I want to begin by saying that I deeply respect the Glitch Feminism is doing in constructing a queer feminist framework for the progressive potential of technology in the development of self-concepts existing in oppposition to the hegemonic structures of patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and capital. I also want to say that the Legacy Russell’s precise writing and citational selection has made this one of the first books that has been flat-out excited to check the endnotes. While I find Glitch Feminism lacks a certain amount of nuance in its optimistic very in regards to how the internet can shape us, the text certainly has provided me with some rich sources to investigate, particularly in regards to notions of the body.
I hadn’t read the article, but I was expecting engagement with works like the ones by James Deen discussed in Russell’s,“Digital Dualism And The Glitch Feminism Manifesto”. I’m glad Russell did tie herself down to the particular genre, instead forcusing on a wide range of queer and black work which she ties to glitch more ontologically than aesthetically.
What frustrated me was that I got to the end of each chapter wanting more from the argument. Most of the sections hover at around 11 pages excepte “Glitch Refuses” which is about twice that. Perhaps it is the books nature as a manifesto, (which I suppose is a genre unto itself), which gives it this form, but I was already onboard. What I was looking for was the points of tension within the theory itself that seem to get papered over or ignored the more I read.
For instance, in regards to Lil Miquela instagramer-simulcra and social justice advocate, Russell Asks:
We wonder: What purpose can a body that has no body serve? In the face of an increasingly privatized world can a corporate avatar—in essence, a privatized body, symbolic in form—be an authentic advocate, a catalyst toward social change? (p93-95)
Russell follows with about 140 words of description in regards to Lil Miquela’s rupture within the space as a body without an original showing principles of glitch at work. Interpretively this is fine, but I was left wanting more than just an interpretation based on the half of book I’d already consumed. Again I was already onboard: I wanted to see how that tension is ultimately addressed. It felt like a thread was left hanging with no citation to a deeper argument in this case. Part of me wonders if it was in service to the over-coding of “anti-body” through punnery, of which I support whole-heartedly, but it wasn’t clear if that was truly the intention of the use of Lil Miquela in the argument.
Through the second half of the book, small bumps like this one occured more and more often. As a queer leaning heavily on my experience on the computational, in the field of computational media, the analogies with computer operations came to erk me. They felt incomplete, missing something. Encryption after all can be decoded and a virus is not always a dysfunction but can also be its own instrument of exploitation.
On page 124 there is a critique of Sherry Turkle’s book Along Together nearly a page long which is perhaps the texts only use of a negative citation, which really stood out to me as I read it. Even in the first chapter when discussing the whiteness in cyberfeminism as a field, those practitioners were recognizes as laying some useful ground work. This felt like a very targeted take down and stands in contrast to the rest of the book. I feel like I have to go read Turkle now just to see how bad it must be. Surely it can’t be singular in its pessimistic critique of network technologies effect on society and surely there is some more nuanced take that I can be routed to, right? Or is there really that lack in our field?
I’m already onboard. I know how necessary the internet can be for connection when marginalized. I also know how paralyzing it can be though and how its structures can accellerate hatred and abuse. Even the utopian idea that the glitch empowers us by allowing us to become unreadable can easily be turned on its head when dealing with the social dynamics that can arise in anonymous boards.
The internet is doubled edged and more and more I struggle to find where I can press on it without bleeding.