CYBORG PERSPECTIVES: women and technology today

MENU :: OVERVIEW :: RESOURCES :: DISCUSSION :: TIMETABLE :: MANIFESTO :: MENU

WEEK :: TWO :: THREE :: FOUR :: FIVE :: SIX :: SEVEN :: EIGHT :: NINE :: TEN :: WEEK

taught by Ann Kaloski and Julie Palmer, Centre for Women's Studies, autumn term 2005.

WEEK TWO
CYBORG EXPERIENCES: WRITING OUR TECHNOBIOGRAPHIES

The ideologically charged question of what counts as daily activity, as experience, can be approached by exploiting the cyborg image. Feminists have recently claimed that women are given to dailiness, that women more than men somehow sustain daily life, and so have a privileged epistemo-logical position potentially. There is a compelling aspect to this claim, one that makes visible unvalued female activity and names it as the ground of life. 'Manifesto' p180

The aim of this session is to encourage awareness of the prevalence of technology in our daily lives, and to think about the ways in which technology interacts with our everyday sense of self. By writing our own stories we shall, perhaps, begin to develop an understanding of relationships between technology, subjectivity and knowledge, three key concepts in Donna Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'.

The key reading each week is compulsory. For this first week, we ask you only to read three short chapters, two from Cyborg Lives, and one from Writing Machines. These texts will help explain what is meant by a 'technobiography'. Please then write your own technobiography. Only if there is time after this do you need to read any of the 'additional' texts, although you might find it useful to at least skim these before the class session. You may wish to return to these additional texts as the module proceeds. Any problems, or if this week's work isn't clear, please contact Julie or Ann.

KEY READING:

Flis Henwood, Helen Kennedy, Nod Miller (eds) Cyborg Lives: Women's Technobiographies (Raw Nerve, 2001); read especially a) 'Cyborg Lives in Context', which is a useful introduction to the authors' project and also to our own workshop, and b) at least one of the other chapters that use the idea of Haraway's cyborg to examine everyday technologies - particularly recommended is 'Plugging into the mother country'.

N Katherine Hayles, 'Media and Materiality' in her Writing Machines (MIT Press, 2002). Hayles uses pseudo-autobiography to take the reader through some of the dilemmas of reading digital fiction, and you might be interested in her chapter 'Media and Materiality' which recounts a literary scholar's first encounters with computers. And do*look* at the book, and consider the way computer-mediated technologies are influencing print production.

EXERCISE:

Before the next session:
1. Chose one day and jot down all the technologies you use throughout that day.
2. Write about your relationship to one of these technologies. We're not looking for polished pieces of work, but rather a sense of how you engage with the technologies and a feeling for some of the excitements, problematics and ambivalences. Be as imaginative as you like, and allow yourself to reflect on the cultural as well as the personal aspects of your usage. Write about a page/ 300 words, and pictures and/or recorded sound are also welcome, but by no means obligatory!

In class:

Everyone will get the chance to read out their piece and to respond to all the others. We'll think about the range of the technologies, and the issues raised by our technobiographies and - along the way - we'll start to get to know each other.

After class:

Please upload your technobiography to the Option module yahoo discussion list (url available soon) and you may find yourself returning to this work for future class exercises or assignments.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Lynn Cherny and Elizabeth Reba Weise (eds) Wired women: gender and new realities in cyberspace (Seal Press, 1996)

Jennifer Terry and Melodie Calvert (eds) Processed lives: gender and technology in everyday life (Routledge, 1997)

Sue Thomas Correspondence (excerpt) pp 195-208. In Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth (eds) Reload: Rethinking women and cyberculture (MIT Press, 2002). Full novel available from AKN

Any problems? Contact Ann Kaloski or Julie Palmer