Tereza Vinklárková, Vojta Dubcová, Michal Durda /Monster Manifesto/

In her influential text A Cyborg Manifesto (1985), Donna Haraway proposes a radical transgression of binary oppositions such as nature and technology, male and female, organic and synthetic. The cyborg thus becomes a metaphor of resistance against essentialist notions of identity and rigid power structures. In academic and artistic circles—especially within queer, posthumanist, and transfeminist studies—the cyborg is a symbol of a liberating alternative for those who transcend normative frameworks of body, gender, nature, and culture.

For many who experience exclusion, identification with the non-human (monstrous, synthetic, animalistic) can be a form of relief: robots, monsters, dolls, or mythical creatures also do not belong to the ‘normal’ human world—yet they are more stably grasped within it, unlike tabooed bodies. Identification with these Others can serve as both a survival strategy and an act of defiance. The problem is that society often views those who identify with the non-human (monstrous, synthetic, cybernetic, or animalistic) as bizarre, cool, or frightening rather than listening to what they have to say. Haraway herself warns against embracing the cyborg as a fetish. The aestheticization of monstrosity may represent a comforting way for society to cope with the discomfort of encountering what truly exceeds norms. Therefore, identification with the non-human is not automatically liberating; it can become emancipatory only when it is recognized not merely as an aesthetic but also as a testimony—with a right to political and existential dimensions.

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