“To be a Cyborg or a Goddess?” by Nina Lykke: Summary and Critique

◆ Context & Aim

• Lykke stages a dialogue between Donna Haraway’s cyborg feminism and Vandana Shiva’s spiritual ecofeminism to test whether feminism must choose “cyborg or goddess,” or can productively hold both at once (Lykke, 1996).
• Core claim: the opposition is a false dichotomy; feminist critiques of technoscience “need both” figures to confront global capitalism/patriarchy and their technoscientific logics (Lykke, 1996).
• “I intend to challenge both Haraway and Shiva… as non-exclusive differences between possible feminist subject-positions and strategies” (Lykke, 1996).

✦ Haraway’s Cyborg Feminism: Technophilic and Critical

• Cyborg = boundary-blurring human/machine hybrid that deconstructs nature/culture, organism/technology, and fixed sex/gender binaries (Lykke, 1996; Haraway, 1991).
• Double vision: cyborgs signal both domination (“a grid of control”) and sites of resistance through “permanently partial identities” (Haraway, 1991, p. 154).
• Lykke rejects Shiva’s charge of “reductionist constructivism,” showing Haraway’s ethical and political commitments rather than techno-optimism (Lykke, 1996).
• Quote: “The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once” (Haraway, 1991, p. 154).

◆ OncoMouse™ as Ethical Lens

• Lykke reads Haraway’s “OncoMouse™” as a material-semiotic figure: at once a suffering lab animal and a trademarked commodity, forcing readers to confront biocapitalism’s ethics (Lykke, 1996; Haraway, 1994).
• Naming politics (“s/he,” “TM”) repositions the animal as a subject/sibling rather than research “object,” shifting the burden of justification (Lykke, 1996).
• Haraway’s ambivalence: OncoMouse™ both bears “our suffering” and is mobilized by capital via salvation narratives (“a cure for cancer”) (Haraway, 1994, p. 23).
• Quote: “Whether I agree to her existence and use or not, s/he suffers… that I and my sisters might live” (Haraway, 1994, p. 23).

✧ Shiva’s Ecofeminist Standpoint & Prakriti

• Shiva centers rural women and prakriti (sacred, self-regenerating nature) as agents against capitalist, patriarchal technoscience; she calls for reviving spiritual/material bonds with nature (Shiva, 1989; Shiva & Mies, 1993; Lykke, 1996).
• She criticizes postmodern feminist STS for aiding “bioengineering” and for treating nature as mere construction (Lykke, 1996).
• Quote: “Patriarchy defines nature as dead… and, in the process, [reductionist constructivism has] reinforced… violations against people and the web of life” (Shiva, 1996).

◆ Dangers of Single-Figure Politics (Cyborg vs Goddess)

• Lykke: Haraway’s dismissal of goddess imagery and Shiva’s dismissal of cyborgs both reinscribe an either/or that narrows feminist strategy (Lykke, 1996).
• She notes critiques of Shiva (e.g., idealizing “rural women,” uneven links between goddess cultures and women’s status) to argue against any exclusive standpoint (Kelkar & Nathan, 1991; Omvedt & Kelkar, 1995; Lykke, 1996).
• Quote: “Neither of the two feminist theorists leave space for the field of vision of the other” (Lykke, 1996).

✺ Toward a Third Position: Holding Cyborg and Goddess (and Coyote)

• Proposal: a hybrid subject-position that mobilizes cyborg deconstruction and goddess/prakriti re-sacralization of nature as an active subject (Lykke, 1996).
• Affinities: both OncoMouse™ and prakriti re-subjectify the nonhuman, inviting dialogue rather than domination (Lykke, 1996).
• Haraway’s “coyote” (trickster nature) offers a non-gendered sacred to complement (not erase) sexual difference claims in goddess frameworks (Haraway, 1991; 1992; Lykke, 1996).
• Quote: “Feminist critics… need both” figures to disrupt current technoscience–power nexuses (Lykke, 1996).

◆ Methodological Moves (Material-Semiotic, Situated, Deconstructive)

• Lykke highlights Haraway’s material-semiotic method: not just textual deconstruction (contra Derrida) but interventions in bodies, labs, markets (Haraway, 1991; 1994; Lykke, 1996).
• Emphasis on situated knowledges and partial perspectives resists universalist truths and cynical relativism (Haraway, 1991; Lykke, 1996).
• Quote: Haraway seeks a “materialized deconstruction that literary Derrideans might envy” (Haraway, 1994, p. 38).

✪ Political Implications for Feminist STS & Eco-Politics

• Strategic pluralism: combine critical technophilia (hacking technoscience from within) with eco-spiritual practices that revalue relationality and limit extraction (Lykke, 1996).
• Avoid nostalgia and naïve techno-solutionism; pursue ethico-political accountability to human and nonhuman others (Lykke, 1996).
• Closing reminder (via Keller): “Neither nature nor sex can be named out of existence” (Keller, 1989, p. 43)—a caution against erasing materialities while theorizing (Lykke, 1996).

1. Contribution to Postmodern and Poststructuralist Literary Theory

• Lykke shows how Haraway’s cyborg functions as a “deconstructive device” that unsettles binary oppositions such as human/machine, nature/culture, and male/female (Lykke, 1997, p. 10).
• Quotation: “As critical figures Haraway’s cyborgs act as a kind of deconstructive device, which subvert cherished notions and dichotomies of the modern world without closing the critical discourse in one counter-truth” (Lykke, 1997, p. 10).
• This aligns with Derridean strategies of différance and destabilization of meaning.

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2. Engagement with Ecofeminist Literary Criticism

• Lykke incorporates Vandana Shiva’s standpoint, which centers on prakriti and spiritual-material bonds between women and nature.
• Quotation: “Shiva links her critique of global power relations and the destructive logic of contemporary technoscience to a (re)claiming of the sacred feminine principle prakriti” (Lykke, 1997, p. 7).
• This highlights how ecofeminist literary readings emphasize the interconnection of texts, ecology, and spiritual cosmologies.

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3. Feminist Technoscience Critique in Literature

• Haraway’s cyborg is applied as a metaphorical figure for analyzing literary and cultural texts shaped by high-tech imaginaries.
• Quotation: “Cyborgs change the world in a material-semiotic sense. Their field of action is not only discourses but also the material (social-natural) world” (Lykke, 1997, p. 12).
• This broadens literary theory by blending textual with material and technological realities.

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4. Rethinking Metaphors in Literary and Cultural Theory

• Lykke urges critics not to choose between the cyborg (Haraway) and the goddess (Shiva) but to treat them as coexisting metaphors for reading literature and culture.
• Quotation: “I am in search of a subject position, which includes both goddess and cyborg, because I think that the feminist critique of technoscience needs both” (Lykke, 1997, p. 20).
• This contributes to metaphor theory in literature by showing how figures function as analytical heuristics rather than fixed identities.

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5. Contribution to Feminist Narrative Theory

• Haraway’s cyborg and Shiva’s goddess open new ways of telling “origin stories” beyond patriarchal myths.
• Quotation: “The inappropriate origin stories of cyborgs make them fit to subvert the significance which Western psychoanalysis… attributed to the Oedipus complex” (Lykke, 1997, p. 11).
• This informs narrative theory by disrupting canonical structures of gender, race, and identity in storytelling.

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6. Cross-Cultural and Postcolonial Dimensions

• By juxtaposing Haraway’s Californian cyborg feminism with Shiva’s Indian ecofeminism, Lykke emphasizes the necessity of cross-cultural perspectives in theory.
• Quotation: “Haraway, situated in a high-tech Californian environment, offers the cyborg… Shiva, claiming to speak for rural women in India, offers prakriti… Neither of the two leave space for the field of vision of the other” (Lykke, 1997, p. 18).
• This challenges Eurocentric biases in literary theory by engaging non-Western epistemologies.

1. Over-Simplification of Haraway vs. Shiva Dichotomy

• Critics argue that while Lykke claims to deconstruct the cyborg/goddess binary, she still largely frames the debate as an opposition rather than fully transcending it.
• The “third position” she suggests may risk reproducing the same dichotomy in softer terms.

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2. Limited Engagement with Non-Western Contexts

• Lykke critiques Shiva’s essentialism but does not fully explore the complexity of Indian ecofeminist traditions.
• Her reading risks reducing Shiva’s prakriti to a symbolic metaphor rather than recognizing its lived cultural and spiritual significance.

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3. Potential Eurocentrism

• By privileging Haraway’s postmodern framework, Lykke may unintentionally reinscribe Western theoretical dominance.
• Her “balancing” approach still tends to grant more analytical legitimacy to cyborg feminism than to Shiva’s ecofeminism.

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4. Essentialism vs. Constructivism Tension

• Lykke identifies Shiva’s ecofeminism as essentialist but does not adequately address the possibility that prakriti might function as a strategic essentialism rather than a naïve naturalism.
• This critique overlooks the political usefulness of cultural-spiritual narratives in postcolonial struggles.

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5. Abstract Theorizing with Limited Praxis

• The essay is strong in metaphorical analysis but offers little guidance for practical feminist activism.
• Critics note that the text risks remaining in the realm of academic theorizing, detached from material struggles that Shiva emphasizes.

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6. Underestimation of Ecofeminist Agency

• Lykke highlights the symbolic potential of Shiva’s goddess figure but downplays the political agency of rural women that Shiva foregrounds.
• This weakens the recognition of grassroots ecofeminist praxis as a site of resistance.

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7. Risk of Theoretical Overload

• By advocating for an inclusive position (cyborg + goddess), Lykke’s framework may appear overly eclectic, lacking clear methodological grounding.
• This risks diluting the critical power of either metaphor when applied to literary or cultural analysis.