- Convenor:
-
Harsha Menon
(Independent)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Lee Douglas
(Goldsmiths, University of London)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 8 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The term 'glitch' traditionally means an error. It can also mean a systems correction. Legacy Russell's theory of Glitch Feminism provides a useful framework in liberating Anthropology from its past violence, while offering a foundation to create a Multi-modal feminist and non-binary future.
Long Abstract:
Traditionally, the word "glitch" is taken to represent an error.
Glitch Feminism, a term and theory developed by the curator Legacy Russell, posits a future using technology to ghost the binary body:
"Glitch Feminism is a creative and political exploration of how the Internet as material can expand - or 'glitch' - the construct of the binary body. It deploys the language of 'glitch' in positing that an 'error' within the flawed machine we operate within - one that disproportionally enacts violence on historically 'othered' bodies - is not an error at all, but rather an integral systems correction to the mechanics of culture and society as we know it."
Legacy Russell: Glitch Feminism. Youtube.com/watch?v=DqNPgd5B3io
Inspired by Cyborg Feminism and Afro-futurism, could Glitch Feminism be useful in imagining a future feminist, non-binary Multimodal Anthropology?
For the panel, I am expanding the use of the term 'technology' to mean film, photography, sound, performance, and other iterations of what Multimodality can be.
What could "glitching" the discipline that historically 'othered' bodies and cultures offer in revisiting histories and shaping possible futures? The binary body in anthropology is one that has endured colonization, and whose present knowledge production often persists in reproducing gendered and racialized bodies for the academic gaze.
Glitch Feminism as a theory is liberating. It is about potential, not just inclusivity, but a shifting of power that bodes a different future. Given this opportunity to employ Glitch Feminism as a research modality, how will Multimodality respond?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 8 March, 2023, -Kareal Amenumey
Paper short abstract:
Body, race, and gender binaries fail under glitch because they are static and legible. Glitch defies language, exceeds the body and name, and pushes toward an abstraction of ill-defined forms. Does multimodal, or 'glitch' anthropology make ever-emerging forms of exchange possible? prolific?
Paper long abstract:
Russell adds to Audre Lorde's infamous quote-- "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, " imagining glitch as mutiny in both online and offline institutions. Rather than a dismantling, Russell posits glitch refusal as a way to "'penetrate....break...puncture...tear' the material of the institution, and by extension the institution of the body" (25). Materially, glitched bodies disrupt normative ideals of order. Constitutively, the pre-determined binaries of law, body, race, and gender prescribed to us by white hegemony fail under glitch because they are static, rigid, and legible, whereas glitch defies language and language confronts binaries. Digitally, the error of a glitch can exceed body and name, and thus the hawkeye of digital modernity, and "reconstituted reality". Russell thinks through defiance and subversion, imagining digital space, and deviant bodies as necessary ruptures toward ill-defined forms. Text as the principal way anthropological thought is produced is directly related to the rigid hegemony that limits our "realities". E. Dattatreyan and Isaac Marrero-Guillamón suggest a multimodal anthropology that avoids disseminating traditional anthropological knowledge, but rather a multimodal, or 'glitch' anthropology which makes ever-emerging forms of exchange possible and prolific. Thinking with glitch and multimodal anthropology, I further imagine these possibilities, politics, and limits.
Harsha Menon (Independent)
Paper short abstract:
We need a glitch. Such a glitch can be articulated as a distribution of agency—a multiplicity which moves beyond a hegemonic framework, according to Legacy Russell. Rather than a static dichotomy of anthropologist and subject, a feminist non-binary approach creates a spectrum of possibilities.
Paper long abstract:
Swakshadip Sarkar (Victoria University of Wellington) Satyabrata Sahoo (IGNOU)
Paper short abstract:
Glitch feminism points out to the convergence of physical and digital realm. The Internet removes the barrier to knowledge but can also be considered to be propagating Western knowledge. This paper will explore the effects of the internet on the ways of engendering a body and its identity in India.
Paper long abstract:
The Socio-Anthropological context of “Glitch” is to defy oneself from “Society of Control”(Deleuze, 1992). It can also be meant to identify one’s body and its journey towards embodiment (McLuhan,1994). So, Glitch Feminism in its Multimodal context talks about liberation and identification of body in Post-colonial settings. Glitch feminism as theorised by Russell (2013) points out to the ambiguities that there is no divide betweent physical and digital realms and the internet provides in expressing queerness and decolonisation. Therefore, this paper will investigate the ways in which the internet provides ways to express queerness and the effects of the same in the case of decolonial queer identities in India. The prevalence of doing queerness in the Indian subcontinent in the form of Hijras, Kotis, Khwaja siras, Aravanis, Shivashaktis etc. diverges from the Western ways of doing gender (Dutta, 2014). Although, in the era of the internet and global funding from the development sector, all these identities have been included under the transgender umbrella, but the word ‘transgender’ cannot capture the essence of these identities for eg, the kinship system that exists among the Hijra community. The internet has provided newer avenues of doing gender and along with it has brought the Western knowledge of gender identities and sexualities. This paper will explore the effects of the internet on Indian ways of doing gender and engendering a body from a neo-colonial lens.