman fabulation—making health care a site of literary and theoretical innovation.

✨ Overall Contribution

Dave Brennan’s A Cyborg’s Father bridges posthumanism, feminist theory, narratology, ecocriticism, and medical humanities. By mis/reading Haraway through the lens of fatherhood, caregiving, and chronic illness, Brennan transforms cyborg theory from abstract philosophy into lived, narrative, and interdependent practice. His work expands literary theory by emphasizing how stories, machines, bodies, and relationships co-constitute meaning in contemporary culture.

Examples of Critiques Through “A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway” by Dave Brennan

📘 Literary Work	🤖 Critique through Brennan’s Cyborg Lens	📖 Connection to A Cyborg’s Father
🌌 *Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun* (2021)**	Brennan’s redefinition of cyborgs challenges the novel’s depiction of Klara as a mechanical Other who longs for human connection. Instead of reinforcing human/nonhuman divides, Brennan’s view suggests Klara’s caregiving role exemplifies practical cyborgism, where technology, affection, and survival are inseparable.	“Here the cyborg is… a reckoning with what bodies and tools and stories are at hand” (Brennan, 2025, p. 172).
🧪 *Sarah Manguso, Very Cold People* (2022)**	This autofiction explores trauma and invisibility in patriarchal America. Brennan’s engagement with Haraway’s claim that “fathers… are inessential” allows a critique of how patriarchal storytelling erases marginal voices, emphasizing instead the narrative agency of silenced figures like Manguso’s young narrator.	“For cyborgs, ‘fathers, after all, are inessential’” (Haraway, 2016, as cited in Brennan, 2025, p. 175).
🌊 *Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, When We Were Birds* (2022)**	This Caribbean magical-realist novel merges human, spiritual, and ecological worlds. Through Brennan’s notion of speculative fabulation, it can be read as a cyborg text, weaving myth, ecology, and survival into new relational narratives that destabilize human-centered history.	“Haraway terms this speculative fabulation… enlarging the spectrum of perception” (Brennan, 2025, p. 173).
🩺 *Sandeep Jauhar, My Father’s Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s* (2023)**	Brennan’s idea of medical cyborgism resonates with Jauhar’s memoir about caring for his father with dementia. Just as Brennan narrates Syl’s illness through machines and fabulation, Jauhar’s narrative shows medicine as storytelling against uncertainty, turning illness into a shared cyborg story of family and technology.	“Medical cyborgism is an effort of fabulation… narratives constructed from unanswerable questions” (Brennan, 2025, p. 174).

Criticism Against “A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway” by Dave Brennan

📖 Over-Personalization of Theory

Brennan heavily relies on his daughter’s illness and fatherhood to interpret Haraway.

Critics may argue this reduces Haraway’s broader political and theoretical project to an individualized memoir.
Risk: The personal lens may obscure the collective, feminist, and anti-capitalist critiques central to Haraway’s manifesto.

🤖 Narrow Scope of Cyborgism

While Haraway positions the cyborg as a global, political, and feminist figure, Brennan emphasizes medical caregiving and family life.

This focus could be seen as domesticating Haraway’s radical vision into a private, affective domain.
Risk: It sidelines larger issues of labor, race, gender, and capitalism that Haraway links to cyborg politics.

🧩 Potential Misreading of Haraway

The subtitle itself—Misreading Donna Haraway—invites critique.
Some may see Brennan’s interpretation as too selective, emphasizing storytelling and illness while downplaying Haraway’s materialist critique of militarism, technoscience, and patriarchy.

Risk: Turning Haraway’s manifesto into a poetic-metaphorical text rather than a political intervention.

🩺 Romanticization of Medical Cyborgism

Brennan reframes medical technologies (insulin pumps, CGMs) as sites of narrative creativity and fabulation.
Critics might argue this romanticizes the trauma of chronic illness and technological dependency.

Risk: Downplays structural issues such as healthcare inequality, accessibility, and systemic failures in medical technology.

🚹 Ambiguity in Critiquing Fatherhood

Brennan reflects on Haraway’s claim that “fathers, after all, are inessential.”
Yet, his narrative re-centers himself as father-storyteller through Syl’s illness.

Risk: Instead of decentering patriarchal voices, his work may recentralize fatherhood through affective authority.

🌍 Limited Engagement with Broader Contexts

Haraway’s cyborg is tied to global capitalism, Cold War militarism, and information technology.
Brennan’s narrative is localized and micro-focused, missing opportunities to connect Syl’s cyborgism to wider socio-political contexts.

Risk: The work might feel too insular compared to Haraway’s expansive vision.

Representative Quotations from “A Cyborg’s Father: Misreading Donna Haraway” by Dave Brennan with Explanation

🌟 Quotation	🔎 Explanation & Critical Significance
🌱 “Physical and imaginary for her read as one continuous text; everything is fluid, merged, boundaryless.” (Brennan, 2025, p. 171)	Brennan uses his daughter’s imagination to illustrate Haraway’s idea of collapsing boundaries. This models cyborg fluidity between real/imagined, human/nonhuman.
🤖 “Here the cyborg is not a centuries-distant mash-up of parts but a reckoning with what bodies and tools and stories are at hand.” (p. 172)	Brennan rejects sci-fi cyborgs (Darth Vader, Robocop) for practical cyborgism, where survival, care, and narrative merge in the present.
⏳ “I have begun to understand myself as… one microchip in the machinery that maintains her health and existence. I am the timekeeper.” (p. 172)	Fatherhood becomes cyborg work. Brennan reframes care (insulin, meals, timing) as a form of human-machine interdependence.
📖 “Questions lead to stories. Let us make a story together. Let us sit on the floor and weave a tale of bears, insects, numbers, machines, people.” (p. 172)	Brennan stresses storytelling as survival. Narratives become cyborg tools for managing uncertainty and meaning-making.
🌌 “Haraway terms this speculative fabulation, a type of narration that enables new takes on what is already possible.” (p. 173)	Brennan adopts Haraway’s speculative fabulation as a literary strategy to expand perception, opening space for new relational stories.
🪸 *“I am reminded of the documentary My Octopus Teacher… an interspecies relationship that wrenches him out of the dark narcissism of human existence.”* (p. 173)	Brennan connects cyborg fabulation with interspecies relationality, showing how encounters with nonhumans shift narratives beyond anthropocentrism.
🩺 “Medical cyborgism is an effort of fabulation… we build stories to make sense of what makes no sense.” (p. 174)	Illness and medicine are framed as storytelling processes, where technology and uncertainty produce cyborg narratives.
💔 “When I watch Syl tell the story of her illness… every time I am newly heartbroken, a lump of sandstone washed through again and again.” (p. 174)	Brennan captures the affective dimension of cyborg care: grief and hope shaped through a child’s narrative play with medical devices.
🚹 “Haraway writes that for cyborgs, ‘fathers, after all, are inessential.’” (Haraway, 2016, cited in Brennan, 2025, p. 175)	A provocative feminist claim Brennan wrestles with. It destabilizes patriarchal authority while recentering interdependent storytelling.
🌈 “Cyborgs… must as a means of survival shrug these stories off. They are the storytellers who will shape the human future, which can only be an extra-human future.” (p. 175)	Brennan aligns Haraway’s cyborg with new future narratives, rejecting patriarchal, racist, and anthropocentric storytelling traditions.

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