Steven Kurtz on Mon, 14 Jul 1997 22:16:50 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> Cyberfeminism Part 3 |
Notes on the Political Condition of Cyberfeminism continued: Cyberfeminist Education Cyberfeminists have already grasped the importance of making hands-on technological education for women a core priority. But this education needs to be contextualized within a critical feminist analysis and discourse about women, Netculture and politics, and the pancapitalist labor economy. Cyberfeminists need to make their voices heard much more strongly in the discussion of Net development. In doing so, cyberfeminism needs to think about who they consider their constituency. As a cultural and technical avant garde, cyberfeminists need to remember that most women who now work with computers and information technology in first world countries are at best glorified typists, for whom the computer simply represents an intensification of work. The question must be asked: What relationship do these women have to technology? How is this relationship produced, and how can it be contested? Cyberfeminism could provide a consciousness raising site where women can tell stories about their experiences with all the different aspects of technology, and how it affects their lives. Such a site could teach women to question the increasing transparency of technological incursion into their workplaces and into everyday life. And of course, there must be ongoing education, information, and activism concerning the feminized "global homework economy (Haraway)" which is profoundly worsening the lives of women in developing countries. Feminist education (women's studies) as it was pioneered in the US in the early 1970's included the idea that a "separate" education, where women would not have to compete with males, and where they would have the freedom to frame issues and ask questions that challenged the hegemony of received practices and ideas. The Feminist Art Programs in California, for example, maintained their own studios, courses, and teachers within an institutional academic structure. But more deeply, it also became evident that a separate space allowed uncensored and radical experimentation that included the meltdown of traditional disciplines, practices, and territories of expertise, and that initiated some postmodern art practices that have changed the face of mainstream art and art history in the US. What might a feminist educational program in computer science and media technology accomplish? Imagine!! Cyberspace lends itself nicely to the creation of separate learning and practice spaces for different groups, and it seems fruitful to expand and maintain these spaces for now in the spirit of feminist self-help. One of the most important educational tools cyberfeminists can offer is an ongoing directory of electronic strategies and resources for women, including feminist theory discussion groups, electronic publishing and exhibition venues, zines, addresses, bibliographies, mediaographies, how-to sites, and general information exchange. While compilations of these resources are already underway, there is a growing need for a more radical and critical feminist discourse about technology in cyberspace (as opposed to discourse in critical and media studies departments in universities). In cyberfeminism, this discourse arises directly from actual current practices and problems, rather than from abstract theorizing. Thus cyberfeminism offers the development of applied, activist theory. An obvious group to target for cyberfeminist networking, education, and expertise is the first generations of young women now graduating from schools and colleges (mainly in the US and Europe) who have had some training in electronic media and in media theory. Having already begun to work in electronic media in school, many of these young women will be searching for ways to get electronically connected, and thus will experience in full force the gender whammy of cyberspace. While many of them have had some exposure to feminist theory and practice in the academy, most of them will be faced with a terrifying void when it comes to feminist support and access in cyberspace. Since cyberspace seems to attract younger women, it is important that cyberfeminists develop projects and sites for purposes of recruitment. Cyberfeminist Body Art Bodies generally are all the rage on the Net--whether they are obsolete, cyborg, techno, porno, erotic, morphed, recombined, phantom, or viral. But most of these "bodies" are little more than recirculated commodified images of sexuality (particularly female and "deviant" sexuality) or medical imaging (such as the infamous Visible Human project), and are presented uncritically. Many artists are contributing to an explosion of body art on the Net, much of it simply a transposition of what already exists in other media. Cyberfeminist body-centered art is coming alive on the Net. As to be expected, the vagina and the clitoris have pride of place in much cyberfeminist work such as that of VNS Matrix. "Cunt art" was a fiercely joyous, liberatory, and radical rallying icon for feminist artists and activists in the 1970s. Women's consciousness-raising and medical self-help groups regularly examined each others' genitals and reproductive organs, and the speculum became the symbol not only of sexual liberation, but also of feminist demands for reproductive freedom and for a woman-centered health-care system. As Donna Haraway suggests in _Modest Witness_, feminists interrogating technoscience (and particularly the new reproductive technologies), need to arm themselves with "the right speculum for the job," one that "makes visible the data structures that are our bodies." The visualization and data-gathering engines that drive both the new information and reproductive technologies can be redirected and applied to the task of "designing the analytical languages [the speculums] for representing and intervening in our spliced, cyborg worlds" (Haraway, p. 212). Cyberfeminism can create reconfigured networked bodies in cyberspace, bodies that are passionately incorporated in textual, visual, and interactive works. Simultaneously, deconstructive projects that address the proliferation of dominant cultural, gender, and sexual codes on the Net will be more effective if they come from a strong, libidinal center, and are understood through the filter of women's history. Indeed, cyberfeminist body art projects are haunted by women's bodily histories. They are often motivated by rage against the forces of censorship, repression, and normalization. Primarily, though, they are motivated by absence--the absence created by female infanticide, clitoridectomy, anorgasmic medications, suttee, footbinding, enforced celibacy, sexual misinformation, lack of birth control information, rape, forced pregnancy, and by female restriction and confinement. Part of theoretical feminism's project has been to explore the possibility of difference in female sexuality and desire. Much French and American feminist, literary, and psychoanalytic theory in the 1980s was dedicated to this research. The Net offers possibilities for exploring these questions in a new technological and information setting, and among a new population of author/producers who are more grounded in practice than in theory. Although this line of research seems to have left the binary of woman/nature far behind, it is by no means certain that it will not fall into some of the traps of essentialist feminism, or succumb to the lure of simply countering masculinist Netculture with a feminine Netpornography. There is much to be gained from consciously interpolating women's histories and bodies into cyberspace; much can be learned from naming the absences, and beginning to create a multifaceted, fluid, and conscious feminist presence. Conclusion It seems safe to say that cyberfeminism is still in its avant-garde phase of development. The first wave of explorers, amazons, and "misfits" have wandered into what is generally a hostile territory, and found a new land in need of decolonization. History is repeating itself in a positive cycle, where feminist avant-garde philosophies, strategies, and tactics from the past can be dusted off and reclaim their former vitality. Separatist activities in the real or virutal forms of dinners, discussion groups, and consciousness raising sessions are viable once again. Essentialist philosophies enacted in body art, cunt art, and identity maintenance recombine with constructionist notions of identity development. An epistemological and ontological anarchy that is celebratory and open to any possibility is threading its way through cyberfeminism. The dogma has yet to solidify. At the same time, the territory is a hostile one, since the gold of the information age will not be handed over to women without a struggle. To make matters worse, a big tollbooth guards access to this new territory. Its function is to collect tribute from every entity--individual, class, or nation, that tries to enter. Entrance for individuals comes at the price of obtaining education, hardware and software; entrance for nations comes at the price of having acceptable infrastructure, and to a lesser extent, an acceptable ideology. Consequently, a more negative cycle is also repeating itself, as the women who have found their way into cyberterritories are generally those who have economic and cultural advantages in other territories; these advantages are awarded through class position, with its intimate ties to cultural position and race. As this group helps open the borders to other disenfranchised groups, it must be asked, what kind of ideology and structure will await the newcomers? Will it be a repetition of the first and second waves of feminism in political and economic arenas? Will cyberspace and its associate institutions be able to cope with a house of difference? Knowing and understanding the history of women's struggle (along with other struggles in race relations and class relations) is essential--not just as a resource for strategies and tactics, not just so tactical responses to cybergender issues can be improved, but also to see that the new gender constructions that come to mark the entirety of this new territory (not just virtual domains) do not fall into the same cycle as in the past. Consider this example. In the US, third-wave *activity* peaked in 1991. Barely three years later, this visible resistance had again died down, leaving continuing debates about feminism largely to the academy. In l997, federal "welfare" laws were repealed in an all-out assault on the public safety net for the poor. At the same time, forced labor through "workfare" and prison programs has begun to intensify, and the expansion of the feminized global electronic homework economy has produced a new wave of sweatshop labor. Since these initiatives have a dramatic effect on poor and working-class women, one would think that the conditions would be right for a new popular front of feminist activism and resistance. However, the social body and public life seem so splintered, alienated, stratified, and distracted by market economy, that as yet no signs of such activism have appeared. Is this problem partly that the avant garde has been paid off to the extent that the issues of the poor which do not effect its members are no cause for action? Is this problem repeating itself in cyberspace and in its manufacture? There are so many more problems to face than just access for all. Notes * Just so the authors' position is clear: We do not support a reductive equality feminism, i.e., support the existing system, but believe there should be equal gender representation in all its territories. We do not support pancapitalism. It is a predatory, pernicious, and sexist system that will not change even if there was equal representation of gender in the policy making classes. Our argument here is that women need access to empowering knowledge and tools which are now dominated by a despicable "virtual class (Kroker)." We do not mean to suggest that women become a part of this class. To break the "glass ceiling" and become an active part of the exploiting class that benefits from gender hierarchy is not a feminist goal, nor anything to be proud of. **In her essay, "The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics," Sadie Plant spins a mythical genesis for the convergence of women and machines in a feminised cybernetics based on women's ancient invention of the craft of weaving. This convergence "is reinforced by cyberfeminism... a perspective (which) is received from the future." In the 70's creating a female mythology was an inspiring and necessary part of recovering and writing the histories of women, and of honoring female cultural inventions and female generativity (the Matrix). Cyberfeminist mythologizing is a welcome sign of inspiration and empowerment, and at this point in time, makes good tactical sense. Such work offers a clear explanation of a constructive relationship between women and technology, and it begins the process of rewriting the gender code of cyberspace. However, in a political sense, the function of the mythic "natural woman" has its limits. In this case, it seems just as likely that weaving was a woefully boring task that was forced upon the disenfranchised. (This trend of boring and alienating work as a the domain of the disempowered is certainly repeating itself in the pancapitalist technocracy.) As cyberfeminist critique increases in complexity, and therefore in ambiguity, the current cyberfeminist mythology will have to fade away much as matriarchal Crete and cunt iconography did in the late 70s. --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de