Experiencing the comic book ‘Priya’s Shakti’ through AR was a very engaging and revealing encounter for me personally. The comic book talks about gender inequality, sexual harassment, which is sadly a very common subject of concern around us. I believe the visuals through AR did a good job in explaining the gravity of the situation. It emphasized on explaining the torment, agony and anger a woman feels on be sexually harassed. Similarly, Priya’s Mirror also discusses the grave issue of acid attacks on woman and the anguish caused by the same. Both the comics talk about these important and prevalent issues and how one shouldn’t let that dictate the rest of their lives. As a society, we need to ask ourselves, why does this even have to happen in the first place at all?
‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ by Donna Haraway is a socialist-feminist scrutiny of women’s condition in the advanced technological situations in the first world. Donna describes a cyborg to be a hybrid of machine and organism whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations. Donna definitely talks in favor of a society of cyborgs. The manifesto denounces traditional convictions of feminism, particularly feminist focuses on identity politics and stimulating instead union through similitude and affinity. She uses the figure of speech of a cyborg to hanker feminists to move beyond the restrictions and boundaries of traditional gender and politics.
“The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism.”
She tries to break the norms by talking about the equality that humans and animals should have, the similarity that organisms and machines have with the advent of artificial intelligence and the equation of the physical and the non-physical. “I’d rather be a cyborg than be a goddess”, reflects Donna’s desire for a society which is devoid of gender inequality and the norms that guide such biasness. It was interesting to experience Priya's Shakti in AR and read the manifesto, comprehending the abject concomitance they reflect.
Thank You
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