Symposion 4, 1, 2017

Feminist Encounters, 2025

Feminism has a long history of wrestling with technologies: not only with the inequalities and blind spots inherent in research, production, and marketing, but also with the effects of different technological forms and arrangements on social relationships, ways of life, and on the body. Technologically permeated societies are a global reality, and feminist, queer, critical race, decolonial, and crip theories are pivotal in offering critical analyses and ways of imagining, producing, and using technologies differently. This issue of Feminist Encounters sets out to reinspect the entanglements between technology and imagination from a range of feminist perspectives in disciplines like STS, philosophy and critical theory, media history and media archaeology, cultural history, and cultural and comparative literature studies.

Marta Calás and Linda Smircich, A Research Agenda for Organization Studies, Feminisms and New Materialisms, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 33-54., 2023

In this chapter, by metaphorically extending the meaning of the word “manspreading”, on one hand we describe how the term “feminist” in “new feminist materialism” has been placed “under erasure”. On the other hand, we show how the feminism has been always already all set for disturbing the discursive male order of new materialism. We foreground three main feminist ethico-onto-epistemological assumptions: decentering the subject, (re)materializing all bodies; intra-acting responsibly. Correspondingly, we articulate three alternative forms of politics – a politics of location, a politics of re-materialization, and an ethical politics of response-ability – which, we deem, embody the generative and affirmative posture of new feminist materialism and pave the way for a different knowledge production practice in Management and Organization Studies. Keywords: agencement; dualisms; differing; ethico-onto-epistemology; knowledge production; transversality

Revista de Estudios Sociales No.35, 2015

The "gender digital divide" constitutes a prolific research program that compares the differences between women and men in access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Nevertheless, those using feminist socio-constructivist perspectives argue for the need to pay attention, not only to "access," but also to "design," in addition to considering social relations as something that is coded within technological artifacts. From this perspective, gender constitutes an integral part of technological production. This paper explores the co-constitution of gender and technology, considering a specific actionresearch experience. It is argued that the re-signification of gendered and technological codes drifts through: a) the opening of gendered and technological codes; b) the production of new cultural imaginaries that question hegemonic representations of gender; and c) the production of new subjectivities through the reorganization of socio-technical practices to develop performative acts that transform patriarchal relations.

2020

The Beautiful Warriors. Technofeminist Practice in the 21st Century brings together seven current technofeminist positions from the fields of art and activism. In very different ways, they expand the theories and practices of 1990's cyberfeminism and thus react to new forms of discrimination and exploitation. Gender politics are negotiated with reference to technology, and questions of technology are combined with questions of ecology and economy. The different positions around this new techno-eco-feminism understand their practice as an invitation to take up their social and aesthetic interventions, to join in, to continue, and never give up.

Recall for articles for the 9th issue of the international journal on-line AG-About Gender. International Journal of Gender Studies (ISSN 2279-5057), entitled New capabilities or old, masked prejudices? Edited by: Rita Bencivenga (LEGS-Laboratoire d’études de genre et de sexualité- CNRS/Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis et Université Paris Ouest), Francesca Bosco (United Nation Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute), Susanna Pozzolo (Università degli Studi di Brescia). The goal of the editors of the volume is to collect contributions that allow for investigation and call for reflections and discussion of the relationship between technology and gender. Particular attention is devoted to new technologies and their ability to shape the world, exploring the various implications of different approaches: philosophical, sociological, bioethical, political, and legal, just to name a few. Papers should be between 4000 and 6000 words (excluding bibliography). Contributions must be sent by 30th October 2015. Please read the attachment and/or visite our website for further information: http://www.aboutgender.unige.it/ojs

Transhumanism: The Proper Guide to a Posthuman Condition or a Dangerous Idea?, 2020

In this chapter, imaginaries of the future with respect to cyber technologies will be analysed. The question is whether or not the relationship between humans and machines shall be designed, modelled and framed such that the distinction between the human and the artificial is blurred. Answers that enact conflating (reductive or projective) or disjoining ways of thinking give evidence of different combinations of hubris and humiliation. For philosopher Günther Anders, in the 1950s, "Promethean shame", that is, hubristic self-humiliation, was the "climax of all possible dehumanization". Today, this anti-humanism comes in trans-and posthumanist disguises. Only integrative answers without hubris and without humiliation can provide humanist imaginaries.

As a continuation of mine, and Amalia Calderon's, course Posthuman in the Anthropocene and the consequent 2-days symposium entitled Posthuman Futures: Art & Literature, we are collaborating with the Soapbox Journal in a special publication on the possible constellations and cartographies that can occupy our memories, biographies and allow us to recognize the 'wounds' of Humanism, Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Colonialism. While at the same time allowing to the thinking with and making kin with other critters.

European Journal of Women's Studies, 2010

Feminist technoscience studies is a relentlessly transdisciplinary field of research which emerged out of decades of feminist critiques. In this editorial for a special issue of European Journal of Women's Studies, we map out som of the stirrings, consternations and contributions of the field as we see it. For researchers within the overlapping fields of science and technology studies (STS) and feminist technoscience studies, there is no such thing as a pure and politically innocent ‘basic’ science that can be transformed into technological applications to be ‘applied’ in ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ways at a comfortable distance from the ‘clean’ hands of the researcher engaged in the former. It is a shared assumption of researchers within the fields of STS and feminist technoscience studies that ‘pure’, ‘basic’ science is as entangled in societal interests, and can be held as politically and ethically accountable, as the technological practices and interventions to which it may give rise. The compound word ‘technoscience’ was coined to emphasize this unavoidable link. In spite of the omnipresent and all-pervasive social and cultural effects of technoscientific thinking and practices, feminist technoscience studies has remained on the margins of feminist/women's/gender studies, a field generally concerned with the human and social sciences. As a branch of feminist studies, feminist technoscience studies has thus been caught in a paradox. Highly esteemed and internationally acclaimed feminist researchers, such as Donna Haraway, Evelyn Fox Keller, Sandra Harding as well as Lynda Birke (who kindly agreed to be interviewed for this issue), have given the field a distinctive profile. However, the works of these feminists have often been read more for their epistemological and cultural analytical interventions or postpositivist science critiques, than for their specific analyses of technoscientific practices and semiotic-material approaches to material agency beyond constructionism. However, as we see it feminist theory owes much of our recent attraction to the study of concrete materialities and the formation of corporealities (the postconstructionist/ material/ontological / post-humanist turn of feminist theory) to such scholars.

2015

Technological artefacts that only twenty years ago were but evocative objects have now become ordinary presences in our life: from artificial implants to mass cosmetic surgery and body manipulation, from new forms of permanent media interconnection to interaction with artificial intelligences. Hence a number of new crucial questions arise, related to our living together in the age of post-humanism. Nowadays, when technology is no longer a tool, or even just an environment, but is wearable and incorporated, and can act retroactively on the very structure of the organism, what are the main challenges we have to face, and the main narratives for making sense of this new human condition? In the tradition of the journal, this special issue addresses the topic from different theoretical perspectives and disciplinary fields. Contributions are divided in three sections: 1) The post-human condition: living in a brave new world'. The essays in this section embrace different ambits relevant to the public sphere and our life together, such as politics, work, religion, fashion, literature. 2) Bodies in question/questioning bodies: here the main focus is on the redefinition of the ableism-disability relationship (and the resulting problematic redefinition of 'ableism' itself) in the light of the typical post-human question of healing-enhancement. 3) Representations/Imaginaries: here the focus is on the way in which the topos of enhancement has been dealt with by fictional and non fictional texts over time, from early television to cinema up to web series. Cosa significa essere umani nell'era dove una tecnologia pervasiva e sempre più 'incorporata' ha eroso il confine tra natura e cultura? Come le nuove possibilità di potenziamento ridefiniscono l'idea stessa di normalità? Quali implicazioni sul nostro vivere insieme? Come porre, se è il caso, la questione del limite? Quali forme narrative concorrono alla costruzione degli immaginari su questi temi? Nella tradizione della rivista, il monografico affronta questo intreccio di questioni a partire da diverse prospettive e diversi ambiti disciplinari. I contributi sono suddivisi in tre sezioni che riguardano alcuni cambiamenti significativi nella sfera pubblica, la ridefinizione dell'idea di 'normalità' relativamente al corpo, gli immaginari legati al tema del 'potenziamento'.

In this chapter, we explore some of the key insights arising from feminist post-humanist and new materialist approaches, along with critical discussions of popular notions of post-feminism in the context of digital leisure and fourth wave feminism. Over several decades, rich and complex theoretical debates have emerged across social science and humanities disciplines about the ontological and epistemological assumptions that underpin notions of human subjectivity, human/non-human and digital relations, embodiment and the significance of affect in the circulation of power (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, 2013; Coole & Frost, 2010; Grosz, 1994; Haraway, 2013). A number of these post-structural and post-humanist approaches grouped under the rubric " new materialism " have begun to shape emergent fields of study that offer novel connections with feminist leisure scholarship; science and technology studies, animal studies, physical cultural studies, food studies, health and eco-humanities, digital sociology, material cultures, participatory design and arts as research practice, along with now more established queer, black, brown, Mad and crip feminisms-among others. Building upon Lisbeth Berbary's detailed account of post* ideas in chapter three, we have written this collaborative chapter through our particular interest in different ways of thinking through questions about power, women's subjectivity or agency and the everyday politics of leisure. Over the last two decades, there have been significant transformations in forms of feminist activism and broader debates in feminist scholarship that extend post-structural critique in new directions. With the rise of web 2.0 and the proliferation of digital media practices, the 1990s " girl power " popular cultural forms of post-feminism are being reinvented in the context of intensified political, economic, and cultural pressures that link women's local lives and global issues in new ways (Baer, 2016; Harris & Dobson, 2015; McRobbie, 2015). Feminist leisure studies have begun to engage with these cultural shifts in what has been termed, not unproblematically, as fourth wave feminism (Parry & Fullagar, 2013). Knappe and Lang (2014) suggest that fourth-wave feminists use "the web to re-link older and newer organizations, foster stronger networks, and encourage outreach to a new generation. Fourth-wave feminism has been defined by its focus on technology" (p. 364). Building on this analysis, we also offer some reflection on the utility and limitations of wave metaphors as we consider future avenues for feminist work.