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.