Feminist materialism... this post is not perfectly pieced together, somewhat meandering, but if I try to make it perfect right now, I'll never publish it.
These are some of my notes and thoughts as I try to understand exactly what material feminism is now. The material feminism I'm interested in is new feminist materialism or new materialism from a feminist perspective, though the materialist feminism that precedes it and which relates to Marxism/labour is certainly relevant to my art practice and my thinking around the work I do in the laboratory. I don't only wish to understand it as it's been philosophized so far--I wish to contribute to the meaning of it by adding my own philosophical standpoint and relevant praxis.
New feminist materialism as I understand it, embraces the materiality of the body and bodies (nonhuman), rejects the cerebral privileging of discourse around or "about" the body in favour of embodied knowledge (being IN it) and rejects postmodern social constructivist assertions that The Material is constituted entirely from language built up around it.
Of particular interest to me is that feminist materialism turns an eye to SCIENCE and its examination of bodies/material/life/stuff/matter, not as simply an androcentric realm that defines science reality according to its own self-serving semiotics, but as a place we can look to in order to radically redefine matter as we know it, animate or inanimate. We must do this by looking at ways where the discursive and the material intersect (not discard discourse entirely in favour of materiality).
I ask (rhetorically), how do words manifest something real? They don't go beyond the realm of ideas unless a material ground exists from which to conjure things. I'm currently working on an abstract I've entitled, The Witch in the Lab Coat. This is for a presentation I plan to give that compares witchcraft (as synonymous with art practice/ manipulating material) with laboratory practice, grounded in new material feminist theory. I embrace the occult and manipulation in its purest meaning and reject the dichotomy between science and spirituality. This draws on postmodern feminism in tearing down the notion of dichotomies but pushes it further to establish a new theoretical place and space that is currently still somewhat undefined. Dialogue around materiality from a feminist perspective looks not only at human agency, but also nonhuman agency, the agency of nature, the agency of unseen things (invisibilia) and asks that we rethink what we think we know about matter and materials and their capacity to affect/act upon us and upon the world. It draws from quantum mechanics, biology, neuroscience, even empathy and creativity. I'm interested in inventing a realization about new methods of knowledge-making and in collaborating with matter to invent new materials. Personally, I draw from my own wealth of experience in adult education and learning theory, hands-on practice and teaching, craft/art, as well as poetry (speech acts), prose, myth and narrative production, witchcraft and postmodern feminism. Oh, and let's not forget motherhood - an unconventional practice of motherhood, whereby I have never made it the centre of my identity, have bucked norms and nuclear family expectations, queered it, and done a damn good job with it while pursuing my own goals. These are all one in my being, intricately interlaced to form a complete mode of material feminist existence.
One way of assessing an intersection between dialogue and material would be to ask the (rhetorical) question: is materialization a perlocutionary effect? I would answer: in part. Perlocution, I would argue, represents the agency of one human through words, the expression of will or presentation of a compelling utterance, that urges another agent to act. So, then, in addition to asking another person to do something for us, we could extend this to the basic notion behind spellcraft: utterances meant to persuade human OR nonhuman material to act in accordance with human intention in order to create a consequence (bad or good). Faith can move mountains, but only if the mountains agree to go along.
Feminist materialism presents an opportunity to imagine a new standard of ethics: one where the material consequences of actions, practices or activities inspire not just ethical considerations but also ethical practices. Working in biotechnology (or any technological field) with human/ nonhuman/ human-derived/ animal-derived/ disembodied and semi-living agents for the purposes of creating something 'other' (even if that 'other' is an augmented human) demands a deep reconsideration of ethical practice. The age-old question is raised: Should we do it just because we can?
For example, culturing cancer cells. When I spoke to my father about my recent work, he caringly advised me, "Don't get any on you!" Contagion is a huge force in making magic, the concept of transmission from one being to another or one thing to another. Fear of contagion has to be one of the most prolific fears throughout humankind. We are afraid of 'catching' things that can't biologically be caught, of them somehow rubbing off on us and affecting us with their own special imagined agency: death, bad luck, madness, evil, loss, demons, guilt. Guilty by association. This unique brand of possession, of violation by a nonhuman agent no doubt has its roots in actual disease contagion or pestilence. Culturally, we are obsessed with preventing contagion by any means, avoiding disease even if the means of avoidance may cause other problems. In my work, if I align myself with the imagined or understood goals of cancer cells, can I say I'm collaborating with them? Will this make me guilty by association? Do I become a monster, a murderer and a force for evil in the material world? Could I infect someone or infect myself? Is playing with living cells like playing God and therefore immoral? Where do all of my materials really come from? How is that acquisition of materials affecting the world? Ethically, it's difficult to reconcile. I don't mind playing God. However, I do mind the waste produced by standard laboratory practice--all the plastic pipettes, glass pipettes, plastic flasks, sterile wrapping, nitrile gloves, petri dishes, plastic bottles, etc in massive quantity that are thrown away into the landfill after being autoclaved. Each time I feed a single petri dish of cells, I use one sterile glass pipette to suck out the waste media, one sterile and packaged plastic pipette to aspirate fresh media from its container and expel it into the cell dish/flask. I go through a few pairs of nitrile gloves. When I trypsinize cells, and split them into new flasks, I use three times more pipettes and flasks. They are all single use, disposable, in order to maintain sterility, prevent contagion, control biohazard. The ecofeminist in me cringes. The materials? Animal rights activists would have a cow. I'm no longer a vegetarian so I can't get hypocritical about that. It gets more complex from here.
So, what if I get cancer cells on me, which my father cautions me not to do? How much protection do my lab coat and gloves afford me? Is cancer contagious? Will anybody suffer loss through my interaction with these microorganisms (the loss of me)? You cannot 'catch' cancer--it falls into that intangible realm of things that people fear catching. However, "tumorigenic human cells are... potential hazards as a result of self-inoculation", as in, an accidental needle prick, which happened once in laboratory history and someone formed a tumour in their own body. So, while getting some of the cells on me wouldn't necessarily be a problem, getting some in me might be. Should I go splashing them around where others might be exposed to them, there might potentially be a problem as well, but I'm trained in how to handle these potent creatures as safely as possible, in a contained manner. They aren't airborne particles. Ethical? Checkmark there.
The economics of material feminism, as I imagine them, are enmeshed in social capital. Touch = community = communication = currency. Haptic economy, a currency of connection. This reflects ideas of Marxist materialism where social activity is synonymous with economy. My brand of new material feminism takes this notion and highlights the importance of touch and haptics in the bonding required to form social networks, how this equates to information exchange and transmission and builds social capital. Social capital is that intangible, nontaxable exchange of resources vis a vis friends, family, colleagues, associates (your network) that assigns fluid value to services and goods, where materials matter to individuals in varying degrees, meaning there can be no fixed value or worth. This radically shifts ideas around profit, from surplus to promoting greater quality of life. Of course, I'm talking about a barter system, where trade is direct.
Enter textiles. Interconnectedness. Intersections. Social Fabric. Mesh. Matrix. Materia. Quilting Bees and other collective works in cloth. Digitextiles. Digits. Hands. Handmade. Computer-assisted. Jacquard.
To be continued in a later post.
READ for reference to early material feminism:
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