TechnoFeminism

Do technologies have sex? Until recently popular stereotypes have associated technology strongly with masculinity. But in the new digital age, wired women are populating cyberspace and embracing technological change. The cyborg figure has fired the feminist imagination as an icon of women’s power and freedom from biological sex difference. What does the new global information society – interconnected, genetically engineered, digitally designed, remotely controlled – hold for women? While most commentators assert that everything in the digital future will be different, how true is this for the social relations of gender? This timely and engaging book argues that technoscientific advances are radically transforming the woman–machine relationship. However, it is feminist politics rather than the technologies themselves that make the difference. TechnoFeminism fuses the visionary insights of cyberfeminism with a materialist analysis of the sexual politics of technology. Drawing on new perspectives in postmodernism, feminist theory and science and technology studies, Judy Wajcman explores the ways in which technologies are gendered both in their design and use. At the same time, she shows how our very subjectivity is shaped by the technoscientific culture of the world we inhabit. This book provides a lucid, accessible and succinct interpretation of some of the most complex and urgent debates of our times.