Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 10:15:20 -0500 (EST) From: "cyberdiva (aka Radhika Gajjala)" <radhik-AT-bgnet.bgsu.edu> I intend to open up a discussion regarding online interaction in relation to the (im) possibility of a "common language for women in integrated circuit" (Haraway 1994: 82), proposing that online networks for interaction are epistemic digital (un)integrated circuits that may, within limits, provide opportunities for certain westernized forms of resistance and cyberfeminisms. But what do I mean by "westernized forms of resistance"? At a very basic level, a westernized form of resistance assumes that once a problem has been perceived/identified, an individual has the "choice," the option of trying to fix the problem. This notion is so thoroughly inbedded in westernized social interaction, discourse and in the knowledges produced within this western field of power/knowledge, that even post-modern, post-structural theories as well as third-world and black feminisms and even "subaltern studies" researchers are unable to be "outside" of it. Third-world feminists, black feminists and subaltern studies scholars, however, have at least tried and continue to try, to articulate this as a problem. Some feminist struggles with mainstream Science, Philosophy and knowledge production have also attempted to articulate and confront this problem in various ways. The non-unitary nature of the agent as well as the non-unified functioning of power and non-unitary character of politics (Guha, 1997, Nigel &Thrift 1996, Alarcon & Grewal 1994, Visweswaran 1994, Foucault 1980) has been acknowledged, however, westernized discourse (academic and everyday) has not been able to extricate itself from the logic of the westernized subject and his/her privileged way of thinking and functioning. It would seem that entry into global knowledge production in the current period requires us to hand over un-appropiatable ways of thinking, reasoning and articulation at the gateway to structures of capital, power and knowledge. In a sense, then, Spivak's much (mis)quoted statement of "The subaltern cannot speak!" would seem to be true. There is no doubt that people within "subaltern" contexts do indeed finds ways to speak, the problem of agency and articulation concerns issues related to making "them" heard within hegemonic discursive/material spheres. Since "speaking" can only be recognized as such when the speaking is acknowledged as such, the subaltern's not being heard is perhaps the equivalent of being unable to speak. My work makes no claims of solving this problem of agency and articulation. _____________________________________ Radhika Gajjala http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~radhik _______________________________________
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