DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca Gender Digital Culture and Sociology

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca Wajcman, Judy Feminism Confronts Technology. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press. Gadgets discussion Cyberfeminism Haraway, Donna "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York; Routledge. about today

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca gender in digital culture IT yet another area where women are excluded Lack of access to technology and machine skill: ineptitude Cyberspace as unsafe place Representation questions Difference between “online feminism” (furthers RL) and “online cyberfeminism” (engages with technology itself, nerd/geeks, grrrrrls, replicunts, viral readings) i.e. Plant intro MAIN QUESTION : Can cyberspace create a new space for rewiring the gender- technology relationship?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca Eniac computer The world's first electronic digital computer was developed by Army Ordnance to compute World War II ballistic firing tables. (1947)

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca The Matrix I NEO- I thought you were a guy TRINITY- Most guys do

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca feminist STS Debate on Science (older, more developed) / Debate on Technology (first steps) Evolution: 1.Discovering hidden women 2.Why women haven’t accessed those fields 3.How to gain access (neutral view) 4.Questioning S or T 5.Is a feminist S or T possible? Wajcman

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca feminist STS Scientific knowledge as patriarcal knowledge (5) The woman and nature discourse (6) What are “feminist” values? What is “nature”? (9) If women were in control, what would happen to technology? (13) Not only production of technology interesting, also use, consumption, etc. (24) Wajcman A QUESTION : What is it like being a girl at ITU? (19, 22)

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca gadgets Content Language Audience?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca

cyberfeminism “As a concept, it covers feminist simulations of technology, most literally through debates about power, identity and autonomy and the role of new technologies in the transformation of these characteristics. It thus considers the role of women in new technological industries such as the World Wide Web and the Internet.” (285) Kennedy

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca background: cyberfeminism Unified, essentialist identity (Enlightment) is problematized (Hall) “The invention of homosexuality”, an identity that came into being at a particular time (Foucault) Discourse not only describes but also defines (Foucault) Cyborg Manifesto. Vs binary thinking and epistemology: animal/human, organism/machine, idealism/materialism. Tecnology fundamental. (Haraway)

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca some cyberfeminist theorists Sadie Plant- Similarities between CMC and female consciousness (webs of difference), transcendent female subjectivity Claudia Springer- cyberfeminism is not liberatory, hardwired/phallic women don’t change culture. Rejected love = violence Nina Wakeford- Internet as playful, free space, renegotiate identity, performance, no male technophobia

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca Gender Turing test I AM- M / F (male /female) I POSE AS- M / F (male /female) - What do you do when you are really angry?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca Problems of cyberfeminism Too often techno-female representations reinstate stereotypical genderings (Springer) Virtual environments and gender bending, steterotypical role models Distance from RL identity seen as dishonest: “Julie” (Stone)

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 10 – Susana Tosca

complementary bibliography  BUTLER, J Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.  PLANT, Sadie “On the matrix: cyberfeminist simulations”. In Bell, David / Kennedy M. Barbara. The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge.  SPRINGER, C Electronic Eros: bodies and desire in the postindustrial age. London: Athlone.  SPRINGER, C “Digital Rage”. In Bell, David / Kennedy M. Barbara. The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge.  STONE, A.R The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.  WAKEFORD, N “Networking women and grrrls with information / communication technology: surfing tales of the www”. In Bell, David / Kennedy M. Barbara. The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge.