Re: [oldboys] insert rant

[josephine starrs <starrs@autonomous.org>]

i agree with diana, that i don't understand these constant bad  reactions
to sadie plants texts.

.....i don't think she said 'the net is female' as such and you are taking
her out of context anyway.
she was forming  her ideas in a time when postructuralist feminist theory
was exploring  metaphors in language which were based on the female body
and sexuality and were different from the phallologocentric metaphors of
patriarchal language. when luce irigaray wrote 'this sex which is not one'
it was liberating  at that time to think of a secret language in terms  of
womens labia constantly whispering.

Sadie was writing when network technology was very much a male domain and
there were theoretical  and academic forces at work to keep it that way.
........she talked about the telephone historically as a technology which
allowed women who were  housebound in the 40's and 50's to communicate and
network (hence all those bad  jokes by men about their wives always being
on the phone). .....when the net became widely available women took to the
technology naturally  being  used to a nonlinear kind of networking in our
communities. ....i think there is some evidence for that as the statistics
say the areas where there are more women users than men are in virtual
communities.

it was donna harraway who first began associating women's bodies with
machines in a very interesting and inspiring way Š...and of course she
debunked all that 70's women and nature essentialist crap with her 'cyborg
manifesto' when she said she would  'rather be a cyborg than a goddess'

Šis obn anti donna harraway as well?

j.




>diana,
>
>>Insert rant ///
>>Like what politics are at play when Sadie Plant gets dissed so
>>regularily for having written some texts ages ago where she described
>>a vision of cyberfeminism that many of us disagree with? So what?
>>There are plenty of women (and men) who had their cyberfem say. Why not
>>refute it instead of just dismissing her work categorically? Or assuming
>>that her work was ever meant to encompass all the possible
>>manifestations of CF? This is really troubling me. Sometimes I can't
>>even  sleep just thinking about it!
>> /// end rant
>
>i am not sure whom you're talking about.
>
>sure, there has been a lot of critique on sadie's work, precise critique
>like from caroline bassett at the last cyberfeminist international, and
>less precise, very emotional critique, but this is exactly what it is all
>about: you set something, a text, a piece of art or whatever, and then
>interested people start to analyze and critizise it. the best would be, if
>this person then would answer and react to it. then you could  start a
>discourse.
>
>the problem is that cyberfeminism is very often equated with sadie plant.
>her work has been so well marketed and is so popular, that it sometimes
>happened that i.e. an interview with me had got the title 'the net is
>female'. because i am a declared cyberfemist journalists use sadie's
>slogans to title my work. this triggers even more my need to distinguish
>myself from her approach, because i would never use such a nonsense
>slogan, except ironically. and, sadie's writing has been very determining
>and appropriating at certain points, that's why i think it is normal that
>many women say, hold on, we don't share your opinion. why shouldn't we
>formulate our opinions and critique?
>
>one of the main ideas of obn, as  i understand it, always was to open the
>specific approach of the mothers of cyberfeminism. to take the term, and
>develop a concept and structure, a context, in which the term functions as
>reference term, but at the same time, highly different approaches produce
>a discourse. a discourse on contemporary feminisms, on gender and queer
>issues in the times of the digital medium, of postcolonial and postcapital
>globalization.
>
>
>more on your thoughts about lists in general later.
>
>best, c.
>
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>
>
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http://starrs.design.nepean.uws.edu.au/
http://starrs.banff.org
http://www.anat.org.au/resistant-media/Bio-Tek



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