🗓 Week 26 + 27 / 2 + 9 mai 2023

Critical Transfeminist Design

with Laura Benítez Valero

Laura Benítez Valero works with critical transfeministt design. she intrduces us to a transfeminist perspective on technology, talks about transhack and critical design justice.

we talk about what a transfeminist perspective in a design practice means and how it can be applied to experimental practices. We will talk more about Design Justive and how we relate to technologies and through technologies. What happens to presences? And who is accountable for absences? Who do we relegate to a condition of subalternity? How do we deal with epistemic violence? The course summarized in a MDEF gihub-page.

about subalternaty and epistemic violonce, the Metaphysics of lack (as oppossed to presence) and hacking practices (tranhacck feminism)

2 mai

what is fiction?

two statement: 1. fiction is potential for critical thought as well as 2. a poential for perverse practices.

a channel to image the real world in new comprehensions. fiction is a tool for imagination. fiction has the potential to be a critical tool.Rethink the future rom a from critcal perspective from the (thick) present @Haraway. And it also enables hyperrealities. How is fiction (re)producing perversaties?

fiction can help (re)producing heteropatriachical colonial consequences.

promise about a bright human future

in this coourse we will argue AGAINST the conceptions of transhuminism (that deals with hypersophisticated technologies and its influence on humanity of Earth)

“Transhumanism is a culural, intellectual and scienific movement that affirms the moral duty to improve the physical and cognitive capacities of the human species and to apply new technologies to man, so that the undesireble and unecessary asspects of the human condition can be eliminated: suffering, disease, ageing and even he mortal condition” - Nick Bostrom - guru of silicon valley.

refers to human as MAN and talks about moral duties whereas we know historically that there are many examples of how moral duties excused and justified e.g. eugenics…

exkurs eugenics:

@Thomas Huxley (grandfather of Aldous Huxley) was the father of social neo darwinism. Dialectical fight between two post-darwinist: a struggle (@Thomas Huxley) or mutual aid (@proponos)? T. Huxley and his son Julian Huxley used Darwins theory to excuse a superiority of normative bodies and colonial power structures. Julian Huxley was a main promoter of the British Eugenics Society. Julian Huxley already used the term transhuminism to promote one genetic line as superior people. He wanted to supposedly “improve” the human race.

social neo darwinism: trying to legitamize a superior human race - man white, colonial…

here we come back to Nick Bostrom who talks about moral duties…

PAY ATTENTION TO TERMINOLOGIES

promise me you wont colonize me

Thus the counterproposal to Nick Bostroms conception of transhumanism is to see it in its frame of power.

there are always two dmensions of power @Spinoza

1. potestas: negative, restrictve, oppressive (politics as usual)

2. potentia: positve, affirmative, empowerinig (the political, being political, being active. The actions of everywhere and everything - knowledge making, knowledge transfer…)

these two dimensioins are always fluctuating and we are always embedded in these two power dimensionos and their interactivities.

check out R.I.S.E Radical indigenous Survivance & Empowerment, instagram. Another way of approaching and seeing technologies and its integration into human progress. Daniela Ortiz, aperuvian artist deals in her artistic practice with performance and writings about the rights of indiginous (woman) and the immigration rules. Blood and rejection of who is being born where as well as who has inhereted which blood and how that inffluences our right to be and to have or obtain citzenships. Deals with Jus Sanguins - the right of blood.

this gives a conception about the importance and impact of being aware of my priviledges and of everyone’s privileges.

@Paul B. Precciado

“I am not a man, a woman, a heterosexualm a homosexual; I am a dissident of the sex-gender....

el pressentiment - critical cultural project based in barcelona. Very controversial statement was: “I would not wish an identity upon anyone”. Because actually, who has the priviledge to say they want to give up identity? It is people that have and are able to have identity. How many privledge do we need in order to state this? How many people are neglected an identity froom the moment they are born? Who can really propose to dillute identity?

Another thing on this: identity-politics often see the negative effects of identity. In queer-philiosophies identity is often liberaing and positively connotated.

queering-identities can be affirmative opposed to dilluting.

subaltern - subalternaty

@Gramsci (1929-35 prisson notebooks) “the subordinate calsses always suffer from the initiative off the ruliing class, even when they revolt”

subaltern studies group - non western conception of the term. This group wanted to reveal he point of view of thos who where denied speech and perspectives. Critique on heteropatriarchy and (post)colonial practices.

wha happens with representation? @Edward Said, Stuard Hall … figures of critical and cultural studies. The representation of myself is imposed by the colonizers… how to articulate a counter representation that is by myself?

for us very imporant the Gayanri Chakravorty Spivak, indian philosopher. @spivacs books: can he subaltern speak?. He is a great reader of Edward Said. She is raising a question as a critical trigger because she knows, she is convinced that the subaltern is no a fixes persona but is actually in making - it is a relational conditions. Not a fixes category (like the proletariat). If we manage to change the structure during our lifes, maybe we manage to not be subalterns when we die.

there is nothing more authoritarian than giving voice to others or collecive. Because these people HAVE already voices. Her approach is to critically analyse the (infra)structures that denied these voices to speak up in the first place. What happens with the so-called subalterns is that they are subjects whose dialectical condition is not recognized and is then silenced for centuries. How many structures are workiing here in order to deny these voices? what has been happening with representations?

@Audrey Lorde “We cant demolish the masterhouse with the master tools.” The subaltern cant leave their condition of their subalternatiy using the tools of the hegemonic colonial structures. This is the Metaphysics of lack (as oppossed to presence).

Spivak uses the term epistemic violece.

epistemology (science of knowledge production): When we are producing knowledge, who is participating? We do pay attention to the presences but often deglect the absences! In which language are we articulatinng knowledge-makinng processes ?

epistemic violonce: has to do with pre-set representation. the white hegemonic academic canon neglects the subaltern. e.g. Laura explaining us about the subaltern. Lauer is giving this class, whereas she should not be the one. This is giving us a lot of clues about the structure and systems we are operaing in right now. “Either one is a first world intellectual with full capacity to speak, or one is a silences subaltern”

some projects that deal with the situated knower and situated knowledge - the epistomic conditions.

they have two basic premises:

1. there are no universal rules_methods_methodlogies

2. they are not focusde on WHAT is knowd bu on HOW ii is known.

it matter the social, eocnomc, cultura context in which knowledge is (re)produced.

collectives that are dealing with using fiction as a potential and are commited to a decolonial perspective and accountability… these collective often call themselves biohackers. There are a lot of biohackers that are very close to tanshumanisms! But there are also some that are closer to critical theories, decolonial practices, feminism…

• The Gyneco Makers project

• Open Source Estrogen project; housewifes making drugs. A collaborative, interdisciplinary research project, Open Source Estrogen combines biohacking and speculative design to demonstrate the entrenched ways in which estrogen is a biomolecule with institutional biopower. GOAL: hack the narratives of heteronormativity and what is supposed to be natural and artificial. s

• Mary Maggic deal with hormon queerinig resistence. If we are already colonizes by synthetic hormon, what is our agency? proposal: we are beeig exposed to this slow violence - there are hormons in all we consume. we are affected by he chemo-etrogens- What if now I am able to identify these and extract and at one point maybe be able to synthezise and change them ? we queer the structure. what is the justification o (re)produce the binary system of man and mwoman? Mary maggic is trying to dearticulate the mysticfication of his.

• TransPlant: becoming more plant and less human. About becoming less human in terms of the modern, wester logocentrism, anthropocentrism and colonialism. they work with the hybridization of human blood with chlorophyll and publish their data as open-source experiments. Are we able to live together in a different way? embracing all our entanglements - becoming-with. becoming less essentialism.

• transhack-feminist manifesto by pecjblenda collective; questioning what is femininity, masculinity is.

• power makess us sick: trying to articulate different approacches to open health. They are transfeminist and transgender mental health. @trans health hack. How to deal wih car - self-care and collective car? mutual aid conception

• who is missing in this space? linked to the wet lab in hangar and collaborating with mary maggic and oothers in the field. They analyze knowledge transfer - who has accesss, who is absent? They do no want to use the term bio-materials but instead use living technologies. If we from the beginning on define a tool-related (material) relationship with something, it is difficult to go beyond an anthropocentric entanglement. The collective works on an open protocol of how and what to use besides using other bodies (not other human neither not non-human bodies). @Gayanri Chakravorty Spivak. We tent to forget the once who are not here. Talking about absences instead of only presences.

more about Transhackfeminism ethics. About accountabilty and Design Justive

9 mai

these projeccts are radically opposed to the social neo darwinist conception of evolution based on struggle and its transhumanist reading, claiming for having a moral duty to use hypersophisticated technoloogies to improve the physicaa and cognitive dimensions and capabilities of humans.

these proposals instead are in line with lynn margullis proposal on symbiocracy(@book: symbiotic planet). Presenting he term habitat instead of struggle. Ecolution here is mainly based on mutual aid.

Lynn Margullis: concept of symbiotic interdependece.

citizen science: who is considered a citizen?

• agua forensic

• myconnect mycilium internet

interesting references:

• Barad, K (2013). What is the measure of nothingness? Infinity, Virtuality, Justice Nº099. Documenta (13). https://deeptimechicago.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/barad-k-what-is-the-measure-of-nothingness.pdf

• Design Justice Network https://designjustice.org/read-the-principles

• Maggic, Mary.

• Estrozine 1 https://files.cargocollective.com/c781072/estrozine-1.1.pdf

• Becoming with Funghi https://files.cargocollective.com/c781072/BecomingFungi2.pdf

• Preciado, P (2011) Manifiesto contrasexual. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama

• Puig de la Bellacasa, M (2017) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

• Spivak, G. (1988) Can the Subaltern Speak? Die Philosophin 14 (27):42-58. https://archive.org/details/CanTheSubalternSpeak

• Baym, Nancy. (2015). Personal Connections in the Digital Age: Digital Media and Society. London: Polity.

• Gertz, Nolen. (2018) Nihilism and Technology. London: Rowman and Littlefield.

• Guersenzvaig, Ariel. (2021). The Goods of Design. London: Rowman and Littlefield.

• Parvin, Nassim. (2023). Just Design: Pasts, Presents, and Future Trajectories of Technology. Just Tech. Social Science Research Council. February 1, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35650/JT.3049.d.2023.

• Rosenberger, R. (2017). Callous Objects: Designs against the Homeless (3^rd ed.). University Of Minnesota Press. Available online: https://manifold.umn.edu/read/callous-objects/

• Vallor, Shannon. Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

• Verbeek, Peter-Paul. Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011.