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The Politics of CyberFeminism: |
Renate Klein |
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| EXTRACT |
Biography |
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Introduction Over the past three years I have been pondering the developments of cyberculture and its relationship to CyberFeminism both in practical and theoretical terms. In my daily work teaching Women's Studies, together with my colleague Laurel Guymer (see Guymer this volume) I have become an enthusiastic learner and promoter of on-line teaching and computer mediated conferencing (CMC) in an otherwise sceptical environment of Arts academics. In my activist work (eg as a member of FINRRAGE and CATW2) I value the swiftness of global information sharing as well as the possibilities of campaigning against social injustices '@the speed of thought ' (to paraphrase Bill Gates, 1999). In my research, however, looking at the increased (western culture induced) fragmentation of bodies, minds and souls through postmodern writing (still) infecting academia and much of cyberwriting3, in conjunction with my criticism of reproductive technologies and genetic engineering, I remain profoundly ambivalent. Some of the assumptions in and about cyberculture as well as actual IT developments trouble me. Put differently, it is the ideologies behind cyberlife that bother me a great deal and I am worried that what is hailed as the virtual techno-paradise of the new millennium remains as woman hating as much of real life at the end of the twentieth century. Coming from a radical feminist perspective my question is simple: can the theories and practices of cyberculture4 amount to a CyberFeminism which leads, in one way or another, to a feminist future? A future, as Diane Bell and I have defined it in Radically Speaking, '...of justice, dignity and above all safety from all forms of violence' (1996, p. xx)? Does cyberculture contribute to a feminism that combines passion and politics - a feminism of the heart, as Australian Real feminist Zelda D'Aprano has put it so well (D'Aprano, 1977/1995)? If the answer is yes, does cyberculture benefit all women and if so, in what ways? If no, is it a 'not yet': in other words will increasing number of feminists as multimedia and on-line producers, consumers, educators, watchdogs and theorists turn cyberspace into a powerful tool that will serve (Cyber)Feminists in the quest to improve women's socio-economic as well as physiological and psychological well being? In short, does the theory and practice of information technology contribute to women's liberation? Or, to put it polemically, paraphrasing Donna Haraway's (in)famous words from her Cyborg Manifesto (1991): If I'm a cyborg rather than a goddess will patriarchy go away?5 In order to find (partial) answers to these (big) questions I will critically look at some of cyberspace's promises, voice my doubts, and confront nightmares. Critical questions leading my inquiry include: who has access to these technologies?; who holds power and is in control?; in whose interest is cyberlife developed?; how does the fragmentation of cyberculture fit within the framework of knowledge of Indigenous and other marginalised peoples?; and, importantly, what is happening to women's bodies/minds/souls in real and cyberlife - is technology serving women - or are we serving it? |
1.I am grateful to Susan Hawthorne and Laurel Guymer for many constructive comments on this chapter and for being radical feminist cybersisters in real and virtual life. 2. FINRRAGE stands for Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering and CATW is the acronym of The Coalition against Trafficking in Women. 3. For detailed criticism of post-modernism see Brodribb (1992) and Section Three 'Radical Feminists "Interrogate" Post-modernism' in Bell and Klein (1996). 4. I use 'cyberculture' interchangeably with 'cyberlife' in which I include Internet features such as e-mail, e-commerce, bulletin boards, MUDs, IRCs, the World Wide Web (WWW), personal web pages, cybersex, CD-ROMs - as well as more esoteric technologies such as virtual reality and becoming a 'cyborg' - or even 'post-human.' 5. A 'cyborg' is an organism that is part human, part machine. Cyborgs became fashionable in the 90s (see Hawthorne, this volume and The Cyborg Handbook, Gray, ed. 1995 for a good overview) but it was feminist historian of science and post-modern theorist Donna Haraway who wrote one of the first articles on this topic. Published initially in 1985 and republished many times since then, her 'Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s' (changed to 'in the late Twentieth Century' in later editions, eg 1991), catapulted cyborgs into the limelight as the new feminist icon for 2000 and beyond that were clearly superior to women. As she put it 'I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess' (ibid, p. 181). |
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