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Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life

Sarah Kember mAnk

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Evolving feminism in Alife environments 177

itself, as this chapter hopes to show, can make a difference. M y project, as has already been suggested, is by no means pristine and is, i n a sense, doubly contaminated - not just by the sciences it moves (slightly) closer towards but by the position it started from. I do not mean to trace a linear trajector)' f rom ignorance to enlightenment, not least because accusations o f scientific 'illiteracy' fly all too often in the face of feminists from scientists entrenched in the science wars and invested primarily in preventing any form of outside intervention. ' What I do mean to trace is the problem o f entrenchment and a possible means o f averting - in the case of alife - the stalemate of science wars. Dialogue does not entail a one-way movement but a two-way dynamic, and a step into 'no-man's' land for feminism is predicated on the apparent break in biology's ranks. T h e unfortunate macho metaphors of combat which suggest themselves in this context signal all too clearly the problem which needs to be addressed. T h i s book is inevitably part o f the problem, and where I started from is where I am now but with some hopefully significant differences w h i c h developed during a process which I am calling dialogue (not emergence). These differences do not centre so much on greater degrees of assent or dissent between the values of feminism and alife, but on the kinds of complexity opened up through internal contestation and made available to diffraction.

Since I am rejecting a teleology of feminist engagement wi th alife, what follows at least indicates the need for a genealogy attendant on the gaps and inconsist­encies in both clearly non-homogenous discourses. M y sustained interest and investment in discourses of alife is strongly informed by debates wi th in cyber­feminism. Cyberfeminism may be defined in relation to its origins in feminist theory and practice of the late i980s and early 1990s (Kennedy 2000: 285) w h i c h engaged wi th the emergent technologies of the information revolution. I t was in part a response to the anarchic politics o f cyberpunk (Squires 1996), characterised by both Andrew Ross (1991) and R o s i Braidotti (1996) as a realm of middle class adolescent male fantasies centred on a rebellion against the parent culaire and a disdain for physicality, or the merely mortal. Computer hacking and science fictional depictions of transcendence as 'getting out of the meat' (Springer 1996) are associated w i t h the then 'new' technologies o f the Internet and virtual reality ( V R ) , and w i t h the notion of cyberspace as, in WooUey's (1992: 122) terms, the 'new frontier'. T h e new final frontier, rather like the old one, was swiftly colonised by cowboys and so cyberfeminism was in part a kind o f Calamit) ' Jane for the new media, creating anarchy more specifically wi th in patriarchal culture and strategically employing anachronistic or essentialist images of women. There were the Riot Girls (Braidotti 1996: 14) and V N S Matrix (1994) whose computer game heroine called G e n sabotages B i g Daddy Mainframe and does for Circui t Boy ('a fetishised replicant of the perfect human H e M a n ' ) by bonding w i t h D N A sluts and consuming plenty of G-slime. Where parody and humour may have mitigated against the troubling aspects of essentialism here, the same cannot be said for Plant's (1995) analogy of weaving, women and cybernetics in w h i c h a supposedly feminised technology is described as being autonomous, self-organised

'A wonderfu l wo rk . . . .Sa rah K e m b e r ' s mas te ry of s u c h an aston ish ing range of s o u r c e s is an incredib le ach ievemen t -not least b e c a u s e s h e is equal ly at home with all of t hem and h a s exce l lent powers of expos i t ion to reach a u d i e n c e s in A- l i fe, evolut ionary biology, cultural s tud ies and feminis t theory. '

Alison Adam, Reader in Information Systems, Salford University

is wo rk makes a significant contr ibut ion to the f ie lds of A-l i fe and feminist s c i e n c e s tud ies , and will se r ve a s a useful introduct ion to A- l i fe a s a s c i e n c e a n d cul ture. '

Janine Marchessault, Chair, Department of Film and Video, York University, Toronto

Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life examines the construction, manipulation, and re-definition of life in contemporary technoscientific culture. The book takes a critical political view of the concept of life as information and traces it through the new biology and discourse of genomics, incorporating the changing discipline of Artificial Life and its manifestation in art, language, literature, commerce and entertainment. Using examples from cloning to computer games, and incorporating an analysis of hardware, software and 'wetware', Sarah Kember demonstrates how this relatively marginal field connects with - and connects up - global networks of information systems.

Refocusing concern on the ethics, rather than the 'nature' of life-as-it-could-be, Kember proposes that Artificial Life is in part an adaptation to the climate of opposition surrounding Artificial Intelligence. From a feminist perspective, and with a set of concerns related to the role of the body, the self and the species in the production of life-as-it-could-be, Kember points to a strategy for change that rests on a dialogue between 'nature' and 'culture', ontology and epistemology, science and the humanities.

Sarah Kember is a senior lecturer in the department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is the author of Virtual Anxiety: Photography, New Technologies and Subjectivity (1998).

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