Thread by @catalyst_sts

Our 5th year anniversary event "Foundations and Futures of Feminist Technosciences" is beginning now!

More info here: techfutures.lmc.gatech.edu/feminist-techn…

We'll be live-tweeting the conversation as it goes. Please join along, you can tag @catalyst_sts and use #Catalyst5th and #FeministSTS.

One of our lead editors @NassimParvin has welcomed everyone and thanked the many organizers, including @maramills, Anne Pollock, and Sonja van Wichelen, as well as sponsors of the event: @DILAC_GT, @cdsNYU, @GTliberalarts.

First up: editorial board member Banu Subramaniam interviews Donna Haraway on Foundations of Feminist Technosciences! #Catalyst5th #FeministSTS

Donna Haraway describes her own foundations in #FeministSTS as working in a moment of urgent eruption and fury amidst feminist, anti-racist, and anti-war movements.

Subramaniam notes the field has expanded + exploded greatly in the last 30 years, challenging Eurocentricism and asks: "what do we see as the successes and challenges" of the field?

Haraway: were #FeministSTS to have been a success that would have been its failure.

Haraway notes the many political interventions of #FeministSTS to be proud of, including the recognition of women in sciences, challenging colonization, early interventions in water and food justice (seeds as feminist objects!), etc.

However, she also notes failures, including relativism and anti-science ideology being taken up by the right and weaponized against #FeministSTS. She also notes that while many scholars have been intentionally anti-racist, but many personal networks remain white and homogenous.

As Subramaniam notes, there are also many erasures within the field and work to be done to challenge this.

Haraway notes the particular erasures of Indigenous scholars (despite their many interventions), and that citation networks still too often tend toward white men.

Subramaniam asks whether Haraway might approach writing the Cyborg Manifesto differently? Haraway notes that she is not the same author then as today, and adds that it was not necessarily written for scientists.

However, she argues that it was written from a position of love, rather than revenge (and critique is not necessarily against something) — it's ok to call our colleagues to account, but we're not always in the same room (esp due to the structuring + architecture of universities).

[Side note: for another great live-tweeted thread, see @lmesseri's thread here:

https://twitter.com/lmesseri/status/1385310034700029954

]

Subramaniam asks a question from the audience around Haraway's comments of lamenting a getting out of touch with the work that scientists are doing.

Haraway responds about the need to do justice work together.

From the audience: How do we stay with the trouble in apocalyptic times? Within our institutions? How do we build a more expansive #FeministSTS beyond academic walls?

Haraway: We need to cultivate in ourselves a sense of time and the thickness of the present — the work is now, that's what staying with the trouble means.

We should call each other to account while also cultivating kindness and forgiveness.

How to think about apocalyptic time?

As Haraway notes, we experience continuities of injustices — we can't banish the fear or deny real structural problems, we must ask how to live with the realities of mass death and destruction?

Do we study with people who have lived through (and continue to) world destruction of humans and non-humans, and yet continue to work and play? We should be honest with our students about being in this with them.

Question on citation practices and apparatuses:

Haraway: err on the side of citing anybody who was part of the conversation that I ran with, even if those were informal.

Haraway shares "orthopedic exercises": are they all white, able-bodied, Western / North American, etc...? This checklist may sound ridiculous, but helps to identify omissions: helps work, people, and categories become apparent.

Haraway: It's okay to have feelings hurt, to be ashamed: we can try again, but only if we work with each other.

Subramaniam notes: we can be playful with beginning with a different genealogy, we may end up somewhere different and quite generative.

Haraway: "We are not one."

Subramaniam: How do we understand the rise of post- and de-colonial work with simultaneous rises in nationalist right movements?

Haraway: It is no surprise that these movements, including white supremacist movements in the US which have never gone away, are resurgent. These are real dangers, but need to see this as fear on their part. Social movements are also real and working, a sign of our strength.

Question about methodology, integrations with AI.

Haraway: The power of digital world making and breaking are even stronger, which are neither good or bad. But "throw it all into the sea but take out the lithium batteries first."

Ending with an orchid!

Subramaniam: How to do biology informed by #FeministSTS? What do we do with botany, especially when it can be about experiences of alienation?

Haraway: work with Anna Tsing and @demonicground around Plantationocene — engagements with land, plants, food, colonialism, slavery, racial capitalism, biodiversity, etc are all essential work in the present.

Many thanks to Banu Subramaniam and Donna Haraway for this generous and generative conversation!

We are now moving to our second panel on Futures of Feminist Technosciences with @moyazb, @MaxLiboiron, @tpbustos, and @thao_pow, moderated by Sonja van Wichelen and @NassimParvin.

Again, please feel free to join in the Twitter conversation by tagging @catalyst_sts, #FeministSTS, and #Catalyst5th.

(It's @LilMissHotMess tweeting for @catalyst_sts — I'm doing my best, but mostly paraphrasing, so your contributions, citations, and quotes are very welcome!)

We begin with @moyazb, honoring the killing of #makhiabryant, and the complexities of grief, justice, and their circulation on social media: "What remains?"

https://twitter.com/moyazb/status/1384820797844377605

@moyazb: Scholarship cannot undo extrajudicial killings. Is it a form of busy work that precludes other forms of organizing? How do we do our research in more just ways? At what point do we abandon our computers to go off the grid? What remains?

@MaxLiboiron catalogues the work of a small sample of scientists and technologists that are "doing the work called for by #FeministSTS with and/or without Feminist STS." @SarivanAnders, Kawika Winter, @rosiealegado, Desi Rodriguez Lonebear, Thomas Mboa Nkoudou. (Please add tags!)

@tpbustos invokes feminist work that weaves together craft, organizing, and memorialization as the "daily bread" of living in the aftermath of war in Colombia. However we need to pause: to reconsider technologies of war + how we use tech to heal and remember. How do we take root?

Citations from @MaxLiboiron's presentation:

Van Anders Lab: queensu.ca/psychology/van… & Van Anders, S. M., & Watson, N. V. (2006). Social neuroendocrinology. Human nature, 17(2), 212-237.

Kawika Winter, Rosie Alegado @algoriphagus: Winter, K., Lincoln, N., Berkes, F., Alegado, R., Kurashima, N., Frank, K., ... & Toonen, R. (2020). Ecomimicry in Indigenous resource management: optimizing ecosystem services to achieve resource abundance, with examples from Hawaiʻi.

[...] Ecology and Society, 25(2).

Alegado, R. (2019). Opponents of the Thirty Meter Telescope fight the process, not science. Nature, 572(7767), 7-8.

Desi Rodriguez-Lonbear @native4data: Rodriguez-Lonebear, D. (2016). Building a data revolution in Indian country. Indigenous data sovereignty: Toward an agenda, 253-272.

Thomas Mboa Nkoudou @Mboathomas: Mboa, T. (2017). The (Unconscious?) Neocolonial Face of Open Access. OpenCon 2017 & Mboa Nkoudou, T. H. (2015). Stratégies de valorisation des savoirs locaux africains: questions et enjeux liés à l’usage du numérique au Cameroun.

[...] Éthique publique. Revue internationale d’éthique sociétale et gouvernementale, 17(2).

Jones, A., & Jenkins, K. (2008). Rethinking collaboration: Working the indigene-colonizer hyphen. Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies, 471-486.

@ MCHammer. (2021). "Lol... the audacity."

https://twitter.com/MCHammer/status/1364367148466860034

Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409-428.

@thao_pow: #FeministSTS science does not exist outside of politics. Note the recognition of @alondra in the Biden administration. We can see the ways in which #FeministSTS has changed science and politics — but how do these change us as a field as we become institutionalized?

@thao_pow How do we resist branding of #feministSTS? How do we challenge the imposition of a coherent narrative or boundaries on a field that has been defined by its incoherence? What might institutionalization offer us, but also take? How will #feministSTS continue its openness?

Van Wichelen: How have panelists' own work in #FeministSTS been viewed and taken shape? What are the strategies you've taken on to navigate and negotiate these institutional challenges?

@moyazb: Strategic naïveté — do first, ask forgiveness and not permission. As a student, wanted to ask questions that I didn't necessarily always get permission from advisors for pursuing. Developing close relationships with faculty in small spaces to counter professionalization.

@MaxLiboiron Lab as my jurisdiction and no one fucks with it! Unexpected allies, including animal care folks. Also became The University / The Man as an administrator: there is no more powerful place for activism. Learn about the workings of this hot mess.

@tpbustos Learn from the plants that grow between cracks. Continue to be a student. One has to create a balance with "dignified rage" but at the same time having the strength of caring for oneself.

@thao_pow: How do we adopt our responsibilities or acknowledge our positions of privilege within universities/institutions?

Q from the audience: How do we think about different temporalities of care, critique, and justice? How do we hold a sense of political urgency with the careful thoughtfulness of scholarship?

@MaxLiboiron: Advice from an elder about avoiding burnout as an activist scholar or BIPOC in STEM: give oneself permission to stop, not just slow down. This is intergenerational, the immediacy has been going on from 1491. You need to live well in order to also engage politically.

@moyazb: Understand the difference between things that are *urgent* and *important* — how do we not fall into doing the things first that are urgent based on someone else's timeline? Be careful with our critique/work, must put day-to-day energy where it is most helpful.

@tpbustos: What is the energy that I need to invest in something? When is something affecting us and when is it crucifying or stopping us?

Q from Sonja Van Wichelen: What do we think about a militant feminist STS? How have you strategically used rage as a form of politics?

@thao_pow: as a junior scholar, it takes time to learn what do with that rage. For a long time, it was about presenting about professional — but shifted to allow people to see anger and emotion, to build solidarity through it.

@tpbustos: Handle rage with care. I have been described as uncivilized because of my rage, have felt that colonialism from colleagues. I have tried to be respectful toward those who have not been respectful to me.

@moyazb: How does rage impact our students? What do we do when students are pushed out of fields or interests by racist/sexist faculty? It's not enough to have supportive faculty, but need interventions for when student feels alone or experiences hostility within a discipline.

@MaxLiboiron: Moving away from a theory of change that you need to change hearts/minds. Also moving away from idea that you need to circulate widely. Instead focus on militant infrastructure and policy.

Q from @NassimParvin: What do you think about Haraway's notion of flourishing possibilities?

(And joy?!)

@moyazb: wants to see Banu Subramaniam's work as a graphic novel! Want to see science as a critical component of what people need.

@MaxLiboiron How to build a treehouse that can hold all of the things we want to see as part of our work and community? (Shoutout to Michelle Murphy)

@tpbustos: What are the stories that not only need to be told, but also heard?

@thao_pow: *shares sound of cat purring...*

Reiterating @tpbustos image of the plant that grows in the cracks, the seed that is able to uproot systems and structures.

From @NassimParvin: Thanks again to all of the panelists, organizers, sponsors for this generative and inspiring set of conversations!

@AimiHamraie joins to introduce the Remote Access: Crip Feminist Dance Party (co-hosted with @KGotkin) — starting now!

Link to party: nyu.zoom.us/j/97154969555
Link to access protocols: docs.google.com/document/d/1ZO…

Feel free to join even if you missed the conversations!

#Catalyst5th

For anyone who hasn't experienced a Remote Access party, these have been taking place quarterly for the past 13 months (organized by @criticaldesignl). How do we survive and thrive in disability culture, how we do access-making in a participatory way?

This was catalyzed via @catalyst_sts in the #CripTechnoscience special section. 🤩

And with that @KGotkin (aka DJ Who Girl) has begun playing a set of music and we're all invited to celebrate together for the next hour.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in making today's #Catalyst5th anniversary celebration possible and everyone who has made @catalyst_sts possible over these past five years. We look forward to continuing the work (and care) of #FeministSTS in the years to come!