Political Feminist Positioning in Neoliberal Global Capitalism

Marina Gržinić, ‘Political Feminist Positioning in Neoliberal Global Capitalism’, pp.201-223, in:

Behar, K. (Ed.), 2016. Object-oriented feminism. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

p.201

The human as a term is central to feminism and its socialist aspirations, as well as to the technological revolutions provided by new media technology, computer devices, and the enhanced development of science and technology that are sped up via the computer and cybernetic developments.

Technical Mentality

Gilbert Simondon, ‘Technical Materiality’ (previously unpublished essay), pp.1–15, in:

De Boever, A., Simondon, G. (Eds.), 2013. Gilbert Simondon: being and technology. Edinburgh Univ. Press, Edinburgh.

p.1

Leaving Antiquity aside, technology has already yielded in at least two ways, schemas of intelligibility that are endowed with a latent power of universality: namely in the form of the Cartesian mechanism and of cybernetic theory.

The Camera That Ate Itself

Matthew Fuller, ‘The Camera That Ate Itself’, 55-85 in:

Fuller, M., 2007. Media ecologies: materialist energies in art and technoculture, 1st MIT Press paperback edition. ed, Leonardo. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England.

p.55

This persistent whimsy that labor-saving technology will of itself release people into a helter-skelter world of self-determined fun is less a theory than a suburban myth.

Nevertheless, Flusser’s Towards a Philosophy of Photography insists we play along. Having been liberated from the necessity, if not from the compulsion, to work, people are available for play.

Retentional Economy

Bernard Steigler, ‘Retentional Economy’, pp.8-13, in:

Stiegler, B., Ross, D., 2010. For a new critique of political economy. Polity, Cambridge.

p.8

In 2001 I argued […] for a new critique: for a critique addressing the question of tertiary retention, that is, the question of mnemotechnics – and in more general terms addressing the question of technics which, qua materialization of experience, always constitutes a spatialization of the time of consciousness beyond consciousness and. therefore, constitutes an unconsciousness, if not the unconscious.

Future Texts

Alondra Nelson. ‘Future Texts’, pp.1-15 in:

Nelson, A. (ed.), 2002. Afrofuturism. Duke University Press, Durham.

p.1

Forecasts of a utopian (to some) race-free future and pronouncements of the dystopian digital divide are the predominant discourses of blackness and technology in the public sphere.

What matters is less a choice between these two narratives, which fall into conventional libertarian and conservative frameworks, and more what they have in common: namely, the assumption that race is a liability in the twenty-first century—is either negligible or evidence of negligence.

(Un)dressing the interface

Brahnam, S., Karanikas, M., Weaver, M., 2011. (Un)dressing the interface: Exposing the foundational HCI metaphor “computer is woman.” Interacting with Computers 23, 401–412. doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2011.03.008

p.401

This focus on dialogue—interaction with a ‘‘second person’’ interface—has eroded the boundaries separating human beings from machines, calling into question the uniqueness of human intelligence and the sacredness of human personality and identity.

What both metaphors fail to acknowledge is that computers are not simply tools or personas. They are complex. In our interaction with them, they define who we are.

Metaphor and Materiality

Judy Wajcman, ‘Metaphor and Materiality’, pp.102-130, in:
Wajcman, J., 2004. TechnoFeminism. Polity, Cambridge ; Malden, MA.

p.102

Technology is an intimate presence in our lives and increasingly defines who we are and how we live. Just as the typewriter and the automobile were icons of freedom for women in the discourse of modernity that presaged first-wave feminism, so cyberspace and cyborgs have become ubiquitous postmodern symbols for feminism today.

Women’s lives have changed irrevocably during the twentieth century, rendering traditional sex roles increasingly untenable.

The Cyborg Solution

Judy Wajcman, ‘The Cyborg Solution’, pp.78-101, in:

Wajcman, J., 2004. TechnoFeminism. Polity, Cambridge ; Malden, MA.

p.79

Feminists were among the first to make the links between reproductive technologies, genetic engineering and eugenics.

[…] the focus of much of the early analysis by radical feminists was a determination to reclaim motherhood as the foundation of women’s identity. Implicit in this view is a concept of reproduction as a natural process, inherent in women alone, and a theory of technology as patriarchal, enabling the male exploitation of women and nature.

Like ecological feminists, radical feminists celebrated the identification of women with nature and saw women as having a special responsibility to ensure the integrity of human and natural life on earth.

Virtual Gender

Judy Wajcman, ‘Virtual Gender’, pp.56-77, in:

Wajcman, J., 2004. TechnoFeminism. Polity, Cambridge ; Malden, MA.

p.57

Progress is still defined by technological enterprises, but it is digital rather than space technology that now excites the imagination with its more immediate and accessible possibilities. Rarely having made it into outer space, little wonder that feminists have seized upon new digital technologies for their potential to finally free women from the constraints of their sex.

p.59

The conviction that the Internet is the solution to social disintegration and individualism is no less popular than the idea that it will accelerate these trends.

The Feminization of Labour in Cognitive Capitalism

Cristina Morini, 2007. The Feminization of Labour in Cognitive Capitalism. Feminist Review 40–59.

p.41

Women from the world’s under-developed countries have been transformed into salaried substitutes of the reproduction of women from the developed countries, at the expense of their own capacity or wish for reproduction; women in the developed countries are driven towards production or indeed towards a future where life is artificial and/or sterile.