Cyberfeminism

Cyberfeminism is used to describe the philosophies of a contemporary feminist community whose interests are cyberspace, the Internet and technology.[1][2] The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing and exploiting the Internet, cyberspace and new-media technologies in general.[2]

Cyberfeminism is considered a predecessor to networked feminism. Cyberfeminism also has a relationship to the field of feminist science and technology studies.[3]

The dominant cyberfeminist perspective takes a utopian view of cyberspace and the Internet as a means of freedom from social constructs such as gender and sex difference. Cyberfeminism views technology as a vehicle for the dissolution of sex and gender as well as a means to link the body with machines.[1]

Definition

Cyberfeminism refers to the application of the feminism(s) ideology to and/or performed in cyberspace. An authoritative definition of cyberfeminism is difficult to find in written works because early cyberfeminists deliberately evaded a rigid elucidation.[4][nb 1]

Cyberfeminism is also concerned with the relationship between existing systems of discrimination and computing technologies, including race and racialization [6] There is also cyberfeminist work exploring the relationship of new technologies to gender and sexuality.[7]

Scholars such as Jessie Daniels suggests that "Cyberfeminism is neither a single theory nor a feminist movement with a clearly articulated political agenda. Rather, "cyberfeminism" refers to a range of theories, debates, and practices about the relationship between gender and digital culture..." In addition, "within and among cyberfeminism(s) there are a number of theoretical and political stances in relation to Internet technology and gender as well as a noticeable ambivalence about a unified feminist political project."[8]

Whereas Cornelia Sollfrank from the Old Boys Network states that: “Cyberfeminism is a myth. A myth is a story of unidentifiable origin, or of different origins. A myth is based on one central story which is retold over and over in different variations. A myth denies one history as well as one truth, and implies a search for truth in the spaces, in the differences between the different stories. Speaking about Cyberfeminism as a myth, is not intended to mystify it, it simply indicates that Cyberfeminism only exists in plural.”[9]

There is not yet a definition to conclude the meaning of Cyberfeminism. Cyberfeminism is not just the subject matter, but is the approach taken to examine subject matter. For example: Cyberfeminism can be a critique at equality in cyberspace, challenge the gender stereotype in the cyberspace, examine the gender relationship in cyberspace, examine the collaboration between human and technology, examine the relationship between women and technology and more. For examples: the innovation of internet has a huge impact on women’s lives (Like how the innovation of telephone bought women security from crime and no longer being isolated from geographical constraint), the idea of digital life has been introduced to all users of the internet; but is this new technology liberating or oppressing women? In this sense, we can think of this innovation once again free women from time and space constraints which enable them to become active users on the web. On the other hand, this innovation can possibly oppress women by encouraging cybersex, pornography or prostitution which ultimately makes them more vulnerable. Therefore, Cyberfeminism is the approach to examine these matters.[10]

History

The term cyberfeminism first came about in 1992, according to Carolyn Guertin, "at a particular moment in time, 1992, simultaneously at three different points on the globe."[11] In Canada, Nancy Paterson wrote an article entitled "Cyberfeminism" for EchoNYC.[12]

In Adelaide, Australia, a four-person collective called VNS Matrix wrote the Cyberfeminist Manifesto and used the term to label their radical feminist acts "to insert women, bodily fluids and political consciousness into electronic spaces."[11][10] That same year, British cultural theorist Sadie Plant used the term to describe definition of the feminizing influence of technology on western society.[11] Guertin goes on to say that the first Cyberfeminist International, organized by the Old Boys Network[13] in Germany, in 1997, refused to define the school of thought, but drafted the "100 Anti-Theses of Cyberfeminism" instead.[11] Guertin says that Cyberfeminism is a celebration of multiplicity.[11]

The foundational catalyst for the formation of cyberfeminist thought is also attributed to feminist critique of the misogynistic overtones of cyberpunk literature in the 1980s,[14] the publication of Donna Haraway's seminal article A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,[3] and the critical theory of several notable authors working from a range of disciplines, which includes the work of Avital Ronell, Sadie Plant, Sandy Stone (artist), and N. Katherine Hayles.

Donna Haraway is the inspiration and genesis for cyberfeminism with her 1985 essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" which was reprinted in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991). Haraway's essay states that cyborgs are able to transcend the public and private spheres, but they do not have the ability to identify with their origins or with nature in order to develop a sense of understanding through differences between self and others. Haraway states that the cyborg "has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labor, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all powers of the parts into a higher unity." However, the book Feminist Essays (2017) by Nancy Quinn Collins states that in the opinion of its author "cyborgs can be bisexual, and cyberfeminism can and should be accepting of bisexuality."[15]

Cyberfeminism arose partly as a reaction to “the pessimism of the 1980s feminist approaches that stressed the inherently masculine nature of techno-science”,[16] a counter movement against the ‘toys for boys’ perception of new Internet technologies.[9] As cyberfeminist artist Faith Wilding argued: "If feminism is to be adequate to its cyberpotential then it must mutate to keep up with the shifting complexities of social realities and life conditions as they are changed by the profound impact communications technologies and techno science have on all our lives. It is up to cyberfeminists to use feminist theoretical insights and strategic tools and join them with cybertechniques to battle the very real sexism, racism, and militarism encoded in the software and hardware of the Net, thus politicizing this environment."[5]

Usage of the term cyberfeminism has faded away after the millennium, partly as a result of the dot.com bubble burst that bruised the utopian bent of much of digital culture.[17] Radhika Gajjala and Yeon Ju Oh’s Cyberfeminism 2.0 argues that cyberfeminism in the 21st century has taken many new forms and focuses on the different aspects of women’s participation online. They find cyberfeminists in women’s blogging networks and their conferences, in women’s gaming, in fandom, in social media, in online mothers’ groups performing pro-breastfeeding activism, and in online spaces developed and populated by marginal networks of women in non-Western countries.[17]

In 2003 the feminist anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium was published; it includes the essay "Cyberfeminism: Networking the Net" by Amy Richards and Marianne Schnall.[18]

Art

"Cyberfeminism in its very nature necessitates a decentered, multiple, participatory practice in which many lines of flight coexist."[19]

The practice of cyberfeminist art is inextricably intertwined with cyberfeminist theory. The 100 anti-theses make clear that cyberfeminism is not just about theory, while theory is extremely important, cyberfeminism requires participation. As one member of the cyberfeminist collective the Old Boys Network[13] writes, cyberfeminism is “linked to aesthetic and ironic strategies as intrinsic tools within the growing importance of design and aesthetics in the new world order of flowing pancapitalism”.[9] Cyberfeminism also has strong connections with the DIY feminism movement, as noted in the seminal text DIY Feminism,[20] a grass roots movement that encourages active participation, especially as a solo practitioner or a small collective.

Around the late nineties several cyberfeminist artists and theorists gained a measure of recognition for their works, including the above-mentioned VNS Matrix and their Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st century,[21] and Faith Wilding and Critical Art Ensemble. Some of the better-known examples of cyberfeminist work include Linda Dement’s Cyberflesh Girlmonster[22] a hypertext CD-ROM that incorporates images of women’s body parts and remixes them to create new monstrous yet beautiful shapes; Melinda Rackham's Carrier, a work of web-based multimedia art that explores the relationship between humans and infectious agents;[17] and Shu Lea Cheang's 1998 work Brandon, which was the first Internet based artwork to be commissioned and collected by the Guggenheim.[23]

The decline in volume of cyberfeminist literature in recent years would suggest that cyberfeminism has somewhat lost momentum as a movement, however, in terms of artists and artworks, not only cyberfeminism is still taking place, but its artistic and theoretical contribution has been of crucial importance to the development of posthuman aesthetics.[24] Recent artworks of note include Evelin Stermitz’s World of Female Avatars[25] in which the artist has collected quotes and images from women over the world and displayed them in an interactive browser based format, and Regina Pinto’s Many Faces of Eve.[26]

Goals

The goals of cyberfeminist artists are varied, as there is no one ‘feminism’ but rather many feminisms, and cyberfeminist artists are as likely to draw on any one particular feminist school of thought (for example socialist feminism) as they are to work without acknowledgement of any theoretical background. However, Faith Wilding in her account of the first Cyberfeminist International listed several areas that were agreed upon as areas in which more research and further work was considered desirable, including: promotion of cyberfeminist artists theorists and speakers; publishing of cyberfeminist theory and criticism; cyberfeminist education projects; creating coalitions with female technical professionals; and creating new self-representations and avatars that “disrupt and recode the gender biases usual in current commercially available ones”.[5]

With the public acceptance of the Internet came a utopian belief that in this new neutral territory users would be able to shed their gendered bodies and be androgynous equals in cyberspace. Unsurprisingly, this has not turned out to be the case – "every social issue that we are familiar with in the real world will now have its counterpart in the virtual one."[27]

Although there was a surge of art and research happening in the cyberfeminist field in the late nineties, nowadays that surge has subsided.

Listserves

An important part of the generation of cyberfeminist theory and critique was the emergence of a few critical listserves that served as the basis for the organization of three international cyberfeminist events and several major publications.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Cyberfeminism, like other critical theoretical frameworks such as queer theory or feminist theory, is a conceptual production that resists formal definition. In her article about the First Cyberfeminist International in 1997, Old Boys Network collective member and co-founder of the group subRosa, Faith Wilding wrote that "the question of how to define cyberfeminism is at the heart of the often contradictory contemporary positions of women working with new technologies and feminist politics."[5] At the First Cyberfeminist International was an attempt to define cyberfeminism through refusal, which resulted in the production of the Old Boys Network's "100 Anti-theses"; Cyberfeminism is not: an ideology, an institution, a structure, or exclusive.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 Wajcman, Judy (May 2006). "TechnoCapitalism meets TechnoFeminism: women and technology in a wireless world". Labour & Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work. Taylor and Francis. 16 (3): 12. doi:10.1080/10301763.2006.10669327.
  2. 1 2 Consalvo, Mia (2003), "Cyberfeminism", in Jones, Steve, Encyclopedia of new media: an essential reference to communication and technology, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, pp. 108–109, ISBN 9780761923824.
  3. 1 2 Haraway, Donna. "A cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century". egs.edu. European Graduate School. Archived from the original on 22 September 2013. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
    • From the original: Haraway, Donna (1991), "A cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century", in Haraway, Donna, Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature, New York: Routledge, pp. 149–181, ISBN 9780415903875.
  4. 1 2 "100 anti-theses: cyberfeminism is not...". obn.org. Old Boys Network. 1997. Archived from the original on 21 June 2007. Retrieved 1 February 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 Wilding, Faith (July 1998). "Where is feminism in cyberfeminism?". n.paradoxa international feminist art journal, special issue: Women and New Media. KT Press. 2: 6–13. Pdf.
  6. ↑ Nakamura, Lisa (2002). Cybertypes: race, ethnicity, and identity on the Internet. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780203953365.
  7. ↑ Magnet, Shoshana (August 2007). "Feminist sexualities, race and the internet: an investigation of suicidegirls.com". New Media & Society. Sage. 9 (4): 577–602. doi:10.1177/1461444807080326.
  8. ↑ Daniels, Jessie (Spring 2009). "Rethinking cyberfeminism(s): race, gender, and embodiment". WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly. The Feminist Press. 37 (1–2): 101–124. JSTOR 27655141. doi:10.1353/wsq.0.0158.
  9. 1 2 3 Sollfrank, Cornelia. "The truth about cyberfeminism". obn.org. The Old Boys Network.
    See also: Sollfrank, Cornelia (2002), "The final truth about cyberfeminism", in von Oldenburg, Helene; Reiche, Claudia, Very cyberfeminist international reader: OBN Conference, Hamburg, December 13-16, 2001 (PDF), Berlin: B-books, pp. 108–112, ISBN 9783933557346.
    and: Reiche, Claudia (2002), "Disagreement with Cornelia Sollfrank's 'The final truth about cyberfeminism'", in von Oldenburg, Helene; Reiche, Claudia, Very cyberfeminist international reader: OBN Conference, Hamburg, December 13-16, 2001 (PDF), Berlin: B-books, pp. 114–117, ISBN 9783933557346.
  10. 1 2 Rosser, Sue V. (2005). "Through the lenses of feminist theory: focus on women and information technology". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. University of Nebraska Press. 26 (1): 1–23. JSTOR 4137430. doi:10.1353/fro.2005.0015.
    • Also as: Rosser, Sue V. (2006), "Using the lenses of feminist theories to focus on women and technology", in Rosser, Sue V.; Fox, Mary Frank; Johnson, Deborah G., Women, gender, and technology, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 13–46, ISBN 9780252073366. Details.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Guertin, Carolyn (2003). Quantum feminist mnemotechnics: the archival text, electronic narrative and the limits of memory (PhD thesis). University of Alberta. OCLC 234362574. Archived from the original on 24 March 2016.
  12. ↑ Hawthorne, Susan; Klein, Renate D. (1999), "Introduction", in Hawthorne, Susan; Klein, Renate D., Cyberfeminism: connectivity, critique and creativity, North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, p. 4, ISBN 9781875559688. Preview.
  13. 1 2 "Home page". obn.org. Old Boys Network.
  14. ↑ Fletcher, Beryl (1999), "Cyberfiction: a fictional journey through cyberspace (or how I became a cyberfeminist)", in Hawthorne, Susan; Klein, Renate D., Cyberfeminism: connectivity, critique and creativity, North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, p. 339, ISBN 9781875559688. Preview.
  15. ↑ Nancy Quinn Collins (15 February 2017). Feminist Essays. Lulu.com. pp. 14–. ISBN 978-1-365-75994-9.
  16. ↑ Wajcman, Judy (2004). TechnoFeminism. Cambridge Malden, MA: Polity. ISBN 9780745630441.
  17. 1 2 3 Barnett, Tully (July 2014). "Monstrous agents: cyberfeminist media and activism". Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media & Technology. Fembot Collective. 5.
  18. ↑ Richards, Amy; Schnall, Marianne (2003), "Cyberfeminism: networking the net", in Morgan, Robin, Sisterhood is forever: the women's anthology for a new millennium, New York, NY: Washington Square Press, pp. 517–525, ISBN 9780743466271. Preview.
  19. ↑ Galloway, Alex (2000). "A report on cyberfeminism: Sadie Plant relative to VNS matrix". Switch: New Media Journal, special issue: Electronic Gender: Art at the Interstice. San José State University. 4 (1).
  20. ↑ Bail, Kathy (1996). DIY feminism. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 9781864482317.
  21. ↑ Pierce, Julianne (1998). "info heavy cyber babe" (PDF). First Cyberfeminist International. C.S.a.O.B. Network, Old Boys Network: Hamburg. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 February 2017.
  22. ↑ Dement, Linda. "Cyberflesh Girlmonster 1995". lindadement.com.
  23. ↑ Jones, Caitlin. "Review of Brandon 1998–99, by Shu Lea Cheang". Guggenheim Museum. Archived from the original on 20 April 2016. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  24. ↑ Ferrando, Francesca (2016). "A feminist genealogy of posthuman aesthetics in the visual arts". Retrieved 29 June 2016.
  25. ↑ Stermitz, Evelin (October 2008). "World of female avatars an artistic online survey on the female body in times of virtual reality". Leonardo. MIT Press. 41 (5): 538–539. JSTOR 20206686. doi:10.1162/leon.2008.41.5.538. Also available at Project Muse.
  26. ↑ Pinto, Regina (2005). "The Many Face of Eve (parent directory)".
  27. ↑ Spender, Dale (1996). Nattering on the net: women, power and cyberspace. Toronto, Ontario: Garamond Press. ISBN 9781551930046.
  28. ↑ "FACES story". Retrieved February 1, 2014.

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