Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life (review)

The field of cyberfeminism is a contentious one, colonized both by those working in the field of gender and technology studies as well as by cyber-grrrls and cyber-artists such as The Cyberfeminist House collective (http://sva74.sva.psu.edu/~cyberfem/) and the subRosa group (http://www.cyberfeminist.net). Indeed, the very term "cyberfeminism" is disputable—who, exactly, is a cyberfeminist? If one never ventures into cyberspace, can one still be a cyberfeminist? I have argued elsewhere, echoing Alison Adam's call for an ethical cyberfeminism in her article "The Ethical Dimension of Cyberfeminism," that "[t]he result of 'all' woman-centered online activity being authenticated is an apolitical and dehistoricised cyberfeminist consciousness" (Gillis 2004, 185). These arguments have been made in response to those cyberfeminists who follow in Sadie Plant's footsteps and her claim that

[t]he Internet promises women a network of lines on which to chatter, natter, work and play; virtuality brings a fluidity to identities which once had to be fixed; and multi-media provides a tactile environment in which women artists can find their space. . . . Women are accessing the circuits on which they were once exchanged, hacking into security's controls, and discovering their own post-humanity.

(265)

Avoiding such generalizing assertions, Kember seeks to position the debates at the core of ongoing politically and ethically responsible cyberfeminism debates. Noting that "[c]yberfeminist cultural analysis must engage with current trends in science and technology with a critical historical awareness of how they are naturalized culturally and with a strategic investment in dialogue rather than dismissal" (51), Kember enters into ongoing cyberfeminism debates about identity, the body, and embodiment through a materialist reading of the nature/culture divide in history, gender, and technology. In so doing, Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life immediately marks itself as part of the new generation of scholarly cyberfeminist thought, one which moves beyond the "cyber-drool."

This book has two bisecting arguments: the "development of identities and entities within the global information network encompassing both human and non-human environments" and "a pluralized cyberfeminist engagement with artificial life as both a discipline and cultural discourse" (vii). The intersection of these rich fields makes for an occasionally dense argument, one that does require a previous understanding of the key debates in these arguments. That said, moving between such diverse topics as SimCity, Darwinian feminism, eXistenZ, and network economics, it is evident that Kember is comfortable straddling—in an exemplary manner—the interdisciplinary fence. Her facile abilities to move between, around, and through the variable permutations of her argument are particularly demonstrated in her inspired reading of the Alife computer games Creatures and Creatures 2.

Of specific note for feminist and gender studies is Chapter Seven, "Evolving Feminism in Alife Environments," which highlights "the constitutive discourses of alife—biology, computer science and cognitive psychology—in order to elaborate the concept of autonomous agency which has been associated with the description and fabrication of alife systems in hardware, software and wetware." (175). This chapter engages with Judith Butler, Patricia Adair Gowaty, Donna Haraway, Vicky Kirby, and Sherry Turkle, among others, culminating in a discussion about alife, autopoiesis, and autonomy, which is a welcome addition to the embodiment debates. Overall, examining "artificial" life, this book calls for a bioethics of posthuman identity, to which cyberfeminism can—and should—contribute. Kember is to be applauded for demonstrating how cyberfeminism can and must have an ethics, a politics, and a history, something that has been largely lacking from the field to date. The range of topics covered and the depth of analysis precludes its use for undergraduates, but it would be a welcome addition to graduate courses on alife, cyberfeminism, and/or feminist theory, and is certainly a requirement for the library of any scholarly (cyber)feminist.