Rationale for a Course on Technofeminism
In her ground-breaking essay, "The
Cyborg Manifesto," Donna Haraway writes:
The international women's movements have constructed 'women's experience,'
as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This
experience is a fiction and a fact of the most crucial, political kind.
Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative
apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter
of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women's experience
in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death,
but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical
illusion. (149)
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Written in 1985, Haraway's manifesto sets the stage
for technofeminism by urging women, particularly feminists, to embrace technology
in order to avoid subjugation to it and those who control it.
Despite the rise of women's interest and participation in computer technology,
as well as the feminist views shaping women's views towards it, Maggie Humm's
handbook The Dictionary of Feminist Theory makes no mention of technofeminism
or cyberfeminist theory in its 314 pages--though she does include one entry
on Haraway and one on technology (which focuses on its rejection by feminists).
Also of special note, at the first Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference
held in Corvallis, OR in August 1997 anxiety about the use and spread of
technology dominated the keynote address, panel presentations, and break-out
sessions. Thus, over a decade after "The Cyborg Manifesto" was
written the relationship between some feminists and technology rests uneasy.
Technofeminism, however, thrives online where definitions of writing
expands into webbed environments, spaces in MOOs, MUDS, and chat rooms,
and electronic messages sent as mail. Webtexts, such as Sandye Thompson's
award-winning work "Speaking of the MOO(n): Textual Realities in MOOspace,"
which explores women's voices created in virtual environments, MOO descriptions
of women's rooms and personae, such as Annie Olson's "Annie's Sunroom,"
located at TWUMOO, and conversations taking place via email like those produced
by Becky Rickly and others in their mailtexts, challenge traditional notions
of what writing is and how women are positioning themselves online in electronic
spaces.
Thus, the questions this course attempts to answer are, "What is
technofeminism, how are women defining feminism with technology, and what
are the ways in which they are writing about themselves and others online?"
Looking at social, political, philosophical, and historical contexts
underlying the relationship between feminism and technology, this course
will explore the theory underpinning technofeminism, the image of the technological
feminist in print, and the various modes of discourse, such as webtexts,
MOOlogs, and email, produced by technofeminists to construct themselves
online and to redefine, as Haraway suggests, "what counts as women's
experience in the late twentieth century."
Premises This
Course in Based On
That feminists must learn to utilize all knowledge-making tools available
to them in order to retain any momentum in the quest for equality. There
is no utopia in ignorance, and subjugation of women always occurs when men
are the sole masters of technological tools. Parity with men will not occur
unless we take control of the technologies that shape our world. Thus, technofeminism
is not *a* feminism but a subfield of all other feminismS.
That knowledge of computer technology is necessary for survival in contemporary
society. Just as we needto be able to read critically and discern effectively
books, newspapers, radio, and television in order to gain an understanding
of the world around us, we need to read critically and discern effectively
email, the WWW, newsgroups, and chat spaces for the very same reason. Thus,
any definition of literacy today must include *computer* literacy.
That literature is a broad term not easily defined. The notion of literariness
has changed through time depending on the mood, temperament, and socio-politico-historical
influences. Literature not only reflects but shapes the values of the audience
who read it. Literature and literariness evolve; they are not are.
Thus, email, webtexts, MOOlogs are *new* forms of literature worthy of exploration.
Books
Cherny et al,Wired Women
Hawisher and Selfe, Technology, Literacy, and Society
Cadigan, Synners
Gibson, Neuromancer
Penn, The Women's Guide to the Wired World
Course Requirements
1 Short Profile of Web Resource on Feminism
1 Project: Webpage, MOOspace, Listserv Moderator, or Digital Annotated
Bibliography
1 Long Research Paper, 20-28 pp. in length
Participation in MOO Symposium
Attendance at all scheduled meetings
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