Manifeste Xénoféministe

by Laboria Cuboniks, Noémie Grunenwald (Translator)

Notre monde est pris de ver­tige. Dans nos vies quo­ti­dien­nes, un entre­lacs d’abs­trac­tion, de vir­tua­lité et de com­plexité s’intro­duit avec l’inva­sion des nou­veaux médias tech­no­lo­gi­ques. Le mani­feste xéno­fé­mi­niste façonne un fémi­nisme adapté à ces réa­li­tés, en s’empa­rant de l’alié­na­tion comme d’un levier pour géné­rer de nou­veaux mondes. Le natu­ra­lisme essen­tia­liste empeste la théo­lo­gie – le mieux est de l’exor­ci­ser au plus vite. L’inno­va­tion tech­nos­cien­ti­fi­que doit s’assor­tir d’une pensée poli­ti­que et théo­ri­que col­lec­tive au sein de laquelle les femmes, les queers et ceux.celles qui ne se confor­ment pas aux normes de genre joue­ront un rôle sans pré­cé­dent.

Laboria Cuboniks, col­lec­tif poly­mor­phe crée en 2014 par Amy Ireland, Diann Bauer, Helen Hester, Katrina Burch, Lucca Fraser et Patricia Reed répar­tis dans cinq pays. Elles cher­chent à déman­te­ler le genre, à détruire la famille nucléaire et à faire dis­pa­raî­tre la nature comme garante de posi­tions poli­ti­ques iné­ga­li­tai­res.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Theory, Queer, Essays

90 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2015

About the author

Laboria Cuboniks (b. 2014) is a xenofeminist collective spread across five countries. She seeks to dismantle gender, destroy “the family,” and do away with nature as a guarantor of inegalitarian political positions.

Reviews

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ivory Tower Alienation?...

The Good:
--Feminist critique and (often neglected) embrace/control of technology is desperately needed, given the alarming centralization of technological reach and power under capitalism.

The Bad/Missing:

1) Target Audience?:
--The delivery needs a complete overhaul if a wider audience is desired (isn't that the goal of a "manifesto", i.e. a public declaration?). I grow ever more wary of insufferable academic verbiage; are we trying to build mass movements or our own ivory towers?

2) Political Economy?:
--Missing: basics political economic structures of the capitalist system: i.e. what are "capitalist" social relations, from micro to macro (especially macro, which is often obscured)?
--i.e. real-world material conditions, rather than the noisy surface (another bad example: the sprawling creative-writing of cultural spillover effects in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?).
--For an accessible intro, see Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails. We can start with capitalism's 3 peculiar markets (labour/land/money) featuring "fictitious commodities" (humans/nature/purchasing power, which are not produced just for buying/selling in markets).

3) Commodification of Labour
--Let's focus on this, as the manifesto was supposed to focus on "gender" and "alienation".
--Key to commodifying labour has been enforcing dependency under the veneer of "freedom" (detailed in Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1):
a) Workers appear free to leave and pursue whatever wage labour they wish.
b) Workers are also free to starve, as their prior access to subsistence (access to Commons/community obligations) have been violently severed; in Marxist literature, this process of dispossession is termed "primitive accumulation" (Marx was actually criticizing Adam Smith's notion of "primitive accumulation"; Smith assumed hard-working capitalists merely saved up to create their initial capital, whereas Marx countered with the real-world history of State violence in privatizing land/criminalizing non-waged subsistence, creating capitalism's peculiar markets/property rights).
...For details on this process of dispossession/dependency, see: The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View
--Next, we can add the gender dynamics, esp. how some labour (Marxist literature's "social reproduction"/care work) were externalized from market prices (i.e. not waged), see: The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values. For an actual manifesto (i.e. accessible) on this, see: Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto
--For history roots of this gender dynamic, see: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
--We can even dig back further into anthropology to consider the relationship between patriarchy and property rights:
-Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
-Engel's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
--Examining these transitions can help us appreciate the dynamism of history, esp. the ongoing struggles and how things can go in different directions (rather than the bias of assuming history is pre-determined). This can provide lessons on current/future struggles, ex. reviving confidence in our social ability to rebuild and expand Commons/socioecological community responsibilities:
-Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
-Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
-The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living
-Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
--Next, "alienation" is in the manifesto's subtitle, yet this seems to be brushed over. If we want a cultural anthropology twist on examining Marxist debates on "productive" vs. "unproductive" labour, on distinctions between extreme exploitation (esp. Global South workers) vs. alienation of Global North "middle class" workers, we can start with Graeber's Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (which also synthesizes the Marxist feminist lens on "social reproduction").
...As usual, much of ivory tower academia has a Global North "middle class" bias. What does capitalism look like on the global scale? The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
--This also relates to "technology"; we need to examine the debates on "manual" vs. "intellectual" labour, and how this relates to "alienation". Graeber's The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy is a fun start.

[Prerna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm extremely wary of any forms of ideology, political or otherwise, that romanticizes alienation. It begs the question - who can afford alienation? The poor? The marginalized people who've been living on the fringes of society and have been fighting relentlessly to carve out a social identity, to be recognised? Xenofeminism and accelerationism in general, reeks of western-imperialist-bourgeoise ideology to me. Again, who can afford accelerationism? All the millions of people from the global south who are predicted to be refugees of climate catastrophe and environmental migration in a few decades? Where are we going to live then? Embed our consciousness in a cyberspace and give up on corporeality because this world won't have space for our material bodies anyway?

There is an irreconcilable friction here, between opposing ideologies. For instance, how do you reconcile the alienation that is so desired within xenofeminism with the intersectionality it claims to embody? It also reeks of reformism, which in my opinion is not gonna work. At this point, nothing short of full-fledged revolution will do.

The problem with ideologies whose main focus is technogical revolution as a solution for the problem of capitalism and neoliberalism is that it further empowers already privileged groups. Any technological revolution should go hand-in-hand with community based efforts at both the global and local scales.

I might have severely misunderstood the text, but I won't fault myself for that because the text itself was short and vague.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

very necessary

now make it accessible for the people you advocate for not just those involved in academia :-))

[Martin Hare Michno · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can find the Xenofeminist Manifesto for free on their website, PDF download included: http://www.laboriacuboniks.net/

As far as I understand, Xenofeminism is a call for radical intersectionalism. The prefix 'Xeno-' refers to the alien, the strange, the unnatural. It is precisely the unnatural which Xenofeminism seeks: "Anyone who's been deemed 'unnatural' in the face of reigning biological norms, anyone who's experienced injustices wrought in the name of natural order, will realize that the glorification of 'nature' has nothing to offer us". Along with its anti-naturalism, Xenofeminism is grounded on ideas of technomaterialism and gender abolitionism.

It is technomaterialist because it believes in the potential of technological advances, and in the repurposing of technology as a feminist tool. The focus on technomaterialism is what makes it a futuristic theory which has announced the inevitable end of capitalism. Technology should be used for the good of society, not to breed the wealth of the few.

It's gender abolitionist ideas are recogniseable to anyone who has basic knowledge in gender theory. It desires not to do away with gender, but to do away with the limits imposed on gender. The Manifesto solidifies this idea with the haunting words: "We have no interest in seeing
the sexuate diversity of the world reduced. Let a hundred sexes bloom!"

It can be a difficult read, however, it's brevity and conciseness allows for multiple re-reads, easy dissections and clear ideas. I cannot summarise all of its ideas here. It is a manifesto which I think every student should read, and after having reading it myself, I cannot believe a feminist ideology can be complete without it. It should be discussed on campuses all around the world. An essential read for today, and I hope it is a beginning of a new language and re-construction of life itself.

[Anwen Hayward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice ideas and all, but alas, I cannot recommend it, and indeed eschew it as a manifesto text in particular, and this is why:

'The very process of construction is therefore understood to be a negentropic, iterative, and continual refashioning.'

WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?!

'Systematic thinking and structural analysis have largely fallen by the wayside in favour of admirable, but insufficient struggles, bound to fixed localities and fragmented insurrections.'

My dudes, my buddies, there is no need to write this so inaccessibly. Try 'Large scale, long term thought is necessary to create lasting change, but the ease of localised thinking and short term solutions is usually favoured.'

I have a Master's degree in Narrative Theory, and getting through this 96 page book took me over a month and a half. I used to read out entire paragraphs to friends and we'd try and wade through the lexical treacle to parse a grain of meaning out of them, often unsuccessfully. This text simply doesn't function as a manifesto; it's hard to call people to your radical new ideas if no-one can understand them. You have to write for the proles and the plebs like me, who yearn desperately to hear radical new ways of thinking but also don't eat thesauruses for brunch. As an academic, I beg academics to stop writing like this. It achieves not a thing.

[Ipsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Identity is a noose. Identity is a noose that we tie around our necks willingly for the rest of our days -- or is it tied willingly? This thought has been echoing in my mind for the past few months now, bringing with it a sea of political pessimism. Xeno-feminism (‘xeno-’ is a prefix which means alien, unnatural, etc) claims as an engine of feminist emancipation the right of everyone to speak as no one in particular. But is it possible to externalise our interiority as “no one in particular?” Identity...is a noose.

Identity is made up of the multitudes within me; that suffocates me. If we are constantly concerned with the needs of every bit of particularity that makes us, how can we even begin to breathe, let alone allow others to breathe? If we are always bogged down by the proliferating differences (let a thousand sexes bloom!) that we, on the left, seem to advocate, then how can we ever bring about emancipatory change in the world? Perhaps you can understand why identity is suffocating to me, perhaps not. But can we even outrun the leash of identity? Perhaps identity is an ineluctable noose?

The multitudes within us, the semiotic and memetic parasites inside of us, demand to be externalised through material-infrastructure; they shape our cultural sense of space and time.
How do we build a better semiotic parasite — one that arouses the desires we want to desire, that orchestrates not an autophagic orgy of indignity or rage, but an emancipatory and egalitarian community buttressed by new forms of unselfish solidarity and collective self-mastery?
Xeno-feminism, predicated on accelerationism, uses hyperstition to manipulate the memetic parasites inside of us, and in turn sway the collective sense of desire in a given epoch, time, and place; so that new futures may burst through from the glorified shrine of fixed Nature.

So perhaps the only way to outrun the tightening leash, the stifling stagnancy of essentialised and naturalised identity is: speed; lines of flight that slash through an uneven landscape of essentialism and naturalism. Mutate, probe and navigate, because the capitalist machinery mutates at the speed of light!

To fight the tyranny of particularity, xenofeminism advocates for a non-absolute universalism, rationalism, and techno-materialism. Feminism must be rational because of the miserable imbalance of male-dominated arenas of science and technology. Yes, the history of thought has been phallocentric, but it does not mean that reason ‘by nature’ is patriarchal. Science and reason are the suspension of gender, not its reinforcement. The techno-scientific innovations must be repurposed towards liberation, must be linked to a collective theoretical and political thinking in which women, queers, and the gender non-conforming play an unparalleled role.

I always thought that the last thing I will ever be interested in is Cyber-culture studies and Accelerationism. My intellectual tendencies have always had more of an intuitive bent (oxymoron, i know!), been more relational, more watery and softer in the way that dreams with a water-colour palette are. The matrices and the blazing pixels of the digital world always seemed like a contradiction. However, looking back at the past three years of my intellectual development, my intense fascination with the role of body in philosophy (with eroticism, trauma, the incest taboo, the poetics of space) has come full circle. The Body will ultimately transcend its materiality and fuse itself with machines, becoming a cyborg. The body lends itself to the virtual, not to be superseded by it but to be enmeshed with it.

As a cis-bisexual woman who has always had more than just a streak of masculine energy, who has always felt out of place and impure, and who has been beaten down and curbed because of it: I have always felt right at home with xenofeminism, and cyborgism. We are all cyborgs, synthetic, unnatural. The glorification of nature has nothing to offer us! I can attach any kind of machinist entity to myself and I won’t have to give two fucks about the purity of nature. It is trans- and queer- inclusive.

We want neither clean hands, nor a clean soul; we want more superior forms of corruption, after all contamination is the ultimate mutational driver! The future is post-human, inhuman. Nothing is sacred, certainly not nature!

This is a flashy little manifesto, which means that the ideas presented here have not been structurally fleshed out yet; these are still big promises and larger-than-life size speculative theorising. It is still a dream with not a single body in sight to buttress it. It is wonderfully delicious all the same! However, the one problem this manifesto has, is its inaccessible language. For whom are these manifestos written exactly? Surely the common public, the working classes who have no relation whatsoever to the highland of academia? Why do leftist academicians write like they’re trying to suck each other’s ivory-tower dicks for some kind of perverse intellectual validation?

Anyway, if you have ever felt like an alien, impure or unnatural under the reigning structures of the world, this is for you! To my cyborg lovers! If nature is unjust, change nature!

Ours is a transformation of seeping, directed subsumption rather than rapid overthrow; it is a transformation of deliberate construction, seeking to submerge the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy in a sea of procedures that soften its shell and dismantle its defences, so as to build a new world from the scraps.

[Marie-Therese · Rating 1 out of 5]

Beautifully designed little book. Too bad the text is nothing but absurdly obfuscatory jargon with barely a fresh thought or interesting idea hidden within. I can't imagine anyone but a first-year gender studies student getting much out of this. Old news, prettily packaged. Save your reading time for something genuinely revolutionary like Shulamith Firestone's practically antique (1970!) but still rabble-rousing 'Dialectic of Sex'. Not recommended for anyone who's passed those first-year philosophy and gender courses.

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basically the alien with 3 tiddies from total recall tries to corrupt you into a multiplicitous freedom that involves listening to 100gecs. If nature is unjust, change nature!

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 3 out of 5]

techno-rational-universalist abolitionist inhumanism

[tout · Rating 2 out of 5]

The design of this book is excellent, and as a designer, this is what really drew me in. It's also what redeems this at all for me, pushing it beyond a one star review. It's a pretty and playful little book.

Some fundamental disagreements with this are its under-nuanced and under-problematized conception of technology and the call to embrace alienation. In modern technology and technology in general, there is more at stake than simply wresting it away from capitalism and patriarchy. Is this not vulgar? Don't we hear the same thing of the state form? What is at stake is how we conceive of our world and how we situate ourselves within it. A perspective that sees itself in this dulled experience of being in the world, as autonomous and alien from the "coming into presence of beings" is little different than the route we're currently given. The fact that we cling to being alien to the chaotic and ever changing and changeable world is a supreme weakness rather than a strength. We can reject what is called "natural" without falling into alienation as its supposed opposite. Similarly how does the author's call to reclaim the "universals" make any sense in our time, of social fragmentation and the potentials for communist multiplicity, and why would the return to the one over the multiple be seen as anything but a technocratic stalinism?

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is a tricky one to rate and I wish I could give it a 3.5.
It is a manifesto and as such is determined, absolute and not bothered with constructive criticism. It manages this well and I appreciate it as such. The crucial aspect of a manifesto that it is lacking in, though, is to ignite a passion for the cause in the audience. It does not fail in doing so entirely, but the jargon is a major hurdle. XF is among other things concerned with language and still, for a platform that is concerned with the elimination of inequality (and explicitly mentions class and included in that presumably the disparity in education and access to its ciphers), the language of the manifesto results in intellectual gatekeeping. While there are certainly phrases that sound provocative and catchy, their meaning is not always clear and up to the reader's interpretation of the convoluted passage preceding it and quite possibly some guessing at the vocabulary used. I wish that this wasn't a problem since I agree with the majority of the platform -- as far as I could understand the wording.

[Fran · Rating 1 out of 5]

In short, this highly contradictory piece argues that liberation is to be found in speculating over complex ideas, rather than pursuing concrete, specific goals related to doing away with oppression. The line "you are not oppressed because you are a laborer, you are a laborer because you are oppressed" really illustrates the unbelievable privilege and ignorance behind this text. It follows that you are not oppressed because you are black, you are black because you are oppressed. You are not oppressed because you are gay, you are gay because you are oppressed.

The rather sinister undercurrent to this is the idea that oppression is found in the labels we use to identify oppressed groups. The group that wrote this (yes it is a group of people) advocates that we do away with the language that allows oppressed groups to talk about their struggles (and develop class consciousness) in favor of hyperspecific, speculative, universal debate with no end goal or purpose. It deems this revolutionary.

In spite of this text arguing for the abolition of sex, gender, race, etc, it posits that experimental hormones be freely available to the entire population for purpose of sex change. But why, if we're abolishing sex and gender, would a trans woman even need to go through the transition process? Could she not just be a woman because she says so? And even then, why would she identify as anything at all? If gender does not exist, neither will dysphoria.

The writer(s') misinformation especially shows when they argue that activism is better focused on universal, sweeping changes, rather than small, local changes. They argue that when small local changes are made, the machine continues on. Activism is not worth pursuing unless it can demolish all the world's problems in one fell swoop. The manifesto refuses to explain how we're supposed to do this.

The closest thing this text comes to actually providing a framework for uh, what the hell people are supposed to do about oppressive power structures is its argument in favor of mind control. It's masked in jargon, so I'm not surprised other people haven't commented on it. XF asks we deploy cultural manipulation of people's desires (hmmm I think there's a word for that...it starts with a p...) while deploying sign operators (think of Pavlov's dog -- we ring a bell, you think of the importance of demisexual liberation) in order to make all people of the Liberation Mindset. This way, we can “desire what we want to desire,” and think only of “unselfish solidarity.”



What is even more baffling about this manifesto is that it insists repeatedly on its understanding that technology is fallible and can be used to reinforce existing power structures…yet its refusal to elaborate on its plan to make sure actual technological mind control will not be used to oppress women and minorities. The sentiment it espouses seems to be that oppression is something flimsy. Easily created, easily taken away. It is this that I find especially grotesque, this which underlines the immense privilege behind this ‘manifesto,’ even more than the misguided assertions about ideal activism.

This manifesto is a whole lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. In many ways, it’s a political manifesto for the ages, and this is what makes it a genius work of antifeminism. As long as something is sleek, wrapped up in pretty packaging and language that sounds smart, you only have to rely on the fact that your readers are easily swayed by their protection of ego to rely on the positive reviews rolling in, and people believing your bigotry is actually the liberation you claim it is. As long as it looks glamorous, it must be righteous and good. As long as there are pretty ideals surrounding it, there is no reason to ask about their implementation. This isn’t a text that is meant to be implemented. It’s noise designed to validate and naturalize apathy towards the plight of the oppressed. It understands the plight of the oppressed as something to be speculated about, and liberation as an impossible ideal to be discussed over cigars and brandy, rather than a concrete reality within our reach.

The continuous contradictions within the text reveal its shallowness. Everyone knows even readers are dumb as boxes of hair these days. No one will read it closely enough to see its message is confused at best and fascist at worst. One minute the text says that women and q****s will be in charge of the technological, anti-oppression mind control it seeks to implement. The next, it says that there is no such thing as a woman, or a q****. It promises oppressed groups power and control over their own liberation, then denies them the language necessary to testify that they are a part of that oppressed group. What’s that? You’re a woman and you’re applying for a spot at the Thought Police Academy For Reprogramming of UnWoke Males? Well, how do you know you’re a woman? Don’t you know there’s no such thing? The confusion over language that this text actually advocates for is a sneaky way of allowing existing power structures to continue. Repeatedly demand that women and gays and minorities prove they deserve to speak, but give it to straight white men without question. It’s clever, I’ll give the authors that.

In summary, this text enables the continuation of oppressive power structures and cripples liberation movements in a few ways:
*Insist on focusing on pie-in-the-sky, speculative, sweeping, universal liberation movements, doomed to live in the future, instead of concrete, locally-based activism making tangible impacts in the lives of people affected by oppression.
*Insist on removing the language of the oppressed so they can no longer speak about their own oppression.
*Naturalizing oppression and placing the responsibility for oppression on the shoulders of the oppressed. “You are not oppressed because you’re black. You’re black because you’re oppressed.”
*Cowardice. Refuses to offer tangible ways for people interested in the ideology it puts forth to actually implement it. Insists XF is just a thinktank, while also arguing for the dismantling of modern society. The reason it swings wildy between these two standpoints is because conviction sounds cool (and might get you tenure!—that’s right, I just looked it up and this was mostly written by PROFESSORS), but conviction needs answers, so it’s best we shy away and switch to a new bulletpoint as soon as the flow of things calls for an example or idea that stands on its own beyond the mirage of academic jargon.
*Hubris. We are things of nature. Arguing we can fix anything with technology is forgetting where we get the fucking materials for technology from. LOL.
*Shockingly fascistic ideas. Encouraging the use of technology to control the way people think, ensure the way they think is “unselfish” and in line with the liberation ideals of XF. Except XF doesn’t really have concrete ideals, does it? So really they’re just advocating for instruments of mind control to be put in the hands of whoever is privileged enough to make it to command central first. Hm. I wonder who that will be? Good thing racism doesn’t exist! /s

TL;DR – Insulated academics are often some of the stupidest people on the planet. Hi ladies if you���re reading this! I hope this got one of you tenure. Which, honestly, it doesn’t make sense to me why you’d want to try to get tenure anyway. If we’re applying the principles of the XF Manifesto, wouldn’t it be much more progressive to use technology to eliminate the use of money and install brain chips into everyone to download necessary information at the appropriate time, rendering both jobs and the teaching profession unnecessary? Why are you working within the concrete system of academia instead of catalyzing a sweeping global reform? You’re almost making it seem like material reality matters, and you’re all just a bunch of privileged hacks making money and a name for yourself reselling oppressive power structures as progressive in what seems to be an elaborate LARPing enterprise wherein you pretend to be technopunk dystopian revolutionaries with something to say.

[Aike · Rating 2 out of 5]

an extra star for the graphic design of this book which is amazing but also the best part. i might just not understand the point of a manifesto, but i would suppose this means you want to convince and sweep up people not already completely agreeing with your ideas. this book however is, i think, practically unreadable if you are not familiar with precisely what this manifesto is all about, thus if you can understand it you probably already agree with most of these points. it's a lot of words for something not all that radical, i'd say, but at least it will look good between your books.

[Alex Sarll]

I'm not a natural fan of the manifesto as a form; they're built on grand statements, and my default response to those is to either point out that they're truisms, or note the various exceptions to the proposed rule. But for the most part, this one is very good. The style is perhaps too academic to be described as rabble-rousing, but it's appropriately exasperated with the various misguided surrenders of territory made by progressive causes, whether that be a tendency towards conceding (if attempting to reframe) the idea that natural equals good, or the problem with beginning from the notion that the oppressed are necessarily the virtuous, and then attempting to convert that into a power capable of changing the system. Furious at the notion of allowing the enemy to retain their sole claim to technology or large-scale operations or rationality itself, impatient with the essentialism which has taken the place of fluidity and volatility in supposedly progressive circles, the authors have come up with something as close as I've seen to a real-world Quellism. Albeit, alas and of course, one fairly short on concrete solutions to the problems it identifies. What follows from this, I don't know, but I certainly hope something does, because "a politics without the infection of purity" feels like something we could use right now.

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow! A blast from the past! The substance of this manifesto, and its visual outlook, are pure gold. Intersectionality is the only way forward, that's for sure. But like the best/worst postmodernists from the 80s, the authors seem to think that the only way to bridge the gap between the academic, the political, and the poetical is to use completely unnecessary jargon. Ironically, then, in its attempt to be avant-garde, the text ends up sounding very old-fashioned.

[Julia Crocodile]

A very worthwhile introduction to an idea of how feminism should operate in our global, technological reality, with an emphasis on avoiding naturalistic feminisms and using technological tools to abolish gender.

Upsides: Some interesting ideas. 1) The idea that "the construction of freedom involves not less but more alienation." I think this is true in the manner in which acquiring freedom requires we alienate ourselves from the conditions we are used to, but I do think that the act of building freedom might be alienating in process but in achieving the end goal would require the gradual achievement of self-actualized liberation. 2) The idea that "To claim that reason or rationality is ‘by nature’ a patriarchal enterprise is to concede defeat. Reason, like information, wants to be free, and patriarchy cannot give it freedom." I completely agree with this and it makes me so angry when people argue that feminism must operate in an emotional manner given the control of men over the real of so-called 'reason.' 3) The emphasis on actually achieving the end goal of gender liberation through the weaponizing of technological tools and processes to get there. "The excess of modesty in feminist agendas of recent decades is not proportionate to the monstrous complexity of our reality.... Technoscientific innovation must be linked to a collective theoretical and political thinking in which women, queers, and the gender non-conforming play an unparalleled role. The real emancipatory potential of technology remains unrealized." I think this is very true and it is true by design. The patriarchs do not want to hand over tools to the technological systems they control, but there is potential for subterfuge and reengineering.

Downsides: It's too short. It's got too much political jargon. It fails to articulate a clear path forward. It has no evidence of how the Laboria Cuboniks collective is putting this ideology into operation.

[lezhypatia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just… really stupid

I’ll extrapolate a bit— as another reviewer very eloquently mentioned, this manifesto drums up legitimacy for its ridiculous premises through the use of pretty infographics and flowery language (the likes of which might put Judith Butler to shame) that, ultimately, is a barely-veiled Trojan horse of fascist solutions (mind control, social coercion, de-facto programming through technology???) to problems which the manifesto refuses to name (or, rather, it refuses to let oppressed groups name ourselves— which tracks, since the problem (oppression) is essentialized into identity. You aren’t oppressed because you are a laborer, you’re a laborer because you are oppressed.).

There’s a lot to critique here, but I am reminded of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents:

“It seems inevitable that people who can’t read are going to lean more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should.”

Through the “male power of naming” written about by Dworkin and Daly, anti feminist groups such as XF can very easily render us “illiterate” in our own oppression. It seems inevitable that people who cannot name themselves or the causes of their oppression also cannot testify about that oppression, consciousness-raise about that oppression or even, eventually, recognize that oppression. To those of us who are rendered illiterate in our own oppression— those who have been stripped of the language necessary to articulate our experiences and build community consciousness— this manifesto may be alluring. To anyone with even a semi-developed feminist consciousness, this manifesto is blatant Antifeminism.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This a manifesto of intersectional feminism as well as an outright attack on capitalism.
It’s flashy. It’s a nice package. What ideas there are, seem like ones I would agree with it. In particular the bits about gender. It just it needs a little more meat.

[Alyssa S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much talking in circles for me. The XF Manifesto uses many words to, frankly, say very little. It has a few sound points, however, which saves it in my eyes.

[jive · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty cool concepts. Mostly just big pretentious words gesturing to vague ideas. Cool ass graphics though. I like it more if I think of it as an avant-garde leftist art project.

[Jen Benyovits · Rating 5 out of 5]

'nothing should be accepted as fixed, permanent, or 'given' [...]. essentialist naturalism reeks of theology - the sooner it is exorcised, the better.'

[The Thinkery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation, while never explicitly a manifesto, has consistently been described as one. This description puts certain expectations of genre and style upon the work, which might mire its reception when it does not fulfil them.

This work, however, is a breath of fresh air into a stale theoretical environment content with sloganeering and momentary action. It is predominantly a project of salvaging: salvaging seemingly tainted and impure concepts—such as alienation, reasoning, and the universal—which in the literature have been closely tied to their origins in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The repression of these concepts comes from a bastardised analytical relationship with history in which past events are regarded as blueprints for assessing future events. In moderation this practice should be encouraged, but when performed in the excessive manner that it is, it leads to the foreclosure of the new in general and a refusal to re-work old concepts to fit better aims specifically.

The work argues for a politics rooted in alienation. This alienation, however, is not the one characterised by Marx but, rather, the human's alienation from any notion of authentic nature. As Laboria Cuboniks points out, this is not a recent invention of capitalism but a rift that has been gradually opened up alongside the proliferation of reasoning. Humans were reasonable, and thus alienated, long before modernity and capitalism came to be. A politics aware of this alienation allows for interventions into a given and theological nature, which has been used to justify various horrors, e.g., the confinement of women's bodies. Such interventions may be major, initiated by humanity at large, or may be minor such as the feminist makeshift technologies concocted in times of prohibition of abortion (analysed in Helen Hester's book on Xenofeminism).

By drawing on Sellars and Brandom, Laboria Cuboniks tries to dethrone "Reason" to emphasise reasoning in its stead. That is, they abandon the old way of "Reason", as a faculty in the minds of white men, and open up for the practice of reasoning as a social enterprise, a messy and entangled doing, which entails participation of multiple agents within a diverse field of communities. This would entail silenced and oppressed groups as well. As they write: "There is no ‘feminine’ rationality, nor is there a ‘masculine’ one. Science is not an expression but a suspension of gender. If today it is dominated by masculine egos, then it is at odds with itself–and this contradiction can be leveraged." One of the tasks ahead is to forge a conception of a minor reasoning encompassing difference.

The same task awaits that of the universal. The universal should not be constituted politically by ascribing one principle indiscriminatorily to a diverse fields of phenomena. Instead, it should entail a gradual and piecemeal transformation from below. No universal is truly universal. It is always a patchwork capable of being reworked one place at a time. But this reworking must strive to be all-encompassing.

Why this need to salvage such concepts? Because the left today is impotent to foster any sustained change. It is satisfied with local and small-scale interventions which have no truck with large-scale abstractions. What Laboria Cuboniks argue for is a displacement of strategy: the left should not turn its back to the universal itself, and thus to complete social transformation, but rather switch to a different account of the universal, one which is intersectional and piecemeal.

I find a lot of value in the moves this work makes. However, I wonder whether Laboria Cuboniks may themselves usher in a new sort of theology: this time, one pertaining to technology. As is the case with transhumanism, for example, technology itself may be theologised. Laboria Cuboniks is not crossing this boundary but I do believe a broader view of technology might remove any remaining tinge of doubt. In Theory, for example, well-known technology is being diffused through Foucault's technologies of self, as voluntary and transformative practices, and Heidegger's question regarding technology, in which technology becomes a tool to diagnose a present. Xenofeminists henceforth should draw on other references than the two mentioned. This could come about, for instance, through a more detailed elaboration of Firestone's concept of technology.

All in all, this work is necessary. I hope a time may arrive in which it will be more widely accepted. However, this would require its current adherents to expand upon xenofeminism, something we have yet to see done outside of Laboria Cuboniks.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Verso inflated this into a $13 pamphlet with shitty letter ‘F’ graphics. Never change, Verso.

Interesting for how it’s engaging with feminism, but largely inoffensive in most other ways (and weird treatments of “alienation”, “nature”, and “xeno”). Somewhat embarrassing when it targets “puritanical politics of shame”—0x0D really sounds like it wants to complain about “SJWs” or something. Does anyone care at this point?

I like the prose and style etc, manifestos are cool that way. But I can’t force myself to care about stuff this speculative or whatever “accelerationism” is going on about outside of being an internet meme. You can have your Sadie Plants and Mark Fishers and Lands and whatever. But this isn’t worth the time.

[Peter [VI] · Rating 4 out of 5]

After looking through some variants of poststructural or poststructural-inspired philosophy, one caught my eye. Xenofeminism. It apparently was inspired, or inspired (I cannot remember which) “Gender Accelerationism.” ‘G/Acc’ seemed weird enough to me but this ‘XF’ thing was a bit more normal, not really dealing with Gender Gods or whatever. From what I also heard of XF was that it was linked to Gender Nihilism (a rejection of gender-related to the fact it has no inherent meaning,) so I already knew I was getting into some cool territory. What I eventually found from it were both more positive things than I thought, yet more negative (to me, of course, as these were very personal critiques.)

The manifesto starts off with an attack on essentialism and naturalism. Essentialism is that things have inherent essences to them, typically forming neat binaries. Leftism <> Rightism, Man <> Women, &c&c. It attacks this as a reinforcement and limit to individuals perceived and categorized as women, and those who are women categorized as men. From this attack of essentialism, it also finds itself intersectionality being both gender abolitionist (I’ll get to this later) and race abolitionist (as well as pro-queer politics,) as race is also a construct that limits individuals. It is also opposed to appeals to nature, as with the advent of technology the barriers we normally have are quickly fading away. The structures which hold the system together are showing themselves to be just that, structures, things that can be molded and broken. It also claims itself to be rational, that the fact many dispel rationality as a patriarchal ownership is self-defeating. It then wishes itself to be a larger-scale assault, yet not something oppressive. It then calls for synthetic praxis and theory (what posties call “looting”,) and that feminism must equip itself for the modern technological era. For its main idea, it calls for the alienation of technology to further its goals of feminist (among others’) desire, that they should not be used in pursuit of capital yet rather instead in pursuit of this rootlike movement, but also that it acknowledges the coming downsides from this era. From poststructural influences (as I could tell,) it forms itself against ‘illusions and melancholy.’ That it is against an overt wishfulness, unfulfilled emancipation, moralizing, and factionalism. It then rejects localism and sees itself looking upon a bigger picture, which is unrelenting and acknowledging of temporary action and defenses, that to escape it not to get rid of. Back onto gender abolitionism, it calls for getting rid of something which creates limits onto oneself, structural impositions, that we have gotten away from the previous naturalism, yet that gender is another problem, that its only purpose was to tame those shaken by the insurrection against ‘sex.’ It looks upon the internet as a superior mode of getting rid of essentialism, a better corruptor, yet it looks again at how it uses an inferior and procrastinatory mode of shaming and moral maintenance. Back again onto gender abolitionism, it calls for an end to the gender normativity, an end to the typical constructs which constrain. This is not getting rid of “gendered traits” but rather the frame from which they sit: getting rid of the lines which limit and segregate the infinite rainbow of colors. It intersectionally is also against race and class. It then seeks a universal vector that is opposed to the particulars, that which in the end will reinforce the same structures, e.g. the white is without race. It then very clearly jabs against TERFs, those which will use gender abolitionism to further transphobia as a clear example of particulars being reinforced by current structures. It then acknowledges plurality and adopts a very meta-anarchist concept of patchwork, a notion of open-source-edness, yet it does not wish itself to be vectorless as it would defeat itself, it has a clear vector. It then touches on counter-technology, in terms of medicine, and XF as a platform rather than just an ideology or the like. “If Nature is Unjust, Change Nature!”

What did I like? It was a joy and nicely organized to read. It touched on very interesting concepts, that countercultures and the like can easily just reinforce the normal culture, and that gender, like sex, must be dissolved. I also very much liked its patchwork-esk openness, as well as advocating for ideological-looting, as I can add my criticisms and still maintain a vector under this platform. Its use of counter-action and deliberate structurization and consideration of structures is something I adore, and that giving authority to anything (like nature) will not lead to truer liberation. A good point is the culture of the internet, how it’s constantly procrastinatory and gets nothing done while thinking it’s on a similar vector. It also uses the internet and memetic praxis as a good means of taking charge, which I agree with. Overall the vector, the platform of Xenofeminism, is something I like. But when it comes to specifics, I dislike and will criticize a lot.

Well, what do I dislike? I dislike its overreliance on imposition and utilitarian mindsets, while also being anti-localist and anti-escapist, while also over-reliant on revisionist modes of thought (e.g. classlessness.) From Accelerationists, Capitalism (The Intelligence) is seen as an inescapable assemblage or entropic force, a ‘Demon’ in which there is no true defeat other than the collapse of everything. To ignore this means any action is purely in vain, the ‘Lifestylist’ as some may call it is, in my opinion, in a better position to the Productivist. Any arm against the system is of the system (look at how unions, an anti-capitalist tendency, has actually made itself integral to the free market; or more comically look at the meme of Che Guevara T-Shirts.) To scoff at escape and localism is something I’d personally find silly. Its overreliance on utilitarian mindsets is also disheartening, as although it thinks and finds itself that they are not oppressive, I say the ends do not justify the means, that any linearity, even if it isn’t an absolute, will create an oppressive and limiting sanity. Its attacks on the contemporary feminist critique of rationality are something I agree with, but its defense of rationality is something I too disagree with. Rationality is a morality. None of the oppressed have ever gotten their freedom from appealing to the morality of their system. XF to the rest is an insanity, an irrationality, a sordidity. To outright reject what is seen as rational is a defeating imposition, but to impose rationality is also impositionary. I call on Xenofeminism to take up some Acid praxis, as it ignores basic entropic problems, and that it needs to escape current lines of thought to find solutions. This is my main critique of XF, its vector is too linear. While it acknowledges inner plurality it ignores the greater plurality. It is overly expansionist, overly productivist, and overly linearistic in my eyes. I also think it does not go far enough in its attack of abstraction, and that it could take an egoistic approach. It seeks egalitarianism and the like, yet this is clearly an abstraction without substance. I can take any of its goals and dissolve it into a creative nothing. It has clear vectors, but the ideals are of great issue. It also takes extremely limiting leftist modes of thought, thinking in terms of more revisionist narratives, ignoring the basis of the individual (yet not to the exclusion of the structure.) Order is not the creator of liberty, rather liberty is the creator of order.

Overall it is an interesting concept, one which I hope gains a good amount of traction. It is something I’d recommend to ‘left’ or other libertarian-leaning post-structuralists.

[Hestia Istiviani · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read in English but this review is in Bahasa Indonesia

Freedom is not given -- and it is certainly not given by anything "natural."

Mencari diskon adalah jalan ninjaku. Setelah berbagi judul gratis sejak awal pandemi, Verso juga mendiskon semua bukunya. Untuk buku fisik sebesar 40% dan untuk buku elektronik 80%. Informasi terkiat Xenofeminism ini aku dapatkan dari Instagram Verso itu sendiri. Lalu aku telusuri lebih jauh lewat resensi di Goodreads dan rasa penasaranku semakin menjadi.

Terminologi "xenofeminism" tergolong asing di telingaku. Aku sendiri yang masih belajar mengenai feminisme merasa buku ini sepertinya bisa aku coba baca untuk mengetahui ada aliran apalagi dalam sebuah konsep feminis.

Buku ini tidak tebal dan disajikan berdampingan dengan ilustrasi menyerupai kolase. Buku dibagi menjadi beberapa bagian berdasarkan topik utama yang mereka bahas. Apabila diakumulasi total ada 20 poin dalam manifesto xenofeminis ini. Masing-masing poin tidak begitu panjang. Disajikan berupa bagaimana sebuah xenofeminis seharusnya berada di tengah masyarakat.

Bagiku, The Xenofeminism Manifesto ini tidak mudah untuk dicerna bagia kalangan yang baru belajar tentang feminis. Minimal, ia harus paham dengan konteks feminis dulu dan sekarang serta sebab mengapa sampai ada beragam aliran dalam feminis. Meski isinya tidak padat, tetapi penggunaan beberapa kata, menurutku, terkesan cukup tendensius. Malah aku melihatnya hampir seperti seseorang yang memaksakan ideologinya untuk diaplikasikan dalam sebuah keadaan.

Kalau membaca ini sebagai sebuah buku untuk menambah pengetahuan, aku rasa tidak salah. Tapi bacalah perlahan dan dampingi dengan Google. Bila ada istilah sulit, bisa langsung mencari apa maksudnya.

[Irene Benito]

I don´t know how to appraise this. The manifesto makes some really interesting points and introduces a couple of radical ideas to develop, alas for a future that I don´t see anywhere near, globally speaking. It supposedly aims to become a hegemonic movement, but as it stands, I think it can only appeal to a reduced avant-garde. The language is highly academic, it rejects any system of beliefs other than science, and advocates learning coding and “the language of architecture” to redefine our realities, which I would say it all adds up to leaving out the vast majority of women and queers in the planet.

[Anton Relin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If nature is unjust, change nature"

Strong message, very transhumanist and technology forward, which is great!, but perhaps the small issue lies specifically in manifesto as genre. Excited to try reading Helen Hester's longer text on this

[Christina Pan · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://laboriacuboniks.net/manifesto...

Valentina recommended

Surprised at how well the language is handled in this political manifesto, doesn’t play tricks and is straightforward
However as a political framework I am not sure how effective this way of thinking is. I like the philosophy though
“There are many lacunae where desire confronts us with the brutality of fact, where beauty is indissociable from truth. Poetry, sex, technology and pain are incandescent with this tension we have traced…”

[nietzscheanista · Rating 2 out of 5]

return to hegel

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strong and compelling piece of feminist literature, but I'm not sure how useful it is. It's a hopeful vision of a future where technology and social advancement means everybody can live how they want to, but I'm not sure I trust people that much. Technology is a tool, one that can be used as a means to elevate all peoples of all ability to the same starting point... but it is also a tool that can be used by corrupt governmental forces, capitalist evils, and patriarchal power schemes. I'm not sure that anybody but a feminist scholar will even be able to wrap their head around this piece of writing, and if a layman can't use it, it's not useful.