Subrosa Tactical Biopolitics
14 Common Knowledge and Political Love subRosa . the body has been for women in capitalist society what the factory has been for male waged workers: the primary ground of their exploitation and resistance, as the female body has been appropriated by the state and men, and forced to function as a means for the reproduction and accumulation of labor. Thus the importance which the body in all its aspects—maternity, childbirth, sexuality—has acquired in feminist theory and women’s history has not been misplaced. silvia federici (2004, p. 16) Under capitalism, femininity and gender roles became a “labor” function, and women became a “labor class.”1 On one hand, women’s bodies and labor are revered and exploited as a “natural” resource, a biocommons or commonwealth that is fundamental to maintain- ing and continuing life: women are equated with “the lands,” “mother-earth,” or “the homelands.”2 On the other hand, women’s sexual and reproductive labor—motherhood, pregnancy, childbirth—is economically devalued and socially degraded. In the Biotech Century, women’s bodies have become fl esh labs and Pharma-commons: They are mined for eggs, embryonic tissues, and stem cells for use in medical, and therapeutic experiments, and are employed as gestational wombs in assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Under such conditions, resistant feminist discourses of the “body” emerge as an explicitly biopolitical practice.3 subRosa is a cyberfeminist collective of cultural producers whose practice creates dis- course and experiential knowledge about the intersections of information and biotechnolo- gies in women’s lives, work, and bodies. Since the year 2000, subRosa has produced a variety of performances, participatory events, installations, publications, and Web sites as (cyber)feminist responses to key issues in bio- and digital technologies.
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