Feminist science and technology studies

El presente artículo explora la metodología difractiva propuesta por Karen Barad como una práctica ético-onto-epistemológica que posibilita el desarrollo transdisciplinario de la investigación artística experimental. Plantear difractivamente un pensar/hacer performativo permite comprender las diferencias como interferencias productivas y dinámicas, generadoras de un conocimiento comprometido con potencialidad para la transformación. En esta línea, el artículo ofrece un estudio de la plant-based music que pone de relieve cómo arte y tecnología intra-actúan de manera difractiva subrayando las implicaciones políticas que surgen en torno a cómo atendemos a las diferencias agenciales desde un tocar afectivo y afectante.

There is a marked lack of literature on user-submitted sexual videos from Latin America. To start filling that gap, we present a formal statistical testing of several hypotheses about the characteristics of 214 videos from Nereliatube.com posted from the inauguration of the site until December 2010. We found that in most cases the video was made consensually and the camera was operated by the man. The most frequent practice shown was fellatio, followed by vaginal penetration. The great majority of videos showed the sexual interactions of one woman with one man; group sex was rare. Violence and manifestations of power were rare and when there was violence it was mostly simulated. Latin American user-submitted sexual videos in Nereliatube generally reflect a society in which women and men have a variety of sexual practices that are mostly consensual and that do not differ from the biologically and anthropologically expected patterns.

This paper analyzes how the convergent dynamics of reductive technological metaphors, algorithmic mediation, and biopolitical commodification are creating a new form of post-human servitude that represents a fundamental transformation in the nature of power relations and human subjugation. Drawing from contemporary scholarship in critical technology studies, surveillance capitalism theory, biopolitical analysis, and postcolonial technology studies, this work integrates philosophical, sociological, bioethical, and geopolitical perspectives to delineate a comprehensive theoretical framework of resistance and emancipation in the era of technological emptiness and digital colonization.

I delivered this public talk at the Forum for European Philosophy at the London School of Economics, being one of three panelists invited to respond to a passage written by Ian Bogost on the current status of objects in our lives. In my paper, I question the stance of contemporary object-based philosophies, which would classify language in the same way any other objects have an "ontology." I am trying to open up a discussion which brings back the special attention given to language above all other objects, a position which has been pushed aside within the past 10-15 years in philosophical enquiry. My proposition is that Donald Trump's "locker room talk" is a signal to us that we must bring back a more deconstructive political engagement with language as object

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A fourth agricultural revolution is pronounced on the strength of new digital technologies entering farming practice. Concerns that, left unchecked, this digital revolution will intensify the problems generated by the third agricultural revolution have led major supranational actors such as the UN and the EU to promote the embedding of state-of-the-art digital technologies within agroecology, a movement that foregrounds the wellbeing of both nature and farmers, drawing on traditional modes of knowledge and practice. The article examines whether this aspiration to combine "the best of both worlds" is feasible at the level of the basic commitments of agroecology and "agromodernism," a term referring collectively to mainstream modes of agriculture that utilise industrial and digital technologies to maximise productivity. The article shows how agroecology and agromodernism constitute contrasting discursive frames and mindsets. At the same time, the article shows that agroecology and agromodernism share an oft-overlooked common ground. Drawing on the work of Martin Heidegger, Jean-François Lyotard and Frédéric Neyrat the article shows that agroecology and agromodernism are constricted by the technoscientific "world-picture," in which the world is infinitely constructible in the hands of the human. The article argues, accordingly, for an alternative, "inhuman" agroecology. Such an agroecology should welcome any technology that resists the totalising tendency of evermore control over the land and foregrounds what exceeds human values and interests.

Bildung und Verkörperung im digitalen Zeitalter 1. Zum Auftakt: KI zwischen Fortschrittshoffnung und anthropologischer Verunsicherung Die Fortschritte in der Entwicklung von sogenannter Künstlicher Intelligenz stellen auch das Bildungssystem vor immense Herausforderungen, führen sie doch dazu, dass ein rasch wachsender Anteil derjenigen kognitiven Leistungen, die bislang durch Menschen erbracht wurden, durch Computerprogramme ersetzt werden kann. Schöne neue Welt? Wo Menschen einmal unverzichtbar waren, werden zunehmend Programme und Maschinen zu ihrer Ersetzung entwickelt. Ingenieurinnen, Juristen, Therapeutinnen, Lehrpersonal -die Liste der Berufe auf Abruf ist lang. Parallel dazu schreitet die Digitalisierung des Unterrichtens rasant voran. Doch wofür sollen junge Menschen künftig eigentlich ausgebildet werden? Für das, was die KI ohnehin besser kann? Die Auswirkungen von KI beschränken sich nicht auf die Transformation des Berufslebens, sie greifen zunehmend auch in unser menschliches Selbstverständnis ein. KI simuliert immer überzeugender auch das, was uns als Menschen ausmacht, nämlich Personalität. So können Chatbots inzwischen derart nuancierte ›Dialoge‹ führen, dass es schwer wird, die Anmutung eines lebendigen Gegenübers abzuwehren. Aber warum auch abwehren? Die in Illustrierten kursierende Geschichte von Joshua Barbeau, der einen Chatbot mit Informationen über seine verstorbene Verlobte fütterte, um dann ›Gespräche‹ mit der Toten zu führen, holt die Episode »Be Right Back« aus der Science-Fiction-Serie Black Mirror ein, in der eine Frau aus Trauer um ihren verstorbenen Mann einen Roboter bestellt, der dessen Fortleben simuliert. Nichts ist in diesem Metier zurzeit veralteter als die Science-Fiction vom Vortag. Mit KI verbundene Hoffnungen oder Befürchtungen betreffen also nicht nur die Ersetzbarkeit menschlicher kognitiver Fähigkeiten, sondern auch den Kern unseres Selbstverständnisses als Menschen. Im Bildungsbereich ist von diesem anthropologischen Schauder allerdings bisher auffällig wenig zu spüren. Das innovative und disruptive Potential von KI wird vielfach gepriesen, doch eher selten nachdenklich reflektiert; vor allem wird sehr viel Geld in die Hand genommen, um nicht im globalen KI-Wettbewerb den

This paper proposes a novel critique of Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, with a perspective rooted not in physical interpretation but in mathematical epistemology. We introduce a simple yet profound mathematical analogy-indeterminate linear equations-to argue that the so-called "superposition state of the cat" is a category error. This error mistakenly attributes "epistemological uncertainty" arising from observational underspecification to the system's own "ontological uncertainty." We prove that just as indeterminate equations having infinite solutions does not mean the variables themselves exist in a "superposed" state, the cat's life-death state is determinate at every moment in the causal chain; the so-called "both dead and alive" is merely an invalid description of our own knowledge deficiency when observational dimensions are insufficient. This paper aims to dissolve this paradox and re-establish clear boundaries between observer, causal chain, and reality states.

The invention of photography in the nineteenth century enabled a wide range of people, many of who could not otherwise afford to commission a painter, to have their likenesses recorded. In Australia, this remarkable new medium was avidly taken up by colonial settlers who, from the mid-1840s onwards, utilised photographic portraits to maintain connections with family and friends, particularly those back 'home'. Separated by vast distances, the small and very portable form of the photograph provided a means by which emigrants could not only keep in touch, but also craft an embodiment of themselves and their life in the colonies. Surviving images allow nuanced insights, particularly through dress, into how the medium of photography was used to create and transmit images of self.

While the sending and receiving of photographs between colonial emigrants and family and friends in Britain is recorded in letters and surviving albums of carte-de-visite, the agency of the sitter and the emotional attachment to such images add another layer of meaning to the production of these photographic portraits. For many, these images were the only way recipients could see and recognise family and friends who were separated through the act of emigration. This paper will discuss the adoption of photography in Australia by colonial settlers and its role in maintaining trans-imperial connections. It will consider how the image embodied personal aspirations of life in Australia while contributing to a collective image of emigrant success.

Emerging as a critique of the cultural paradigm in philosophy, new materialism has had a significant impact on the contemporary landscape of the humanities and social sciences, particularly since the 2000s. Following Donna Haraway's 1988 critique of social constructivism, developed through her concept of situated knowledge, which invited feminists to make reality claims rather than merely addressing the extent to which this or that practice is socially constructed, new materialist feminisms proposed solutions for conceiving the agency of matter-as well as the body and the nonhuman-in its various entanglements with meaning and discourse. Most have criticized Judith Butler's concept of performativity for reducing the body to either a sign or a fantasy, thus ignoring its agency. In this article, after positioning the new materialist critique of the cultural turn as a response to Haraway's earlier call for faithful claims to reality, I argue that the underlying problem of the new materialists with Butlerian performativity is generally framed in terms of an objection to correlationism, as conceptualized by the French philosopher Meillassaux, which the new materialist feminisms themselves do not manage to evade either. New materialism, which first emerged as a critique of the cultural paradigm, has now become a productive school of thought, influencing today's arts and humanities as well as the social sciences. In the arts, works with new materialist sensibilities that foreground the agency of the nonhuman with its socio-material affordances have proliferated, especially since the second decade of the 2000s. Some examples include Leonard (2020) on Altieri's Becoming we (2018), Golańska (2017) on Eisenman and Libeskind's monumental designs, Jain and Roy (2022) on the agency and materiality of waste in artworks by twenty-first-century Indian artists. This went hand in hand with reflections on the use of new materialism in art education (Truman and Springgay 2015; Hood and

Deleuze and Guattari provide a sophisticated account of ontological relationality, many facets of which have been annexed into new materialist theory. It is worth asking how this happens and with what degree of accuracy. Deleuze's appropriation of Spinozist univocity has been interpreted by many feminist new materialists as an endorsement of addressing all beings as ontological and moral equals and using impersonal affect as the guidepost for ethics. The question is, can relational ontologies, which downplay human exceptionalism, agency, and the relevance of human consciousness, yield an ethics or a politics? Primarily comparing their use of Spinoza to that of Braidotti's and the differences between Barad's idea of the mattering of meaning to their sense and concept formation, this chapter concludes that Deleuze and Guattari's account of relational becoming does not issue in zoeor ontoegalitarianism but rather a pragmatics that, while challenging human exceptionalism, retains a role for human distinctiveness.

In landscapes marked by genocide, state terror, and ecological transformation, ghosts do not simply represent what was lost but return to disrupt settled temporalities, animating struggles over justice, memory, and the ethics of killing. Tracing a personal and ethnographic encounter in Tierra del Fuego, this essay explores how rage, refusal, and haunting unsettle conservation logics and expose the unresolved wounds of organized disappearance. Rather than interpret rage as an object to be explained or reduce spectral presences to metaphor, the article proposes haunting as anti-method, a way of attending to ghosts, anger, and multispecies violence without seeking resolution.

The global socio-ecological crisis is making it increasingly clear that 'we' do not only act in interpersonal social and political relationships, but that non-human forms of life and relationships must also be taken into account in the critical analysis of our presente. In light of that realization, this volume opens the question of the Menge (multitude, crowd) towards a post-anthropocentric perspective on multiplicity. Based on speculative readings of works by K. Barad, M. de la Cadena, and C. Vicuña, the essays illuminate how a human-and-more-than-human intra/sectional approach can help deconstruct the western hegemonic framework in contemporary cultural thinking from a transdisciplinary perspective.

Historical forms of domination and power, encompassed but not limited to social categories and hierarchies of difference, get built into seemingly non-human objects and the infrastructures that link them, thus sanitizing digital media technologies as human-free.  Rather than questioning the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of the human, fantasies about the revolutionary nature of new media and technology developments as posthuman carry forward and re-universalize the historical specificity of the category “human” whose bounds they claim to surpass.  To begin to theorize some of the ways in which the notion of a revolutionary network of humans and things is both racial and racializing, the first part of this article develops a reading of Sylvia Wynter’s theorization of modern “man” as fundamentally constructed through racial-scientific notions of the biological and economic.  We then think Wynter’s notion of homo-oeconomicus alongside Rifkin’s postulation that in fact th...

This paper provides an analysis of how cultural notions of the body and kinship conveyed through Western medical technologies and practices in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) bring together India's colonial history and its economic development through outsourcing, globalisation and instrumentalised notions of the reproductive body in transnational commercial surrogacy. Essential to this industry is the concept of the disembodied uterus that has arisen in scientific and medical practice, which allows for the logic of the ‘gestational carrier’ as a functional role in ART practices, and therefore in transnational medical fertility travel to India. Highlighting the instrumentalisation of the uterus as an alienable component of a body and subject – and therefore of women's bodies in surrogacy – helps elucidate some of the material and political stakes that accompany the growth of the fertility travel industry in India, where histories of privilege and difference converge...

Between aesthetics and functionality.
Conceptual and theoretical perspectives on digital fashion

The recent phenomenon of digital fashion is often considered non-functional because garments cannot be ‚worn‘ to provide protection from the elements; however, popular designs frequently incorporate elements of functional clothing, such as sportswear and outerwear. Against this scaffolding, this paper reevaluates the relationship between aesthetics and functionality within digital fashion. Tracing the terms of aesthetics and function through various discourses and disciplines, including psychological considerations on the purpose of dress, aesthetic
and design theory, as well as more recent research into functional clothing,
I argue that digital fashion may not only be theorized through the lens of aesthetics but also through functionality. Specifically, the aesthetics of functionality work to produce a disciplined body and mind of the wearer. Further, digital fashion is placed both within a human environment as well as the digital environment of social media platforms and their affordances.

GAFA is a term that refers to the four dominant digital platforms: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. This term is more commonly used in Europe and other regions, while in the U.S. it is common to call these companies "Big Tech," including also Microsoft.

This article inter-references Asian North American theorizing of techno-orientalism and queer Asia as method. Specifically, it develops queer techno-orientalism as method to think beyond Chinese queer and trans bodies' hyper visibility as "technologized threats" in techno-orientalist representations and their invisibility in China's cisheteronormative, nationalist hi-tech future. It argues that Chinese queer and trans bodies can reclaim a reparative techno future beyond these two dominant frames. To do this, I practice queer techno-orientalism as method by juxtaposing the cyberpunk TV series Mr. Robot (2016-2019) and the animated short Uterus Man (2013). I read against the grain of techno-orientalist tropes to explore other possible relationships between Chinese queer/trans bodies and technology more specifically, and between East Asian queer/ trans futures and technology more broadly.

This volume explores urgent questions surrounding the bidirectional relationship between feminist philosophy and emerging technologies. It underlines the exigency of feminist philosophical reflections on the design, use, and understanding of emerging technologies and at the same time accentuates how emerging technologies can uniquely impact the shape of future feminist critique and intervention.

While feminist philosophers have attended to problems posed by a few specific technologies that emerged in the previous century—especially reproductive technologies—broader philosophical questions concerning the challenges various new technologies present to feminism have yet to receive the sustained, critical attention they deserve. Feminist Philosophy and Emerging Technologies responds to this problem. It is divided into two sections. Section 1 provides theoretical considerations about the links between feminist philosophy and philosophy of technology (broadly construed) by developing—against the background of emerging technologies—methodological approaches and guidance for bringing those two fields of philosophical research together. Section 2 is dedicated to analyses of specific emerging technologies and user trends, their relation to extant structures of oppression, and to bringing to the fore various ways in which a feminist philosophy of technology can impact the design of current and future technologies.

Feminist Philosophy and Emerging Technologies is an excellent resource for scholars and advanced students working in feminist philosophy, philosophy of technology, ethics, political philosophy, feminist theory, gender and cultural studies, and science and technology studies.

This issue poses, once more, the centuries-old question: "What is art?" and invited respondents to answer this question either from the perspective of the "creator" or the "recipient" of art. We were invited to answer a question about "the essence of art", and to specify the position from which we write in terms of this creator-recipient duality. Conventionally and controversially for some of us, providing essential definitions of art (as well as normative evaluations and ontologies of art) has been a task that the Western philosophy of art has assumed for itself. Philosophy has conceived its task as defining the properties which can and cannot be assigned to art as a phenomenon in ways that some have critiqued as an authoritarian gesture. 1 The project of this journal issue invites other voices into this definitional practice: gathering a "variety of responses from very different people who interact with art in different ways". This is a welcome gesture towards a greater inclusivity; to perform art's philosophy otherwise. However, my starting point is to speculate towards a further extension or mutation of this gesture. My starting point is the provocation -both playful and serious -that we need to invite nonhuman animals into this questioning too. We, human animals, need to find ways to ask nonhuman animals what art is or, better, what art might become. "What happens to standard human definitions of art when nonhuman animals are the creators and recipients, artists and audiences?"

This study presents a reflexive discussion on findings from my 2022–2023 field research at an equestrian club in Ankara, using a postmodern anthropological approach. I examine how anthropocentric perspectives obscure nonhuman roles in social life, analyzing horses' positioning through spatial and linguistic arrangements. Drawing on postmodern anthropology and multispecies ethnography, I assess how knowledge production is shaped by ethical and species-based standpoints. My refusal to ride -rooted in veganism and animal liberation activism- limited my interactions with club members, challenging the "neutral observer” ideal in classical ethnography. Through participatory observation and interviews, I explore spatial organization, linguistic codes, and horse subjectivity. Findings reveal that horses’ needs are often neglected, while labels like "obedient” or "troublesome” reinforce human-centered instrumentalization. Despite multispecies ethnography’s potential, anthropocentric methodological legacies constrain its effectiveness. By reflecting on horse agency and my researcher position, I highlight anthropology’s limitations in engaging with nonhuman beings and advocate for a more inclusive ethnographic perspective.

Narrative, at least in any common-sense designation, tends to be understood as being composed of language: words are the stuff of stories. But if words have often been “granted too much power” in how we understand the world and ourselves (Barad 2007: 132), and the sensuousness of matter granted too little, might we consider a broader interpretation? This book chapter explores embodied mimesis as a material-discursive narrative strategy, able to unfurl more-than-human narratives with and through the body. Embodied mimesis is a creative practice of embodied role-play, in which one imaginatively mimics and assimilates to the movements, gestures and sensational capacities of non-humans. The chapter specifically looks at the creative mimetic practices of Natasha Myers and Miriam Simun to ask how they might activate the imaginative capacities of the body by opening up ordinarily illegible or ‘impossible’ sensations.

Diese Arbeit beleuchtet Myokarditis als mehrdimensionales Phänomen im Schnittfeld zwischen moderner Herzbildgebung, Immunologie und neurowissenschaftlich fundierter Bewusstseinsforschung. Unter Rückgriff auf kardiovaskuläre MRT-Techniken (T2, LGE, EGE) sowie immunhistologische Methoden wird die These entwickelt, dass entzündliche Prozesse im Herzmuskel auch als Ausdruck systemischer Überlastung interpretiert werden können. Ergänzt durch Theorien wie IIT und GWT wird eine Brücke geschlagen zwischen somatischer Medizin, emergentem Bewusstsein und KI-gestützter Diagnostik.

“I carry my uterus in a small suitcase for the day I need to leave it at the railway station. Till then I hold on to my hysteria and take my nettle tea with gin”.
-Tishani Doshi

Food and dirt stains on clothes do not proclaim or declare a similar meaning as a menstrual stain does. This is because, a mark on one’s clothes does not become a stain until it has been socially, culturally, and linguistically constructed as such. Unlike ‘semen’, which is also found deposited outside of the body, menstrual blood constructs a surveillance of male gaze against women’s leaky bodies. On the whole, the proposed research study has been conducted on the young women adults of Kolkata within the age group of 18-25 years old, keeping in mind the definition of young adults as posited forward by the Young Adult Development Project, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2018).

In doing that, the study deciphers the kind of social construction of menstrual blood which is already at play in the larger society, and whether this new generation of educated young women adults is congruent with this narrative or ponders over quite something contradictory. This should also be understood that Kolkata being an urban sprawl might have a bearing of urbanized thought process upon the present researcher, the respondents, and largely the research study. Henceforth, the rationality and significance of the study lies in its effort to decide whether menstrual blood as a female bodily fluid is indeed a matter out of place as it transcends the bodily boundaries, or it being considered as a form of pollution hovers the society by its mere existence. For this particular research study, data has been collected from both primary and secondary sources. While primary sources include interviews, secondary sources include books, journals, and articles for that matter. The analysis in this paper is qualitative in nature.

The integration of Indigenous Knowledges in planning represents an ongoing dilemma. On the one hand, involvement in the planning process enhances a decolonial space for Indigenous Peoples. On the other, it legitimates the coloniality of planning and coopts Indigenous Knowledges. Because of its complexity, a holistic view of the mechanisms Indigenous Peoples create to engage, support, and empower themselves during the planning process represents an alternative approach. In this paper, I apply the voice of place to describe the epistemological reclamation five Tribal Nations experience in the Bears Ears National Monument. The findings suggest a refusal of settler narratives in Indigenous Land, the importance of Indigenous processes, a praxis of relational Knowledges, and the fluid forms of moving between knowledge systems while maintaining knowledge sovereignty. By telling a story from the Tribes' perspective, this research re-signifies the role of Indigenous Peoples when engaging in settler-state planning.

In this paper, we introduce Karen BARAD's concept of agentive realism and the diffractive methodology based on it. This methodology was inspired by Niels BOHR's work on the complementarity principle in quantum theory. BARAD argued for overcoming the traditional separation between ontology and epistemology in order to gain a new perspective on the relationship between the observer and the observed. We explain central concepts such as "intraaction," "apparatus" and "entangled reconfigurations of spacetimemattering" to show how objects and subjects emerge and constitute each other in a network of relationships. We also present critical reflections on the transfer of theoretical figures from quantum mechanics to social science issues. We discuss the potential benefits as well as the challenges and misunderstandings that arise from such an interdisciplinary framework and use examples from hospital ethnography to illustrate how BARAD's methodological concepts can be applied to empirical research. This approach is particularly productive for questions where it is not possible to assume a particular form of identity and subjectivity. The ethical implications of this paradigm are also discussed in more detail.

In this essay we envision a more durable and portable model of scholarship on public engagement with science through partnerships between rhetoricians of science and quantitative social scientists. We consider a number of barriers and limitations that make such partnerships difficult, with an eye toward discovering ways that researchers may overcome them. We conclude by articulating guidelines for reciprocal transdisciplinary work as well as specific recommended practices for such collaborations.

In the present master thesis I aim to describe how technology reshapes and transforms sexuality, but also to present a normative account of how the role of technology in the transformation of sexuality should be addressed as an issue of sexual education. The starting point of my analysis is the split between sex and reproduction. I argue that contraception technologies freed sexuality from the needs of reproduction, played an important role in the emergence of what Anthony Giddens defines as plastic sexuality and in the reordering of sexuality in relations to lifestyles. I then use the work of Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek in order to present how contraception technologies determine the very possibilities we have for interpreting our sexuality due to their role in our bodily and sensory involvement in a sexual act. My next step is to use Anthony Giddens’ approach towards modernity. I argue that our sexual identities, as part of our self-identities, are reflexively organized in the...

O debate natureza-cultura aborda questões sobre o papel da natureza e da
cultura no desenvolvimento humano, além de fazer referência a divisão entre biociências e humanidades. Nesse contexto, os pares natureza-cultura podem ser considerados opostos (dualismo), em interação (interacionismo) ou entrelaçados (pós-dualismo). Com base em perspectivas pós-dualistas, feministas biólogas questionam tanto os determinismos biológicos quanto os sociais no tratamento das questões de sexo/gênero, rejeitam abordagens biofóbicas que consideram os aspectos biológicos como limitadores e denunciam interpretações rígidas e reducionistas da biologia. Como é crescente o número de estudos da área de pesquisa em Educação em Ciências que abordam as temáticas sexo/gênero e sexualidade, faz-se necessário compreender como palavras e expressões derivadas de “biologia” são mobilizadas nessas pesquisas. Para tanto, a partir de referenciais pós-dualistas, analisou-se vinte artigos de periódicos da área em questão (2018 a 2020), a fim de caracterizar o debate natureza-cultura e compreender as relações que eles estabelecem com o “biológico”. Os artigos analisados apresentam relações interacionistas entre os pares do debate natureza-cultura, sendo raras as perspectivas pósdualistas. Além disso, observamos que os estudos se referem ao “biológico” a partir de sete
interpretações (material, determinista, pedagógica, discursiva, como campo de estudos, como conhecimentos e “outras biologias”), preponderando efeitos de uso limitante. Os resultados indicam a construção de uma visão rígida da biologia na área de pesquisa em Educação em Ciências, a qual poderia ser ampliada a partir de novas relações com o “biológico”, fundamentadas em perspectivas feministas pós-dualistas.

This study offers a transversal reading of Donna Haraway’s work by articulating two key figures—the cyborg and the mud-being—in relation to archetypal images of the feminine and material practices involving clay. Developed within the context of my thesis as a male ceramist, the research
navigates the intersections between art, ceramics, algorithms, and architecture, using clay as both a symbolic and embodied site of inquiry.
Drawing on A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) and When Species Meet (2008), I explore how Haraway shifts from a critique of dualisms and technological hybridity to an ethics of relationality grounded in the earthly. My practice mirrors this trajectory, combining insect-inspired algorithms and clay as active agents in processes of creation.
The article also revisits symbolic feminist discourses from the 1970s, particularly the figure of the Great Mother, examining how Haraway reinterprets such archetypes through notions of posthumanist ethics and response-ability. In doing so, it seeks to identify a fertile middle ground between mythology and technoscience, where clay and code coexist as part of an ethics of mixture.

In the networked world, privacy and visibility become entangled in new and unexpected ways. This article uses the concept of networked visibility to explore the entanglement of technology and the visibility of patient bodies. Based on semi-structured interviews with patients active in social media, this paper describes how multiple patient bodies are produced in the negotiations between the need for privacy and the need for social interaction. Information technology is actively involved in these negotiations: patients use technology to make their bodies both visible and invisible. At the same time technology collects data on these patients, which can be used for undesired commercial and surveillance purposes. The notion of visibility by design may infuse design efforts that enable online privacy, supporting patients in the multiple ways they want to be visible and invisible online.

This paper investigates the relation between information and communication technology and sustainability through two frameworks that promote sustainable development: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Doughnut Economics. The instrumentalist technology perspective underlying the SDGs, guiding the perceived universality of ICT, presents ICT as a neutral tool. Doughnut Economics enables a more integrative approach, making the unsustainability of ICT itself visible. What these frameworks have in common is that they are located in the discourse of the Anthropocene. Feminist perspectives on this epoch by Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing focus the attention on different figures, rhythms, and futures made invisible by the centrality of the human species in the debates on the future of our planet. The idea that humanswith-technology will get us out the predicament of the Anthropocene needs urgent refinement and critical investigation.

Focusing on the body beyond the face allows multispecies anthropology
to embrace a multisensory perspective, opening new possibilities
for detecting and understanding the subtleties of
interspecies connectedness. The body, transcending any single
sense, reveals its multisensorial potentialities: touch evokes emotions,
sight inspires visions, hearing deepens into attentive listening,
taste fosters companionship, and smell rekindles memories.
Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s views on the body
and my ethnographic work with pigeons and donkeys in Pakistan,
this article contends that a bodily oriented, sense-based approach
has the potential to generate new forms of knowledge and reimagine
relationships that transcend species boundaries.

The following post is the second in a multi-part, co-authored piece of scholarship, continuing Backchannels' experimental tradition in short-form communication. In a series of three posts, Gonzalo Correa and Arthur Arruda Leal Ferreira examine multispecies relations in science and technology. Part Three will appear on 31st.

Die Publikation untersucht Schnittstellen zwischen Gender Studies und Objekten der digitalen Medienkultur: Memes, Apps, Posts. Es werden spekulative Experimente durchgeführt, um anhand einzelner Objekte Einstiegspunkte in die zeitgenössischen Konstellationen der digitalen Medienkultur und gendertheoretischen Ansätze zu erproben. Gefühl und Affekt spielen dabei eine Schlüsselrolle: Wenn unsere Emotionen durch künstlerische und mediale Objekte angesprochen werden, verändert sich unser kritisches Denken über sie. Die „Kartografie“ der zeitgenössischen digitalen Medienkultur stellt somit eine situierte Methode dar.

The publication looks at the intersections that now exist between gender studies and the objects of digital media culture—memes, apps, posts. Speculative experiments are carried out to test out entry points to the contemporary constellations of digital media culture and gender theory approaches using individual objects. Feeling and affect play a key role here: having our emotions appealed to by artistic and media objects changes our critical thinking about them. The “cartography” of contemporary digital media culture thus constitutes a situated method.

This book presents a novel and systematic social theory of soil. Representative of the rising interest in “the material” in the social sciences, it contributes to the exploration of current transformations in socioecologies, as well as in political and artistic practices, in order to address global ecological change. The chapters in this book challenge scholars to attend more carefully to the ways in which they think about soil, both materially and theoretically. Contributors address a range of topics, including new ways of thinking about the politics of caring for soils; the ecological and symbiotic relations between soils; how the productive capacities and contested governance of soils are deployed as matters of political concern; and indigenous ways of knowing and being with soil.

Gender and technology are deeply intersectional, with significant disparities in representation and influence. In Türkiye, only 24.3% of the workforce in technology consists of women, while globally, women make up just 26% of artificial intelligence professionals, a figure that drops to 11% in Silicon Valley. This paper critically examines the gendered design of digital voice assistants through the lens of feminist technoscience theory, arguing that AI and software development reflect and reinforce societal gender inequalities. The predominance of female voices in voice assistants, often coded with submissive and accommodating traits, is a manifestation of patriarchal cultural transmission into technology. This phenomenon is conceptualized as "digital authority" a term introduced by the author to describe the gendered power dynamics embedded in AI interactions. This study explores the interplay of gender, power, and technology as it is emphasized in international reports that deals with gender inequality in digital skills through education. The research highlights how male-dominated software development teams embed gender stereotypes into voice assistants, and how these stereotypes shape linguistic and behavioral characteristics. Additionally, this study presents findings from a small-scale survey conducted in Istanbul with 56 participants aged 30-60, all holding university degrees and belonging to middle-to upper-class economic backgrounds. The survey results align with UNESCO's findings, demonstrating similar usage patterns and reinforcing concerns about the reproduction of gender biases in AI driven assistants. To address these challenges, the paper advocates for increasing women's participation in AI development through digital education, greater visibility of female role models, gender-sensitive training for software developers, and policy interventions by governments, NGOs, and municipalities. Without immediate efforts to dismantle male dominance in the digital space, gender biases in AI will persist and deepen. A feminization of artificial intelligence where women transition from users to creators of technology is imperative for fostering a more inclusive and equitable digital future.

Based on the Doha Agreement signed on February 29, 2020 between the Taliban and the United States of America, the two parties committed to stopping attacks on each other. The United States committed to withdrawing all its military and civilian forces and those of its allies from Afghanistan within 14 months. The Taliban also pledged to cut off cooperation with terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, and pledged to reduce the intensity of its attacks and to advance peace talks with the Afghan government. While this agreement was expected to end nearly two decades of military conflict in Afghanistan. However, the Taliban's increased attacks on military and civilian targets have continued to the point where Afghan cities have fallen one after another; The then Afghan president fled to Abu Dhabi, and Kabul fell to the Taliban within hours. Meanwhile, despite assurances issued by the Taliban, many Afghans were trying to leave the country. This has caused the world to once again face an international refugee crisis, raising the question of how international law can manage such a situation; what are the commitments of member states of the international community, and what are the potential gaps and challenges.

Based on the Doha Agreement signed on February 29, 2020 between the Taliban and the United States of America, the two parties committed to stopping attacks on each other. The United States committed to withdrawing all its military and civilian forces and those of its allies from Afghanistan within 14 months. The Taliban also pledged to cut off cooperation with terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, and pledged to reduce the intensity of its attacks and to advance peace talks with the Afghan government. While this agreement was expected to end nearly two decades of military conflict in Afghanistan. However, the Taliban's increased attacks on military and civilian targets have continued to the point where Afghan cities have fallen one after another; The then Afghan president fled to Abu Dhabi, and Kabul fell to the Taliban within hours. Meanwhile, despite assurances issued by the Taliban, many Afghans were trying to leave the country. This has caused the world to once again face an international refugee crisis, raising the question of how international law can manage such a situation; what are the commitments of member states of the international community, and what are the potential gaps and challenges.