Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Cyberfeminism as feminist theory and practice is a historically specific concept of the 1990s which grew out of feminist uses of the early world wide web. The notion of cyberfeminism was over time challenged by other ways of conceptualizing the relationship between feminism and new technologies, such as “technofeminism” ( Wajcman 2004 ), “posthumanist feminism” ( Barad 2007 ), and the growing field of feminist new media studies more generally. The concept of cyberfeminism was used for the first time by Australian artists' group VNS Matrix in their Cyberfeminist manifesto for the 21st century ( 1991 ), and soon after by British cultural theorist Sadie Plant. Cyberfeminism refers to a wide range of feminist practices, ranging from high theory to political techno-art, science fiction writing, game design, and activism. Cyberfeminist projects can usually be mapped in relation to two intersecting axes, one running between “theoretical” and “practice-based” cyberfeminism, the other between “third wave” and “second wave” feminism. Theoretically oriented cyberfeminism, aligned with third wave feminism, operates primarily on a sophisticated theoretical level of feminist theory and technoscience studies, in relation to which feminist historian of science Donna Haraway's (1991) cyborg is an emblematic figure (→ Cybernetics ; Cyborgs ). But in contrast to the use of the cyborg in, for ... log in or subscribe to read full text