Xenofeminism

In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution? These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the 'Laboria Cuboniks' collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto 'Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation'. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction. Challenging and iconoclastic, this visionary book is the essential guide to one of the most exciting intellectual trends in contemporary feminism.

A pocket color manifesto for a new futuristic feminism Injustice should not simply be accepted as “the way things are.” This is the starting point for The Xenofeminist Manifesto, a radical attempt to articulate a feminism fit for the twenty-first century. Unafraid of exploring the potentials of technology, both its tyrannical and emancipatory possibilities, the manifesto seeks to uproot forces of repression that have come to seem inevitable—from the family, to the body, to the idea of gender itself. If nature is unjust, change nature!

The far right is back with a vengeance. After several decades at the political margins, far-right politics has again taken center stage. Three of the world’s largest democracies – Brazil, India, and the United States – now have a radical right leader, while far-right parties continue to increase their profile and support within Europe. In this timely book, leading global expert on political extremism Cas Mudde provides a concise overview of the fourth wave of postwar far-right politics, exploring its history, ideology, organization, causes, and consequences, as well as the responses available to civil society, party, and state actors to challenge its ideas and influence. What defines this current far-right renaissance, Mudde argues, is its mainstreaming and normalization within the contemporary political landscape. Challenging orthodox thinking on the relationship between conventional and far-right politics, Mudde offers a complex and insightful picture of one of the key political challenges of our time.

This book works through the notion of the alien in contemporary philosophy. The authors attempt to think through politics, posthumanism, and alienation beyond and across the circuitry of thought that would otherwise enfold the alien in its regressive and parochial trappings. The figure of the Other has held critical thought in its sway for decades, to the point that we now suffer from a surfeit of alterity. This book considers whether the figure of the alien can offer us something better. It traces the outlines, intersections, and problems of emergent vectors of thought that coalesce around a renewed relationship to alienation: left accelerationism, xenofeminism, and inhumanism. Their common thread is the embrace of alienation as a positive force, transforming our progressive exile from a series of edenic harmonies – be they economic, sociological, or biological – into an esoteric genealogy of freedom. Appeals to alien forces can mask all too familiar prejudices, repackaging old assumptions in the language of sublime strangeness or harsh reality. This book seeks to move beyond this by looking at how the notion of the alien interacts with present problems and politics. It was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.

Our democracies repeatedly fail to safeguard the future. From pensions to pandemics, health and social care through to climate, biodiversity and emerging technologies, democracies have been unable to deliver robust policies for the long term. In this book, Graham Smith asks why. Exploring the drivers of short-termism, he considers ways of reshaping legislatures and constitutions and proposes strengthening independent offices whose overarching goals do not change at every election. More radically, Smith argues that forms of participatory and deliberative politics offer the most effective democratic response to the current political myopia, as well as a powerful means of protecting the interests of generations to come.

"Our decision to start the series of conversations with you is based on your implementation of the "xeno" in your perspective practices. Perhaps it is high time for a xeno-architecture to match aims to unpack the prefix xeno, probing what it entails -not merely rhetorically but also as a means of practice- in an attempt to bring the ideas it contains more concretely into the domain of architecture. It proposes to link the more philosophical discussions on the notion of xeno with the questions of instrumentalization and governance that are necessarily involved in the praxis and geopolitics of architecture. And it relates the significance of legal architectures and technologically driven transformations in the metaphysics of law back to the agenda of xeno-architecture."

"As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder.” —Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh. This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.

The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity? The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Timely and provocative, Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.