Cyberfeminism Index

by Mindy Seu (Editor)

In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.

The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 1,000 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.

Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.

Contributors include: Skawennati, Charlotte Web, Melanie Hoff, Constanza Pina, Melissa Aguilar, Cornelia Sollfrank, Paola Ricaurte Quijano, Mary Maggic, Neema Githere, Helen Hester, Annie Goh, VNS Matrix, Klau Chinche / Klau Kinky and Irina Aristarkhova.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Technology, Art, Theory, Politics, Research

560 pages, Paperback

Published October 4, 2022

Reviews

[Mochi · Rating 5 out of 5]

not really "read" per se, this book is an encyclopedic index, rather than a book to read straight through. Flipping through it made me want to take/teach? a class on cyberfeminism and explore the evolutions of this concept in depth. I would love to see this index as a physical/virtual library, where each entry would lead to the full body of the work/project in question. but it makes me happy that this reference of the past 20 years of work on computing + gender exists!

but also -- how to bring such discourse into tech spaces? I got this book from the art library, and it seems very much like an Art Book.

[Kaleigh]

Marking this as "read" because it's as read as it will ever be, meaning it's not really a book one expects to read every word of in any sort of order. The clue is right there in the title, "Index," and that's really what it is. A yellow pages of sorts for cyberfeminist projects, each with a title, website link, and small blurb about it.

The projects are mostly insanely cool and rad and I think the collection is probably invaluable to understanding feminist web history, but you do really have to look at the links on paper and type them into a browser to get to them and to get the most out of them. It's neat for sure, but I was expecting a little more analysis, some real essays or something and don't think I would have bought this physical version had I known (re: read any review ahead of time) it's really kind of just a massive list of links. A web-based version if it exists is probably the way to go... but I guess the physical book does loudly say something about you if you have it on a shelf—if you use your shelf as a means to communicate things about yourself like I do.

[Kelsey Halliday Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Afterword by Legacy Russell is a must read. Online iteration of this project that compiled this material is just as great for those that don’t have this. Will be browsing and referencing this for years to come- it already hadn’t left my side table for the year since I got it.

[Debby Friday · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for a reference book on a relatively niche subgenre of feminist thought. I don’t know what I was expecting but I wanted to get more out of this as an encyclopedic text. I could see myself being really into this in undergrad but I think my tastes have changed over the years.

I will say, though, that the curatorial work here is well-done and rather impressive. I also liked the visual/image index at the back.

[Sanpaku · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10.
Content-wise, maybe the only feminist work that brings honor to its movement to its core.
It still has some structural issues, such as entries in the wrong sections, that for an encyclopedic work are extremely important.

[Elikem Kalitsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

No a read but amazing concept

[moni]

More of an index rather than a read, a great book I got out of the library before I finish my masters degree LOL

[Sophia · Rating 5 out of 5]

an incredible resource. i honestly use it regularly because it's so creatively and intellectually stimulating. there's nothing else like it. 10/10

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the others said, it’s an index, so it’s not something you read linearly. i love it so much, it’s like a digital index about a topic i care about but analog.
I find cyberfeminism extremely interesting

[Mads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Physical indexes of digital works and worlds are very important.