DOCSLIB.ORG

Material Feminisms This Page Intentionally Left Blank Material Feminisms

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Material Feminisms This Page Intentionally Left Blank Material Feminisms material feminisms This page intentionally left blank material feminisms Edited by Stacy Alaimo & Susan Hekman indiana university press bloomington & indianapolis This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [email protected] © 2008 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any infor- mation storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the pub- lisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Material feminisms / edited by Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-253-34978-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-253-21946-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Feminist theory. 2. Body, Human. I. Alaimo, Stacy, date II. Hekman, Susan J. HQ1190.M3775 2008 305.4201—dc22 2007019295 1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09 08 To Justin and Jeanne This page intentionally left blank contents acknowledgments • xi introduction: emerging models of materiality in feminist theory • Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman part . material theory . darwin and feminism: preliminary investigations for a possible alliance • Elizabeth Grosz . on not becoming man: the materialist politics of unactualized potential • Claire Colebrook . constructing the ballast: an ontology for feminism • Susan Hekman . posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter • Karen Barad Contents part . material world . otherworldly conversations, terran topics, local terms • Donna J. Haraway . viscous porosity: witnessing katrina • Nancy Tuana . natural convers(at)ions: or, what if culture was really nature all along? • Vicki Kirby . trans-corporeal feminisms and the ethical space of nature • Stacy Alaimo . landscape, memory, and forgetting: thinking through (my mother’s) body and place • Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands viii Contents part . material bodies . disability experience on trial • Tobin Siebers . how real is race? • Michael Hames-García . from race/sex/etc. to glucose, feeding tube, and mourning: the shifting matter of chicana feminism • Suzanne Bost . organic empathy: feminism, psychopharmaceuticals, and the embodiment of depression • Elizabeth A. Wilson . cassie’s hair • Susan Bordo list of contributors • index • ix This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments Permission granted by The University of Chicago Press to reprint Karen Barad’s essay “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Under- standing of How Matter Comes to Matter,” as it appeared in Signs 28:3 (2003), 801–31. © 2003 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Permission granted by Routledge Publishing, Inc. to reprint Donna J. Haraway’s essay “Otherworldly Conversations, Terran Topics, Local Terms,” as it appeared in The Haraway Reader, by Donna J. Haraway. New York: Routledge, 2004. Permission granted by aunt lute Books to reprint Gloria Anzaldúa’s poem “Cihuatlyotl, Woman Alone” from Borderlands/La Frontera. San Francisco: aunt lute Books, 1987. Linda G. Hardnett’s poem “If Hair Makes Me Black, I Must Be Purple” appeared in Black Hair, edited by Ima Ebong. New York: Uni- verse Publishing, 2001. Permission granted by Debraha Watson to reprint her poem “Good Hair” as it appeared in Black Hair, edited by Ima Ebong. New York: Universe Publishing, 2001. xi This page intentionally left blank material feminisms This page intentionally left blank introduction: emerging models of materiality in feminist theory Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman The purpose of this anthology is to bring the material, specifically the materiality of the human body and the natural world, into the fore- front of feminist theory and practice. This is no small matter indeed, and we expect this collection to spark intense debate. Materiality, par- ticularly that of bodies and natures, has long been an extraordinarily volatile site for feminist theory—so volatile, in fact, that the guiding rule of procedure for most contemporary feminisms requires that one distance oneself as much as possible from the tainted realm of materi- ality by taking refuge within culture, discourse, and language. Our thesis is that feminist theory is at an impasse caused by the contempo- rary linguistic turn in feminist thought. With the advent of postmod- ernism and poststructuralism, many feminists have turned their attention to social constructionist models. They have focused on the role of language in the constitution of social reality, demonstrating that discursive practices constitute the social position of women. They have engaged in productive and wide-ranging analyses and decon- structions of the concepts that define and derogate women. The turn to the linguistic and discursive has been enormously pro- ductive for feminism. It has fostered complex analyses of the intercon- nections between power, knowledge, subjectivity, and language. It has allowed feminists to understand gender from a new and fruitful per- spective. For example, it has allowed feminists to understand how gender has been articulated with other volatile markings, such as class, race, and sexuality, within cultural systems of difference that function 1 Material Feminisms like a language (à la Ferdinand de Saussure). The rigorous deconstruc- tions of Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray (especially within Speculum of the Other Woman) have exposed the pernicious logic that casts woman as subordinated, inferior, a mirror of the same, or all but invisible. At the forefront of this turn to the linguistic is the influence of postmod- ern thought in feminist theory. The strength of postmodern feminism is to reveal that since its inception, Western thought has been struc- tured by a series of gendered dichotomies. Postmodern feminists have argued that the male/female dichotomy informs all the dichotomies that ground Western thought: culture/nature, mind/body, subject/ob- ject, rational/emotional, and countless others. Postmodern feminists have further argued that it is imperative not to move from one side of the dichotomy to the other, to reverse the privileging of concepts, but to deconstruct the dichotomy itself, to move to an understanding that does not rest on oppositions. Feminist theory and practice have been significantly enriched by these postmodern insights. Postmodern analysis has revealed the lia- bility of defining and fixing the identity of “woman” in any location or of attempting to assert the superiority of the feminine over the mascu- line. Indeed, within queer theory, especially, the “feminine” and the “masculine” have been productively unmoored, contested, and rede- ployed. But it is now apparent that the move to the linguistic, particu- larly in its postmodern variant, has serious liabilities as well as advantages. In short, postmodernism has not fulfilled its promise as a theoretical grounding for feminism. Although postmoderns claim to reject all dichotomies, there is one dichotomy that they appear to embrace al- most without question: language/reality. Perhaps due to its centrality in modernist thought, postmoderns are very uncomfortable with the concept of the real or the material. Whereas the epistemology of mod- ernism is grounded in objective access to a real/natural world, post- modernists argue that the real/material is entirely constituted by language; what we call the real is a product of language and has its reality only in language. In their zeal to reject the modernist ground- ing in the material, postmoderns have turned to the discursive pole as the exclusive source of the constitution of nature, society, and reality. Far from deconstructing the dichotomies of language/reality or 2 Introduction: Emerging Models of Materiality in Feminist Theory culture/nature, they have rejected one side and embraced the other. Even though many social constructionist theories grant the existence of material reality, that reality is often posited as a realm entirely separate from that of language, discourse, and culture. This presumption of sepa- ration has meant, in practice, that feminist theory and cultural studies have focused almost entirely on the textual, linguistic, and discursive. Defenders of postmodernism would argue that this is a misread- ing of the postmodern position or even that we cannot identify a single postmodern position in any case. Theorists such as Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault do, in fact, accommodate the material in their work. Their use of the material, furthermore, has been reflected in the work of other theorists. William Connolly, for example, employs the mate- riality of Deleuze in his Neuropolitics (2002). And feminist theorists such as Claire Colebrook and Ladelle McWhorter have drawn upon Deleuze and Foucault to enable them to engage with materiality in significant and revealing ways. Nonetheless, the material force of the work of Deleuze, and especially of Foucault, is often overlooked be- cause of the exclusive focus on the discursive. Furthermore, the ten- dency
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Perception of the Experience of Domestic Violence by Women With
    Perception of the Experience of Domestic Violence By Women with a Physical Disability by Jennifer Margery Mays BSocSci (Human Services) A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Research) Centre for Social Change Research School of Humanities and Human Services Queensland University of Technology February 2003 Declaration I, Jennifer Mays, declare that the work contained in this thesis is to the best of my knowledge and belief, original, except as acknowledged in the text and that the material has not been submitted, either in whole or part, for a degree at this or any other university. Signed: __________________________ Date: __________________________ i Abstract The disability movement drew attention to the struggle against the oppression of people of disability. The rise of disability activism contributed to increased awareness of the need for a social theory of disability, in order to account for the historical, social and economic basis of oppression. Emerging studies of disability issues by disability theorists, such as Sobsey (1994), highlighted the higher prevalence and nature of violence against people with a disability, in comparison to the general population. However, the limited research concerning women with a physical impairment experiencing domestic violence contributes to this social problem being underestimated in the community. Contemporary theoretical conceptualisations of both domestic violence and disability fail to explain the causal framework that leads to women who have a disability experiencing violent situations. Similarly, by explaining domestic violence as a solely socially constructed gender inequality and power differential, feminism provides insufficient recognition of the structural dimension of disability.
    [Show full text]
  • Tesis Oct Draft 20.Pdf
    A Manolo y Maruchi 2 Index Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………... 9 Introduction 1. Research topic, objectives and research questions…………………… 11 2. Research motivations…………………………………………………….. 14 3. Methodological strategies ………………………………………………. 15 4. Structure of the thesis…………………………………………………… 17 Chapter 1. Drawing cartographies, building epistemologies 1.1. Introduction…………………………………………………………. 22 1.2. Feminist (in)visible alliances: the importance of methodological bridges between the Humanities and the Social Sciences…………………………………. 24 1.2.1. Writing a scholarly piece in between the Social Sciences and the Humanities………………………………………………………… 25 1.2.2. Conceptual and political benefits of such a methodological bridge… 27 1.3. From post-modernist paradoxes for literary studies to post-humanist and post- colonial contributions: mapping literary theory………………………………….. 28 1.4. Literature and feminism: an overview………………………………………… 33 1.5. Entangling literature, technology and feminism ………..…………………… 37 1.5.1. Cyberfeminism: going political through the social net……………. 39 3 1.5.2. Feminist Science and Technology Studies: How might we theorize bodies as lived and/or as socially situated? ……………………………………….. 41 1.5.3. Third wave feminism: reinforcing dichotomies? …………………….. 43 1.6. New materialism: third wave feminist epistemology…………………………… 45 1.6.1. New materialist conversations: engaging with the critiques. ………. 46 1.6.2. Putting new materialism to work: implications for the relation between Toni Morrison and Facebook. ……………………………………………… 49 1.7. Conclusions………………………………………………………………… 51 Chapter 2. Diffractive methodology: relating gendered fluxes 2.1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………. 53 2.2. Diffractive methodology……………………………………………………….. 54 2.3. Objective and research questions……………………………………………….. 56 2.4. Selecting the participants ……………………………………………………….. 57 2.4.1. Toni Morrison: performing feminist politics in the information society 58 2.4.2. Social Networking Sites: the case of Facebook………………………… 59 2.4.3.
    [Show full text]
  • Camora 1.Pdf
    The Function of the Rhetoric of Maternity in the Representation of Female Sexuality, Religion, Nationality, and Race in Early Modern English Literature and Culture by Cecilia Morales A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in the University of Michigan 2020 Doctoral Committee: Professor Michael Schoenfeldt, Chair Dr. Neeraja Aravamudan, Edward Ginsberg Center, University of Michigan Professor Peggy McCracken Professor Catherine Sanok Professor Valerie Traub Cecilia Morales [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7428-3777 © Cecilia Morales 2020 Acknowledgements Throughout my doctoral studies, I have been fortunate to have the love and support of countless individuals, to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude. I’d like to begin by thanking my committee members. Cathy and Peggy taught me valuable lessons not only about my work but about being a thoughtful and compassionate scholar and teacher. Valerie’s reminders to always be as generous as possible when discussing the work of other scholars has kept me sane and stable in this competitive world of academia. Mike helped me, a displaced Texan, to feel at home in Michigan from our first meeting, during which we chatted about both Shakespearean scholarship and Tex Mex. Finally, the most recent addition to my committee is Neeraja Aravamudan, who I consider my most active mentor and supporter. One of the best decisions I made during graduate school was accepting an internship at the Edward Ginsberg Center, where Neeraja became my supervisor. Neeraja and the other Ginsberg staff remind me it’s possible to take my work very seriously without taking myself too seriously.
    [Show full text]
  • Materialist Feminism
    9­ / MATERIALIST FEMINISM A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives Edited by Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham ROUTLEDGE New York & London Introduction Reclaiming Anticapitalist Feminism Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham THE NEED FOR ClASS ANALYSIS OF WOMEN'S DIFFERENT LIVES We see this reader as a timely contribution to feminist struggle for transformative social change, a struggle which is fundamentally a class war over resources, knowledge, and power. Currently the richest 20 percent of humanity garners 83 percent of global income, while the poorest 20 percent of the world's people struggles to survive on just 1 percent of the global income (Sivard 1993; World Bank 1994). During the 1990s, as capitalism triumphantly secures its global reach, anticommunist ideologies hammer home socialism's inherent failure and the Left increasingly moves into the professional middle class. many of western feminism's earlier priorities-commitment to social transformation, attention to the political economy of patriarchy, analysis of the perva­ sive social structures that link and divide women~have been obscured or actively dismissed. Various forms of feminist cultural politics that take as their starting point gender, race, class, sexuality, or coalitions among them have increasingly displaced a systemic perspective that links the battle against women's oppression to a fight against capitalism. The archive collected in Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives is a reminder that despite this trend feminists have continued to find in historical materialism a powerful theoretical and political resource. The tradi- . tion of feminist engagement with marxism emphasizes a perspective on social life that refuses to separate the materiality of meaning, identity, the body, state, or nation from the requisite division of labor that undergirds the scramble for profits in capitalism's global system.
    [Show full text]
  • WGSS Draft Syllabus 692B Spring 2013 Ann Ferguson
    WGSS syllabus 692C Spring 2014 History of Feminist Theory Professor emerita Ann Ferguson Mondays 2:30-5 pm Office hours by appointment. [email protected] Phone: 413-367-2310 Texts 1. Linda Nicholson, ed. (1997)The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory (Routledge) 2. Hester Eisenstein (2009) Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World (Paradigm) 3. Rachel Alsop, Annette Fitzsimmons and Kathleen Lennon (2002) Theorizing Gender (Polity) Optional: Silvia Federici (2004) Caliban and the Witch: Women and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia) Eva Illouz (2012) Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation (Polity) Other readings for the course available on UMass UDrive (www. udrive.oit.umass.edu/xythoswfs/webview/xythoslogin.action, password given in seminar) Class Requirements and Grading Policies There are 3 components through which the course will be graded: class participation (which includes a class report and online postings), short paper, and final term paper. The work done by each student for each of these components will be weighted as follows: class participation (including class report) 30%, short paper 30%, and final term paper 40%. A. Class Participation (30%): (1) All students will be expected to do the reading before the class for which they are assigned and to contribute to the discussion about them. This will include posting discussion questions on something in the reading for the week suitable for a class discussion. These questions should be clarified by several lines which locate the issue in the reading. They should be posted by noon of the day before the seminar.
    [Show full text]
  • The Feminist Futures of Reading Diffractively: How Barad's Methodology Replaces Conflict-Based Readings of Beauvoir and Irigaray
    Issue 30 (2016) » DOI: 10.20415/rhiz/030.e02 The Feminist Futures of Reading Diffractively: How Barad's Methodology Replaces Conflict-based Readings of Beauvoir and Irigaray Evelien Geerts and Iris van der Tuin Abstract Quantum leaps happen in texts, too. This reading of the role of the quantum leap in Karen Barad's agential realism is necessary, because arguing that the diffractive reading strategy proposed by Barad's ethico-onto-epistemology mirrors the physical phenomenon of diffraction would indeed be representationalist. Reviewing how Barad—in her own oeuvre—has transformed diffraction into an innovative reading methodology that could not only potentially challenge the epistemological underpinnings of the canonization process that is at work in feminist theory, but could also radically change the canonization practice of feminist oeuvres itself, our article embarks on a detailed examination of the ways in which the oeuvres of Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray have been mistakenly categorized and canonized in a hierarchical and Oedipalized manner. This conflict-based narrative has not only paralyzed the oeuvres of Irigaray and Beauvoir, but also has had a negative impact on the canonization of sexual difference philosophy as a whole in feminist theory. By (re)reading the oeuvres diffractively, this article brings the feminist philosophies of Beauvoir and Irigaray together by invalidating the idea that the feminist canonization process always has to run along the lines of discontinuity, Oedipalization and dialectization. Introduction: from conflict to affirmation [1][1] Most feminist theorists will have a hard time when confronted with philosopher Slavoj Žižek's recent engagements with physicist-philosopher Karen Barad's work.
    [Show full text]
  • Legal Research Paper Series
    Legal Research Paper Series NON HUMAN ANIMALS AND THE LAW: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ANIMAL LAW RESOURCES AT THE STANFORD LAW LIBRARY By Rita K. Lomio and J. Paul Lomio Research Paper No. 6 October 2005 Robert Crown Law Library Crown Quadrangle Stanford, California 94305-8612 NON HUMAN ANIMALS AND THE LAW: A BIBLIOGRPAHY OF ANIMAL LAW RESOURCES AT THE STANFORD LAW LIBRARY I. Books II. Reports III. Law Review Articles IV. Newspaper Articles (including legal newspapers) V. Sound Recordings and Films VI. Web Resources I. Books RESEARCH GUIDES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES Hoffman, Piper, and the Harvard Student Animal Legal Defense Fund The Guide to Animal Law Resources Hollis, New Hampshire: Puritan Press, 1999 Reference KF 3841 G85 “As law students, we have found that although more resources are available and more people are involved that the case just a few years ago, locating the resource or the person we need in a particular situation remains difficult. The Guide to Animal Law Resources represents our attempt to collect in one place some of the resources a legal professional, law professor or law student might want and have a hard time finding.” Guide includes citations to organizations and internships, animal law court cases, a bibliography, law schools where animal law courses are taught, Internet resources, conferences and lawyers devoted to the cause. The International Institute for Animal Law A Bibliography of Animal Law Resources Chicago, Illinois: The International Institute for Animal Law, 2001 KF 3841 A1 B53 Kistler, John M. Animal Rights: A Subject Guide, Bibliography, and Internet Companion Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000 HV 4708 K57 Bibliography divided into six subject areas: Animal Rights: General Works, Animal Natures, Fatal Uses of Animals, Nonfatal Uses of Animals, Animal Populations, and Animal Speculations.
    [Show full text]
  • INTERSPECIES SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Intersectional Empathetic Approaches to Food and Climate Justice
    1 INTERSPECIES SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: intersectional empathetic approaches to food and climate justice A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Policy and Governance at the University of Canterbury Éilis Rose Espiner i “He aroha whakatō, he aroha puta mai” (where kindness is sown, kindness will be received) ii Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. v Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 0 What is Sustainable Development? .................................................................................................... 1 Literature Review ................................................................................................................................ 2 Theory ................................................................................................................................................. 7 Chapter one: environmental impacts of current food system ............................................................. 11 Inefficient consumption patterns ..................................................................................................... 11 Resource-intensive ...........................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Gaslightpdffinal.Pdf
    Credits. Book Layout and Design: Miah Jeffra Cover Artwork: Pseudodocumentation: Broken Glass by David DiMichele, Courtesy of Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco ISBN: 978-0-692-33821-6 The Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices is made possible, in part, by a generous contribution by Amazon.com Gaslight Vol. 1 No. 1 2014 Gaslight is published once yearly in Los Angeles, California Gaslight is exclusively a publication of recipients of the Lambda Literary Foundation's Emerging Voices Fellowship. All correspondence may be addressed to 5482 Wilshire Boulevard #1595 Los Angeles, CA 90036 Details at www.lambdaliterary.org. Contents Director's Note . 9 Editor's Note . 11 Lisa Galloway / Epitaph ..................................13 / Hives ....................................16 Jane Blunschi / Snapdragon ................................18 Miah Jeffra / Coffee Spilled ................................31 Victor Vazquez / Keiki ....................................35 Christina Quintana / A Slip of Moon ........................36 Morgan M Page / Cruelty .................................51 Wayne Johns / Where Your Children Are ......................53 Wo Chan / Our Majesties at Michael's Craft Shop ..............66 / [and I, thirty thousand feet in the air, pop] ...........67 / Sonnet by Lamplight ............................68 Yana Calou / Mortars ....................................69 Hope Thompson/ Sharp in the Dark .........................74 Yuska Lutfi Tuanakotta / Mother and Son Go Shopping ..........82 Megan McHugh / I Don't Need to Talk
    [Show full text]
  • Sharp-Animal Ethos.Indd
    Introduction Moral Entanglements in Experimental Animal Science “Why look at animals?” The critic, painter, and poet John Berger, widely celebrated for his attentiveness to seeing as a way of knowing, famously posed this question while pondering captive zoo and other creatures. Animals “are both like and unlike” humans, wrote Berger, and our encoun- ters with them entail an exchanged gaze. Whereas the animal “does not reserve a special look for man . man becomes aware of himself returning the look” (1990, 13, 25). Across this “abyss of non-comprehension . [the animal’s] common language, its silence, guarantees its distance, its distinct- ness, its exclusion, from and of man” and “because of this distinctness . an animal’s life, never to be confused with a man’s, can be seen to run paral- lel to his. Only in death do the two parallel lines converge and after death, perhaps cross over to become parallel again” (14–15). Experimental laboratory science necessitates specialized, interspecies encounters marked simultaneously by distance and intimacy, difference and similarity, and by distinct confrontations between humans and animals during those moments when animals die for science. As experimental sub- jects, lab animals occupy “parallel” lives in Berger’s sense; the intimacy of human-animal encounters in labs fosters troubling entanglements too. The premise that lab animals are simultaneously “like and unlike” us justifies their experimental use, yet the intimacy of quotidian lab encounters trou- bles the human ability to maintain boundaries of interspecies distance and distinctness. This premise springs from animals’ roles as research subjects: as proxies, animals endure procedures deemed too painful or dangerous for human subjects and, as such, animals are distinct from us.
    [Show full text]
  • UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Postfeminist Technologies: Digital Media and the Culture Industries of Choice A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television by Jonathan Alan Cohn 2013 © Copyright by Jonathan Alan Cohn 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Postfeminist Technologies: Digital Media and the Culture Industries of Choice by Jonathan Alan Cohn Doctor in Philosophy in Film and Television University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Kathleen McHugh, Chair In this dissertation, I argue that digital recommendation systems – a relatively recent technological innovation – fundamentally reconfigure the very notion of “self” in and for the digital era. Many popular websites, including Google, Netflix and Amazon, employ these systems to assist the user in making decisions of all types, by offering recommendations based on particular algorithms. Throughout the dissertation, I engage the ways that these recommendation systems facilitate contemporary notions of agency and identity as they are constructed through acts of choice. I examine how these systems have enabled the emergence of what I call the culture industries of choice. These industries use digital recommendation systems to lead users toward certain decisions and objects and away from others. In doing so, these automated recommendations, derived from an analysis of user data, shape the contemporary self ii through a rhetoric that equates conformity with equality and consumerism with freedom. Now a part of today’s most popular and influential websites and digital technologies, these digital recommendation systems articulate self-representation and modulation as an integral part of electronic consumption; further, they articulate new networks and conceptions of community.
    [Show full text]
  • La Crítica Feminista Bajo El Prisma Del Materialismo Agencial. Un Enfoque Posthumanista
    Miriam Fernández-Santiago Journal of Feminist, Gender and Women Studies 10:31-39, Marzo/March 2021 La crítica feminista bajo el prisma del materialismo agencial. Un enfoque posthumanista Agential Materialism and the Feminist Paradigm. A Posthumanist Approach Miriam Fernández-Santiago 1, @ 1English Department, University of Granada, Spain. Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Campus Universitario de Cartuja C.P. 18071 Granada, Spain. Recibido: 21/08/2018 Aceptado: 19/02/2021 @ Autor/a de correspondencia: [email protected] Resumen El fértil campo de la crítica feminista ha producido abundantes y brillantes frutos en su desarrollo a lo largo del siglo veinte, pero es desde la ventaja que da la distancia en el tiempo que podemos ahora tomar cierta perspectiva sobre los contextos generales de producción y recepción en que dicha crítica feminista ha tomado el cuerpo de nuevos mitos que subvierten el falogocentrismo de los que la precedieron. El presente artículo pretende establecer un diálogo entre estos nuevos cuerpos discursivos (principalmente en el trabajo de Cixous, Hayles, de Bauvoir, y Haraway) y el materialism agencial de Karen Barad, utilizando su constructo crítico de “fenómeno” como instrumento para comprender las dimensiones que el paradigma feminista adquiere en el contexto posthumanista para proponer la intra-acción difractiva como alternativa a los constructos naturalizados. Palabras clave: materialismo agencial, responsabilidad, paradigma feminista, Karen Barad, post-humanismo. Abstract Much has been argued within the fertile critical field of feminism in the second half of the twentieth century. With the advantage of distance from the twenty-first century, we can now gain a certain perspective on the general context of production and reception of feminist criticism as it becomes embodied in new myths that subvert the old phallogocentric ones.
    [Show full text]