International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Cyberfeminism as feminist theory and practice has grown out of an emergent use of digital media and new communication technologies. The concept 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 example, mainstream science fiction as an illustration of hardened masculinity, Haraway uses the cyborg to represent transcendence of dichotomies such as mind/body, organism/machine, culture/nature, civilized/primitive, and, centrally, man/woman, implying movement toward a society where gender has ceased to matter, or at least matters ... log in or subscribe to read full text