Adam, Alison. “The Ethical Dimension of Cyberfeminism.” Reload: Rethinking Women & Cyberculture. Mary Flanagan and

Austin Booth eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002. 158-174.

Summary of the General Argument:

Adam discusses Cyberfemiism as the “problem child” of cyberculture, which she likens to a “wayward father,” and cyborg feminism, which she likens to a mother (162). For Adams the relationship between ethics and cyberfeminism is a matter of “appropriation of relevant ethical theory,” and then applying said theory to “significant examples and drawing out implications” (167). Adam argues that cyberfeminisms dodging of ethical concerns and “apparently apolitical stance is problematic” (168); therefore, “only if the political and especially the ethical dimensions are thoroughly interwoven into cyberfeminism’s somewhat hesitant theoretical roots can it deliver its early promise” (158).

My Response:

Adam’s arguments and concerns are interesting and will help me build my case for re-visioning Butler as a rhetorician as much of Butler’s work can be describes as employing and meditating ethos. Furthermore, the ethical concerns raised by Adam about cyberculture and the internet may very well help me later in my dissertation project as I am composing topian pedagogical practices. Also, this article with its father and mother approach to the taxonomy of cyberfeminism underscores Veronica Hollinger’s (see below) critique of feminism as “heteronormative” (302).

Hollinger, Veronica. “(Re) reading Queerly: Science Fiction, Feminism, and the Defamiliarization of Gender.” Reload: Rethinking Women & Cyberculture. 301-320.

Summary of the General Argument:

Using Judith Butler, who posits, “literary narrative [is] a place where theory takes place” (qtd. in Hollinger 301) and theories of gender-as-performance stemming from Joan Riviere’s 1929 study, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” Hollinger argues for queering feminist theory “in order to (re)read how the ‘variable construction of [gender] identity’ has been represented in science fiction by women writers” (301).

My Response:

Hollinger’s discussion of defamiliarization supports my discussion of the same. Also, her process of queering feminist theory supports my effort to apply a multiplicitious approach as she provides a concrete example of using multiple theories to provide a feminist (re)reading of Butler’s work. Finally, the essay allows me to reflect on the biases, assumptions, and entrenched vocabularies I am apt to apply to the text: as my modus operandi is deeply hetero (and I do not say that to brag, I say that to confess assumptions), I am the reader Hollinger and other queer theorists critique as closed and biased. Hollinger quotes Michael Warner who sums up the cultural bias of readers like myself: “Het culture thinks of itself as the elemental form of human association, as the very model of inter-gender relations, as the indivisible basis of all community, and as the means of reproduction without which society wouldn’t exist” (302). I am especially dug-in on Warner’s last point as I believe that the biological necessity of reproduction is not a social construction.

Nakamura, Lisa. “After/Images of Identity: Gender, Technology, and Identity Politics.” Reload: Rethinking Women & Cyberculture. 321-331.

Summary of the General Argument:

The key term in Nakamura’s title, “After/Images,” refers to two concepts: 1. the idea that we are or that technology is making us post-corporeal, post image, post identity; and 2. the idea the images of identity that are produced in cyberspace can be likened to “the image you see when you close your eyes at a bright bulb[. . .]” (322). These concepts are unpacked into an extremely interesting and entertaining theory. Nakamara argues:

This visual metaphor[. . .]has a critical valence and can represent a way of seeing differently, of claiming the right to possess agency in our, of being a subject and not an object of technology.[. . .]When we look at these rhetorics and images of cyberspace, we seeing an after/image—both posthuman and projectionary—meaning it is the product of a vision rearranged and deranged by the virtual light of virtual things and people. [. . .] (322)

My Response:

As Nakamaura’s discussion progresses, she suggests that cyberspace is far from a utopic realm free of gender, race, age, class, etc.; rather, it is a dystopia in which “Identity Tourists’[. . .]performances online [use] race and gender as amusing prostheses that [can] be donned and shed without ‘real life’ consequences” (323). This work is useful as it gives me some experience feminist rhetorical ideas about identity and cyberspace, and I can see it paying off down the road as I work on the pedagogy section of dissertation.

Ramirez, Catherine S. “Cyborg Feminism: The Science Fiction of Octavia E. Butler and Gloria Anzaldua.” Reload: Rethinking Women & Cyberculture. 374-402.

Summary of the General Argument:

Rameriz argues that Butler’s Wild Seed and The Parable of the Sower “critique fixed concepts of race, gender, sexuality and humanity, and subsequently, ‘fictions’ of identity and community.” Donna Haraway’s concept of the “cyberborg identity” is key to this critique, but Rameriz is careful to situate Butler not only as a feminist but as an Afrofuturist, or a science fiction writer who “inserts black people, as well as women other people of color, into narratives[. . .].” The article concludes with a comparison of Butler to Anzuldua and “offer[s] a theory of and for ‘New World,’ feminist science fiction” (375).

My Response:

Rameriz’s article is very well researched and offers a fascinating tapestry woven from over 75 sources (some of which are on this very list). The bibliography alone is an excellent resource, but Rameriz also does a very nice job of analyzing Butler’s work as theory. Rameriz’s work definitely supports and informs mine. For example, her discussion of science fiction as “dislocation” and “cognitive estrangement” (which is supported by Phillip K. Dick, Darko Suvin, and Bertolt Brecht) supports my claim that utopian/dystopian scifinarratives defamiliarize the self and society which thus gives them simply incredible rhetorical power to shape change (377).

Stein, Sarah. “A Cyberroom of One’s Own.” Reload: Rethinking Women & Cyberculture. 148-157.

Summary of the General Argument:

Stein uses Virginia Woolf’s famous concept of a “room of one’s own” a portal into discussing not only the economic and social inequities women face but also the problem of finding “Time and space[. . .]needed to give room to the sinking down into the material at hand, and to the rising up of insight and imaginative urges,” and she subsequently asks, “how can we find room for reflection, for listening, inwardly and outwardly?” (148). Stein investigates MOOs and other cyberspace to recommend that women[. . .]become more involved in developing new communication modalities for digital forms,” and the use of virtual spaces as a room for immersion in subject matter (155).

My Response:

As Stein’s “focus is on the question of women’s creativity,” (149) I see this source as being particularly useful to me on two levels: 1. it informs me about women’s issues which are not apparent to me in my glorious white-male-hetero-academic subjectivity, and 2. it gives me some good ideas of how to begin with questions of gender in the pedagogy section of my project.