Introduction to Digital Feminisms

Introduction to Digital Feminisms Sheila Petty, University of Regina, has written extensively on issues of cultural representation, identity and nation in African and African diasporic cinem a and new m edia, and has curated film , television and new m edia exhibitions for galleries across Canada. She is author of Contact Zones: Memory, Origin and Discourses in Black Diasporic Cinema (2008). Barbara Crow, York University, currently conducts research in m apping digital cities focusing on the relationship between digital technology and m ultim edia cities; Canadian sexual assault law and contested boundaries of consent (with Dr. Lise Gotell), investigating wom en's organizations and legal discourses; the Mobile Digital Com m ons Network (MDCN), exploring relations of m obile technologies an cultural production; and m ost r e c e n t l y , t h e C o m m u n it y W ir e le s s Infrastructure Project (CW IRP), exploring W iFi as public infrastructure. She was president of the C a n a d ia n W o m e n 's Studies Association, 2002-2004 and co-founding editor of wi: Journal of the Mobile Digital Commons Network. 2 Atlantis W elcom e to Atlantis' latest foray into m aking the "digital" explicit in fem inist scholarship and practice. Guest editors Sheila Petty and Barbara Crow have extensive a c a d e m ic e x p e r ie n c e r a n g in g f r o m developing hands-on workshops on how to code web pages to curating exhibitions of digital art. From our perspective, the "digital," in other words, the conversion of texts, sounds and im ages to zeroes and ones m oving around the globe in nano-seconds and their ephem eral and ubiquitous qualities, are both wondrous and daunting. Digital practices have m ade significant changes to not only how we dissem inate, transfer and send content, but also how we m anage, negotiate and m ove in our day-to-day lives. This issue focuses on "digital fem inism s" and how new technologies have inform ed wom en's self expression, cultures, labour and histories, influenced the representation of wom en, and changed the way in which wom en's issues are viewed or pursued. As fem inists working in the areas of new technologies and new m edia practices, we were interested in how the com plexity of new technologies has altered the way wom en think about tim e, space and ourselves in the digital age. W hether it is business, m edia, entertainm ent, advocacy, art, education, social action, politics or a m yriad of other sites of contention, the ability of new technologies to converge with and transform past, present and future ways of interacting with the world in which we live has im m ense and wide-ranging im plications for fem inists. In the original call for papers, we looked for contributions from a broad range of areas, including W om en's Studies, New Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Film and Com m unications Studies, History, Visual Arts, Com puter Science and any other area relevant to the discussion. Given the com plexities of new technologies, we encouraged subm issions that think across geographical divides, histories and m edia, 32.2, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis including (but not lim ited to) the Internet, digital arts, aesthetic and narrative analysis, f ilm , v i d e o , t e l e v i s io n , e d u c a tio n a l software/delivery, and visual and digital art. W e were encouraged by all the exciting fem inist work going on out there. For exam ple, gender issues in art and technology have been taken up by Canadian new m edia artists Nell Tenhaaf, Catherine Richards, Julie Andreyev, Char Davies, Caitlin Fisher, Judith Doyle, Sara Diam ond, Joey Berzowska, Kay Burns, and Nancy Paterson, am ong others. Institutions such as the Banff New Media Institute have been im portant sites for nurturing and taking risks with artists working in new m edia contexts. And given that we both work in the areas of Fine Arts, Social Sciences and Hum anities, we were especially keen to see papers dealing with artistic and cultural inflections of new technologies. Inspired by wom en artist researchers working at the crossroads of art, science and technology, we were keen to dem onstrate that wom en's voices are pivotal and central to these practices. One of our goals with this issue was to further a project that saw fruition in 2003 when The MIT Press published W omen, Art, and Technology, edited by Judy Malloy. One of Malloy's m ajor goals was "to com pile a volum e that both docum ents the work of wom en who have been working innovatively w ith a rt a n d te c h n o lo g y for m any decades....and includes projects and voices now integral in the field" (Malloy 2003, xx). Diversity, inclusivity and difference becam e k e y is s u e s a n d a s m o re w o m e n artists/theorists grappled with and challenged them , it becam e clear that "gender m atters" (xvi), but it m atters differently to different wom en. Interestingly, our project forced us to ponder our intellec tua l an d political relationship to digital technologies and fem inism . W hile we are both cognizant of and have been engaged with "third wave" fem inism , we found ourselves asking ultim ately if fem inism is relevant to considerations of digital technologies. W e were glad to see that the subm issions we did www.msvu.ca/atlantis receive, and thus included in this issue, share in com m on, but not always explicitly, the ways in which digital technologies m ediate wom en's bodies: their labouring bodies, their reproductive bodies; and their disabled bodies. The cover art of this issue of Atlantis is a photo of students interacting with a work by fem inist collaborators Nell Tenhaaf and Melanie Baljko and this collection begins with an interview/conversation conducted by Kim Sawchuk entitled, "Artificial Life and Lo-Fi Em bodim ent: A Conversation with Nell Tenhaaf and Melanie Baljko." This piece sets the context of collaboration for, and interdisciplinarity of, fem inist work in digital technologies. Sawchuk's interview weaves questions of how, why and when these kinds of collaborations can com e together and what these collaborations can reveal. They address the significant challenge of "m aking...different languages and skills speak to one another." In particular, Sawchuk, Tenhaaf and Baljko e x p lo re "fe m in ism a n d e m b o d ie d com m unication" and "[how] the presence of fem inism inform [s] their scientific research and the art practice." They provide us with ways to not only think about how to effect these kinds of collaborations, but what they can also enhance and ultim ately, m ake m ore com plex and nuanced. W hile Sawchuk interviews two fem inists working and creating in the fields of com puter science and Fine Arts, Krista ScottDixon's "Long (Standing) Digital Divisions: W om en's IT W ork in Canada" puts this labour into a context and probes the notion of the "digital divide" and its relevance to wom en's work within the IT contexts in Canada. The labour involving the creation, production and adm inistration of digital technologies takes up, and is shaped by, gender practices. ScottDixon provides us with evidence of how the intersections of race, m asculinity and fem ininity have m aterial consequences. But, what is m ost significant about Scott-Dixon's contribution is her dism antling and interrogation of the concept, "digital divide," that continues to reproduce and reify relations of gender and digital technologies. PR Atlantis 32.2, 2008 3 She argues, through an exam ination of five juxtaposed relations, "technology/work," "p a id /un pa id," "go od job s/ba d jo b s ," "work/tim e," and "divide/equity," that the concept of divide is em bedded in corporate discourses of "haves" and "have-nots" and that solutions lie alm ost exclusively in the realm of skills and access to technologies. Hence, the "digital divide" discourse relies and reproduces liberal notions all the while purporting that individual wom en m ust be responsible for learning these skills and leaving it to the m arket to provide these technologies. She concludes by arguing: "If fem inists are to address the persistent disparities in wom en's IT labour force participation and experiences, they will not only need to reclaim the conceptualization of the 'digital divide,' but also to speak m ore broadly of a project of technological equity." Scott-Dixon's interrogation of the problem atics of the "digital divide" and m ore specifically, how this concept continues to m aintain traditional gender relations in the m aterial practice of digital technology and her call for "technological equity," lends a useful fram ework for two Canadian case studies that explicitly take up the labour of digital technologies. These case studies, exam ined in Katrina Peddle, Alison Powell and Leslie Regan Shade's article, "Bringing Fem inist Perspectives into Com m unity Inform atics," reveal how Scott-Dixon's relations get played out in a com m unity business organization and a not-for-profit technology group developing and im plem enting "free" W i-Fi networks. It is Peddle, Powell and Shade's contention that gender played a significant role in shutting wom en out or keeping them in particularly subordinate roles. Their appeal to this em erging field is that this kind of work m ust "exam ine the exclusions inherent in the i n v is ib ilit y o f t h e e v e r y d a y w h e n conceptualizing participation in CI initiatives and organizations" (Balka 2002) and why a fem inist intervention is required in the newly em erging field of Com m unity Inform atics (CI). In quite a different context, Janice Hladki explores "Social Justice, Artistic Practice, and New Technologies: Gender and 4 Atlantis Disability Activism s and Identities in Film and Digital Video" through the work of South African fem inist disability film m aker Shelley Barry. Hladki approaches the film m aker's works from a Foucauldian perspective and provides close critical readings of the film and video trilogy, W hole: a Trinity of Being. In this context, Hladki reveals the ways in which digital technologies can tell different stories for and about bodies with disabilities. Barry's rendering of her experience with digital text, sound and im ages not only provides her with ways to represent her disabled body, but also to consider the potential of bodies with disabilities. In one of Barry's pieces in her trilogy, she skillfully changes the subject position of the m edical profession's gaze of her body that Monique Benoit and Jean Dragon so carefully docum ent in "Corps, genre et interprétations par im agerie m édicale: les dessous de la s c è n e clin iq u e dans la re la tio n patiente/m édicin." Like Barry, Benoit and Dragon argue that m edical im agery has had a significant im pact on representations of the gendered body in m edicine. In particular, the field of gynecology has involved, and evolved, visualization techniques that have served to "standardize" im ages of wom en's bodies that were, at one tim e, invisible to the hum an eye. The authors effectively argue, however, that this practice and process are inherently voyeuristic in nature and procedure. Furtherm ore, they go on to detail how, by pushing the lim its of photographic technology in the drive to achieve the m ost "realistic im age" of the wom an's body, western m edicine has, in essence, reduced the doctor/patient relationship to one of technological efficiency and innovation. As Hladki describes and analyzes the ways in which artist Shelley Barry turns the m edical gaze back unto us using digital technologies, Benoit and Dragon illustrate how difficult it is to not be com pletely objectified by m edical technology itself. Ultim ately, wom en's bodies are reduced to the m inutia of zeroes and ones - both a digital body and electrom agnetic fields with no agency. Our last two papers address the ways 32.2, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis in which one digital technology application, blogging, with its attendant culture of giving everyone a voice and m aking everyone an author, conveys the always critical insight of fem inist scholarship that contexts m atter. In "Blogging the Maternal: Self-Representations of The Pregnant and Postpartum Body," Lesley Husbands investigates current efforts to counter the narrowness of dom inant representations of the pregnant and postpartum body. Like Benoit and Dragon, despite the potential of these technologies to provide wom en with m ore knowledge and agency about their bodies, the continued subordination and devaluation of wom en's bodies gets reproduced in blogs by, about and for wom en. In particular, Husbands' essay exam ines the Internet blog, "The Shape of a Mother," and argues that while its intent is to successfully challenge and engage with hegem onic m ass m edia representations of the "perfect" pregnant and postpartum body, in her im pressionistic m ethodology, she finds that despite the agency of digital tools wom en's post-partum bodies continue to be pathologized and desexualized. In another blogging context, "Blogging in the Classroom : Technology, Fem inist Pedagogy, and Participatory Learning," Jenny Roth advocates the use of blogs in the fem inist classroom as a way to enrich students' participatory action. Roth claim ed to be a neophyte in understanding and using these technologies yet she was keenly aware of the ways in which her undergraduate s tu d e n ts have in te g ra te d digital com m unications in their day-to-day lives and wanted to work with these skills (social networking, text m essaging and em ailing). Indeed, from Roth's perspective the blogging com ponent of her course m et with trem endous success. W hat is critical to note in the Husbands and Roth papers is that context m atters in order to facilitate the agentic dim ensions of these technologies. W hile Husbands' prem ise that a site where wom en could discuss post-partum bodies m ight be a way to resist dom inant discourses, the proprietor of the blog did not intervene, facilitate, and/or engage with participant www.msvu.ca/atlantis entries. In the blog Roth established for her class, the reasons for the blog, instructions of use and focus on particular content with specific readings - hence its explicitly pedagogical agenda - produced the m ore e m a n c ip a to ry re s u lts expo u n d ed b y proponents of blogging. Consequently, what is m ost significant for fem inist considerations of digital applications is how to facilitate and m ake room for all wom en's experiences in all contexts. As Shade and Crow have argued elsewhere, English-Canadian research in this area "has made the m aterial relations of technology and culture explicit and integral to social change" (2004, 170). These papers continue this research agenda and also allude to the possibility that these technologies can be part of our agenda for social change. It is our hope that fem inist scholars can m ake m ore explicit the ways in which digital technologies perm eate our everyday, are com pelled to m ake m ore obvious and provocative relations with these technologies and to be m indful of the ways in which these technologies continue to m ediate wom en's bodies. References Balka, E. "The Invisibility of the Everyday: New Technology and W om en's W ork," Sex and Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, E. Meehan and M. E. Riordan, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002, pp. 60-74. M alloy, Judy, ed. W omen, Art, and Technology. Cam bridge, Mass and London, England: The MIT Press, 2003. Shade, Leslie Regan and Barbara Crow. "Canadian Fem inist Perspectives on Digital Technology," Topia 11 (2004):161-76. PR Atlantis 32.2, 2008 5