[oldboys] insert rant // plant & haraway

[miss.gunst@gmx.net]

> i agree with diana, that i don't understand these constant bad 
> reactions to sadie plants texts.
> .....i don't think she said 'the net is female' as such

in zeros & ones, there are for sure some passages that may at least read
like very simple (minded) short cut assertions - and even more give that
impression in case you extract them from their context.
when i read the book for the first time, i was really between: hey, at
least nice stuff to read for trainrides - and: what a big bullshit so
called feminist science-pop i don't know... i mean: this came out about
20 years _after_ cixous et al.
i mean, the quality of this book is for sure not that it would really
say something astonishingly new - as it is rather a compilation of ideas
availiable and at hand at that time. so the impact was indeed more in
the way she compiled the stuff, how she read things together - that is,
exactly what one could take as the main problem, as some people did/do.

well: when i read it more closely and later also looked at the context,
from today's perspective i'd say: no, its not necessarily that
simple(-minded), rather i'd consider her rhetoric as some kind of
strategic position. as well, reading her other books and therefore
getting a better idea about "where she came from an where she went to" &
thereby also getting a better idea of her way of writing seemed to
improve this perspective. (while the interviews i read would leave it
more or less open, as you'd be never really able what's said with a
twinkle between the lines/from a strategic position and what should be
taken simply "literally" in all its astonishing simplicity).

additionally, i would have to admit that as a strategic position this
operational mode of dealing with the issue is - in contrast to hardcore
essentialisms i.e. - maybe really an alert and powerful position. see,
zeros & ones was the first 'feminist'/'theory' book to appear as a
goldmann-taschenbuch (goldmann is a paperback-publisher normally
producing fantasy novels, kitschy love novels and diet-books).
so this position was at least perceived by a greater public (in contrast
to many other books that were discussed within the academic ivory tower
and/or the netculture sceen itself only).

on the other hand, how would people read this book? how did they read
the book? (how did i read it when i read it the first time?) in fact,
most people took that what they read just literally, so the efforts of
the strategic position (at least i would tend to consider as the maybe
most important point) are quite ambivalent.

well, and what bothers me even more is that currently, at least here in
germany, we have something like a cyberfeminism=plant+vns matrix short
cut dominating the whole discussion. even the acadamic one, at least in
part - the future bodies conf gave a perfect example, as many of the
people in the audience and even some of the speakers would put it like
this. which makes me feel like: hey, what's wrong. it's the year 2001,
isn't it? wasn't there something else happening with/around
cyberfeminism during the last six years??

> Sadie was writing when network technology was very much a male domain > and there were theoretical  and academic forces at work to keep it > that way.
well. again we have the problem between fact and fiction.
while technology as a male domain _was_ and _is_ a myth turned into
reality by spreading this myth (one of the most effective strategies of
masculinist societies) - i am still not sure if writing & and spreading
counter-myths/narratives is the most effective strategy to get rid of
that problem. i'd say: i would love to believe that (not only following
plant, but also haraway - in the c manifesto -, and many others). and
sometimes i use this strategy myself. but anyway i think we should also
look for other strategies, too.

> it was donna harraway who first began associating women's bodies with
> is obn anti donna harraway as well?

ooups. there's no singular mythic being called obn (that could have one
singular opinion/attitude) - therefore neither one could say "obn is
anti-haraway" nor "obn is anti-plant", right?
at least from my point of view, obn is about developing a multitude of
possible cyberfeminisms (in plural) - hopefully without thereby being
led into the classical "judiaeische volksfront" vs. "volksfront von
judaea" (see: the life of brian) split necessaily. i mean, - again at
least for me - that's one of the crucial points about old boys
networking: estimating the differences, considering dissent as a
creative tool...

however, back to haraway: while today i have a hard time to get from
plant's zeros & ones more than a historical perspective on some basic
ideals around possible cyberfeminisms and - as written above - about the
use of post-situationist strategies in (cyber)feminist writing,
i consider the good old c manifesto still as an important source.
for me, it's not done at all - rather there's a similar problem with the
short cut reading (i.e. the omnipresent fem cyborg thing).
in contrast to that i was always wondering why so few people whent into
the economy chapter of the extended version of the manifesto. maybe it's
not that popular because also haraway herself went more into other
directions, that is i.e. the biotech thread.
however, anyone else here also interested that? or any hints where i
could find other texts relating esp. to that chapter?

curious about that:
kuniboy

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: oldboys-unsubscribe@lists.ccc.de
For additional commands, e-mail: oldboys-help@lists.ccc.de