The Ethical Dimension of Cyberfeminism
Adam, Alison. "The Ethical Dimension of Cyberfeminism". In Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture, which see at internal link, ch. 9, pp. [158]-172.
Concise and insightful essay, with highly useful Notes and list of Works Cited (pp. 169-74) — useful for background on cyberculture, cyberpunk, and their relationship with feminism and feminists' relationships, actual and potential, with cyberculture.
Cyberfeminism: "Feminism" — as a mass noun, including feminisms ranging from now somewhat old-style eco-feminism through liberal and radical feminism — combined with cyberculture, identified as "One parent" of cyberfeminism and
"the term used to describe the explosion of interest in cultures developing around virtual reality (VR), the Internet, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and artificial life [AL, or A-Life] (the modeling of populations using digital technology) — much of which speaks in a markedly futuristic voice" (p. [158]).
Deals briefly with William Gibson's Neuromancer and the cyberpunk tradition of cyberspace and the possibility of (a section name in her essay), "A Meat-Free Existence," contrasting this with "the bodily involvement of anti-science protesters in their protest [on the one hand] and [on the other] the shunning of the somatic by cyberculture's console cowboys. Physical protest and demonstration has [sic] long been the tactic of those opposing nuclear weaponry. Genetically modified crops are destroyed by organized groups of protesters; some animal rights protesters have even died for their cause. Contrast this with the way that cyberculture's aficionados often appear to have forgotten that they have bodies at all" (p. 169) — an important point on the mostly masculine desire for transcendence or what we have called (using a term from folklore studies), a "separable soul." Adam drives home the point, approvingly quoting Allucquère Rosanne Stone, "'Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?': Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures" on how "The discourse of visionary virtual world builders is rife with images of imaginal bodies freed from the constrains that flesh imposes. Cyberspace developers foresee a time when they will be able to forget about the body. But it is important to remember that virtual community originates in, and must return to the physical. No refigured virtual body [...] will slow the death of a cyberpunk with AIDS. Even in the age of the technosocial subject, life is lived through bodies" (Stone p. 113; Adam pp. 159-60).
Section "Cyberspace as Escape" deals with transcendence in cyberspace suggesting cyberculture's "appeal as a means of producing new forms of expression, new psychic experiences that transcend mundane use of technology, in a fusion of technology and art with cyberspace as the medium of this transformation" — or, less loftily, cyberspace as "an alternatives to drug culture," and drugs, or drugs plus VR (pp. 160-61).
After the specific brief section on "Cyberculture for Feminists," and questions of technological determinism, "The Comfort of Cyborgs" section briefly notes the masculinist and destructive image of cyborgs in THE TERMINATOR and ROBOCOP (1987), moving on to Donna Haraway's ovular discussion of the cyborg "appropriated as a feminist icon" in "A Manifesto for Cyborgs" (pp. 162-63).
RDE, finishing, 20July23
