engleski

From Feminism to Cyberfeminism

In 1984 bell hooks reflects on the growing disinterest in feminism as a radical political movement and the increasing inability to arrive at a unified definition of feminism itself. A decade later Anna Yeatman writes of the ways in which academic feminism or femocracy has been characterized by various attempts to respond to challenges of the Otherness. Most people think of feminism or the more commonly used term women’ s lib as a movement that aims to make women the social equal to men. This broad definition, popularized by the media and the mainstream segments of the movement, raises problematic questions. Since men are not equals in white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal class structure, which men do women want to be equal to? Do women share a common vision of what equality means? Implicit in this simplistic definition of women’ s liberation is a dismissal of race and class as factors that, in conjunction with sexism, racial and gender discrimination, determine the extent to which an individual will be discriminated against, exploited or oppressed. Women in lower class and poor groups, particularly those who are non-white, would not have defined women’ s liberation as women gaining social equality with men since they are continually reminded in their everyday lives that all women do not share a common social status. Many women are reluctant to advocate feminsim because they are uncertain about the meaning of the term. Other women from exploited and oppressed groups dismiss the term because they do not wish to be perceived as supporting a racist movement: feminism is often equated with white women’ s rights efforts. Large numbers of women see feminism as a synonymous with lesbianism ; their homophobia leads them to associate with any group identified as pro- lesbian. Of course there are women who do not want to be associated with women’ s rights movement in any form so they reject and oppose feminist movement. Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class of women. It does not privilege women over men. Feminism is neither a lifestyle nor a ready made identity or role one can step into. Defining feminism as a movement to end sexist oppression is crucial for the development of theory because it is a starting point indicating the direction of exploration and analysis. According to this, the question of feministic theory includes other aspects of contemporary life, too. It studies the reflections of feminism in our virtual space. Virtual reality (VR), Internet or cyber-world (cyber-world is a term which was inaugurated into theory in 1984. by William Gibson in his cyber- punk novel Neuromacer defining it as the process of blending between data spaces and virtual reality) have occurred as the result from the development of computer technology as the transfer technology. It is a technology which inevitably raises some important economic issues such as profitability, but at the same time it manipulates people in a direct or indirect manner. On the one hand, it is space in which people are exposed to violence because it imposes its own identity (the process of imitation of American way of living) and on the other, it offers us a possibility for political and social freedom of different group members (racial, class and even gender issues). The bodies that live in such reality are called cyber-bodies or cyborg and it is a hybrid of a man and a machine. Nevertheless, in virtual reality cyber-bodies have completely different features from the real world bodies. Racial, gender, class and other issues are differently considered in virtual reality than in a real world. In this space we are given the possibility to take the position of the Other Due to some social, political and any other reasons in the real world we are sometimes denied to become what we want to be. This virtual reality gives us the opportunity to incorporate our own subjectivity and to be equal and free. The categories of race, sex and gender might become completely irrelevant because they are invisible or simply disappear. In virtual reality a body loses its material quality and is reduced to an imaginative level. Since the emphasis is given to the categories of gender and sex, both in the real and cyber-world, this research paper will be oriented to the concept of cyberfeminism and its theoretical aspects. It will also give the insight into cyberfeminism as an aspect of denial of feminine subjectivity. Can women through cyber technology accomplish what they have not managed so far? Does cyber technology offer women to control their bodies and to construct their identity in the world without restrictions? These are some issues that will be discussed in this research work.

feminism ; cyberfeminism ; cyber-punk ; virtual reality

nije evidentirano