Haraway’s cyborg manifesto in education: after AI

Abstract This paper critically assesses the impact of Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ on education, 40 years since it was published and after AI. It provides a significant re-evaluation of the manifesto’s prescience in mapping the future of education, an aspect of the essay which has been under-recognized within the field. It then reviews the main points of divergence between the manifesto and contemporary theory, providing a synthesis of the ways in which scholars are now critiquing, adapting and developing Haraway’s work. It suggests that Haraway’s cyborg theory to an extent lacks explanatory power in relation to contemporary artificial intelligence, anthropocentrism and technology acceleration. However, it argues strongly for the methodological value of the manifesto’s call to balance critique of contemporary digital society with an embrace of human/machine kinship and pleasure in the ‘dangerous possibilities’ opened up by the confusion of boundaries. It ends by proposing three original pathways for research in education—with and beyond AI—which might be seen as aligned with this broad approach.