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Nancy Paterson
Cyberfeminism recognizes that it is precisely due to our culturally enforced distance from technology, that we are in a position to explore the three tenets of feminism after postmodernism, through artistic practice: diversity, the ubiquity of technology and transgender politics. If anyone lacks the capacity for spectatorship, they have the capacity for action. If they lack the masculine 'ability' to fetishize technology, then they are able to understand that culture is not what you live in, but what you live through. Pluralism is one postmodern concept which feminism finds no argument with, due to its widely divergent approaches within specific cultures as well as throughout the world. The usefulness of connections and dislocations, the integrity and relevance of different perspectives becomes particularly apparent when the site of intersection is artistic practice. There is considerably more to cultural diversity than knowing where to find the best of various 'ethnic' restaurants - and knowing what to order when you get there. Appropriation is a strategy to be avoided. And there is more to an awareness of technological ubiquity than having an email account and knowing how to use it. Being a woman and using new technologies, does not (automatically) mean you are liberated. This separates the cyberfemmes from the cyberfeminists. Furthermore, the promotion of transgender politics involves support for authentic expression of individual sex/gender not the license to seduce anything that moves. Diversity, technological ubiquity, transgender politics - these are all related. For example, it was through the debate surrounding the supposed 'disappearance' of the body in cyberspace and through VR technologies that transgender politics emerged as an issue which cyberfeminism must address. Transgender politics is the most fascinating aspect of cyberfeminism - faking gender, trying on gender, multiple genders. When we moved past religion it was feared that we would believe in nothing. In fact, we have gained the ability to believe in *anything*. With transgender politics it is not so much that we lose definitions of gender but that anything goes. Coming to Hollywood (Brandon Lee, Kyoko Date) - identity as fleeting as the flicker of pixels. Excerpt from 'Curly, Larry & PoMo' first presented at the ASTARTI conference, Paris 1998 -- www.cgrg.ohio-state.edu/Astrolabe/journal/inaugural/paterson.html
Responses:
from: jecca I suggest transgressing the binary approach to sex as "male vs. female". I offer a URL from my website, Terrestrial Transgression. It is the "More extra" link, located at http://artnetweb.com/jecca/jecmorex.html No one is 100% female or 100% male. We are all hybrids.
from: Sonya Rapoport Date: August 2, 1999 Nancy, Within the context of your reference to cultural diversity that "Appropriation is a strategy to be avoided", I understand and agree with your sense of "appropriation" as an expropriation of something which is not ones own and is not for one to own. However, as a distinction to this use of the term, I would like to add that in my work I use the word "appropriaton" as a way of softening gender boundaries that will eventually help dissolve gender label distinctions.Also, in another sense of the word, I appropriate information/images upon which to build my own artwork. Sources are always credited. I appreciate your words about my work. They mean a great deal to me. I'd like to add to Jecca's list a few of my own "tree" URLs Arbor Erecta -- http://users.lmi.net/~sonyarap/arborerecta/arbor.html Make Me A Jewish Man: An Alternative Masculinity -- http://www.clayd.com/MMAJM/index.html
From:Dawn Mercedes Date: August 3, 1999 I appreciate the URLs! A few comments: Binary pairs in themselves are not inherently damaging; it is the values (also gendered) attached to them by a patriarchal culture, the valuing and privileging of one over the other, the inequalities present in the relationships between the pairs, that are destructive. So how do we construct categories of meaning without privileging some categories over others? Do we want to/need to? Put another way, how might we conceive of difference without opposition? Cyberfeminism offers us a means to begin to address these questions; it is a way to dismantle the system from "within." In the realm of ones and zeros, cyberfeminists expose the binary illogic of it all. Yet, must we separate the cyberfemmes from the cyberfeminists (indeed, it becomes increasingly difficult not to reproduce the structure of domination on a different axis.)? Aren't the transgendered simply dismissed as "other" by established systems of power? Will transgender politics get "stuck" with the postmodern (it's-just-a-passing-fad) label? So many questions for cyber/feminists to consider . . .
From: Jaishree Odin Date: August 10, 1999 Nancy describes the three tenets of cyberfeminism as diversity, the ubiquity of technology and transgender politics. I believe a truly transgender politics (in the cyber world) is possible only when both sexes are equal. But are they really equal or are they really equally represented in symbolic order or intellectual discourses of our culture? When we think of differences based on race and ethnicity that raise a host of other issues pertaining to cultural difference. Here I am not so much thinking about my ability to adopt roles or personas in the cyberworld, but more how an artist might experience the burden or the joy of ones cultural or gender history as it shapes her work. Luce Irigaray in her work repeatedly points to the danger of oppositional thinking in which male and female are seen as opposite categories. She also sees the urgency for an ethics of sexual difference, even as her ultimate goal is the inclusion of sexual difference rather than creating any essentialized male and female categories. In order to promote women-as-subjects in the social arena, she notes, it is crucial that woman-as-subject is unearthed in the symbolic system and intellectual discourses. The sexual indifference, she adds, must be replaced by sexual difference which would result from the acceptance of the sexuate nature of discourses. Instead of one sex seeing itself reflected in the other, both men and women would experience themselves as subjects reflected in the othering of their own self rather than of the other selves. Irigaray argues that the "the sexualization of discourse" will give voice to the suppressed other so that various discourses instead of opting for univocality and oneness will become fluid, multivocal and plural in which both the male and the female can easily alternate between the position of the subject and the object. This brings me to Anna Coueys "Gender is malleable." Many successful writers and artists (authors of powerful feminist representations) regard themselves as artists and writers rather than women artists or women writers. As Anna rightly points out, "gender-identified work has an important role to play in building our understanding and freedom, but it does not represent the entire scope of women's stories."
From: Tina LaPorta Jaishree raises an important point in her post. Currently, I am persuing the possibility of a female subjectivity located within a global networked society, throughout my work on-line. The question for me remains: if we are not yet fully woman-subjects in the real (or physical) world, then how is it possible to represent and explore the dynamics of female subjectivity on-line? OR, is it precisely within the virtual internet-space where woman-subjectivity emerges -- fully human, fully conscious: absent corporeal representation.....?
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