Laboria Cuboniks: The Xenofeminist Manifesto: A Politics for Alienation (2018)
Filed under book | Tags: · accelerationism, alienation, automation, cyberfeminism, feminism, gender, manifesto, materialism, nature, neorationalism, politics, technology, theory, women, xenofeminism
“The real emancipatory potential of technology remains unrealised.
The Xenofeminist Manifesto calls for the scaling up of feminism. Contemporary feminism, it contends, is limited by its predominant investment in local and micropolitical action. What is needed is a feminism capable of systemic intervention. The Xenofeminist Manifesto propose that such a feminism must start from a new universal–one no longer coded as cis, straight, white, and male–with Xenofeminism as its theoretical and technological platform. Drawing on queer and transfeminist theory, as well as philosophical rationalism, against nature and biological essentialism, the feminist collective Laboria Cuboniks instead invest in alienation and the anti-natural, in seizing technology and in embracing the desire for an alien future.
If nature is unjust, change nature!”
Publisher Verso, London, September 2018
Creative Commons BY 4.0 International License
ISBN 9781788731577, 1788731573
95 pages
Commentary: Annie Goh (2018).
Comment (0)Helen Hester: Xenofeminism (2018–) [EN, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · accelerationism, automation, cyberfeminism, feminism, futurity, gender, materialism, neorationalism, posthumanism, reproduction, technology, women, xenofeminism
“In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
Challenging and iconoclastic, this visionary book is the essential guide to one of the most exciting intellectual trends in contemporary feminism.”
Publisher Polity Press, 2018
Theory Redux series
ISBN 1509520627, 9781509520626
v+169 pages
via calamitousannunciation
Reviews: Emma Rees (Times Higher Education, 2018), Rhian E. Jones (New Humanist, 2018), Mareile Pfannebecker (LSE Review of Books, 2018), Peter Heft (The Mantle, 2018), Diana Young (Kontradikce, 2019), Dharmender Dhillon (Philosophy Now, 2020), Alison MacKenzie (Postdigital Science and Education, 2021).
English: HTML (added on 2018-6-1), PDF (4 MB)
Spanish: PDF (trans. Hugo Salas, 2018, added on 2021-1-22)