Cyberfeminist Literary Space: Performing the Electronic Manifesto

Abstract

According to media critic Justine Cassell, the most effective "feminist vision" of an electronic text or software design "as a space" for sharing authority with others is to have the work "be about [its own] design and construction" (1998: 302). Cyberfeminism and cyberfeminist electronic literature are relentlessly meta, demonstrating a prevailing preoccupation with their own construction. It should come as no surprise then that the dominant genre for cyberfeminists is the manifesto, including programs for Cyborgs (Haraway 1985), mercenaries of slime (VNS Matrix 1991), for Net.Wurkers (Mez 2001), Queertexters (Rhodes 2004), Zinesters (Antropy 2012), Xenofeminists (Laboria Cuboniks 2014) and Glitch Feminists (Russell 2020). These self-consciously styled literary works celebrate the complexity of their own construction and reading. The manifesto as a literary genre is a call to social action. As a participatory and conversational form, it invites the reader to become an active player or an interactor in a narratological, discursive, semiotic and/or literal revolution. As a twentyfirst-century form, it is especially well suited to feminist digital culture because of its three major properties: it is reciprocal, viral, and memetic 6