"How Do Cyborgs Communicate?" Re/Writing Cyberfeminism.

Lecture | Vortrag
in the framework of the conference | im Rahmen der Konferenz "Writing Europe", Kiev, June 28 – July 02, 2005 | 28.06.-02.07.2005

In her famous "Manifesto for Cyborgs", Donna Haraway did not only point out the importance of language as a vehicle for what she'd call "the informatics of domination". She also laid a great emphasis on writing as a cyborg technique: "Writing is pre-eminently the technology of cyborgs, etched surfaces of the late twentieth century. Cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism […]".

However, on a more practical level, except for her references to feminist science fiction authors (and, in a way, also her own piece) she did not give any practical examples for cyborg writing and communication. As well, many of the theorists referring to her Manifesto failed to do so. Especially Sadie Plant's book on cyberfeminism might be aptly read in terms of a more traditional feminist writing strategy, that is: re/writing history from a feminist point of view.
On the other hand, successful attempts have been made to develop a wider range of tools and strategies by making use of the so called new communication technologies; to open the latter up for artistic approaches to language and code as a medium. Nevertheless, in terms of communication, this stays a risky strategy.

The lecture will not only present selected examples of applied cyborg communication strategies that are working with/on the code, but also address some of the problems arising together with these strategies and/or that remain unsolved so far, amongst them the question of language as a code contaminated by the informatics of domination.

tags: alltagskultur, alltagstechnologien, analogital, art & media, art & public, art & society, communication, cultural history, cyberfeminism, cyberfeminismus, digital culture, digitale kultur, everyday culture, everyday technologies, gender studies, geschichten & geschichte, geschlechterforschung, knowledge cultures, kommunikation, kulturgeschichte, kunst & gesellschaft, kunst & medien, kunst & öffentlichkeit, net cultures, netzkulturen, perception, repräsentation, representation, stories & histories, technologie, technology, tools, vermittlung, wahrnehmung, werkzeug, wissenskulturen