[ecrea] CFP: A Manifesto for Cyborgs thirty-years on: Gender, Technology and Feminist-Technoscience in the twenty-first century

CALL FOR PAPERS

A Manifesto for Cyborgs thirty-years on: Gender, Technology and 
Feminist-Technoscience in the twenty-first century



Platform: Journal of Media and Communication

An interdisciplinary journal for early career researchers and graduate 
students



Abstracts due: Friday 27th of February, 2015

Volume Editor: Thao Phan



In her iconic essay A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and 
Socialist-Feminism in the 1980s, Donna Haraway introduced the metaphor 
of the cyborg as an “ironic political myth” to critique the so far 
troubling narratives of the West. Published in the Socialist Review in 
1985, it brings together a broad spectrum of literacies—from 
socialist-feminism, to cybernetics and biopolitics—to proffer a cutting 
criticism of Enlightenment humanism, gender essentialism, and military 
technoscience. Her provocations created a useful framework to 
destabilise rigid boundaries and make fluid the borderlines between 
human and animal, organism and machine, natural and artificial, semiotic 
and material. Today the Manifesto sits comfortably as part of the canon 
of feminist-technoscience and postmodern theory. Although as an 
oppositional figure the cyborg is bounded by a historical specificity, 
it has certainly found new significance and politics in the contemporary 
age of ubiquitous media.



To mark the 30th anniversary since its publication, Platform invites 
authors whose work resonates or responds to themes expounded in this 
seminal essay. With the benefit of thirty years’ hindsight, what new 
observations or critical assessments can be made in regards to the 
cyborg as a feminist, tropic figure? Did the cyborg fulfill its promise 
of an “historical transformation”? Is the figure of the cyborg still as 
useful today, given contemporary technological developments? Or, 
conversely, do we need myths like Haraway’s now more than ever? We 
encourage the submission of theoretical or empirical work engaging with 
applications of, or criticisms of, frameworks used by Haraway, and are 
particularly interested in critical papers that provide novel insights 
into the relation between gender and technoscience.



Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:



    ·      Cyborg subjectivities in the 21st century

    ·      Gendered tropes in technology

    ·      Novel readings of gender and technoscience

    ·      Trans/queer studies of technology

    ·      Feminist science and/or feminist science and technology studies

    ·      Posthuman subjectivities

    ·      Postgender politics and subjectivities of “affinity”

    ·      Multiple or fractured readings of the cyborg

    ·      Technologies of sex and gender

    ·      Technologies of race and identity

    ·      Critical studies of the body/embodiment

    ·      Feminist histories/historiographies of media, technology or 
computation

    ·      The informatics of domination

    ·      Biotechnologies and Artificial Intelligence

    ·      Feminism and accelerationist politics

    ·      Feminism and new materialisms



In addition to this special section, we also welcome submissions that 
more broadly deal with issues relating to the areas of media, 
technology, and communication in theoretical or critical terms.

Please send all enquiries and submissions to (platformjmc /at/ gmail.com). 
Abstracts must be accompanied by a brief curriculum vitae and 
biographical note, and should not exceed 350 words.

We recommend that prospective authors submit abstracts well before the 
abstract deadline of the 27th of February 2015, in order to allow for 
feedback and suggestions from the editors. All submissions should be 
from early career researchers (defined as being within a few years of 
completing their PhD) or current graduate students undertaking their 
Masters, PhD, or international equivalent.

All eligible submissions will be sent for double-blind peer-review. 
Early submission is highly encouraged, as the review process will 
commence on submission.



Platform: Journal of Media and Communication is a fully refereed, 
open-access online graduate journal. Founded and published by the School 
of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne (Australia), 
Platform was launched in November 2008. Platform is refereed by an 
international board of established and emerging scholars working across 
diverse fields in media and communication studies, and is edited by 
graduate students at the University of Melbourne.

For more information visit:

http://journals.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/platform/call_papers.html 





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