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Histories
of Cyberfeminism.
One might argue that cyberfeminism has been slow in incorporating non-Western
conceptions of gender/sexual difference and science/technology, both in
art and in theory, and when it does incorporate them, both art works and
theory have the “West” as standard and “other”
as alternative (exotic) or subaltern (exploited) modes of relation to
technology. Even if it is true, this situation is not different from the
field as a whole, where Western genealogies are often presented as separate
in origin from the rest of the world (starting from a point in Greek,
or Roman, or Renaissance, or Film history), and often serve as a standard
in the development of this new field. This panel (like a conference as
a whole) is also an attempt to come to terms with such “history”
and present the methodological and aesthetic problems of this limited
approach.
First of all, one would need to clarify why we discuss the issue of “histories”
and not one history. Just as in the case of “women’s histories,”
which are still to be written and being written, cyberfeminist histories
would acknowledge that often Western European-based history of art, science
and technology, consciously or unconsciously confuses the lack of information
on and communication with non-Western European sources with their absence,
or even unimportance for its own methodology and, hence, - conclusions.
Second, this “ignorance” of sources leads – as we hope
- to an attitude of curiosity and learning, coming from an understanding
that indeed, attitudes to technology, science and the machine are not
simply “born” from the Western origins and sources, but “made”
within a complex set of colonial, imperial, trading, linguistic and other
global histories. A simple gap in our mutual knowledges of each other’s
contexts might be a fruitful resource for research and collaborative work.
Thus, this panel invites explorations into our cyberfeminist ‘gaps’.
In the West, cyberfeminism has often been influenced by the ideas of socialist
feminism and post-modernism. Some focused more on the critique of women’s
disempowerment in relation to new media and technologies, particularly
reproductive and bio-technologies, and use of female labor and female
body in the “new technological” age; while others celebrated
technological possibilities of morphing hybrid identities, with introduction
of playful subjectivity, when male-female, machine-human, West/East, North/South,
straight and homosexual binaries become porous, fluid and deliberately
confused. And a tension between these two approaches often works as a
catalyst for cyberfeminist debate and discussion: when one blames another
for not being activist or “decentered” enough in their creative
and theoretical engagements with new media. While these debates are useful
in interrogating various theoretical methodologies and artistic practices,
within this panel we will try to critically explore specific cases of
media art, scientific and medical technologies, communications technologies
(Internet, web, blog, email networking, etc.), food production and distribution
technologies, farming knowledge etc. to excavate more histories of women’s
development and uses of such technologies in art, community and science.
We hope that looking at these examples will foster our discussion on the
development of aesthetics and politics of cyberfeminist histories we can
learn from. Examples of such case studies might include, but not be limited,
to:
- Sarai “Cybermohalla” Project (http://www.sarai.net/practices/cybermohalla)
- Vandana Shiva’s farm (http://www.navdanya.org/about/founder-message.htm)
- Emily Jacir’s video installation “Crossing Surda (A Record
of Going to and from Work)” (http://www.daratalfunun.org/main/activit/curentl/febo6/emily/emily06.html)
- the Zapatista Women’s brigades (http://www.caferebelion.com/newlinks.html)
- Women on Waves (www.womenonwaves.org)
- Domain Errors! Cyberfeminist Practices. A subRosa anthology, Autonomedia,
2003 (http://www.refugia.net/domainerrors/index.html)
- Soviet histories of women artists working with technology
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