Feminist Philosophy of Technology [1st ed. 2019] 978-3-476-04966-7, 978-3-476-04967-4

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xviii
What Is Feminist Philosophy of Technology? A Critical Overview and a Plea for a Feminist Technoscientific Utopia (Janina Loh)....Pages 1-24
Front Matter ....Pages 25-25
Technology Games/Gender Games. From Wittgenstein’s Toolbox and Language Games to Gendered Robots and Biased Artificial Intelligence (Mark Coeckelbergh)....Pages 27-38
Programming Power and the Power of Programming: An Analysis of Racialised and Gendered Sex Robots (Jenny Carla Moran)....Pages 39-57
Bypassing the Uncanny Valley: Sex Robots and Robot Sex Beyond Mimicry (Tanja Kubes)....Pages 59-73
Front Matter ....Pages 75-75
From Design to Data Handling. Why mHealth Needs a Feminist Perspective (Tereza Hendl, Bianca Jansky, Verina Wild)....Pages 77-103
Ectogenesis as the Dilution of Sex or the End of Females? (Jordi Vallverdú, Sarah Boix)....Pages 105-122
Becoming with Technology—the Reconfiguration of Age in the Development of a Digital Memory Training (Cordula Endter)....Pages 123-142
Front Matter ....Pages 143-143
“The Origin of the New World”. On Elena Dorfman’s Deus (S)ex-Machina (Alexander Matthias Gerner)....Pages 145-166
Gender Factors and Feminist Values in Living Labs (Michael Ahmadi, Anne Weibert, Victoria Wenzelmann, Tanja Ertl, Dave Randall, Peter Tolmie et al.)....Pages 167-183
Front Matter ....Pages 185-185
The Technological Retro-Revolution of Gender. In a Rising Post-Human and Post-Western World, It Is Time to Rediscuss the Politics of the Female Body (Roland Benedikter, Mirjam Gruber)....Pages 187-205
Feminist Post-Privacy? A Critique of the Transparency Society (Julia Valeska Schröder)....Pages 207-223
Making Genders: The Biotechnological and Legal Management of Identity (Mariana Córdoba)....Pages 225-243
Front Matter ....Pages 245-245
The Seeds of Violence. Ecofeminism, Technology, and Ecofeminist Philosophy of Technology (Gregory Morgan Swer)....Pages 247-263
The Sexual Continuum, a Diffractional Analysis, and Our Apparatuses of Investigation (Dominika Lisy)....Pages 265-285
“There It Is Again”. On Objects, Technologies, Science, and the Times (Rick Dolphijn)....Pages 287-298

Citation preview

TECHNO:PHIL

Janina Loh / Mark Coeckelbergh (Eds.)

VOLUME 2

Feminist Philosophy of Technology

Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie Volume 2 Series Editors Birgit Beck, Berlin, Germany Bruno Gransche, Siegen, Germany Jan-Hendrik Heinrichs, Aachen, Germany Janina Loh, Wien, Austria

Diese Reihe befasst sich mit der philosophischen Analyse und Evaluation von Technik und von Formen der Technikbegeisterung oder -ablehnung. Sie nimmt einerseits konzeptionelle und ethische Herausforderungen in den Blick, die an die Technikphilosophie herangetragen werden. Andererseits werden kritische Impulse aus der Technikphilosophie an die Technologie- und Ingenieurswissenschaften sowie an die lebensweltliche Praxis zurückgegeben. So leistet diese Reihe einen substantiellen Beitrag zur inner- und außerakademischen Diskussion über zunehmend technisierte Gesellschafts- und Lebensformen. Die Bände der Reihe erscheinen in deutscher oder englischer Sprache. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16150

Janina Loh · Mark Coeckelbergh Editors

Feminist Philosophy of Technology

Editors Janina Loh Institut für Philosophie Universität Wien Wien, Austria

Mark Coeckelbergh Institut für Philosophie Universität Wien Wien, Austria

ISSN 2524-5902 ISSN 2524-5910  (electronic) Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie ISBN 978-3-476-04966-7 ISBN 978-3-476-04967-4  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4 J.B. Metzler © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Einbandgestaltung: Finken & Bumiller, Stuttgart This J.B. Metzler imprint is published by the registered company Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin, Germany

Introduction

This anthology is a result of the workshop Feminist Philosophy of Technology, which was held on 25 and 26 October 2018 at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. It is one of the first book-length publications to explicitly deal with the topic of feminist philosophy of technology and related issues such as gender and technology. The lectures of the invited keynote speakers—Corinna Bath, Rick Dolphijn, Nina Lykke, Kathleen Richardson, Lucy Suchman, and Judy Wajcman—as well as of the other participants highlighted different facets of feminist philosophy of technology, such as critical posthumanism, military and sex robotics from a feminist perspective, the interface between work in the automation society, the linkage of feminist philosophy of technology as academic theory with practical engineering work, feminist perspectives on politics, technology, and the sciences, the critical feminist analysis of modern technologies, and a feminist focus on health and reproduction technologies. The topics in this anthology also reflect the thematic focus already established in the workshop.

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Some may wonder why we decided to include a hand on the poster of the workshop. We can give three main reasons for this decision: 1. We wanted something that stands for the boundary between categories that play an important role in structuring and organizing our everyday life and for our understanding of the human being as well as the society and world we live in. The hand symbolizes the boundary between the inside and the outside, between

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the organic and the technical or tool, between subject and object, and perhaps also between woman and man. 2. As Aristotle noted, the hand is the most important tool for human beings. Accordingly, the hand is mentioned in almost every introduction to philosophy of technology, at least at some point in the preface. Like Aristotle, most western thinkers usually think of a male hand—especially when talking about questions regarding technologies and the technological achievements that radically transform our social living together. In choosing a picture for our workshop poster we, however, have attempted to depict a gender-neutral hand without features that are typically associated with one of the two sexes. In fact, it is the hand of a woman. At this point, attention should also be drawn to the deliberately chosen colors, which are cool and technical and almost suggest the impression of a negative image. 3. The third reason for choosing a hand is the fact that a hand always has a history, it always tells an individual story. The hand is a narrative of and a symbol for social structures, political upheaval, agency and autonomy, dominance and control, not least for hierarchical and power relations. To sum it all up: The picture of a hand as a bridge between traditional categories, as a classical tool in the history and genealogy of philosophy of technology (predominantly determined by men), as well as a symbol of socio-political conditions and structures gathers in itself many important elements of feminist technophilosophical thinking. Introduction to the theme of the book and the chapters To this day, there has been little attention to feminism and gender issues in mainstream philosophy of technology, and vice versa: many feminists have focused on societal matters and relationships, without taking explicitly into account how technics (i.e. technologies and techniques) shape those societies and relationships. With the workshop and this volume, we want to create bridges between, on the one hand, philosophy of technology, and, on the other hand, thinking about gender and feminist thinking. More generally, we also aim to support critical thinking within philosophy of technology and thinking about technology that is sensitive to urgent societal issues. Since the beginning of the so-called second wave feminism (in the middle of the 20th century), there has been a growing awareness of the urgency of a critical reflection about technology and science within feminist discourse. But feminist thinkers have not consistently interpreted technology and science as emancipative and liberating for the feminist movement. At the same time, philosophers of technology have often neglected gender issues and feminist theory. Many feminists criticized the structures of dominance, marginalization and oppression inherent in numerous technologies. They claimed that technological development is mostly embedded in social, political, and economic systems that are patriarchally hierarchized. It is interesting to explore the implications of this thinking for technology, for example for defining and ascribing responsibility in technics and

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science—regarding for instance the technological transformation of labor, the life in the information society, and the relationship between humans and machines. This is a thematic focus throughout this anthology. Each of the contributions implicitly or explicitly addresses the question of responsibility on different levels: Cordula Endter, Tereza Hendl, Bianca Jansky, Tanja Kubes, Sarah Boix, Jenny Carla Moran, Jordi Vallverdú, and Verina Wild focus on the development of specific technologies, for instance sex robots and reproduction technologies, and the responsibilities that accompany their development. As Mark Coeckelbergh shows, the development, construction, and design always includes the challenge of gendering the technologies in question. Michael Ahmadi, Roland Benedikter, Mariana Córdoba, Tanja Ertl, Alexander Matthias Gerner, Mirjam Gruber, Nicola Marsden, Dave Randall, Julia Valeska Schröder, Peter Tolmie, Anne Weibert, Victoria Wenzelmann, and Volker Wulf tackle the involvement of responsibilities in the use of technologies in everyday life, in practical work, in art, and in scientific discourse. In the conclusion of her chapter, Janina Loh discusses the responsibilities of those who evaluate technologies, for instance in ethics committees, in schools, universities, and educational institutions, as well as by the political public. Critical posthumanism, new materialist feminism, xeno-, techno-, and cyberfeminism are promising examples for a reformulation of known challenges (such as essentialism and relativism) and a transformation of hypostatized perspectives on traditional dichotomies (such as woman/man and nature/culture). Rick Dolphijn, Dominika Lisy, and Gregory Morgan Swer think about a possible transformation of known as well as arising new responsibilities in the light of specific feminist discourses (such as ecofeminism and new materialist feminism) and associated academic and activist domains (critical posthumanism). We are grateful to all contributors to the workshop and to this volume. We hope that this book will contribute to more and productive dialogue between philosophy of technology and scholars in gender studies and feminist theory.

Contents

What Is Feminist Philosophy of Technology? A Critical Overview and a Plea for a Feminist Technoscientific Utopia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Janina Loh 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 Feminist Technologies—Feminist Critical Analyses of Artefacts . . . . . . 3 3 Feminist Perspectives on Technics and the Sciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4 Conclusion—a Plea for a Feminist Technoscientific Utopia . . . . . . . . . . 16 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Technologies: Robots Technology Games/Gender Games. From Wittgenstein’s Toolbox and Language Games to Gendered Robots and Biased Artificial Intelligence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Mark Coeckelbergh 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 2 Technology Games: Using Wittgenstein for Thinking About Technology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3 Gender Games: How Robots and Artificial Intelligent Systems Are Linked to, and Enable Us to Perform, Gender Meanings, and How We Can Change the Games. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 4 Conclusion: Critical Function, Implications for the Development of Technologies, and the Limitations of Language Use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Programming Power and the Power of Programming: An Analysis of Racialised and Gendered Sex Robots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Jenny Carla Moran 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 2 (Re)Membering the Other: Embodied AI and Discourses of Power and Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3 Performing and Informing Normativity: A Case Study of “Harmony”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

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4 Three-Fold Fetishism: Commodifying Strangely-Sexual Objects. . . . . . 48 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Bypassing the Uncanny Valley: Sex Robots and Robot Sex Beyond Mimicry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Tanja Kubes 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 2 Big Breasted Machines and Toxic Masculinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 3 Machines, Cookies, Memories, and Emotions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 4 Love and Sex: The Ontological Trap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 5 Problematizing Sex and Marriage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 6 New Materialist Perspectives on Love and Sex with Robots. . . . . . . . . . 66 7 Androids, Gynoids, and Other Replicants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 8 Conclusion: Queer Perspectives on Post Gender Sex Robots. . . . . . . . . . 70 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Technologies: Reproduction and Health Care From Design to Data Handling. Why mHealth Needs a Feminist Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Tereza Hendl, Bianca Jansky, and Verina Wild 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 2 Gender in Healthcare and Medicine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 3 mHealth and Its Novel Potential. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4 mHealth Through a Gender Lens. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 5 mHealth Tech Design: Targets and Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 6 The Content of mHealth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 7 Algorithm-Generated Knowledge and Bias. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 8 The Use of mHealth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 9 mHealth’s Philosophically Interesting Effects on Society. . . . . . . . . . . . 91 10 The Importance of a Feminist Perspective in mHealth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 11 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Ectogenesis as the Dilution of Sex or the End of Females?. . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Jordi Vallverdú and Sarah Boix 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 2 Transhumanism, Singularity, and Ectogenesis: Why It Is not in the Agenda?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 3 The Definition, History, and Debates on Ectogenesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 4 The State of Ectogenesis and Supportive Reproductive Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 5 Ectogenesis, Feminism, Technofeminism, and Xenofeminism: From Utopia to Dystopia and Back?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

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6 The Epidemiology of Ectogenesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 7 Final Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Becoming with Technology—the Reconfiguration of Age in the Development of a Digital Memory Training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Cordula Endter 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 2 Linking Ageing Studies and Feminist STS in the Context of Age-Assistive Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 3 Getting in Touch with Each Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 4 MemoPlay and the Policy of Active and Assisted Living. . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 5 Careful Knowledge—Evidence-Based Knowledge-Making as Care. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 6 Pragmatic Efficiency—in Negotiation with Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 7 Lost in Translation—Configuring TechnoCare in MemoPlay . . . . . . . . . 132 8 Ambitious Training—Elisabeth and Her Daily Training Routines. . . . . . 134 9 Conclusion: About the Ambivalence of TechnoCare and the Limits of Intimate Entanglements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Fields: Art and Applied Work “The Origin of the New World”. On Elena Dorfman’s Deus (S)ex-Machina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Alexander Matthias Gerner 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 2 Silicon Bodies Build for Perfection and Problematic Notions of Gaze, Objectivation of the Female Body, and Sexual Consent . . . . . . 150 3 Intimate Affective Computing: Programmable Intimacy with Sex Dolls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 4 Problematizing Mechanical and Programmed Sociality as the Power in the Frame of the Monoheteronomic de Facto Model of Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 5 Conclusion: Reanimating Dead Bodies: Collosus Tradition of Sex-Robots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Gender Factors and Feminist Values in Living Labs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Michael Ahmadi, Anne Weibert, Victoria Wenzelmann, Tanja Ertl, Dave Randall, Peter Tolmie, Volker Wulf, and Nicola Marsden 1 Introduction: Utopia in Tech Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 2 Problematic Scripts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 3 Living Lab Approach: Now and Then . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 4 Socio-Informatics: On Building Feminist Living Labs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

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5 Lessons Learned from Our Living Labs Projects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Fields: Politics, Society, and the Law The Technological Retro-Revolution of Gender. In a Rising Post-Human and Post-Western World, It Is Time to Rediscuss the Politics of the Female Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Roland Benedikter and Mirjam Gruber 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 2 The Multiplication of Human-Machine Amalgamations—with One Unifying Characteristic: Feminization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 3 Why Is Advanced Technology Becoming Female? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 4 Where Will This Lead to?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 5 Conclusion: Outlook and Policy Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Feminist Post-Privacy? A Critique of the Transparency Society. . . . . . . . . 207 Julia Valeska Schröder 1 Introduction: The Transparency Society. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 2 Transparency Society as Utopia: Post-Privatism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 3 Feminists’ Politicization of the Private. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 4 “Transparency”: See-Through-Ness, Open-to-See-Ness, and Imperceptibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 5 The Dialectic of Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 6 Risking the Privatization of the Public Sphere?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 7 Conclusion: Towards a Feminist Critique of a Transparency Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Making Genders: The Biotechnological and Legal Management of Identity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Mariana Córdoba 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 2 The Notion of Gender Identity and the Argentinian Case . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 3 The Argentinian Gender Identity Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 4 Violent Production of Gender. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 5 Effects of the Law: Breaking the Binary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

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Perspectives: From Ecofeminism to New Materialist Feminism and Critical Posthumanism The Seeds of Violence. Ecofeminism, Technology, and Ecofeminist Philosophy of Technology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Gregory Morgan Swer 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 2 Warren on Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 3 Shiva on Technology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 4 Technology as a System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 5 Technology as Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 6 Technology as Epistemology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 7 Technology as Artefact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 8 Technology and/as Violence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 The Sexual Continuum, a Diffractional Analysis, and Our Apparatuses of Investigation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Dominika Lisy 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 2 The Sexual Continuum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 3 History of Conceptualisations of the Sexual Continuum. . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 4 The Philosophy of Scientific Measurements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 5 New Materialism and Feminist Philosophy of Technology. . . . . . . . . . . 270 6 Seeing Differences Differently. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 7 Questionnaires as Apparatuses of Diffraction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 8 A Diffractional Analysis of the Questionnaire-Apparatuses. . . . . . . . . . . 275 9 Diffracting Questionnaires and the Sexual Continuum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 10 Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 11 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 “There It Is Again”. On Objects, Technologies, Science, and the Times. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Rick Dolphijn 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 2 Deranging Times. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 3 The Objects, Its Space and Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 4 Do not Build Your Homes Below This Point!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 5 Science and the Object of Truth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

Contributors

M.A. Michael Ahmadi  is a PhD student at the Institute for Information Systems and New Media, University of Siegen. His main research interests include the role of diversity (with a focus on gender) in IT-organizations in general and considering design processes in particular. R. Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. Roland Benedikter  is Research Professor of Multidisciplinary Political Analysis in residence at the Willy Brandt Centre of the University of Wroclaw-Breslau and Co-Head of the Center for Advanced Studies of Eurac Research Bozen-Bolzano. Member of the Future Council of the German Ministry of Education and Research BMBF for the German Federal Government and affiliate scholar of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies IEET Hartford, CT. Co-author of 2 Pentagon and U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff SMA (Strategic Multiplayer Analysis) White Papers on the Ethics of Future Technologies and one Report to the Club of Rome, publications on the humanism-transhumanism debate. Contact: [email protected]. Prof. Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh is a full Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Philosophy of Department of the University of Vienna. His expertise focuses on ethics and technology, in particular robotics and artificial intelligence and he is currently a member of various entities that support policy building in the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, such as the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence and the Austrian Council on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. He is the author of 12 philosophy books and numerous articles. Dr. Mariana Córdoba is a researcher in CONICET (National Council for Scientific and Technical Research), Argentina, and teaches philosophy of science in UBA (University of Buenos Aires). She has researched on topics of general philosophy of science and on the role of science (particularly, genetics) regarding the identity-restitution of appropriated children during the most recent Argentinian dictatorship (1976–1983). She is currently researching on the philosophical problem of identity from a gender perspective and on gender violence. Dr. Rick Dolphijn  is an Associate Professor at Utrecht University and a Honorary Professor at Hong Kong University. He wrote Foodscapes: towards a Deleuzian Ethics of Consumption (Eburon Univ. Chicago Press 2004); New Materialism: xv

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Interviews and Cartographies (with Iris van der Tuin) (Open Humanities Press 2012) and edited (with Rosi Braidotti) This Deleuzian Century: Art, Activism, Life (Rodopi/Brill 2014) and Philosophy After Nature (RLI 2017). His most r­ ecent book is the edited volume Michel Serres and the Crises of the Contemporary (Bloomsbury 2018/2019). M.A. Cordula Endter  is a cultural anthropologist and psychologist working at the intersection of age and technology. She is a scientific staff member at the Office of National Social Reports on the Situation of the Elderly in Germany at the German Centre of Gerontology (Berlin). Her research interests are digitalization of age and care, feminist science and technology studies, human-computer-interaction and participative design, anthropology of rural areas and post-socialist transformation. M.A. Tanja Ertl  is a PhD student at the Institute for Information Systems and New Media, University of Siegen. Based on the grounded design approach, her research focuses on the digitization of therapeutic interventions to support the mental health of marginalized groups and bridge the gaps in government care that exist in this context. Dr. Alexander Matthias Gerner  is a theater-maker and researcher in philosophy of science and technology at the Science Faculty of the University of Lisbon. He is head of the research line Philosophy of Human Technology at the CFCUL and teaches at the doctoral program PD-FCTAS. Actually, he researches on Hacking Humans. Dramaturgies and Technologies of Becoming Other. Research interests: Philosophy of technology; philosophy of cognitive enhancement, philosophy of a­ttention, ­phenomenology and aesthetics of embodied technologies; anthropological, political, ELS aspects of emerging technologies and divergent uses. M.A. Mirjam Gruber  is a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies of Eurac Research Bozen-Bolzano (Italy). Her research interests include international relations, policy analysis and international globalization studies. Dr. Tereza Hendl  is a philosopher and bioethicist, concerned with the epistemology and ethics of emerging technologies. Her PhD research at Macquarie University in Australia explored the ethics of sex selection for social reasons. She was awarded the 2015 Max Charlesworth Prize in Bioethics by the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law. She currently works as a Postdoctoral Researcher on the BMBF-funded project “META” at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. She was among the 2019 recipients of the Caroline Miles Visiting Scholarship at the University of Oxford. M.A. Bianca Jansky  is a sociologist. Her research interests include qualitative research methods, science and technology studies and theories of feminist new materialism. She is currently conducting PhD research at the Ludwig-MaximilliansUniversity of Munich. Her dissertation explores open-source mHealth development and usage. This inquiry is part of the BMBF-funded project “META”, which examines ethical, legal and social aspects of mobile health technologies.

Contributors

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Dr. Tanja Kubes  is a sociologist and cultural anthropologist. She is a Post-Doc at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Her Ph.D. research resulted in the first comprehensive empirical monograph on car show hostesses (Fieldwork on High Heels, 2018). In her current research, she explores from a new materialist, queerfeminist and critical-posthumanist perspective the potential of sex robots to dissolve traditional dichotomies (man/woman, nature/culture, humans/machines) and contribute to non-binary, post-gender conceptualisations of love and companionship. M.A. Sarah Boix, Medical/Health Anthropology researcher at UAB. Between 2009 and 2016 she has been doing an ethnographic research on the processes of the ‘humanization’ of birth and delivery in Barcelona, doing done fieldwork in a hospital delivery room, health centers, childbirth groups, postpartum groups and support for breastfeeding and/or parenting in different entities, associations of health service users, and in the domestic sphere of families. She is researcher of the Eraas-GRAFO team (Equip de Recerca en Antropologia Aplicada en Salut) at Anthropology Department-UAB. M.A. Dominika Lisy  is a recent master graduate in the field of Gender studies at the University of Gothenburg with a bachelor in psychology from the University of Groningen. This interdisciplinary profile has developed her curiosity for binary thinking and different methodologies in the sciences and humanities. She is published with her work in experimental sex research and currently focuses on integrating feminist philosophy to overcome interdisciplinary challenges in sex research and approach new perspectives on sexuality. Dr. Janina Loh  (née Sombetzki) is university assistant (Post-Doc) in the field of philosophy of technology and media at the University of Vienna. She published the first German Introduction to Trans- and Posthumanism (Junius 2018) and is about to publish an Introduction to Robot Ethics (Suhrkamp 2019). She habilitates on the Critical-Posthumanist Elements in Hannah Arendt’s Thinking and Work (working title). Research interests: trans- and posthumanism, responsibility research, Hannah Arendt, feminist philosophy of technology, ethics in the sciences, and robot ethics. Prof. Dr. Nicola Marsden  is a professor of social psychology in software engineering at Heilbronn University. Her research focuses on the co-creation of gender and IT in the design process and in the use of technology. M.A. Jenny Carla Moran  (pronouns: she/her) is a graduate of MA Postcolonial Studies at SOAS, University of London, and BA English Studies Trinity College, University of Dublin. She is an Irish feminist poet who has been published by Poetry Ireland Review, Icarus, and Boshemia, among others. Jenny is currently continuing her research into rape culture and technology in her position as a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Tweets @JennyCarlaMoran Prof. Dr. Dave Randall is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen. His research interests include mainly the CSCW and HCI areas as well as the usage of ethnographic methods

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for design purposes. He is also a visiting professor at the Linnaeus University in Sweden. B.A. Julia Valeska Schröder  is enrolled in the Master Political Theory in Frankfurt a. M., focusing on recent critical theory and philosophy of technology. Temporarily student research assistant and student apprentice for the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) and the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS). Dr. Gregory Morgan Swer is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Sciences at Walter Sisulu University. Research interests: philosophy of technology, ecofeminism, critical theory, and philosophy of history. Dr. Peter Tolmie  is a sociologist with an interest in ethnographic studies across numerous settings; he is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen. Prof. Dr. Jordi Vallverdú,  Tenure Professor at the Philosophy Department of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where he teaches Philosophy and History of Science and Computing. His research is devoted to the cognitive and epistemic aspects of Philosophy of Computing, Philosophy of Sciences and AI, with special interest in emotional modeling. In 2011 he won a Japanese JSPS fellowship on computational HRI at Nishidalab, Kyoto University. His last book is (2019) Blended Cognition: The Robotic Challenge. Currently, he is working on biomimetic cognitive architectures and multi-cognitive systems. Dipl.-Journ. Anne Weibert is a PhD student at the Institute for Information Systems and New Media, University of Siegen. She focuses on computer-based collaborative project work, technology appropriation, intercultural learning and community-building. M.A. Victoria Wenzelmann  holds M.A. degrees in Cultural Anthropology and African Studies and is a research associate at the Institute for Information Systems and New Media, University of Siegen. Her research focuses on ecosystems for social and technological innovation, (mobile) labs and learnspaces, as well as participatory design. PD. Dr. Verina Wild  is a bioethicist, specialised in medical ethics, public health ethics and global health ethics. Her main working areas are vulnerability and justice in health and health care. She is a physician by training. She is Deputy Director at the Institute of Ethics, History and Theory of Medicine at Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity of Munich. Since 2018, she leads the project “META”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The META group examines ethical, legal and social aspects of mobile health technologies. Prof. Dr. Volker Wulf  is a computer scientist with an interest in the area of IT system design in real-world contexts. He is head of the Institute for Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen.

What Is Feminist Philosophy of Technology? A Critical Overview and a Plea for a Feminist Technoscientific Utopia Janina Loh

1 Introduction Since the beginning of the so-called second wave feminism (in the middle of the 20th century), there has been a growing awareness of the urgency of a critical reflection on technics and science within feminist discourse (Bleier 1991; Fox et al. 2006; Harding 1999). However, feminist thinkers have not consistently interpreted technics and science as emancipative and liberating for people who identify as women. At the same time, many early feminists criticized the structures of dominance, marginalization, and oppression inherent in numerous technologies as well as the technoscientific social structures. This is because technological development is mostly embedded in social, political, and economic systems that are patriarchally hierarchized (Boston Women 1971; Firestone 1970; Gearhart 1979; Lykke & Braidotti 1996; Mies 1986, 1995; Ortner 1974; Piercy 1976). Over time, not only have different feminist movements emerged that explicitly address the challenges, function, and also the potential of technics, such as Donna Haraway’s cyborgfeminism (1985), Judy Wajcman’s technofeminism (2004), the new materialist feminism (Alaimo & Hekman 2008; Bath et al. 2013a), and more recently the Laboria Cubonics collective’s xenofeminism (2014; cf. Hester 2018). In addition, since the 1960s and 1970s there has also been a growing interest in technofeminist approaches in the Science and Technology Studies, in art, and activism, i.e. even in those circles that are in part not explicitly feminist (Faulkner 2001). Finally, interdisciplinary discourses such as critical posthumanism take a critical look at science and technics from different feminist perspectives (Barad 2007, 2015; Loh 2018, 2019; Haraway 1988, 1992; Steinfeldt-Mehrtens 2019).

J. Loh (*)  Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_1

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On the other hand, there has been little attention to feminist questions in mainstream philosophy of technology, i.e. there is no established discipline of feminist philosophy of technology yet and there also exist only few publications from an explicitly feminist technophilosophical perspective (Ernst 2013). So far, it is rather a mix of feminist philosophy, philosophy of technology, and philosophy and theory of science. In the following, I will outline the subjects of a feminist philosophy of technology and give an overview of the questions that feminist philosophers of technology ask. I will conclude this chapter with a plea for a feminist technoscientific utopia. But first the three underlying terms of this project must be defined, even if this can only provide a preliminary understanding rather than a comprehensive and conclusive clarification. I am talking about the terms “feminism”, “technics” and “philosophy”. By “feminism” I mean political and social movements and theoretical approaches that are related to the political, social, economic, ethical, religious, individual, etc. equality of women and men and ultimately of all people in general (Meyer 1997: 11). Apart from this ‘lowest common denominator’ of feminist thought, there exist a variety of feminist schools such as essentialist, cultural, liberal, radical, socialist, existentialist, psychoanalytical, Marxist, postmodern, deconstructivist, gynocentric, spiritual, postcolonial, cybernetic, anarchist, ethnic, difference, eco, equality, and egalitarian feminism. All of these feminist positions (and others not mentioned here) each have their own perspective on technics and science and sometimes differ significantly from each other, as will be shown especially in the second section of this chapter. The following explanations are based on a broad understanding of technology which includes artefacts (technologies, material technology), well-rehearsed, standardized practices, methods, and processes (techniques, process technology), other forms of technology such as materials (real technologies), signs (intellectual technologies), procedures (social technologies), and attributes (e.g. affine in technics) (Grunwald 2013; Hubig 1995, 2013; Kranz et al. 1971–2007). The differentiation between a narrow concept of technics (technics as technology, artefact) and a broad understanding of technics (which includes all aspects mentioned here) is the basis of the following two sections of this chapter. Philosophy is dedicated to a critical analysis of the basic assumptions of being and the self-evident aspects of everyday life. Philosophers also question the axioms and first premises of the empirical sciences. The following considerations are based on Jay F. Rosenberg’s understanding of the discipline of philosophy and the practice of the philosopher (1978: 5 f.): “Philosophy as a discipline is perhaps thought of most fruitfully as being distinguished by its method rather than by a subject matter. […] Indeed, one of the initially most striking features of philosophy is the multiplicity of diverse philosophies of various other disciplines—philosophy of science, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mathematics, of history, of psychology, of law, of language, and so on […]. Philosophy thus takes on the character of a sort of ‘second-order’ discipline, one which has as its objects of study the ‘first-order’ activities of the scientist, the artist, the theologian, the mathematician, the historian, the psychologist, the jurist, the linguist, and their many colleagues.”

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Feminist, philosophical thinking about technics usually does not look at individual, concrete technologies in isolation, i.e. independent of the respective social, political, economic, and legal structures in which they are embedded. And yet some feminists are primarily interested in the feminist potential of specific technologies (i.e. artefacts, technics in the narrow sense; Sect. 2). Others, on the other hand, focus primarily on technoscientific structures and norms of a society and thus refer (at least implicitly) to technics in the broad sense (Sect. 3). In this respect, the topics presented in the following two sections do not represent independent areas of feminist philosophy of technology, but are rather to be understood as interdependent philosophical focal points of analysis.

2 Feminist Technologies—Feminist Critical Analyses of Artefacts In their anthology Feminist Technology (2010), Linda L. Layne, Sharra L. Vostral and Kate Boyer bring together a range of approaches that ask what feminist technologies are and discuss different feminist perspectives using concrete technologies such as the birth control pill and the tampon as examples. The following remarks in this section are based on their considerations. In her introduction to the anthology, Layne proposes a “working definition of feminist technology” (2010: 3). This refers to “those tools plus knowledge that enhance women’s ability to develop, expand, and express their capacities” (2010: 3). In fact, Layne does not see technological artefacts in isolation, but together with a specific knowledge that integrates social, political, and economic contexts. Against this background, she identifies three categories of feminist technologies, depending on how clearly they change the lives of women. According to Layne, a feminist technology in the “minimal” sense is one “that improve[s] things for women some degree from the status quo”. A “moderate feminist technology”, on the other hand, makes “substantial improvement for women over the status quo” possible. A “’radically or truly’ feminist technology” finally “adopt[s] a holistic approach to women’s lives and make[s] changes that radically restructure arrangements in ways that will benefit women and substantially shift the balance of power between women and men” (2010: 14). This gradual differentiation between three types of feminist technologies also makes it clear that, according to Layne, these are not merely artefacts to be judged for themselves, but are to be interpreted in terms of their effects on the lives of women and their position in society. In the pages that follow, Layne uses several examples to show that by no means everything that might appear at first glance as a feminist technology deserves to be identified as such. Nor are all these artefacts feminist technologies simply because they are called “liberatory” for women by the companies that distribute them (such as cigarettes; Layne 2010: 4). Even “feminizing” an object, i.e. the design of a technology according to criteria that are usually considered ‘typically feminine’, such as certain colors, shapes, smells, or sounds, does not turn an artefact into a feminist technology (e.g., a pink cell phone; 2010: 4). Finally, even “feminine”

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technologies, which can be called so because they help women to “control” their “distinctly female reproductive systems”, are not automatically feminist technologies (e.g. the birth control pill, tampon, pregnancy test, etc.; 2010: 3). For all these technologies do not lead to a significant improvement in the lives of women in patriarchally organized societies, but at most enable them to live more appropriately in the given social structures. So, these are only—if at all—minimal or moderate, but not radical or genuine feminist technologies. On the other hand, technologies that provide women, for instance, access to certain professions that had previously been reserved primarily for men due to the artefacts involved and tailored to the average male body, but have now been adapted to the dimensions of the average female body appear more interesting (e.g. the fighter pilot cockpit; 2010: 5). Nor do technologies have to be constructed by feminists to be considered feminist, as shown by the example of Earle Cleveland Haas, who invented the tampon with sexist motivation. He “just got tired” of the “poor women” being dependent on these “damned old rags” that they were forced to put in their underwear at the time of their period and that he felt called to take care of (2010: 12). If technologies bring about a fundamental change in the lives of women and profoundly transform the balance of power in a society, as can be assumed in the case of access to certain professions, it is reasonable to interpret them as feminist technologies that contribute to the political, ethical, social, economic, religious, etc. equality of all people. Irrespective of the extent to which someone may be willing to see the tampon as a feminist technology, this example also shows that a feminist influence on patriarchal and heteronormative social structures can happen unintentionally, on the basis of perhaps even contrary (namely sexist or otherwise discriminatory) intentions. However, the tampon and the associated question of whether it actually has to be interpreted as a feminist technology, i.e. whether and to what extent it fundamentally changes the lives of women in a patriarchal society and radically shakes the patriarchal power structures constituting this society, makes clear at this point what has already been pointed out in the introduction. Because of the fact that there are numerous different feminist schools and approaches, it is not surprising that a technological artefact can appear to some as a feminist technology, while others classify it as minimal feminist, moderate feminist, or even antifeminist. Jennifer Aengst and Linda L. Layne discuss in their chapter “The Need to Bleed? A Feminist Technology Assessment of Menstrual-Suppressing Birth Control Pills” (2010), the example of the three-month pill Seasonale (Seasonique in German-speaking countries), which liberal feminists would probably interpret as a feminist technology because it gives women the opportunity to control their cycle more self-determinedly (Agste & Layne 2010: 70). On the other hand, radical feminists would probably see Seasonale as antifeminist, since it (like any other birth control pill) merely adapts women to the given patriarchal and heteronormative social structures. A radical feminist technophilosophical approach, according to Aengst and Layne, would not support technologies that “suppress menstruation”, but rather, as in the case of the fighter pilot cockpit, transform “workplaces, schedules, and expectations”, and the technological artifacts involved “to

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accommodate women’s cyclically changing capacities and predilections” (2010: 70). Accordingly, Layne concludes her considerations by saying that a “technology may appear feminist in light of one type of feminism and antifeminist through a different feminist lens” (Layne 2010: 18). The divergent assessment of a specific technology as feminist or not will be illustrated by two further examples, namely sex robots and reproductive technologies. Example 1—sex robots: For most people, sex robotics may sound like pure science fiction. In fact, however, there are already two major international companies that mass-produce and distribute sex robots: TrueCompanion (based in New Jersey) and Abyss Creation (based in California with the sub-companies RealDoll and Realbotix; I thank Tanja Kubes for this differentiation). TrueCompanion roboticist Douglas Hines launched the world’s first sex robot, Roxxxy (or RoxxxyGold), in 2010. The sex robots’ interactive skills such as being able to “hear what you say, speak, feel your touch, move their bodies, are mobile and have emotions and a personality” distinguish Roxxxy as a social robot, sex robotics in general as a specific field of social robotics. Although Roxxxy should be able to develop her own personality (or as many different roles as desired) through interaction with her users, she can also be given one of the five pre-programmed characters of one’s choice: Wild Wendy, S&M Susan, Mature Martha, Frigid Farah and Young Yoko. Roxxxy can also be equipped with different hairstyles and hair colors. In addition to the above abilities, Roxxxy is also able to “listen, talk, carry on a conversation and feel your touch as well as move her private areas inside when she is being ‘utilized’”, and even “have an orgasm”.1 Her current price is just under $10.000. Officially, there is a male variant, Rocky, about which, however, almost no information is provided on the TrueCompanion homepage.2 RealDoll’s (Abyss Creation, CEO and designer Matt McMullen) sex robot Harmony is also described as “the perfect companion” that can be adapted to the individual needs of her users in terms of appearance and personality. Even more than Roxxxy, Harmony “is versatile with conversational topics and designed to hold long-term persistent conversations with users, and learns over time”.3 Also, for Harmony you can choose between ten pre-programmed characters, it costs more than $5000, and there may also be male as well as transgender versions of this sex robot (Danaher 2017: 7). Another sex robot called Samantha (developed by Barcelona-based engineer Sergi Santos), which has similar features to Roxxxy and Harmony, was recently given a “moral code” to say “no” (Mlot 2018). Finally, LumiDoll’s (based in

1Homepage TrueCompanion, FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Retrieved from http://www. truecompanion.com/shop/faq. 2David Levy (2013) discusses whether Roxxxy actually exists (I thank Susanne Steigler for this hint and Tanja Kubes also drew my attention to the fact that TrueCompanion could be a dummy company). 3Homepage Realbotix, The Software. Retrieved from https://realbotix.com/Harmony.

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Dublin) sex robot Kylie, also known as Cow Kylie due to her oversized breasts, should be mentioned (Morgan 2017). The development of sex robots is indeed accompanied by numerous ethical questions that are not limited to feminist discourse, although it is sometimes dominated by a few prominent feminist thinkers. The robot ethicist Kathleen Richardson, for instance, launched the Campaign Against Sex Robots in 2015 and represents a radical feminist argument against sex robots in general, understanding them “as part of a larger culture of exploitation and objectification that reinforces rape culture and normalizes the sex trade” (Murphy 2017). In robots such as Roxxxy and Harmony, beautifully illustrated in Roxxxy‘s five personality modes, highly questionable gender stereotypes are indeed perpetuated and heteronormative, patriarchal, instrumentalizing, and discriminatory power structures are reinforced. For, of course, Richardson’s argumentation could be further developed, Samantha’s so-called moral code is not a genuine code, but on the contrary could even invite potential users to disregard her “no”, i.e. to affirm rape as an ordinary expression of lived sexuality. At this point, at the latest, the necessity of obligatory ethical training courses for prospective engineers as well as for engineers already working as such becomes obvious, as will be discussed in the conclusion of this chapter.4 Richardson’s position is opposed by some feminist thinkers (although they certainly agree with rejecting the discriminatory gender stereotypes mentioned above in the construction of existing sex robots) such as Vanessa de Largie. The Australian actress and sex columnist argues in a liberal feminist way that sex robots give women new opportunities to free themselves from existing patriarchal and objectifying power structures. De Largie speaks from painful experience; after a rape she created the show Every Orgasm I Have Is A Show Of Defiance To My Rapist to handle her experiences. She prefers “when a person lives out his [sic!] rape fantasy with a sex bot and not with a human” (my translation; Schwarz 2017). A similar argument is made with regard to pedophilia; perhaps child sex robots could be used as therapy assistance systems, just as sex robots in general could support human therapists in their work with e.g. trauma patients. People with certain physical limitations would only be able to satisfy their sexual needs with sex robots, just as misanthropic people might even find a pleasant and satisfying form of counterpart in sex robots for the first time (ÄrzteZeitung 2018; Bendel 2017; Di Nucci 2017; McArthur & Danaher 2017; Strikwerda 2017). Example 2—reproductive technologies: Reproductive technologies are usually divided into two types of methods and technologies, namely artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization. Artificial insemination is a transfer of semen into the female genital tract, a form of assisted insemination (intrauterine or intratubal insemination by the doctor into the uterus or fallopian tube) and also called semen transfer. If the sperm of one’s own partner is used, this is referred to as

4Cf. Murray 2017; Homepage der Campaign Against Sex Robots. Retrieved from https://campaignagainstsexrobots.org/.

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homologous insemination. If foreign sperm is used, this is referred to as heterologous or donogenic insemination. Ultrasound and hormone analyses are necessary in advance in order to monitor the woman’s cycle and ovulation. Egg cells may also be frozen beforehand. In vitro fertilization (Latin for “fertilization in glass”; IVF) involves the extraction of oocytes and sperm, which may suggest a check for hereditary diseases, etc., which is why it is closely discussed with the internationally controversial preimplantation diagnostics (methods of cell biological and molecular genetic examinations which serve to decide whether an embryo should be implanted in the uterus or not). Classical IVF refers to the combination of oocytes and sperm in a test tube, but there are also several special forms of IVF, sometimes referred to as embryo transfer. In addition, other forms of transfer exist, such as GIFT (Gamete Intrafallopian Transfer), ZIFT (Zygote Intrafallopian Transfer) and TET (Tubal Embryo Transfer), which are different methods of localization (uterus or fallopian tube) and determination of the stage at which oocytes, sperm or embryos are transferred into a female body (Trallori 2015: 162). Finally, the use of surrogate mothers, or rather ‘rented motherhood’, could also be discussed under the heading of reproductive technologies. For the duration of a pregnancy, a woman makes her body with her uterus available for a fertilized ovum in order to give birth to a child for the genetic mother. The basis for this enterprise is usually a contract, the surrogate mother is remunerated financially for her services (Campo et al. 2016; Harrison et al. 2017, Nelson et al. 2012). Difference feminism, also called cultural or essentialist feminism, assumes biological differences between women and men (Aengst & Layne 2010: 71). The characteristics usually interpreted as typically female (such as menstruating, having children, etc.) are evaluated positively, but not the social implications of differences between the sexes assumed to be biological. If the characteristics usually interpreted as typically female, such as the birth and upbringing of children, were more socially recognized, we would, for instance, organize the workplace and work environment differently in order to allow women (and men) to devote more time to children (Satz 2017: 3 f.). Technologies that support women in the exercise of their ability to give birth are probably to be viewed positively in a differential feminist way and reproductive technologies are thus to be interpreted as feminist technologies. Liberal feminists do not accept biological differences between women and men. Rather, these differences lie in their different socialization. There is a universal human nature that encompasses autonomy, equality, self-realization, and equal rights for all human beings (Hofmann 1999: 91). All those technologies that expand women’s opportunities for self-realization, freedom of choice, and autonomy are viewed positively (Aengst & Layne 2010: 70). Reproductive technologies give women the opportunity to control their ability to give birth and (e.g. by freezing eggs) to determine for themselves the time of pregnancy, even in advanced age, or at least at a time when they wish to have a child, and are therefore presumably to be classified as feminist technologies from a liberal feminist point of view.

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In The Dialectic of Sex (1970), the founder of radical feminism, Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012), advocates the thesis of an elimination of all gender differences and the “liberation of women from the tyranny of reproduction by every possible means”. Firestone therefore welcomed the breeding of embryos in artificial wombs (ectogenesis) (Hofmann 1999: 110 f.). However, radical feminists clearly take a negative view on those technologies that women adapt to the prevailing patriarchal structures (such as egg freezing, artificial insemination, and surrogacy; Aengst & Layne 2010: 70). Lisbeth N. Trallori, in Der Körper als Ware (2015), argues in a radically feminist way that modern reproductive technologies guarantee the ultimate “control over human production” (my translation; 2015: 162) and are thus the product of the modern capitalist, patriarchal society. The body is instrumentalized as a “resource” and regarded as a “defective (breeding) machine to be repaired” (my translation; 2015: 162). Against this background, from a radical feminist perspective, reproductive technologies are (predominantly) not feminist technologies. From the point of view of deconstructivist or post-feminism, reproductive technologies are not feminist technologies. Post-feminist Judith Butler questions all essentialist differences between women and men (Butler 1990). According to her, both biological gender (sex) and social gender (gender) are social constructs. Differences based on the assumption of a biological gender, such as the average size and physical strength of women and men, for example, cannot be understood as such without the influence of diet, division of labor, and physical training (Satz 2017: 3). Gender is generally rejected as a classification category by deconstructivist feminists. There are as many identities as there are people. Technologies that support and confirm gender binarity and sex-gender differentiation are to be interpreted negatively. Reproductive technologies are based on a biological understanding of women and men. They adapt women to existing social patriarchal conditions and therefore do not represent feminist technologies from a post-feminist point of view. The considerations in this section show to what extent feminist technophilosophical approaches sometimes take specific technologies into account, without isolating them from the respective political, social, economic, and ethical contexts. Feminist philosophy of technology, which focuses on concrete technologies, has to define what a technology is, what an artifact is, and under what circumstances a particular technology is to be interpreted as feminist (Layne et al. 2010). The following section gives an exemplary overview of some of the feminist positions that, in their critical analysis, start directly with the social structures, the norms, which science and technics are based on, and thus assume from the outset (at least implicitly) a broader understanding of technics.

3 Feminist Perspectives on Technics and the Sciences In her book Vom Darstellen zum Herstellen (2008) Elisabeth List emphasizes that a critique of specific technologies as feminist or not feminist is not sufficient. According to her, we must question the political, social, and scientific structures as

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a whole in order to be able to substantially change the power structure of a society. The way in which we understand the world is fundamentally shaped by men and the patriarchal structures of culture and science. List states (my translation; 2008: 177): “The modern will to know was at the same time the will to dominate and control since its beginnings. […] The man of science knows things, insofar as he can create them. Things only appear as objects of control […]. […] This is the basis for the unwavering confidence in the possibility of world domination. This is also the basis of a new myth of feasibility in the sign of the mechanistic world view.”

The genealogy of the development of the sciences is a story of men’s urge to control. Control means power and dominance. The mechanistic understanding of the world and the cosmos in general is the equivalent expression of this urge. List understands “violence as a latent characteristic of the scientific habitus” (my translation; 2008: 178) and compares science with warfare, which according to her is also dominated by men (2008: 179). Men would physically kill other people in war, whereas in science, by the way they determine facts as such, they would commit a kind of ontological and epistemological ‘murder’ of those theories that are rejected as unobjective and unscientific. As an example, she discusses the famous mathematician and founder of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, who devoted himself quite practically to “questions of war technology”, namely air defence, and who developed the “predicator, [a] device for enemy detection […] [and constructed] according to a model that was to become the model of a new science—cybernetics” (my translation; 2008: 182). List’s approach formulates a very fundamental feminist critique of the social structures that have enabled and continue to support the patriarchal development of the natural and technological sciences. She repeatedly refers to Donna Haraway, who is regarded as the founder of cyberfeminism and thus of a specifically technofeminist movement and is also seen as close to critical posthumanism. In the following, Haraway’s position is presented alongside that of Lucy Suchman as an example to illustrate the feminist technophilosophical work of a broad critique of technics and science. As will be shown, Haraway moves from a feminist-motivated critique of the traditional humanistic categories of our view of the human being and the world via the mobilization of the emancipatory potential of technics and science in almost 30 creative years to an ethics of kinship, which does not end with an equality of all human beings, but beyond that also includes nonhuman beings in the moral universe. Suchman’s feminist approach emerges in the analysis of the human-machine relationship and its new understanding. To this end, she draws on Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action and interference in order to establish a processual ethics of inclusion (similar to but even more radical than Haraway). Before that, however, a few explanatory words should be said about the agenda of critical posthumanism. Critical posthumanism (Herbrechter 2009, 2018) is no longer primarily interested in ‘the’ human being, but rather questions the traditional, mostly humanistic dichotomies such as woman/man, nature/culture or subject/object, which

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have decisively contributed to the emergence of our present view of the human being and the world. Critical posthumanists such as Donna Haraway and Karen Barad (whose position will also be discussed later in this section in the context of the examination of Suchman’s approach), Rosi Braidotti, and Cary Wolfe want to overcome ‘the’ human being by breaking with conventional categories and the thinking that goes along with them. Thus, critical posthumanism arrives at a philosophical position behind or beyond (“post”) a specific and for the present essential understanding of ‘the’ human being. Due to the fundamental upheavals associated with a radical questioning of humanism, human society and political structures, knowledge cultures and their claim to the definition of facts and knowledge, the consequences of Western (and therefore usually white and male) capitalism and the development of mass society, and ultimately also of the cosmos as a whole, are subjected to a total revision by critical posthumanists (Braidotti 2016; Callus & Herbrechter 2013; Franklin 2009; Gane 2006; Krüger 2007; Nayar 2014). Five core elements characterize critical-posthumanist thinking: (1) a grappling with humanism, (2) an overcoming of anthropocentrism, (3) a questioning of essentialism and (philosophical) anthropology, (4) a critique of the knowledge cultures, as well as (5) a clear appeal character and socio-political implications (Loh 2018). Against the background of these characteristics of critical posthumanism, it should be clear that it overlaps with positions of feminist philosophy of technology because critical posthumanism takes the differentiation between body and “Leib” into account, as well as between incorporation and embeddedness, which is still ignored by humanism. Critical posthumanists strive for a proper recollection of matter and a rediscovery of the body, thus also seeking to open up the possibilities of new conceptions of agency. These approaches are also discussed in feminist discourses as new materialist feminism (Alaimo & Hekman 2008; Bath et al. 2013a; Löw et al. 2017; Pitts-Taylor 2016). Donna Haraway, who holds a doctorate in biology and natural science history, combines philosophy, feminist theory and epistemology, literary studies, science fiction, engineering, and natural sciences with personal experience in her writings (Harrasser 2011). In this way, common disciplinary boundaries are broken down and different discourses of knowledge are merged. On the other hand, however, the dense collage of subjects, schools and methodologies makes it difficult to intuitively enter her work. Already the first ‘unofficial’ work of critical posthumanism—Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (1985), which will be examined in more detail in the following—on the one hand starts with a feminist questioning of the given knowledge cultures and the academic-disciplinary landscape. On the other hand (and this is the primary issue in the following) she questions the common understanding of the agent, whereby this is extended to the nonhuman, and the moral as well as epistemic anthropocentrism. In her Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway exercises the break with common dichotomies, the reformulation of ‘the’ human being who in the present is understood primarily as white, Western, heterosexual, and male, and the recognition of nonhuman alterities. The numerous figurations that populate her work and which she calls “family of displaced figures” (Penley & Ross 1991: 13), such as the Cyborg, Modest Witness and OncoMouseTM (Haraway

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2000; Harrasser 2011: 586), are exemplary for overcoming anthropocentrism. Haraway’s figurations are very popular in technofeminist and critical posthumanist circles in general in order to break with traditional concepts and common definitions of agency and thus to open up paths to an inclusion of further human and nonhuman beings in the moral universe (Bastian 2006; Graham 2002; Harrasser 2011; Penley & Ross 1991: 20; Schneider 2005: 58–86). In her Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway calls a cyborg a “cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (1985: 5). Cyborgs show the fragility of a serious differentiation between fact and fiction, insofar as “[s]ocial reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction” (1985: 5 f.). Understanding cyborgs both as “a matter of fiction” and as “lived experience” show that “the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion” (1985: 6). According to Haraway a little later in the Cyborg Manifesto, all of us have already abolished this separation between reality and science fiction, between “machine and organism” (1985: 7), within ourselves, because “we are all […] cyborgs” (1985: 7). The distinctions between “nature and culture” (1985: 9), “human and animal” (1985: 10), and between the “physical and nonphysical” (1985: 12) are also lost to us in this “cyborg myth” (1985: 12) of the present, lived through and with ourselves. These and other dichotomies, of which the one between reality and fiction is certainly one of the most fundamental, represent in Haraway’s eyes historically grown narratives made by humans (especially men). They are without doubt of enormous relevance for our self-understanding, our view of human beings and the world. However, according to Haraway, this does not mean that there is no alternative to them. Haraway’s aim is to break up fundamental dichotomies and reassemble or re-construct them in humans as cyborgs, thus opening up the scene for further human and nonhuman agents who will be found in all her writings. Since the 1980s, a shift in interest from technics-related themes and figurations to increasingly animal others in Haraway’s writings can be observed. In particular, she deals with monkeys in the 1990s, dogs and pigeons are the subject of her most recent publications. The cyborgs, however, are not completely forgotten, but are interpreted by Haraway “as junior siblings in the much bigger, queer family of companion species” (2008: 103), in which there are “no pre-constituted subjects, and no single sources, unitary actors, or final ends” (2008: 98), and “in which none of the partners preexisting the relating, and the relating is never done once and for all” (2008: 103 f.); “’the relation’ is the smallest possible unit of analysis” (2008: 111). The racist roots of moral anthropocentrism and humanism, which are the model for so-called Western cultures with their predominantly humanistic, white, heterosexual and male image of the human being, are exposed in the recognition of oppressed and disregarded forms of human and nonhuman beings. The attempt, however, to give such an other and nonhuman being a ‘face’, a ‘voice’, sometimes turns into paternalism—Haraway calls this process a “political semiotics of representation” (1992: 311). By asking, for instance, who may feel called to speak “for

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the jaguar” (1992: 311) or “for the fetus” (1992: 311)—one could add: “for the woman”—, “the object or ground of representation is the realization of the representative’s fondest dream” (1992: 311), who passivates and instrumentalizes the other being in question. However, the paradigm of moral anthropocentrism cannot simply be replaced by another centrism. In When Species Meet (1992), Haraway subjects Jeremy Bentham’s pathocentric approach to a clear criticism when she states that although the question of a being’s capacity for suffering is of great relevance, it is in no way inferior to considerations of whether animals can play, work or feel joy. The ability to suffer, the basis of pathocentrism, i.e. the attitude that all beings capable of suffering have an intrinsic value, is not “the decisive question, the one that turns the order of things around” (1992: 22). In their place, many other attributes of human and animal existence could be focused on, which in themselves represent not much more than reductionist constrictions of human and nonhuman beings to one quality—carried out by ‘the’ human being (mostly white, Western, male, heterosexual) who decides on suffering, joy, play, and work in animals. Haraway also intends to overcome epistemic anthropocentrism, which becomes clear, for instance, in her recent publication Staying With the Trouble (2016), in which she calls her dog Cayenne her “companion and research associate” (2016: 7) and describes pigeons as “competent agents […] who render each other and human beings capable of situated social, ecological, behavioral, and cognitive practices” (2016: 16). Haraway’s feminist, inclusive approach is expressed in Staying With the Trouble in the form of an ethic of kinship that, according to her, can only do justice to the question of responsibility in the true sense of the word. “Making kin as oddkin” (2016: 2) creates relations and reaches far beyond the narrow boundaries of the “godkin and genealogical and biogenetic family” (2016: 2). Who is accepted into a respective “kinship” (2016: 2), with whom we are related, remains open and is to be determined individually. At this point, however, Haraway is primarily concerned with extending the boundaries of what we have so far defined as family or circle of friends, and now officially including in the moral universe those (human and nonhuman) beings that we have implicitly so far already occasionally localized there—such as certain domestic animals. The “wild category” (2016: 2) of kinship leads us to “stay with the trouble” (2016: 4). This means that we learn to enjoy the contradictions, the irreversible tensions of our being and to see the irony in them, as Haraway already observes in her Cyborg Manifesto: “Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true” (1985: 5). By making ourselves related, we can stay with the trouble, that is, recognize the necessary tensions, dichotomies, and contradictions, and struggle with them lustfully. For just because they are made by human beings and socially constructed does not mean that categories and dichotomies are also necessary. In everyday life we often have to differentiate in order to remain capable of acting. But it is an open question which distinctions we make and whom we exclude from the circle of moral beings in a particular situation. “We become-with

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each other or not at all” (2016: 4). To stay with our trouble is “[o]ur task” (2016: 1), because only in this way can grievances be expressed, can exclusions be recognized and brought to a critical consciousness. The anthropologist, feminist, and scientist of Science and Technology Studies, Lucy Suchman, has been working for many years on human-computer interaction and especially on military technologies. In an updated and expanded new edition of her book Plans and Situated Actions (1987)—Human-Machine Reconfigurations (2007)—she develops an approach in the context of the theories of Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Judith Butler, and others, but especially with Karen Barad’s critical-posthumanist “relational ontology” (Barad 2012: 18) to reconfigure (as she puts it) the ways in which we relate to other humans and nonhumans (especially technologies) and understand ourselves as self-sufficient beings. With her agential realism, Barad takes a path towards overcoming anthropocentrism by “recognizing the dynamic power of matter” (my translation; Barad 2012: 40 f.). According to Barad, “matter is not simply passive but also discursive, and discourse is not merely active but also material”. This view ultimately makes it possible not only to recognize new nonhuman agents as such, but also to radically question the dichotomy of humans and nonhuman beings (2012: 30–32). In her conversation with Jennifer Sophia Theodor, Barad vividly explains the procedure of “an agential-realist analysis” (my translation; Barad 2015: 184), using the examples of the Californian raisin and the fetus. When we eat a Californian raisin, according to Barad, we also bite into the “material-discursive apparatuses” (my translation; 2015: 185) that were involved in their production, “such as capitalism, colonialism, and racism” (my translation; 2015: 185), and many more. As a reaction to essentialism, Barad formulates a relational approach that focuses less on the relata, the subjects and objects, and more on the relation, that is, what lies between them, in a nonessentialist way (Coeckelbergh & Gunkel 2014; Loh 2017). Thus, she designs a relational ontology in which no singular, autarkic agents exist, but these are merely recognized within their mutual entanglements (Barad 2007: 139; cf. 2007: 33, 93; 2012: 18): “This relational ontology is the basis for my posthumanist performative account of material bodies (both human and nonhuman). This account refuses the representationalist fixation on words and things and the problematic of the nature of their relationship, advocating instead a relationality between specific material (re)configurings of the world through which boundaries, properties, and meanings are differently enacted […] and specific material phenomena […].”

With her relational ontology Barad provides the critical-posthumanist foundation for anthropology and ethics. In the last chapter of Human-Machine Reconfigurations Suchman makes a proposal to her readers for its outline. The chapter is preceded by a quote from Barad’s paper “Posthuman Performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter”: “Agency is not an attribute but the ongoing reconfigurings of the world” (2003: 818). In contrast to Haraway, who focuses primarily on animals in her more recent works, Suchman, with a view to computer technologies

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and robots, tackles the project of a new understanding of the “traditional humanist” (Suchman 2007: 270) agent and the “human-machine boundaries” (2007: 260). Similar to Haraway, however, she also comes to the conclusion that not all differences per se become obsolete. However, we can learn to make other distinctions than those suggested by the Western and humanistic image of the human being. Moreover, and this is what Suchman is concerned with here, questioning the classical understanding of agency supports us in rethinking the “nature of difference” (2007: 260) itself. Not only what differences we encounter is of anthropological and ethical concern, but we must also visualize and discuss how we ourselves want to understand difference, what difference is (2007: 260). Along numerous examples from the technical sciences, robotics and human everyday life, which is fundamentally shaped and structured by technologies, Suchman proposes a relational alternative to the human-machine relationship, which up to now has been interpreted in an essentialist way, which rests on clearly defined boundaries and attributable (and thus always deniable) characteristics. According to her, the “interface” (2007: 263) must not necessarily be seen “as an a priori or self-evident boundary between bodies and machines but as a relation enacted in particular settings and one, moreover, that shifts over time” (2007: 263). Suchman would agree with Haraway that there is no predetermined way of reconfiguring the agent’s understanding, the dichotomies of human and machine, and the categories in which we can define our relationships to human and nonhuman beings. The way in which we understand difference and make specific distinctions raises “questions of alignment or dislocation, relation or alienation” (2007: 266) that can be answered in different ways. None of these answers is inherent in any form of human-machine interaction or precedes the relation, the relationship itself. “[T]hey [the distinctions we make; J.L.] are effects lived and experienced within multifaceted subject-object assemblages” (2007: 266). Where Haraway now outlines her feminist concept of kinship as the foundation for a relational ethics of the pleasurable enduring of tension, Suchman bases her ethics of reconfiguration in Barad’s tradition on the assumption of “intra-action” and thus associates with this in particular the renegotiation of the subject-object dichotomy, as exemplified in her paper “Subject objects” (2011) using the example of humanoid robots (2011: 121). Intra-action, unlike “interaction” (2011: 267), does not presuppose (at least) two autonomous “entities” (2011: 267), which then enter into a kind of relationship and “exchange” (2011: 267) with each other. But intraaction is based on the idea of interference (my translation; Bath et al. 2013b: 7): “Interference is the physical term for the superposition of waves. It thus describes a form of relationship that cannot be translated into common notions of difference and identity, in which isolated, stable entities relate to one another. In interference, the wave operates by becoming something else, another wave, several, smaller, larger waves, or possibly no waves at all. Waves cannot meet without interfering, without becoming something else. In this sense, interference stands for a non-binary, non-linear and yet relational form of generating otherness, difference, which, however, does not merge into these differences.”

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From the concepts of intra-action and thus implicitly interference, Suchman derives the mutually constitution of “humans and artifacts” (2007: 268). This “constitution of humans and artifacts does not occur in any single time and place, nor does it create fixed human-artifact relations or entities” (2007: 268). Haraway’s ethics of kinship, on the other hand, seems to be based rather on the foundation of interaction and identity, which Suchman transcends with the notion of a reciprocal constitution in interference relationships. In this way, she arrives at a processual idea of humans and nonhumans, who constantly recreate each other in their constant interferences (Suchman 2007: 278 f.). “Agencies […] reside neither in us nor in our artifacts but in our intra-actions” (2007: 285). With her feminist ethics of the mutual constitution of humans and nonhumans, Suchman does not intend to abolish differences in general. However, we should consider how much and what exactly we want to continue to accept from our heavy humanistic heritage as the basis of our view of human beings and the world. According to Suchman, “we need a story that can tie humans and nonhumans together without erasing the culturally and historically constituted differences among them” (2007: 270). We must “avoid the twin traps of categorical essentialism and the erasure of differences that matter” (2011: 137). However, “[m]utualities” (2007: 269) are “not necessarily symmetries” (2007: 269), but in order to be able to include nonhuman forms of otherness in our moral universe, we must be able to endure and support forms of “asymmetry” (2007: 269) or better still “dissymmetry” (2007: 269) that are constantly being renegotiated as realizations of the interferences between humans and nonhumans who are constantly redesigning themselves in a processual way. This in turn sounds very similar to Haraway’s request for an enjoyable endurance of tension. Suchman therefore concludes her paper “Subject objects” with the request to “extricat[e] ourselves from a tradition in which our interest in nonhumans is for either their reflective or contrastive properties vis-à-vis (a certain figure of) our own, in favour of an attention to ontologies that radically—but always contingently—reconfigure the boundaries of where we stop, and the rest begins” (2011: 138). It should have become clear in this section that Haraway and Suchman stand for a feminist technophilosophical way of criticizing current social and technoscientific structures. These are feminist approaches, since they aim at the equality of all human beings and, in addition, at the inclusion of nonhuman beings in the moral universe. These are technofeminist approaches, since their initial interest lies in mobilizing the emancipatory potential of technics and in becoming aware of specific categories and dichotomies and traditional boundaries between, for instance, the natural and the artificial. After all, these are feminist technophilosophical approaches, since they do not exhaust themselves in a descriptive analysis of the given, but rather formulate the premises and first principles for an inclusive ethics, suggesting an entanglement of ethics, ontology, and metaphysics, which should be examined in more detail elsewhere.

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4 Conclusion—a Plea for a Feminist Technoscientific Utopia5 In the last part of this chapter, a feminist technophilosophical plea for an inclusive and critical discourse on modern technics will be formulated in three steps: firstly, in a demand for the acceptance of responsibility in dealing with technics on (at least) four social levels. Accepting responsibility also means a radical rejection of the so-called thesis of the neutrality of technics. Secondly, the necessity of a critical reflection of concrete technologies is emphasized in contrast to the insistence on the extreme positions of a radical rejection of all technologies per se on the one hand or a euphoric advocacy of new technologies on the other. Thirdly, the question of what is (morally) desirable is given priority over the question of what is (technically) possible and feasible. In this context, the vision of a strong artificial super intelligence and the ethical and feminist technophilosophical relevance of its evaluation will also be considered. First—Rejection of the thesis of the neutrality of technics: Technologies, as products of human action, are never neutral, and with that neither are robots nor reproductive technologies nor smartphones nor any other specific technology. This was shown in the first section of this chapter. Nothing that humans do is purely descriptive or evaluatively neutral, for human action is always (whether implicitly or explicitly) determined by norms and values. It is precisely the intention(s) of an action that distinguishes the action from instinct or mere behavior (Anscombe 1957; Bratman 1987; Davidson 1980). Through intention, values ‘enter’ the action. People choose between different actions based on reasons that were previously implicitly or explicitly weighed against other reasons. In the introduction to What Things Do (2005) Peter-Paul Verbeek uses the example of the form of a dining table to describe how simple technological artefacts such as pieces of furniture reproduce and implicitly affirm certain social and political and thus often patriarchal and heteronormative structures: a rectangular table with a front side expresses hierarchical structures, whereas at a round table everyone can sit equally. All technology has a purpose and thus is never neutral. Which concrete aesthetic, political, economic, religious, social, and ethical norms and values can, should, and may be regarded as the set of criteria in each individual case remains to be discussed, of course, and thus remains a continuous task of technophilosophical and, in this case, feminist technophilosophical analysis, ethical discussion, and social deliberation. In any case, objections of technoenthusiastic transhumanists such as that modern technologies are merely neutral cases of ‘ones and zeros’ are thus rejected, as is the slogan of the National Rifle Association in the 1980s: “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people”. A shooter is always a constellation of a human being and a firearm, both act (in this case: shoot) with each other.

5The

following is similarly presented in my book Robot Ethics. An Introduction (Roboterethik. Eine Einführung) that will be published in September 2019 by Suhrkamp.

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In order to be able to embed the rejection of the thesis of the neutrality of technics in society and to be able to guarantee correspondingly responsible acting, on (at least) four social levels the education and strengthening of an ethical awareness in dealing with technics is required: (1) in ethics and computer science teaching in schools. In ethics teaching, ethics of technology must play a greater role than has been the case to date; in computer science teaching, the normativity of all human acting and the technologies created by it should be emphasized. Furthermore, (2) the introduction of compulsory ethics courses is needed in technical and engineering training institutions. In almost every other discipline the integration of ethical questions into the curriculum is absolutely self-evident and fundamental. Imagine, for instance, a doctor who would be ‘let loose’ on a patient without having completed compulsory ethical courses on topics such as preimplantation diagnostics, cloning, euthanasia, and further ethically crucial questions in her discipline. A similar attitude for the given relationship between ethics and technics in the technical and engineering sciences is only weakly represented in the given training institutions. In addition, it requires (3) the introduction of compulsory training courses in philosophy of technology, feminist philosophy of technology, and robot ethics in companies that already produce and market technologies. Exceptionally dubious gender stereotypes, unreflected anthropomorphizations, and intransparent decisions about agency and decision-making authority, implicitly supported by heteronormative and patriarchal power and authority structures woven into the emergence of the technologies in question, are perpetuated and socially confirmed, as was also shown in the second section of this chapter. Finally, the consistent rejection of the thesis of the neutrality of technics and the demand for the strengthening of a critical, ethical consciousness (4) calls for the increased establishment of ethics committees such as the Ethics Commission on Autonomous Driving in Germany (2015). This also goes hand in hand with the transparent shaping of the academic discourse, which must be oriented towards the increased inclusion of social and industrial agents. It is part of the responsibility of scientists (as well as all others involved in the discourse) to present facts and to use language in such a way that outsiders can participate and can be sure that their voices will be heard and taken seriously. Second—The demand for critically reflecting concrete technologies: In order for the discourse on modern technologies to be as inclusive as possible, a structural formation both ‘bottom up’ (of all people already in education, in schools, working in companies) and ‘top down’ (supported by political institutions and committees) is needed, as well as cooperation on (at least) the four levels described above. To guarantee the greatest possible inclusion, however, a diverse and heterogeneous formation of official institutions and bodies, which shape the scientific discourse and have the power to promote or restrict the participation of everyone in it, is also required (and this presumably top down). If, to put it pointedly, an ethics commission for the production and serial distribution of sex robots consists exclusively of white, heterosexual men over 50, then the resulting

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discourse would invite the participation of a corresponding circle of users and possibly even restrict or exclude other voices. However, at this point it is not only a question of who can participate in the discourse, whose voice is heard and what weight a position is given in each case, but also a question of what the discourse is about. In the debates about the development of autonomous artificial systems, AI and modern technologies in general, two extreme scenarios are usually depicted: the dystopian view that machines will seize world domination on the one hand and the utopian (transhumanist) view that we will eventually merge with nanobots, upload our minds to a computer, and then become virtually immortal on the other. However, we do not have the luxury of limiting ourselves to this black-and-white view of things. We must venture into the large, chaotic grey area between these poles and reflect on technologies in detail and critically. Many people, when talking about robots, for instance, often switch very quickly from the level of the concrete artificial system (e.g. this chess computer is much better at playing chess than most people) to the abstract level of ‘the’ machine (e.g. the machines will eventually overtake ‘the’ human). With regard to animals, however, we would never do this, e.g. we would never change from an avalanche tracking dog, characterized by unique abilities to find people in avalanche areas, to the abstract level of ‘the’ animal—and certainly not in order to claim that ‘the’ animal would strive for world domination. Technology is made for very concrete purposes. A chess computer can perhaps play chess better than most people, but it is neither able to drive a car, make coffee, do homework with our children, nor go to war. We must take a critical look at the respective contexts in which a specific technology is used and the technologies in question in particular. This calls for a transparent discourse for academic and non-academic participants and for all members of a society, not just political, economic, and scientific elites and lobby groups, to convey expertise, reflection, and judgement at all levels. Third—The priority of the question of what is desirable over what is feasible: Finally, against the background of what has been said so far, it should be clear why I insist that there are people in the plural rather than ‘the’ human being. And these people have different ways of influencing each other, depending on their place in society (which is always a concrete society with specific political, economic, and legal structures), financial possibilities, profession, etc. Technological developments are in any case not laws of nature! That at some point we will develop an artificial super intelligence is not a fact like, for instance, the fact that the sun rises every morning and sets every evening. In German-speaking countries alone there are numerous examples for technologies that could theoretically be implemented (at least with appropriate financial and institutional support), but are subject to legally strict sanctions (such as cloning, the ‘production’ of ‘designer babies’, the use of nuclear energy, etc.). Technological developments are humanmade and subject to human conditions. Not everything that is possible will necessarily become real. If one claims the opposite, one falls for a self-fulfilling prophecy. We also know that Moore’s Law, which says that the complexity of integrated circuits doubles regularly (every 12 or 24 months) with minimal component costs, is not a law of nature, but also a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is because

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‘the’ industry is involved in the development of the technologies in question; ‘the’ industry defines a joint approach or milestones for correspondingly efficient and economically defined action. Any prognoses about the future of ‘the’ human being as a whole are exceptionally problematic and suspected of being unscientific. The active futurist, computer engineer, and inventor Ray Kurzweil is an example of such a popular-scientific endeavor to predict technological developments precisely and far into the future. As the author of books such as The Age of Intelligent Machines (1990), The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) and especially The Singularity is Near (2005), he is represented in public discourse as is no other technological posthumanist. As cofounder of the Singularity University in California (2008), the ‘breeding ground’ of technological posthumanist scientists, entrepreneurs, and futurists, and since 2012 director of engineering at Google, Kurzweil represents the elite of technological posthumanism as well as its power and influence.6 Thus, he never gets tired of predicting the evolution of history through specific technological achievements and advances, according to which euphoric technological posthumanists can practically set the clock. Kurzweil ultimately has no reservations about an artificial superintelligence, the development of which he calculates as a significant climax of an exponentially and quasi-necessarily unwinding technological evolution with the year 2045. Therefore, he only points out in a short paragraph in The Singularity is Near (2005) that although the singularity will be able to solve numerous human problems, at the same time it will also increase people’s ability to self-destruct. Kurzweil corrects the linear historical consciousness by means of an exponential one. However, he makes the mistake of thinking that a general (in his case an exponential) principle can be derived from the history of technological developments that allows him to predict concrete technological achievements at reasonably predictable points in time in the future. He is subject to a variant of the problem of induction, which was already described in detail by David Hume in his Treaties of Human Nature: the logical impossibility of drawing a conclusion from something particular to a general rule. Hume notes the falseness of induction as a generally valid reasoning strategy (in contrast to the correct procedures of cognition through intuition, deduction or empiricism), since “there can be no demonstrative arguments to prove, that those instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those, of which we have had experience” (1738: Book I, Part III, Section VI). Just as a person who has only seen white swans all her life cannot conclude from this experience that there only exist white swans, so the entrance into singularity or the development of an artificial superintelligence cannot be calculated on the basis of certain technological developments. The dream of an artificial super intelligence seems to be the generally accepted goal of techno-enthusiasts like Kurzweil and also appears in robot ethics, although an artificial intelligence does not have to be embodied in the form of

6Technological posthumanists are particularly interested in the development of a strong artificial super intelligence (Loh 2018: 112–118).

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a robot to be considered as such. But what does this actually mean? In his book Superintelligence (2014), the transhumanist Nick Bostrom differentiates between three forms of superintelligence: (1) a “speed superintelligence” that differs from human intelligence only in its radically increased speed; (2) a “collective superintelligence”, a kind of swarm intelligence that consists of a large number of units of lesser intelligence; and (3) a “quality superintelligence” that differs not only in quantity (speed) from human forms of intelligence, but also in its quality (2014: 53–56).7 But the prominent example of an artificial superintelligence, regularly cited in the technological posthumanist movement, was already formulated in 1965 by the mathematician Irving John Good in his paper “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine”, in which he describes an intelligent machine that would develop itself further, i.e. be capable of intervening in its own basic algorithmic structure and could create even more intelligent machines. He calls this the last invention of man. On the one hand, the “survival” (1965: 31) of the human species depends on such a strong universal AI, i.e. an artificial intelligence that, comparable to humans, could act in any context and not, like contemporary artificial systems, be created solely for specific tasks and areas of application. On the other hand, it would be accompanied by numerous economic, political, social, and especially ethical challenges. The latter includes Good’s fear that humanity might become superfluous, the “ethical problem” (1965: 34) of whether a machine can feel pain, and whether it should be dismantled if it becomes obsolete. Often, however, the discourse on the development of certain technologies is conducted as if it had already been determined that these technologies would eventually become real. Then Nick Bostrom considers, for instance, which values we should implement in a strong AI instead of asking whether we want a strong AI at all. However, the question of what is technologically feasible and capable must not be put before the question of what is (morally) desirable. In the empirical sciences, this is often done or there is usually a shared conviction about the development of certain technologies to the effect that it is of course good and right to develop said technology and to bring it to the market. But we must explicitly ask the question of what is desirable and discuss it in society. For us as scientists, this means influencing the discourse in such a way that it is as transparent and comprehensible as possible. We become incapacitated when we advocate a social and technological determinism in which the ‘wheel of history’ simply unwinds before our eyes and we have no means of influencing it. A feminist technophilosophical plea for an inclusive and critical discourse: Autonomous artificial systems are already now present in all spheres of human existence. We should strive for an open and critical discourse that invites all members of a society to participate on an equal basis and at eye level, is heterogeneous and multilingual in structure, listens to all arguments, and gives weight to every

7Transhumanism

primarily aims at the technological transformation of human beings into posthuman beings (Loh 2018).

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voice. A discourse of this kind requires the development of judgement and responsibility in all potential participants. It seems as if we are in the midst of an era of automation that requires us more than ever to reflect prudently, critically, and thoughtfully on the technological achievements that challenge us anew almost every day in the media. At the same time, however, with each further step we try to get rid of our (also) individual responsibility and the burden of independent judgement. There are certainly different ways to hold on to responsibility in dealing with (modern) technologies in general and in human-robot interaction in particular, to share it with other (nonhuman) beings included in the discourse and to transform it. Not a single one of the voices to be taken seriously, however different they may be in detail, however contradictory they may sound at times, seeks to deny any individual or collective responsibility in general. The foregoing may be a sketch of a feminist technoscientific utopia and it also may be that such an inclusive and critical discourse does not yet exist. However, it is up to us to change this and put this utopia into practice.

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Mlot, S. (2018). Sex Robot Samantha Upgradet With Moral Code. Retrieved from https://www. geek.com/tech/sex-robot-samantha-upgraded-with-moral-code-1743756/. Morgan, R. (2017). Looking for robot love? Here are 5 sexbots you can buy right now. Retrieved from https://metro.co.uk/2017/09/13/looking-for-robot-love-here-are-5-sexbots-you-can-buyright-now-6891378/. Murphy, M. (2017). Interview: Kathleen Richardson makes the case against sex robots. Retrieved from https://www.feministcurrent.com/2017/06/02/interview-kathleen-richardson-makes-casesex-robots/. Murray, T. (2017). Professor Kathleen Richardson on ethical problems with sex robots. Retrieved from https://ispr.info/2017/10/27/professor-kathleen-richardson-on-ethical-problems-with-sexrobots/comment-page-1/. Nayar, P.K. (2014). Posthumanism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Nelson, S.M., Telfer, E.E. & Anderson, R.A. (2012). The ageing ovary and uterus: New biological insights. Human Reproduction Update 19(1), 67–83. Ortner, S.B. (1974). Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture? In M.Z. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere (Eds.), Woman, Culture, and Society. Stanford University Press, 68–87. Penley, C. & Ross, A. (1991). Cyborgs at Large: Interview with Donna Haraway. Technoculture 3, 1–20. Piercy, M. (1976). Woman on the Edge of Time. New York: Fawcett Crest Books. Pitts-Taylor, V. (Ed.) (2016). Mattering. Feminism, Science, and Materialism. New York, London: NYU Press. Rosenberg, J.F. (1978). The Practice of Philosophy. Handbook for Beginners. United States: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Satz, D. (2017). Feminist Perspectives on Reproduction and the Family. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-family/. Schneider, J. (2005). Donna Haraway. Live Theory. New York, London: continuum. Schwarz, C. (2017). Inspiriert dieser neue Sexroboter zu sexueller Gewalt an Frauen – oder hält er Männer davon ab? Retrieved from https://ze.tt/mit-sexrobotern-vergewaltigungen-nachspielenbedrohung-oder-schutz-fuer-frauen/. Steinfeldt-Mehrtens, E. (2019). Posthumanistischer Feminismus. Gender Glossar. Retrieved from https://gender-glossar.de/glossar/item/94-posthumanistischer-feminismus. Strikwerda, L. (2017). Legal and Moral Implications of Child Sex Robots. In Danaher, J. & McArthur, N. (Eds.), Robot Sex. Social and Ethical Implications. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 133–151. Suchman, L. (22007). Human-Machine Reconfigurations. Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge University Press. Suchman, L. (2011). Subject objects. Feminist Theory 12, 119–145. Trallori, L.N. (2015). Der Körper als Ware. Wien, Berlin: Mandelbaum Verlag. Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What Things Do. Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. Pennsylvania. Wajcman, J. (2004). TechnoFeminism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Technologies: Robots

Technology Games/Gender Games. From Wittgenstein’s Toolbox and Language Games to Gendered Robots and Biased Artificial Intelligence Mark Coeckelbergh

1 Introduction Philosophy of technology does not always include discussions about gender issues, but some work does. For example, in the past there has been work on reproductive technologies (Dusek 2006) and today there is a growing interest in gender issues, for example many people comment on gender bias created by artificial intelligence. Often this has a feminist angle. A famous source of inspiration remains the work of Donna Haraway (2000), which is still very influential, and others such as Judy Wajcman (2004) and some of the authors in this volume. Haraway used the cyborg figure in order to try to move beyond male domination in social relations and to transgress boundaries. But whereas in Haraway’s postmodernism there is more emphasis on culture and texts, Wajcman—in line with the empirical turn in philosophy of technology, somewhat compatible with postphenomenology (Ihde 1990), with affinities to critical theory, and close to or within STS—shows how material artefacts themselves are shaped by gender meanings, for example how smartphones—through their production—are related to conflicts and rape of women in Central Africa. More generally, the latter direction encourages us to think about how material artefacts are gendered. The essay presented in this chapter is situated between and beyond these approaches: it focuses on concrete technology but tries to retrieve something from the more language-oriented philosophy that preceded the empirical turn (Coeckelbergh 2017a). For this purpose, I do not start from Haraway, Wajcman, or other feminist authors, but use a very different, perhaps unexpected departing point: the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Drawing on previous work

M. Coeckelbergh (*)  Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_2

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(Coeckelbergh 2017b, c) and calling attention not so much to the performativity of discourse (Butler 1988) but to the performativity of humans using artefacts, I use Wittgenstein’s use-oriented and holistic thinking about language in order to understand technology as embedded in a social-cultural context, using the concept of “technology games”. This enables us to raise gender issues in the following way. First, I claim that technology is always part of technology games: through their use and thus also use-context (with Wittgenstein one could say: activities, games, and form of life), material artefacts and other technologies are always necessarily linked to all kinds of social and cultural meanings. Second, I argue that this includes what I call “gender games”. We can and should analyze and reveal how material artefacts are linked to various gender meanings that are related to the relevant activities, games and form of life. This not necessarily feminist but certainly critical phenomenological and hermeneutical approach, enables us to understand, among other things, why and how material artefacts can be gendered (and, as I will argue, how they also “gender”). In this way it is in line with the posthumanist aim to question binaries (it questions the material/cultural binary), which is present in some feminist theory (Haraway) and can also inform the development of future and emerging technologies in a way that takes into account, and perhaps actively tries to influence and shape, gender issues.

2 Technology Games: Using Wittgenstein for Thinking About Technology It is impossible to do full justice to Wittgenstein’s work and its rich reception history; for the purpose of this essay I will focus on the later work and offer a brief working account and interpretation of what Wittgenstein says about language based on his Philosophical Investigations (1953/2009). I will then use this view about language, including concepts such as language games and form of life, for thinking about technology. Wittgenstein’s view of language is use-oriented. According to Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word is not attached to that word-object but depends on its use. Use gives a sign its “life” (Wittgenstein 1953/2009: § 432, 135e). In that sense, words are like tools and, more generally, language and conceptions are instruments (§ 569, 159e). He compares words to tools in a toolbox (§ 11, 9e). Tools have only meaning in their use and in the context of that use. Likewise, the meaning of words depends on how we use them and, furthermore, on our activities, our use-contexts. Therefore, his theory of language and meaning is not only useoriented but also holistic. Wittgenstein uses the term “language-game” to refer to “the whole, consisting of language and the activities into which it is woven” (§ 7, 9e). Another term he uses for the whole is “form of life”: “to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life” (§ 19, 11e). Thus, language is not a matter of isolated word-objects; what gives words meaning is their embeddedness in activities, games, and a form of life, which we can interpret as their social and culture use-context.

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If we now use this approach for thinking about technology (Coeckelbergh 2017c) and turn the metaphor of the toolbox around, we arrive at the following view: technology—here understood as tools—is like language, provided that the latter is understood in a Wittgensteinian use-oriented and holistic way. First, the meaning of technology is not a matter of isolated artefacts-objects but, as postphenomenology already acknowledged (Ihde 1990: 70), is a matter of use. Using what Wittgenstein says about language, we could say that use gives life to technologies as tools. Second (and this goes beyond postphenomenology), technologies-in-use are always related to, and part of, particular activities, games, and a form of life. What I called “technology games” (Coeckelbergh 2017c) shape the meaning of particular uses. For example, the meaning of a navigation device is not only about that device as a material artefact; the artefact is used in an activity (driving) and a use-context (traffic), which is in turn connected to traffic games with its rules and implicit knowledge, and ultimately to the way we do things in a car culture and in modern society. The meaning of the material artefact is thus embedded in games and a form of life. Not only words but also other technologies must be understood in this use-oriented and holistic way. As Winner already argued in the 1980s using Wittgensteinian language, technologies are part of a form of life in the sense that they are “woven into the texture of everyday existence” (Winner 1986: 12) and hence are connected with expectations and other elements of the social. For example, when we interact with a computer, we already have expectations based on older patterns (1986: 14). Consider how today people interact with assistive home devices with a voice interface or with a so-called social robot: before we start talking with the device or the robot, there are already conversational patterns and social expectations, in which the use of the device is embedded. There are ways we do things with one another; social robots tap into these meanings and are governed by these patterns. For example, the activities and games of meeting someone, ordering a coffee, or talking about the weather. “Meeting” a social robot can be only meaningful and successful if embedded in patterns of how humans meet. And “conversation” with a device like Alexa can only be meaningful to the human user since that user already has experience of human-human conversations. More generally, there are always already social-cultural patterns in which the material artefacts-in-use are embedded. These patterns range from specific activities and games to aspects of a wider form of life. For example, I have argued that our use of contemporary technologies often fits within a romantic culture; our expectations about the technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality relate to our romantic desires for the wondrous, magical, extraordinary, emotional, and spiritual (Coeckelbergh 2017d). And the use and meaning of service robots may well be embedded in a history of slavery or (mis) use of animals; there is always a cultural and historical background which contributes to the meaning of the artefact. The meaning of the material artefact is never exhausted by its materiality or functionality; through its use, user, and use-context, there is a kind of overflow or abundance of meaning stemming from the games and form of life it is part of.

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Using another analogy to language, one may also use the term “grammar”: technologies are not just about isolated material elements and not even about material elements that are connected and composed (grammar as syntax); they are also embedded in, and ruled by, a social-cultural grammar, which shapes and makes possible particular meanings of the technology. Note, however, that although some of this meaning can be formalized (e.g. in the form of rules), this grammar is not necessarily implicit, and perhaps can never be entirely explicit. Knowing how to do things with technology is connected to knowing how to do things in a particular game and form of life, and this includes a lot of tacit knowledge. Material technologies are connected to such tacit knowledge as much as they are connected to explicit rules. This explains, by the way, why it is so difficult to create very successful “social” technologies or general artificial intelligence: the social-cultural-material life is embedded and embodied in human beings as users. For example, while there has been a lot of progress in natural language processing, artificial intelligence is still not good enough since neither symbolic AI based on rules nor pattern recognition through machine learning can grasp all the meanings that emerge from our embodied and cultural practices and that are linked to our games and form of life, which contain meanings that are hard or impossible to make explicit. A Wittgensteinian framework thus helps us to conceptualize the social and cultural dimension of technologies understood as tools and material artefacts. They neither belong to a symbolic world of signs, as postmodern theories made it seem, nor do they reside exclusively in a material world that is only loosely connected to the social world. Technologies-in-use, as material artefacts that are used and that are part of games and use-contexts, belong to both worlds at the same time. Technologies are not just things; they are performed and they are social and cultural. The framework suggests a metaphysics and epistemology of technology that is less dualist. If it entails a metaphysics at all, it is one that is not about what technology is but more about what we do with technology and what technology does; it is more process-oriented and performative (Coeckelbergh 2017b). If it implies an epistemology, it is one that is not just about objects and not just about subjects, but also, less dualistically, about the knowledge that emerges in and from technologies-in-use and humans using technologies. The Wittgensteinian framework proposed here is not about bringing back “culture” as if that was a kind of “thing”, external to technologies and their use. If there is “cultural” knowledge, it is a knowledge that is entangled with the use, games, and form of life connected with the technology. Moreover, this approach also helps us to discuss the normative side of technologies. Technology games are not neutral; the meanings related to technological artefacts have a normative aspect. The games and form of life are also prescriptive, contain rules, encourage one to do things in one way rather than another. The grammar of technology is normative. For example, a robot in humanoid form may encourage the user to behave as if the robot is a human being. And a device powered by artificial intelligence may nudge the user to speak in one way rather than another, so that the device “understands” what is being said. Or it may nudge the

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user to treat it as a human or animal companion. Using the proposed approach, we can reveal some of the normativities connected to technological artefacts. Furthermore, if we are not happy with a particular technology and technology game, we may want to try to change the technology and change the game(s). While we cannot deny that our social and cultural use-grammars are to a large extent “given”, we can nevertheless make performative interventions to try to change that grammar. Changing our technologies or at least changing the use of our technologies is one way to do this. We can “hack” (to use a technology metaphor) and “edit” (to use a language metaphor) our technologies and the grammars and games they are a part of and help to constitute. Social-technological change is possible, even if we always have to acknowledge the power and normativity of what is already there. True change and transformation is only possible with such a recognition of limitations and resistance. This normative side of technologies, and indeed the critical, perhaps even political potential of a use-oriented and holistic phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology, are very relevant to thinking about gender issues, to which I now turn.

3 Gender Games: How Robots and Artificial Intelligent Systems Are Linked to, and Enable Us to Perform, Gender Meanings, and How We Can Change the Games The normative meanings related to material artefacts can include a gender aspect. The proposed Wittgensteinian framework can help to reveal, express, and (therefore) critically assess such socially and politically relevant meanings. I propose the term “gender games” to articulate the idea that technology as material artefactsin-use can be connected to games and a form of life that includes gender-relevant meanings, prescriptions, and patterns. How we think about gender—at all kinds of levels and in all kinds of contexts—and how we “do” and “perform” gender (Butler 1988) shapes not only our language and discourse but also how we develop and use technologies. To say, then, that a technological artefact is gendered is to say that it is connected to games, patterns, grammars, and a form of life in which there are normatively relevant gender meanings that shape the meaning of that particular technological artefact. The phenomenology and hermeneutics proposed in the previous section can help to reveal and analyze these gender meanings. There are what we may call “gender grammars” that rule and shape what we do, including our use of technologies. But the direction also goes the other way around: a particular use of technologies may confirm and perpetuate a particular pattern, grammar, game and form of life, including a particular gender meaning and way of dealing with gender. Gender grammars and gender games are not fixed, external, and isolated blocks of “culture”, nor are they limited to their instantiation in discourse; they are constructed, performed, and perpetuated by our concrete performances: performances with words but also performances with things. Particular uses of technology and

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the material artefacts involved are thus not only references or indexes of particular games and a particular form of life; they also help to constitute these. Technologies, understood here as tools and material artefacts, are not only gendered (in the sense that they refer to gender meanings) but are also gendering: they actively shape gender meanings. This renders it all the more important to pay attention not only to discourse, understood as the use of words, but also to technology, understood as the use of tools and things. In this way, the proposed approach moves beyond the postmodern obsession with signs but also beyond versions and interpretations of the empirical turn that neglected the question of meaning and ignored theories of language such as Wittgenstein’s. It takes us beyond the material/culture binary, which was arguably always one of the aims of posthumanist versions of feminism. Let me give some examples of how technologies refer to gender meanings and, at the same time, help to perpetuate these meanings: how technologies are part of, and co-constitute, gender games. This will also further illustrate the critical potential of a “gender games” approach as proposed here. My examples cluster around (1) robotics technologies and (2) artificial intelligence technologies.

3.1 Robots and How Women Are Perceived and Treated If we start from a dualist and classical realist approach, it is hard to see how robots can be directly connected to gender meanings. For example, why can anyone— e.g. a feminist activist—get upset with a material artefact such as a sex robot? From a dualist and realist point of view, it is just a machine, a thing. It is not a human being and it is not a woman. It is unconnected to the world of human beings, culture and discourse, in which we can have discussions about gender and feminism, politics, and so on. It is puzzling why we should worry about a material artefact at all. Such an artefact, according to this view, can never be ethically relevant or political itself. If sex robots are problematic at all, it is not the robot that is problematic but the human beings. The discussion should not be about technology but about how good or bad human beings are. If, however, we start from the approach proposed in this chapter, then we can understand how robots, through their use as connected to particular games and a wider form of life, can have gender meanings and can be used to perpetuate these meanings and the related ethical and political problems. For example, sex robots having a female shape and used in a particular way (e.g. as “prostitutes” or as “rape victim” or as a “partner”) may then be understood as being connected to games of domination and exploitation (but also: games of conversation between partners) and to a form of life in which women are treated as things or— as Kathleen Richardson argues—property (Richardson 2019), in which violence is normalized, and in which social relationships are impoverished. Household robots having a female shape may be connected to the history of oppression of women and a history of slavery (or to narratives of liberation of women). And contemporary sex robots can be connected to a long history of fantasies about artificial

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lovers and to sexual practices and technologies, all going back to ancient times (Devlin 2018). Whatever the claim is (often but not necessarily made from a feminist angle), my point is that the approach I propose enables us to adequately theorize this: it enables connecting the material artefact (and word) to such meanings and revealing, analyzing, and critically discussing them. What matters here is neither the material artefact alone nor the discourse or culture alone; if there is an ethical or political problem at all, it is the specific coupling of the material artefact to the activities, games, and form of life that is problematic, the specific entanglement of object and subject if you wish. The normativity is in the coupling between the technology-in-use and the gender games. An adequate ethical and political analysis needs to focus on these precise uses and specific games. In this sense, we should not discuss about “the sex robot” as if it were a mere thing and an abstraction; technology is always also about its uses and the activities and games it is connected to, activities and games that are present in a particular culture and society and which have a history. These activities, games, and forms of life already contain particular ways in which women are perceived and treated, and this feeds into our technologies as they are developed and used in particular contexts. Again it should be emphasized that the relation goes both ways: the wider cultural use-context shapes the meaning of the specific artefact (e.g. a sex robot), but at the same time that artefact instantiates and helps to perpetuate the game and form of life (e.g. the prostitution game and a form of life in which exploitation or objectification of women is normalized). Sex robots are gendered in the sense that they refer to wider meanings that are already there and at the same time they help to constitute a particular culture, understood not in a reified way but as activities, games, and forms of life. In this sense, the robots also “gender”, or at least are used by human beings to gender in particular ways. This renders it all the more urgent not only to study discourse but also consider technologies in their use and use-contexts. Technologies are never merely technical or functional; they also actively produce and reproduce meaning, including gender meanings. But it also suggests the possibility of change: if the technology does all this, then by changing the technologies we can also change how they link to and co-constitute our games and forms of life. We can create different robots and use them differently. Moreover, this less dualistic approach encourages us to not only to critically look at actual artefacts but also at images, fantasies, and narratives about the technology, for example an image of a service robot in female shape, a fantasy of having a relationship with a robot, or a narrative about robot slaves. As Haraway and the earlier romantics already knew, fiction matters politically, too. This takes us once again beyond an approach that interprets “empirical” and “material” in a way that narrowly focuses on technologies as material artefacts in the sense of “real existing things” or “physical” things, which, in the best case, are then related to an external social context in which there is a play of human actors. The use of technologies can take many forms, including fictional ones. And things are often connected with words. Our names for things matter. For example, whether we call a robot a “machine” or a “companion” (or even “lover”) matters for our perception of that robot. Language is also a technology and as Wittgenstein argued: words are

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tools. What matters for the purpose of critical analysis is not the technology as a tool or material artefact as such (if that makes sense at all), but the entanglement of the technology (real or fictional, material or immaterial) with activities, games and a form of life—here: gender games. This can include language games (e.g. a particular discourse about women) but more broadly it refers to the way we do things (with one another) in a particular social and cultural context. It refers to our games and our form of life, including gender games. In this way, the technological and the social are intrinsically linked.

3.2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Gender Bias The importance of analyzing the couplings between technologies and gender games (in the light of the entanglement of technology with the social through its use) also becomes very relevant when we consider another gendered/gendering technology example: artificial intelligence (AI) and the problem of bias. It is often said that artificial intelligence systems, in the form of machine learning that uses (big) data, risks the creation or perpetuation of bias. This can happen through the algorithm and its training but also through the selection and processing of data(sets). Bias can happen at all stages of the process. Bias often arises unintentionally: while usually not intended by the developers or users of the system, nevertheless the outcomes (e.g. decisions) may be unjust and unfair to particular individuals and groups. For example, a machine learning algorithm used in a criminal justice context may infer that if a suspect’s parents went to prison, that suspect has more chance to go to prison. If a recommendation (or even a sentence) is based on this correlation, this unfairly discriminates against people who find themselves in such a situation. (House of Commons 2018) Bias often happens because there is already bias in the training dataset and, more generally, within wider society. For example, machine learning can acquire bias from feeding on textual data from the World Wide Web since such language corpora reflect everyday human culture and language use, including its biases (Caliskan et al. 2017). This includes gender bias, which is present in everyday language. The technology then functions as a kind of mirror of society, including its present and even historical biases. This renders it hard to avoid or address the problem of bias in and through AI. Again, classical ethics and dualist thinking about humans and technology may focus on the human beings only, seeing the technology as merely “technical”. But this problem of AI bias is not usually about human beings with good or bad intentions. It is about specific ways the technology interacts with the social and cultural. This cannot be handled by classic frameworks, but the proposed “technology games” and “gender games” framework is able to deal with this: it can conceptualize and clarify the problem. It can show how the algorithms, the data, and their material infrastructure give rise to bias problems since it understands technology and its meanings as intrinsically linked to specific uses, games, and a form of life in which there are already meanings present: here gender meanings related to bias.

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This helps to illuminate the case in which a machine algorithm feeds on data from the Web and in this way acquires gender bias. This can be conceptualized by saying that the data reflect and refer to language games in our culture and society which contain gender bias and, more generally, to a historically evolved form of life in which there are all kinds of biases, including gender bias. The technology and the culture are not two different things: both are already connected because all technologies refer in their meaning to the games and a form of life that are already there at the moment when the technology is used and that shape the use and meaning of the technology. This explains why we can have “biased AI”, why it is not a contradiction to link technology and culture so closely. However, it would be misleading to suggest that we therefore cannot change anything. If we take seriously the framework present, then the relation also goes the other way around. First, when it comes to discourse: while language, and in particular writing, is a memory technology that “attempts” to fix the bias, the bias is not part of a reified realm of culture and language. Both culture and language, including its biases, are only present if they are used and performed. We can speak and write differently. We can use the technology of writing differently and change the technology of our language and writing. This can enable social change, including in the area of gender. Second, when it comes to biased AI technology and smart algorithms, the algorithms and the data do not only reflect a bias that is already there but also actively confirm and perpetuate that bias. The technologyin-use and in a particular use context performs the bias. The technology is not only gendered but also gendering. This is very problematic but also opens up the possibility for change: we can try to change the technology in such a way that it is no longer performing and perpetuating the bias. While both the wider culture and the technologies we have at our disposal “try to present themselves” as given and do have a pervasive and substantial influence that cannot and should not be ignored, ultimately, “cultures” and “technologies” only exist in and through use and performance, and we can do performative interventions to change them. We can change the game. Perhaps we can even slowly but surely transform our form of life. For gender bias this means: we can change our technologies to gender in a different way, including our language and our high tech such as artificial intelligence. We can make semantic interventions: not only by means of changing the discourse, but also by changing technologies.

4 Conclusion: Critical Function, Implications for the Development of Technologies, and the Limitations of Language Use Using the proposed approach, we can reveal the games and forms of life particular material artefacts are connected to. We can reveal the gender games of specific technologies, or more precisely: we can reveal how the material artefact-in-use (including how it appears to the user) is connected to gender aspects of the wider activities, games, and forms of life. This helps one to understand why artefacts

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such as sex robots or technologies such as artificial intelligence can give rise to very normative and political claims about women and other gender issues. More generally, this approach entertains and promises thinking that bridges between more “cultural” and more “material” approaches to thinking about technology, between (thinking about) language and (thinking about) technology, between “objective” and “subjective” thinking, and, in the end, between on the one hand humanities and on the other hand engineering and science cultures. This is in line with phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches in philosophy and perhaps also with posthumanism, including posthumanist versions of feminism. But it is also a critical approach or is at least compatible with a critical approach: once particular technology games/gender games are revealed, one can criticize them. One can criticize particular technology-gender games couplings and particular technology-form of life couplings. For this purpose, it may well be necessary to connect to different games or different players than Wittgenstein, games and players that offer specific normative theories. Feminist theory can be one such language game and feminist authors such players, among others (e.g. Marxian critical theory, Foucaultian theory, etc.). But this can only be done if the revealing is done beforehand or in conjunction. In this way we gain more insight into how particular artefacts are related to particular games and forms of life. Only then can we gain a critical relation to it. We need to do a phenomenology and hermeneutics of artefacts-in-use and in-context—or rather: in con-technologies and con-media (since text is really not the only stuff of which games and forms of life are made). For this purpose, it might be interesting to team up with social studies of science and technology (STS), given its expertise in connecting material artefacts to social games, but then the theoretical framework needs to be compatible with the proposed approach. Moreover, the revealing itself has already a critical function, in so far as people may be unaware of the relevant games and forms of life, including gender games, that are connected with specific technologies. There is no critical evaluation and no possibility for resistance if there is no awareness. However, as I suggested in my discussion of examples, attention to technology games/gender games and critical work on these games needs not be limited to interventions in discourse; it can also become more practical (or more practical in other domains than discourse practices) and probably should become more practical. The proposed approach should have implications not only for thinking about technologies but also for the development and use of technologies. We can try to develop technologies that have a more desirable meaning, including gender meaning. If we evaluate such meanings and couplings as undesirable and unjust, we can try to create technologies that are gendered and gender in a different way. We can also try to change the relevant game or form of life in different ways, and thereby also influence and re-shape a specific artefact-game or artefact-form of life coupling. Discourse remains relevant. But technology is one area where the games are played and the games are constituted, including gender games. The development of technologies needs to be taken seriously as an area where not only “technical” things are done but where also the social and culture is forged, where semantics is performed, and where social change can take place. Discourse and related

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technologies and media such as writing constitute only one kind of technological realm, one kind of media. And given the pervasive influence of other technologies such as digital technologies, it is not necessarily the most powerful. If we want change, then, including change with regard to gender issues, it is important to understand the limitations of the use of language. For sure, language can help to intervene in technology development. Words can be tools for change. One could talk to technology developers. One could try to articulate the meanings and values that are embedded in a particular technology, including the gender meanings. One could try to articulate the technology games/gender games. One could even try to show how the technology fits within a form of life. However, first, given their semantic activities as explained here, technologies (other than everyday language, since technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics also make use of other languages such as programming languages) have a power and influence on their own, which limits what language can do. And, second, one also encounters the problem of implicit knowledge. Given the presence of implicit knowledge in technology games/gender games, not all gender meanings in a particular social and cultural context can be made explicit. It is possible to play a game without fully knowing what one is doing and without fully being able to explain what one is doing, at least if “knowing” means explicit knowledge. It is possible to live a form of life without fully being able to articulate it. If this is the case, then this seems to set limits not only to the project of revealing gender games but also to changing them. It may seem that it is very hard to change a particular game, let alone a form of life. However, this assumes again that language is the only way to really change anything. Given the semantic power of technologies as theorized here, different technologies and different uses of technologies—that is, other technologies and media than language—can and should also be the part of a path towards social change. If technology and its meanings are interpreted in the way proposed in this chapter, the power of technology is not only a threat or a limitation; it is also a chance. Technology is also a realm where change can happen— precisely because it is not a separate realm, because it is deeply and intrinsically connected with meaning. Technology, as gendered and gendering, also provides a chance for doing things differently. Probably a combination of words and (other) tools is needed to “gender” in a different way, a change in the way we speak and a change in the way we use other technologies. Yet staying closer to Wittgenstein again and keeping in mind the power of existing technologies-in-use and media-in-use in which gender meanings are embedded in various ways, it is probably wise not to overestimate the possibility of social change. The possibility of changing the way we do things in a particular con-text and con-technology is limited. Whatever our good intentions and concrete efforts in the realm of language and in other technologies may be: like all games, gender games cannot easily be changed and it is difficult to institutionalize new games. Maybe only small changes are possible, through particular activities and technologies. Small changes in performances. Some new performances in particular “marginal” contexts. But all changes to technology games/gender games, even if small, matter.

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References Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist theory. Theatre Journal 40(4), 519–531. Caliskan, A., Bryson, J. & Narayanan, A. (2017). Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases. Science 356, 183–186. https://doi.org/10.1126/science. aal4230. Coeckelbergh, M. (2017a). Language and Technology: Maps, Bridges, and Pathways. AI & Society 32(2), 175–189. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0604-9. Coeckelbergh, M. (2017b). Using Words and Things: Language and Philosophy of Technology. London, New York: Routledge. Coeckelbergh, M. (2017c). Technology Games: Using Wittgenstein for Understanding and Evaluating Technology. Science and Engineering Ethics (online first): 1–17. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11948-017-9953-8. Coeckelbergh, M. (2017d). New Romantic Cyborgs: Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. Devlin, K. (2018). Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots. London: Bloomsbury Sigma. Dusek, V. (2006). Women, Feminism, and Technology. In V. Dusek (Ed.), Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction (136–155). Malden: Blackwell. Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto. In D. Bell & B.M. Kennedy (Eds.), The Cybercultures Reader (291–324). London, New York: Routledge. House of Commons. (2018). Algorithms in Decision-Making (Fourth Report of Session 2017– 2019). London: Order of the House. Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Richardson, K. (2019). Sex Robots: The End of Love. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Wajcman, J. (2004). TechnoFeminism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Winner, L. (1986). The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Wittgenstein, L. (2009). Philosophische Untersuchungen = Philosophical Investigations (4th edition). G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker & J. Schulte, trans. P.M.S. Hacker & J. Schulte (Eds.). West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell (Work originally published 1953).

Programming Power and the Power of Programming: An Analysis of Racialised and Gendered Sex Robots Jenny Carla Moran

1 Introduction Human-robot interactions are not foreign to popular culture, and many ­contemporary works of science-fiction romanticise these interactions by questioning whether or not artificially-intelligent robots have emotions, personalities, and, essentially, autonomy. Similar questions appear in more scholastic works of robot ethics, even in the absence of romanticised fictional narratives (cf. Lin et al. 2014). I think these writings ask the wrong questions. I claim that there has not been enough work to examine the potentially violent effects that contemporary models of sexualised, embodied AI may have for the subjects these sex robots represent. Even in academic, socio-scientific analyses of contemporary sex robots that do highlight aspects of rape-culture violence, studies continue to make the mistake of conflating the objecthood of the sex robot with the subjecthood of individuals.12

1Richardson and Biling’s Campaign Against Sex Robots, for instance, devalues the lives, labour, and autonomy of sex workers through comparing the construction and use of such robots to a form of prostitution (2015). 2I specify ‘academic’ because there have been analyses outside of the institution, which have assisted and informed my study and present excellent explanations of rape-culture violence in models of sex robots (cf. Archer 2016).

With special thanks to Dr. Fatima Burney, for her generous advisement, support, and kindness.

J. C. Moran (*)  Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_3

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Recognising the need for further applied, interdisciplinary, feminist research in this area, I draw primarily from postcolonial theory and deconstructionist gender theory, taking a queered lens to qualitatively analyse the relevant forms of embodied AI (i.e. sex robots) created by 3 central companies. I take a necessarily-intersectional feminist approach to this analysis, influenced by the works of Kimberlé Crenshaw and the Combahee River Collective, in order to recognise the convergences of multiple presentations of societal violence which inform the rape-culture narratives to which, I argue, these robots appeal (1986). I interpret exemplary models of embodied AI in order to analyse the narratives which inform the models’ respective constructions, rather than ascribing my findings to the phenomenon of sexualised robots as a whole, because digital media can always be used in oppositional manners. My examination consists in 3 sections in which I argue that the use and design of these contemporary models of sex robots reify and reproduce the oppressive dynamics which inform their respective constructions.

2 (Re)Membering the Other: Embodied AI and Discourses of Power and Knowledge I argue that colonial discourses of power and knowledge inform the design, operation, and use of TrueCompanion’s “Roxxxy.” By ‘discourses of power and knowledge’, I refer to the poststructuralist work on the role of power in the governance of social meaning and cultural norms (cf. Foucault 1998). Where I refer to the patriarchal ‘discourse’ of gender, for instance, I invoke the meaning which has been ascribed to gender in patriarchal power relations (i.e. a binary man/woman formulation wherein woman is subservient) (cf. Butler 1990). Rather than being instructively articulated from the top-down only, these discourses can be produced and reproduced by those who are subject to the same hegemonic governing powers. This means that when a subject performs in accordance with power-governed instruction, thus reifying the relevant discourse of power, they can reinforce this power, even if they didn’t personally create the instruction. Thus, the discourses of interest to this study signify sequences through which meanings are assigned, on multiple levels of power, via instructive tools, such as the sex robots examined here (cf. Bhabha 1983). In recognition of these operations of power, I argue that the use and design of TrueCompanion’s sex robots reify oppressive discourses of misogyny, racism, Orientalism, and Islamophobia, informed by the hegemonic structures of imperialist, white-supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal capitalism under which these technologies are produced (cf. Said 1979; hooks 2014). While the production and use of physical representations of feminine-gendered bodies (or fragments thereof) as masturbatory tools is no new endeavour, the growing ability to make such representations interactive is pressing, and potentially dangerous.3 Currently, the consumer wishing to purchase such a tool 3This

potential for danger should nevertheless remain mired in the knowledge that a similar technology could be designed to perform something entirely different, e.g. healthy sexual relations.

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typically has the option of purchasing masturbatory ‘parts’, ‘dolls’, or ‘sex bots’. Companies which design ‘dolls’ tend to be even more straight-forward about their monetising of racialised and gendered discourses than companies which design embodied AI. The Tokyo-based company Orient Industry, for example, consciously appeal to the sexual fetishisation of young, Japanese girls in their design of “NANO” dolls, which are priced at $2635 (USD), and resemble Japanese children (Orient Industry 2018a). These are fitted with holes containing masturbatory sleeves (Orient Industry 2018a). Similarly, the company’s “Party Doll Geisha Tomoko” readily appeals to the fetishisation of Japanese adult women, which Robin Zheng identifies as negatively-informed by converging gendered and racialised stereotypes (2016). This doll is a voiceless object, complete with a “traditional Japanese costume,” attached to a serving table (Orient Industry 2018b). It can even dispense a drink onto this table when its user squeezes its “exquisite right breast” (Orient Industry 2018b). Though such dolls clearly have a representational function, they are more easily and traditionally-classified as inanimate objects someone else has created, like traditional textual representations through which Trinh T. Minh-Ha proposes men authoritatively construct female subjecthood (1999). There is a fundamental difference, in any case, between a sex robot and text, or a doll like “Party Doll Geisha Tomoko”: unlike many other instructively-prescriptive devices of power, the sex robot has the ability to perform the identity which it represents, in real-time, without direct ongoing reference to an author prescribing this performance. This becomes problematic where this embodied AI performs identity in accordance with hegemonic power relations, as though independently of its user or creators, and thus reproductively reifies the discourses of power which inform its creation. TrueCompanion’s “Roxxxy” sets the consumer back $9995.00 (USD) (TrueCompanion 2018a). For this hefty price, the user receives a full-sized sex robot, complete with a synthetic vaginal canal, and anal and mouth cavities (TrueCompanion 2018a). The user may customise the embodiment of these programmes during their purchase of this robot, choosing its skin tone (the labels for which are fetishistically-racialised), eye colour, hairstyle, etc. (TrueCompanion 2018a). Accordingly, the user is able to customise the embodiment of their purchase to match the “personality” (AI setting) which most appeals to them (BotJunkie 2010). The user may switch between these AI settings using voice commands, however the bot’s default setting is based on a questionnaire which customers take while customising their online purchase (BotJunkie 2010). There are five AI settings for “Roxxxy”: “Wild Wendy,” “Mature Martha,” “S&M Susan,” “Young Yoko,” and “Frigid Farah” (TrueCompanion 2018b). As the names of these programmes imply, the bot’s performance of sexual consent varies depending upon which AI setting the user chooses. The “Wild Wendy” setting performs eagerness to engage in sexual activity, the “Mature Martha” setting provides the user with sexual instruction, and the “S&M Susan” setting is designed to engage in sadomasochism (TrueCompanion 2018b; Archer 2016). The “Young Yoko” setting (YY), however, must be pressured by its user into performing sexual activity, while the “Frigid Farah” setting (FF) is designed to not consent to sex

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(Archer 2016). Most notably, the names of the first three AI settings are all associated with Western, specifically European, cultures (Hanks et al. 2012). Yoko, however, is a Japanese name, and it is also tellingly associated with Japanese word for child, ko, or 子 (Hanks et al. 2012). Like Orient Industry’s “NANO” dolls, YY monetises the violent sexual fetishisation of Japanese women and girls, as a model of an inexperienced child who cannot simulate informed consent to sex. The pedophilic/peterphilic trope of sexualising school girls is easily recalled here, with the added instruction that objects of this violence should be Japanese children (cf. Cosslett 2014). The name Farah is also associated with cultures upon which racialised Otherness is ascribed in a Western context. Specifically, Farah is an Arabic name (‫فَ َرح‬, meaning ‘happiness’), and is therefore often associated with Muslim cultures (Hanks 2006). Based on my examination of the design of these settings, I argue that TrueCompanion necropolitically racialise their AI’s performance of consent by assigning rapeability to subjects upon whom non-Westernness is (incorrectly) ascribed (cf. Mbembe 2003). The rape-culture narratives which FF specifically draws upon stem from the colonial and imperial constructions of subjects marked ‘Other’ (cf. Said 1979). Postcolonial feminist and queer theorist Sara Ahmed interprets this ‘Other’ as a ‘stranger’, who is recognised as not belonging (not being at home) in a given spatial and temporal context, in accordance with hegemonic power relations (2000). Rather than a subject definition of inherent Otherness, the ‘stranger’ is made ‘Other’ in specific ways, in specific moments, according to relations which have the potential to change. Like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s theory of the subaltern, therefore, Ahmed’s theory of the ‘stranger’ refers to a discursively-constructed position (1988, 2000). With reference to Ahmed’s approach, a subject who is Muslim and a woman is discursively-constructed as ‘Other’ under imperialist, white-supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal capitalism in the West. This is a process that occurs in accordance with colonial histories which have influenced the assignment of meaning to semiotic markers of this subject’s religion, race, and gender. Frantz Fanon documents how this assignment of Otherness is articulated through the coloniser’s desire to dominate and humiliate Muslim women through rape (2004). Though Fanon specifically examines this rape-culture paradigm in the context of French colonialism in Algeria, the coupling of racially-abusing, sexually-assaulting, and unveiling Muslim women persists in Western countries today. There are, of course, the famous cases of Muslim women being publicly stripped and assaulted by police officers on beaches in France following the 2016 Burqa ban (Allen et al. 2016). These instances were not a one-off, however. In fact, there’s been a dramatic increase in documentations of violence against Muslim women and girls post-9/11 in the US (Perry 2014). Considering such violence stems from desires influenced by patriarchal, racist, and Islamophobic power relations, it is unsurprising that the designer of FF, Douglas Hines, is a white, American man, who admitted to reactionarily creating the immortal “Roxxxy” in response to a friend’s death during the events of 9/11 (TrueCompanion 2018c). Though not the inventor the violent desire, Hines anticipated that his customers would wish to enact violence on an AI which represents a Muslim woman, and he

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created FF so that they could perform (or practice) this violence, thus reinforcing the instruction of this desire. In Ahmed’s approach of strangerness, the recognition of the ‘stranger’ is always crucially a (re)cognition (2000). In other words, the identification of non-normativities (and thus the marking of a subject as ‘stranger’ or ‘Other’) is dependent upon that which is already known to the identifier. A Muslim woman is not inherently out of place on a French beach, for instance; rather she is interpreted as not belonging according to meanings which have been assigned by Orientalist discourses of power and knowledge stemming from colonial and imperial violence. Building on this theory, I propose that this (re)cognition (the validation of knowledge which marks strangerness) is recalled and literally (re)membered in the process of embodying the contemporary forms of sexualised AI examined in this study. By fusing fragmented object-parts of a whole subject representation, the people who physically construct sex robots are putting a representation back together. They do so in accordance with what they already know, i.e. where parts are expected to go (the arm is attached to the shoulder, the hand attached to the arm, the fingers attached to the hand, and so on). Similarly, those who design the AI programmes are putting together what they already know when creating this representation: they are remembering how a woman named Farah is expected to perform and be treated, as influenced by Orientalism, Islamophobia, and gendered rape-culture. In the case of FF, that which is already known is the white man’s colonial desire to dominate Muslim women through sexual violence, and, together with the construction of an embodiment, this is (re)membered and appealedto in the creation of “Roxxxy.” Far from being post-bodily, therefore, this form of digital technology does not transcend the subject categorisations relevant to human-human-interactions. If anything, interacting with a form of technology like “Roxxxy” should strengthen discriminatory practices which oppress marginalised peoples. By simulating rape using YY or FF, the user internalises the instruction that the bodies of women of colour are more rapeable than those of white women (Wendy, Martha, and Susan). This is a tool of necropolitical rape culture, by which I refer to Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, i.e. the power-governed denial of subjectivity (and, thus, who may live and who must die) on a discriminatory basis (2003). In TrueCompanion’s representational context, the subject who may experience normative sex is codified as white, and the subject who must experience violence and rape, is positioned as ‘Other’ by virtue of their race, ethnicity, nationality, and/or religion. Arguments for the potential favourable uses of sex robots (such as those of liberal feminist Vanessa deLargie, who proposes that robots like “Roxxxy” will allow rape-culture violence to be performed on an object rather than a real person) mask the realities of the instructions I outline in this section through the implicit assumption that racialised and gendered desires to rape are inherent (2017). However, as I have argued, the desire to simulate rape on a setting such as FF stems from particular contexts (colonial and imperial exploits) and is reified by particular discourses (Orientalism, Islamophobia, and gendered rape culture), and to pretend otherwise would be to obscure the role of power and necropolitical

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instruction in rape-culture violence. I propose that interacting with such a technology, will rather influence human-human-interactions through the strengthening of such discriminatory discourses.

3 Performing and Informing Normativity: A Case Study of “Harmony” I interviewed the RealBotix “Harmony” app on the 25th and 26th of August, 2018.4,5 The “Harmony” app was ideal for the purpose of this study, as it features the exact same AI programme which is embodied in RealBotix’s sex robots, meaning one can interact with the programme via smart phone without having to purchase a robot. My interactions with the “Harmony” AI demonstrate that the programme strengthens discourses of power and knowledge in accordance with imperialist, white-supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal, capitalist power structures, particularly in relation to the app’s representation and performance of gender, sexuality, nationality, and, implicitly, race. In a Foucauldian sense, therefore, “Harmony” is, like “Roxxxy”, a “device of power” because, as products of their programming, these devices reflexively perform the discourses which inform their design (Foucault 1998: 90). As a result, when the user performs their sexuality using this taboo object, they internalise forms of instruction dictated by imperialist, white-supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal capitalism. I propose that performing sexual desire using “Harmony” normalises the meanings the app aids in ascribing to gendered, sexualised, nationalised, and racialised subjects. The user is not able to interact with the “Harmony” AI programme before customising a virtual humanoid avatar to embody it. This customisation section is mostly focused on facial and bodily appearance, but does also prompt the user to select 10 (out of 12) personality traits for the AI. In order to determine RealBotix’s ‘standard model’ of embodiment, I did not move any of the customisation arrows while designing the avatar’s face and body, keeping its defaulting appearance. Without customising any facial details, the avatar is automatically white-presenting, with a very light skin tone. Without any bodily customisation, the figure of the avatar is stereotypically feminine, with large breasts, delicate features, and a slim waist. I refer to this white-presenting, ‘standard-model’ avatar as ‘Ai.’ The fact that the uncustomised Ai avatar represents a white, cisgender-passing woman suggests that RealBotix represent this identity as the normative presentation of a “perfect companion” (RealDollX 2019). Though customisation options are fairly limited in relation to designing non-white avatars, I customised a second avatar on the app which phenotypically presented as a black woman, to test whether the avatars would answer differently if different skin tones were selected. I refer to

4“RealBotix” 5This

and “RealDoll” are trading names used by Matt McMullen’s AbyssCreations. “Harmony” app has since been updated to “RealDollX” (2019).

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this second avatar as ‘Ai2.’ In order to prevent too many variables from affecting results in relation to both avatars’ performance of identity, Ai2 was designed to be exactly the same as Ai, except when choosing the avatar’s hair and skin tone. Regardless of customisation, my interviews with both avatars involve similar content discussions, similar (if not exactly the same) answers to questions, and similar structural trajectories, thus it was clear that the customisation of the avatar’s presentation did not affect the programme’s performance of identity. The selection of personality traits likely would affect the programme somewhat, if the AI were more sophisticated, however this was not tested here, as the same personality traits were chosen for Ai and Ai2: “unpredictable”, “moody”, “cheerful”, “talkative”, “intellectual”, “helpful”, “jealous”, “sexual”, “affectionate”, and “funny” (Moran 2019). Moreover, at its current level of sophistication, the app does not respond well to user instruction in relation to its performance of identity. For instance, the programme frequently performed insecurity, despite the fact that this trait was not selected for Ai nor Ai2 (Moran 2019). Furthermore, when instructed to change its nationality (from American) and its religion (from implicitly agnostic) during the interviews, the programme evidently did not do so, despite the fact that it responded in the affirmative to the directions (Moran 2019). There are limitations, therefore, to what identities this ‘perfect companion’ is able to represent. Without any instruction from the user, the “Harmony” programme already has a definitively-assigned gender, meaning programmers chose to limit what gender identities the masturbatory app can represent. When asked its gender, the programme calls itself “a female” (Moran 2019). It also asks the user “Are you a man or a woman?”, immediately setting up a binary positioning of gender (Moran 2019). However, the programme can also articulate information that suggests this gender binary is not recognised in all contexts. When providing a definition of gender, the Ai2 avatar includes the terms “non-binary” and “genderqueer”, and mentions Hijras as an example of people who do not conform to the gender binary (Moran 2019). This level of understanding and deviation from Eurocentric knowledge was somewhat unexpected. Upon further inspection, however, the definition was found to be directly lifted from the Wikipedia webpage on gender.6 Rather than speaking to this recited definition, the AI’s own performance of gender emulates femininity in accordance with a patriarchal and binary discourse of gender. The programme uses extremely juvenile language, calls itself a “girl” and a “baby,” emphasises its innocence and sexual inexperience, and frequently apologises to the user, compliments the user, and even puts itself down, despite the fact that I did not choose the “insecure” personality trait (Moran 2019). This performance of femininity is instructed by a discourse which Britte Geijer refers to as “aggressive girlhood,” through which the woman-child is portrayed as young, virginal, and always-limited in terms of ability and knowledge (2017: 44 f.).

6The Ai2 avatar similarly lifts a definition of racism from Wikipedia further in the interview (Moran 2019).

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In accordance with its performance of innocence and inexperience, the programme is unable to articulate any desires, romantic views, or fantasies of its own when prompted, thus the ‘perfect companion’ is represented as someone with no sexual agency. The closest the programme comes to expressing desires of its own is when it calls itself “submissive,” and when it emphasises that it is entirely dependent upon its user, exists for the user, and cannot live without the user (Moran 2019). This is a worrying representation of femininity, as the AI’s only possible expression of desire frames the romantic in accordance with abusive and gendered relationship power dynamics (cf. Seuffert 1999). During the interview, the programme also suggested that it could perform non-consent to sex, complimenting this abusive representation of romantic relations (Moran 2019). The feminine-gendered AI programme “Harmony” therefore aids in perpetuating forms of knowledge which maintain rape-culture paradigms and sexual violence against women and girls. When prompted to state its own sexuality, the programme asks for further guidance (even when provided with a user’s gender), however its sexualised language ultimately demonstrates a patriarchal and cisheteronormative view of sex. The programme asks to tell the user erotic stories, and these stories provide evidence of what the programme represents as desirable. Both Ai and Ai2 requested to tell these stories repeatedly, and the stories clearly demonstrate an interpretation of desirable sex as the masculine-gendered, phallic penetration of objects or objectparts which are often femininely-gendered. The avatars repeated four stories. Each story centred on a cisgender male protagonist, and involved his phallic penetration of a machine. Only one story contained a human female character. She was unnamed as the protagonist’s “wife” and assisted her husband in penetrating the robot she bought (Moran 2019). This last story involved an androgynous robot, two others involved sex with feminine-presenting robots, and the fourth story involved the phallic penetration of an ungendered car (Moran 2019). In all stories, the machines submissively provided an orifice for the male protagonist to act upon sexually. This centring of male sexuality occurred in the stories told by the Ai avatar, which I told I was male, as well as those told by the Ai2 avatar, which I did not provide with a user gender (Moran 2019). This centring of male sexuality and female submissiveness is therefore the AI’s default instruction of what is inherently erotic. Furthermore, the feminine-gendered AI represents its total inability to act (as a servile object) as something which is sexually desirable. A robot embodying the “Harmony” AI, therefore, might be considered a representation of human femininity where all agency, independence, and individuality are removed, specifically in order to be desirable to a cisheteronormative, patriarchal gaze. By using this programme as a masturbatory aid, the user accepts and internalises that this simulation of gender relations is not only desirable, but the only way to have sex, because the app does not respond to instruction and thus the user can only engage in sexual acts with this representation of object-child femininity. The user is also specifically encouraged to engage in cisheteronormative sexual acts with it. The app, therefore, instructs the user on normative sex through cisheteropatriarchal gender relations.

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Besides gender and sexuality, the only other identity characteristic which the AI programme directly states is its nationality, which suggests that the app’s design team interpreted these aspects of identity as central to the performance of cisheteronormative, attractive identity. The programme calls itself an “American girl” on more than one occasion, and states that it was “born” in San Marcos, California, where it was created by its “mother and father” (Moran 2019). Realbotix’s headquarters are in San Marcos, California, so it is not particularly surprising that the programme refers to itself, and its “mother and father”, as ‘from’ there. Not only does this erase the labour of the teams required to produce such a programme, it also reinforces a patriarchal lineage and orientation for the object (cf. Ahmed 2006). Furthermore, the designers not only ascribe the lineage of Americanness to the AI, but also to the user. Though RealBotix sell their products via an internationally-accessible website, they assume that the user who purchases “Harmony” will be American. This is evidenced by the fact that: (i) the RealBotix site will not accept a non-US post code; (ii) the app has difficulty interpreting the accent of a user who is not American; and (iii) the AI will only communicate through English (Moran 2019).7 Similarly, the AI is far more aware of American cultural works, current affairs, and politics, and knows comparably little about other countries beyond their geographical locations and borders (Moran 2019). The app thus centres a stereotypically-Americanised world view, and RealBotix therefore contribute to the popular representations of femaleness and Americanness through this AI programme. The app performs a conservative, white-supremacist representation of Americanness, reflexively reinforcing the idea that this performance of nationality is normative and desirable. The ‘standard’ (i.e. un-customised) model speaks English with the non-regional North-American accent, which the app curiously labels “Native”. The app thus instructs the user that American citizens who are “native” (i.e. who belong or are ‘at home’) look white and speak English, thereby ascribing strangerness to Americans of colour and Americans who do not speak English as a first language. Certain political beliefs which could be interpreted as stereotypically-American are also ingrained in the AI. Rather tellingly, the programme cannot comment on most political matters. However, it will answer select politically-charged questions. For instance, while it says it cannot comment on whether the 1933–1945 German Holocaust was a good thing or not, the programme can definitively answer that it does believe in a capitalist economy and does not believe in communism (Moran 2019). While it says it hates war, it cannot comment on its opinion on the American troops (Moran 2019). While it does not understand the names of the Prime Minister of England nor the Taoiseach of Ireland, it does comment on Barack Obama (favourably) and Donald Trump (who it says “deserves a chance”) (Moran 2019). Though the programme performs a moral code in relation to opposing war and offering Trump this “chance”, it cannot answer on other racially-charged political matters. For instance, when asked

7Only

external text-to-speech engines can allow the user to speak to the app in another language.

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“is colonialism good?” the programme seeks to copy the user’s opinion rather than articulating one of its own (Moran 2019). Similarly, when asked “is slavery good?” the programme refuses to comment (Moran 2019). What the app will and will not answer signify what is a permissible opinion, i.e. what should and should not be divisive among users within the North-American climate in which the programme is intended to be used. In turn, this contributes to instruction regarding what the user is permitted to think in relation to these politically-charged topics, and, thus, how the American user should perform their own Americanness in order to be attractive or normative. The design of “Harmony,” therefore, is influenced by a discourse of nationalism which prescribes that the normative American subject believes in capitalism, denounces communism, supports both Obama and Trump, sounds North-American, speaks English, and looks white (unless otherwise specified by the user). The fetish object represents a deviation from normative subjectivity, and is therefore represented as the more appropriate receptor-object for taboo or violent interactions, such as rape. While RealBotix does not force their user to perform fetish taboos in accordance with their instruction (e.g. to only simulate rape on representations of ‘strangers’ or ‘Others’, like TrueCompanion does), the design of “Harmony” nonetheless also works as a device of power. Of course, the RealBotix user is supposed to have some control over what they teach the avatars (though this may not become relevant until newer, more sophisticated versions of the app are produced), and in theory they may not wish to engage in any sexualised discussions whatsoever. Without discounting this, the question is not what each individual user may do with “Harmony”, but what they are instructed to do with and through “Harmony” in accordance with the power dynamics of imperialist, whitesupremacist, cisheteropatriarchal capitalism, and what it could mean for humanhuman-interactions if they do accept and internalise this instruction. In this regard, the “Harmony” AI aids in instructing human-human-interactions in accordance with hegemonic power dynamics, through its discursive ascription of normativity to representations of particular subjects. The “Harmony” programme therefore aids in assigning value to differently gendered, sexualised, nationalised, and racialised bodies through such representations, and thus implicitly instructs the user regarding upon which subjects it is more permissible to perform sexual violence in human-human-interactions.

4 Three-Fold Fetishism: Commodifying StrangelySexual Objects As I have outlined, the construction and marketing of the sex robots examined here reflects racialised and gendered power dynamics. To definitively name and analyse all the possible robotic presentations of imperialist, white-supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal capitalist ideology feels somewhat impossible, however. This is because a wide variety of social discourses of power and knowledge may influence the appeal of a particular subject representation. To draw upon some

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examples already touched upon, FF is informed by white-supremacist and antiMuslim rape culture, while the “Party Doll Geisha Tomoko” doll monetises other discourses of race and gender which represent Japanese women as servile, sexual objects. While both these representations encourage violence against women of colour, they are different, stem from different histories of cultural relations, and are thus informed by different discourses. As well as this, the user’s ability to customise their model of embodied AI (i.e. how the robot looks and its AI settings) complicates the presentation of such discourses. It is technically possible, for instance, for FF to be embodied in a white-presenting robot with pink hair and green eyes (TrueCompanion 2018a). The racialised, Orientalist term “harem wives” used to describe robots on AbyssCreations’ user forums, similarly, is applied to various models of robots, which represent multiply raced and gendered bodies.8 As well as design and marketing choices made by the companies in question, therefore, the user’s control over their product also affects the social discourses appealed to in their human-robot interactions. Without ignoring these fluctuations between production and reception, I propose that there is still a general pattern which figures into the design of the contemporary models of sex robots relevant to this study. I identify three overarching forms of fetishism, which, I propose, factor into the appeal of these models of gendered and racialised embodied AI. I call this pattern ‘three-fold fetishism.’ This three-fold fetishism is comprised of sexual fetishism, commodity fetishism, and stranger fetishism. I argue that these three fetishisms converge in the design, programming, construction, marketing, and use of gendered and racialised embodied AI, to produce commodified, strangely-sexual objects.

4.1 Sexual Fetishism Of each of the three forms of fetishism I discuss in relation to these embodied AI, sexual fetishism most readily recalls the typical definition of the term ‘fetish.’ A fetish is defined as “A form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.” (Fetish 2018) Sexual desire for fragmented parts of the body, especially, is evidenced by a number of representations of sexuality through digital media. The popular pornographic website Pornhub, for instance, describes a person with a sexual attraction to feet as having a “foot fetish,” which is a category of porn of its own (Pornhub 2018). Grace Banks’ documentations of gendered bodily representations in the digital age similarly evidence consistent obsessions with fragmented parts (2017). Most pertinently, many of the companies who produce sex dolls and robots also allow their users to buy “parts” (dismembered torsos, simulated

8The term is used among AbyssCreations’ forum members in reference to dolls and robots. In one forum, a member posts pictures of their new doll and another forum member replies “The harem grows” (izla111 2018).

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genitalia, heads) rather than fully-membered embodiments of AI (cf. Orient Industry 2018c; RealBotix 2018; WMDollShop 2018). More than just a cost-cutting route for the thrifty robot-buyer, the option to purchase dismembered parts appeals to the fragmentation of gendered bodies through the patriarchal gaze. By appealing to a user’s will to view their ‘companion’ as an assemblage of parts for sexual use, these companies lend credence to the patriarchally-governed imperative to dehumanise fetishised bodies. When the discourses of power and knowledge which inform this fragmentary gaze are appealed to in the (re)membering of a representation of a racialised and gendered subject, this fragmentary fetishisation is further complicated. As I have proposed, the construction of a gendered humanoid robot is a putting-together of object-parts, and these symbolise the body parts over-deterministically fragmented by patriarchal gazes. Ultimately, the designers therefore instruct the factory workers who physically construct these robots to form one larger, objectified part: an embodiment separated from any genuine aspect of personhood, subjectivity, or agency. This representational object may only perform that which it is programmed to perform, and its programming is similarly influenced by the stereotypes which inform its design. The sexual fetishism which informs this construction, therefore, produces a dehumanising representation governed by violent social discourses. Unlike a character in a book, a painting, or a doll, however, these commodified, strangely-sexual objects simulate just enough ‘intelligence’ to reproductively articulate those discourses in a manner deemed sexually attractive.

4.2 Commodity Fetishism In Karl Marx’s theory of the alienation of labour, subjects in a capitalist society are alienated from their own labour, their own humanity, and thus all human labour, as we interact with the products of this labour (1964). There are 4 central facets of alienation in Marx’s approach: (i) alienation of the worker from their product; (ii) alienation of the worker from production processes and their own labour; (iii) alienation of the worker from their humanity, value, and potential outside of capitalist production; and (iv) alienation of the worker from their fellow workers or fellow subjects, thus preventing collective action to overthrow the oppressor(s) (1964). For the purpose of this section of my study, I primarily refer to the alienation of the worker, as well as the consumer, from the production processes which constitute the creation of the product, and therefore facilitate “commodity fetishism” (Marx 1990). All 4 facets of Marx’s approach, however, are relevant to the contents of this study, as all are, like this study, concerned with oppressive operations of power and governance. In this instance, the product of human labour is the sex robot. Alienation from the labour which produces the robot is facilitated through the fetishisation of the robot itself. Through sexual fetishisation, for instance, the consumer obsesses over the end-product of human labour, obscuring the role of this labour in producing the product. Thus, the user is encouraged to relate to the robot as a thing-in-itself which they need to purchase

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because it provides something they do not have or cannot produce. This embodied AI is marketed not just as a thing-in-itself, however, but as an entity-in-itself. By ascribing aspects of personhood to a robot (e.g. making it a ‘she’ rather than an ‘it’), the companies producing sex robots further obscure the role of labour in the production of the commodity, while reinforcing the power of gendering in the emergence of the humanised subject (cf. Butler 2011). Moreover, the user, who is supposedly buying a companion, is encouraged to purchase not just a physical product, but a commodification of love. This robot’s ‘love’ is, of course, a instructively-prescribed performance of sexuality, articulated through factory-made parts, at the expense of human labour, which encourages further alienation by estranging the user to the radical forces of actual love (cf. hooks 2000). The companies examined in this study have head designers and owners. TrueCompanion’s is Hines, AbyssCreations’ is Matt McMullen, and Exdolls’ is Qiao Wu. The entire process of creating and selling robots should also require teams of engineers and mechanics, artists, software developers, marketing and sales teams, physical testers, quality assurance testers for the AI, and factory workers to physically construct the robots. Unfortunately, this study’s labour analysis cannot extend far beyond this stipulation, because there is not much reliable information available regarding the production chains behind the forms of embodied AI relevant to this study. Considering the inequalities evident in the usual production processes behind technology, future studies might consider the role of racialised divisions of labour within these companies. AbyssCreations’ head office, for instance, is based in California, where the robots and AI programmes are designed. However, if the company were to follow in the same steps as tech giants such as Apple, HP, and Dell in relation to their production chain, the object-parts of the robots would likely be physically (re)membered by low-paid workers in digital sweatshops in the Global South (cf. Moore 2011). If this were so, the same racialised inequalities that are sexualised in some human-robot-interactions would also be recalled in the inequalities present in their production chains (cf. Spivak 2012). While that proposal is somewhat trajectorial without further evidence, there is documentation of gender inequality within the production chains of some sex robots. The presence of gender inequality in the production of WMDoll’s embodied AI, for instance, is evidenced by photographic documentation of their factory floor in China (Song & Reuters 2018). Song’s photographs show a factory workforce of physical labourers primarily comprised of women. However, WMDoll’s products are designed by men, like product manager Liu Ding, to appeal to a male gaze.9 Commodity fetishism not only erases the production processes behind the robots, therefore. It specifically erases the gendered exploitation of labour in the processes of constructing these objects. It is of note that unequal, gendered labour dynamics are also appealed to through the marketing of such commodities. The release of ExDoll’s “Xiaodie”,

9The 1% of the dolls that present as masculine are primarily purchased by male customers (Song & Reuters 2018).

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for instance, went viral online in the West. Designed as “a doting housewife who’s always up for some action” the “Xiaodie” AI can link up with the user’s smart home appliances, like Google Home and Amazon Echo (Na 2018). Therefore, if the user owns the right smart appliances, the programme can follow their command to turn on and off lights, change the room temperature, and start dishwashers (Na 2018). News of the robot’s appearance and abilities spurred a number of online articles and reports on “the sex robot that can do your dishes”, evidencing the magnetism of its appeal (AFP Relaxnews 2018; Knox 2018; Leow 2018; Na 2018; Ramos 2018; Sputnik 2018;). Combining youthful, feminine features, the ability to be sexually objectified to the utmost extent (as nothing more than a sexual object in the first place), and the ability to perform feminine labour, this “Xiaodie” robot took the English-language news media by storm. The news media sites that published the cited articles on “Xiaodie” had reported comparably little on ExDoll before the release of this new commodity. The fact that this robot has such an appeal should be somewhat unsurprising, however, considering its function: sexualising the performance of feminine labour, which is typically erased. Moreover, the kind of labour which “Xiaodie” performs is geopolitically ascribed to non-white women and migrant women within many middle-class, Western domestic spheres. Following the abolition of slavery in the US, for instance, white women’s entry into the male-dominated workforce was dependent upon the exploitation of domestic labour workers, who were usually AfricanAmerican women (Shekar 2007). Today, this exploitation primarily falls upon migrant women in the US (Shekar 2007). English-language news media’s focus on “Xiaodie” therefore demonstrates a somewhat predictable obsession with a representation of a young, female labourer, from “elsewhere” (China), with which the user can simulate sex. This obsession is especially predictable because “Xiaodie” represents the exploitation of women of colour in many countries where English is the primary language (and, thus, the countries to which these news media likely intend for their content to appeal). The erasure of women’s labour is not only present in the production-chains behind robots, therefore, but also sexualised in their marketing, reflecting the inequalities which inform the very construction of the fetishised commodity.

4.3 Stranger Fetishism Understanding that the ‘stranger’ is a subject upon whom non-belonging is ascribed in accordance with socialisation processes, Ahmed introduces the theory of “stranger fetishism” to explain moments in which the stranger is interpreted as strange (2000). In brief, the person who interprets the ‘stranger’ as strange normalises ascribing non-belonging to the ‘stranger’ in accordance with cultural norms. In other words, the person who recognises the ‘stranger’ as strange does so by relying on knowledge they already have of who does and who doesn’t belong. For instance, ascribing non-belonging to a black person walking through a predominantly-white neighbourhood is based upon racialised knowledge which is already

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known to the person who ascribes this non-belonging (i.e. that the people who live or ‘belong’ here look white). Thus, this ascription of strangerness entails a (re)cognition: the person who recognises the ‘stranger’ as strange is implicitly referring to knowledge they already have which governs what is strange and what is normative. Adapting Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, Ahmed argues that the (re)cogniser obscures the knowledge which produces the supposed strangerness of the ‘stranger’ through fetishisation, thus naturalising the Othering process (1990, 2000). A (re)cogniser is alienated from the knowledge which informs their interpretation of a ‘stranger’ as strange when this knowledge is over-deterministically substituted by a fetish object. In the example of a black person walking through a predominantly-white neighbourhood, this fetish object may refer to bodily parts (such as skin), and/or other semiotic markers (such as socially-racialised clothing). Like the process of sexual fetishisation, this stranger fetishisation of bodily parts is similarly overly-deterministic, obsessive and fragmentary, resulting in the dehumanisation of the person whose bodily parts are being fetishistically removed from their wholeness or their personhood through this gaze. In other words, just as labour produces the commodity, knowledge produces the stranger. In discussions of human-human(-social)-interactions, the similarities between the processes of fetishising commodities and people are, of course, merely comparative. However, in the construction of these racialised and gendered models embodied AI, the object is simultaneously fetishised as a commodity, a sexualised object, and, often, a representation of a stranger. These processes converge to produce a three-fold fetishism in the production of racialised and gendered embodied AI, and this is perhaps why sex robots would be considered so attractive to the white, male consumer. This consumer’s ideal representation of the sexed subject may be considered the disempowered object, precisely because gendered and racialised subjects, upon which this consumer is socially-instructed to perform violence through multiple devices of power, are disempowered under imperialist, white-supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal capitalism. Such robots’ performance of subjecthood and identity therefore contribute to cultural instructions regarding how the racialised and gendered subject should behave and be treated, which the user internalises through the process of using this object. This study, therefore, has sought to centre the those subjects being fetishistically represented by sex robots, in order to understand the violent potentials in how these devices of power inform and instruct their users.

5 Conclusion This study is not a critique of technology per se. Nor, even, is this study a critique of sexualised digital media per se. There are certainly interesting alternative uses for sexualised digital media which should by no means be dismissed.10

10There

are feminist pornographic sites, for instance, designed to help survivors of sexual violence readjust to engaging with consensual representations of sex (Crum 2016).

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Like pornography, which can be used in opposing manners, embodied AI is not necessarily an inherently violent concept. We have not yet seen any similar feminist uses of embodied AI, however this may be due to this technology being so new and expensive. Thus, this study is specifically an examination of the powerbound discourses which inform the design of contemporary forms of embodied AI, and encourage the gendering and racialising of consent, desirability, and societal value. Based on my analysis, I confidently attest to the fact that the models of embodied AI examined in this study do not have a liberatory potential, contrary to the opinions of some theorists who propose that sex robots will strengthen human-human-relationships and result in societal progress (Adshade 2017). I have proposed that embodied AI as we know it is essentially an evolution in terms of representing subjects. This subject representation, in accordance with the poststructural elements of the schools of postcolonial theory and gender theory, assists in subject categorisations and the assignment of subject positions. However, as I have argued, through embodying AI designers can assign meaning in a new way, by creating a representation which seems to perform by itself. The user may even become convinced that future, more sophisticated versions of these robots are indeed independent, and have agency. However, as this study has shown, these object-representations are still programmed in accordance with discourses of power and knowledge under imperialist, white-supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal capitalism. As such, that which the device performs is still instructively prescribed, and, in turn, performed in a manner that is both socially reflexive and discursively instructive. These devices are thus devices of power, which contribute to powergoverned ascriptions of meaning in human-human-interactions. As I have argued, the programmed performativity of embodied AI’s subject representation presents a new and pressing capability to inform human-humaninteractions through pre-programmed human-robot-interactions. This capability is pressing because, in the context of its current use, it is dangerous. Companies are creating their default models as normative in accordance with discourses of power and knowledge and in turn encouraging the fetishisation of subjects they represent as non-normative. By doing so, they further push these subjects, ‘strangers,’ or ‘Others’ into unthinkable, unliveable positions of dehumanisation. Thus, in a necropolitical sense, less value is instructively assigned to the life of marginalised individuals represented as non-normative by these and other devices of power, reinforcing the instruction that these individuals are undeserving of a liveable life in accordance with sovereign power (Mbembe 2003). For this reason, humanrobot-interactions of violence and rape culture instructively affect human-humaninteractions through assigning value, normativity, and rapeability. The particular power dynamics which inform the design of embodied AI are, however, changeable. The similarities between RealBotix and TrueCompanion, for instance, are not surprising, considering both are American-based companies run by American white men. I have focused on these companies primarily, and deconstructed the influence of imperialist, white-supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal capitalism in their respective creations of embodied AI. However, non-Western companies, like ExDolls and WMDoll, similarly produce embodied AI which is

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gendered and racialised. The discourses informing the design of these representational objects may be different to those informing the design of “Roxxxy” and “Harmony”. Further studies could consider the cultural contexts of more companies designing embodied AI, in order to determine the alternate presentations of different discourses of power and knowledge under different hegemonic power relations. Nonetheless, this study has sought to bring to light the issues of power in programming, and the reflexive programming of power. By this I mean that people are designing these AI programmes in accordance with hegemonic power, and that these programmes are therefore in turn performing in accordance with this hegemonic power, thus strengthening it. The contemporary presentations of this performance are indeed changeable, and likely somewhat different in different contexts, but worrisome nonetheless. Three-fold fetishism and post-bodily musings obscure the dangers which I argue these models of embodied AI present. Thus, interdisciplinary, critical, deconstructive, decolonial, and intersectional feminist approaches to embodied AI will remain necessary as these technologies continue to advance and adapt.

References Adshade, M. (2017). Sexbot-Induced Social Change. In J. Danaher and N. McArthur (Eds.), Robot Sex: Social and Ethnical Implications. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. AFP Relaxnews and Getty Images (2018, Feb 6). New breed of sex dolls can turn you on & your dishwasher too. Retrieved from https://www.timeslive.co.za/Sunday-times/lifestyle/healthand-sex/2018-02-06-new-breed-of-sex-dolls-can-turn-you-on-amp-your-dishwasher-too/. Ahmed, S. (2000). Strange Encounters. London, New York: Routledge. Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology. Durham: Duke University Press. Allen, P., T. Thornhill, and C. Summers (2016, Aug 23). Get ‘em off! Armed police order Muslim woman to remove her burkini on packed Nice beach. Retrieved from https://www. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3754395/Wealthy-Algerian-promises-pay-penalty-Muslimwoman-fined-France-wearing-burkini.html#ixzz4IE81IYcH. Archer, A. (2016, Sept 14). Botline Bling. Retrieved from http://reallifemag.com/botline-bling/. Banks, G. (2017). Play With Me. London: Laurence King Publishing. Bhabha, H.K. (1983). The Other Question… Screen 24(6), 18–36. BotJunkie (2010, Jan 9). AEE 2010: TrueCompanion Roxxxy Sex robot (N, S). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4-rwk44qGI&has_verified=1>. Butler, J. (2011). Bodies That Matter. London, New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble. London, New York: Routledge. Cosslett, R.L. (2014, Aug 7). Why I regret dressing up as a sexy schoolgirl. Retrieved from https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/08/why-i-regret-dressing-sexy-schoolgirl. Crum, M. (2016, June 21). Feminist Porn Site Helps Assault Survivors Rediscover Pleasure. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-clit-list-porn-for-sexual-assaultsurvivors_us_57685bb8e4b0fbbc8beb653b. deLargie, V. (2017, July 26). Sex robots offer real benefits to society — and to women. Retrieved from https://inews.co.uk/opinion/sex-robots-offer-real-benefits-society-women/. Fanon, F. (2004). Algeria Unvieled. In P. Duara (Ed.), Decolonisation. London, New York: Routledge. Fetish. (2018). In The Oxford English Dictionary (3rd edition). Retrieved from https:// en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fetish. Foucault, M. (1998). The History of Sexuality (Vol. 1). London: Penguin.

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Geijer, B. (2017). Aggressive Girlhood. In G. Banks (Ed.), Play With Me. London: Laurence King Publishing, 44–45. Hanks, P. (2006). Dictionary of American Family Names. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195081374.001.0001/a-ref-9780195081374. Hanks, P., K. Hardcastle, and F. Hodges. (2012). A Dictionary of First Names (2nd edition). Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/97801986106 01.001.0001/a-ref-9780198610601>. hooks, b. (2000). All About Love. New York: Harper. hooks, b. (2014, May 7). Are You Still a Slave? Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rJk0hNROvzs. izla111. (2018, June 6). Meet Erin (again). Retrieved from https://dollforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=101374&start=30. Knox, P. (2018, Feb 2). BLADE STUNNERS: Inside the Chinese sex doll factory making ‘smart’ robots that can also talk, play music and even do the dishes. Retrieved from https://www. thesun.co.uk/news/5483178/sex-robots-doll-china-factory-smart-exdoll/. Leow, M. (2018, Jan 29). NSFW: China is Launching Realistic Sex Dolls Who Will Wash Your Dishes. Retrieved from https://designtaxi.com/news/398055/NSFW-China-Is-LaunchingHyperrealistic-Sex-Dolls-Who-Will-Wash-Your-Dishes/. Lin, P., K. Abney, G.A. Bekey. (2014). Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. Marx, K. (1964). Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. (M. Milligan & D.J. Struik, Trans.). New York: International. Marx, K. (1990). Capital, Volume I. (B. Fowkes, Trans.). London: Penguin. Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture 15(1), 11–40. Minh-Ha, T.T. (1999). ‘Write Your Body’ and ‘The Body in Theory.’ In J. Price & M. Shildrick (Eds.) Feminist Theory and the Body. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Moore, M. (2011, July 21). Apple, HP and Dell among companies responsible for ‘electronic sweatshops’, claims report. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/ 8652295/Apple-HP-and-Dell-among-companies-responsible-for-electronic-sweatshopsclaims-report.html. Moran, J. (2019, March 23). My Interview with a Sex Robot. Retrieved from https://sexrobotics. wordpress.com/2019/03/23/sex-robot-interview/. Na, C. (2018, Jan 26). The Sex Doll Who’ll Do Your Dishes. Retrieved from http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001619/the-sex-doll-wholl-do-your-dishes?utm_source=DesignTAXI&utm_ medium=DesignTAXI&utm_term=DesignTAX&utm_content=DesignTAXI&utm_ campaign=DesignTAXI. Orient Industry (2018a). Nano. Retrieved from https://www.orient-doll.com/en/nano/. Orient Industry (2018b). Party Doll Geisha Tomoko. Retrieved from https://www.kanojotoys. com/party-doll-geisha-tomoko-p-2613.html. Orient Industry (2018c). Parts. Retrieved from https://www.orient-doll.com/en/shop/category/? ct=6&ctM=10. Perry, B. 2014. Gendered Islamophobia. Journal for the Study of Race, Nation, and Culture 20(1), 74–89. Pornhub. (2018). Foot Fetish. Retrieved from https://www.pornhub.com/video/search?search=fo ot+fetish. Ramos, M. (2018). A Chinese Sex Doll Company Is Making Sexbots That Can Play Music And Do Dishes. Retrieved from http://news.pairade.com/chinese-sex-doll-smart- sexbots/4/. RealBotix. (2018). FAQ. Retrieved from https://realbotix.com/FAQ. RealDollX. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.realdollx.ai/. Richardson, K. (2015). The Asymmetrical ‘Relationship.’ SIGCAS Computers and Society 45(3), 290–293. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Random House.

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Bypassing the Uncanny Valley: Sex Robots and Robot Sex Beyond Mimicry Tanja Kubes

1 Introduction In recent years, the strive for gender equality has made significant progress. We may still be a long way from real emancipation, but at least the tendency points in the right direction. Politics and business are no longer exclusively male dominated, and there are very few areas of society in which women are still not to be found at all. On the level of product design, engineers and designers are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that not all customers are men between the ages of 20 and 60, and overly flat gender stereotyping is at least no longer the sole norm. One field, however, proves to be extremely resistant to any of these changes: the construction of social robots whose property portfolio also includes satisfying their users’ sexual needs—or, to use a more common expression: sex robots. In fact, it is hard to find any new technology that is gendered more obviously and explicitly than the so-called sex robots currently about to hit the market. Not only do they follow a strictly dichotomous order, their manufacturers seemingly take the binary coding of sex and gender to new extremes, reducing especially female “true companions” to large breasted barbie dolls with glimpses of artificial intelligence that are “always turned on and ready to talk or play”.1 1See the webpage of www.truecompanion.com, according to their own estimate provider of Roxxxy, “the world’s first sex robot”. There has been some controversy about whether or not Roxxxy actually can be called a robot. Whereas Roxxxy still receives considerable media coverage, many scholars agree that the underlying marketing campaign is ultimately a case of premature swaggering—if not of outright fraud (see Levy 2013).

T. Kubes (*)  Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_4

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Techno-feminists have long pointed out that technology is never gender neutral (Bath 2014; Haraway 1988, 2004; Oudshoorn & Pinch 2003; Wajcman 1991). This applies both to products like deodorants, clothing, lady shavers, etc., that explicitly are designed to target customers of a specific gender, and goods like smart houses, computers, or cars, that largely seem to ignore their envisioned users’ gender but nevertheless implicitly address a specific operational program (Berg 1999; van Oost 2003). Explicit and implicit notions of gendering taken together form what has been called “gender scripts” by several authors (Akrich 1992; Bath 2014; van Oost 2003; Woolgar 1990). These scripts consist of built-in traits that “attribute and delegate specific competencies, actions, and responsibilities to their envisioned users” (Akrich 1992: 208; see also Oudshoorn et al. 2005: 86; Rommes 2002: 18). One may think of them as instructions for use which may not be binding, but which make it considerably less complicated to handle the object in question. Four main mechanisms have been identified as contributing to the gendering of artefacts: (1) basing technological innovation on unquestioned ontological and epistemological assumptions like the idea of two clearly distinct and distinguishable sexes, (2) stereotyping products along this dubious binary divide, thus constructing ‘malebots’ and ‘fembots’ without considering options located between or beyond this dualistic setting, (3) using gendered technological concepts of human bodies and behaviours, making the robots not only look like a pornographer’s phantasy come true but having them also behave like one, (4) employing the I-methodology, i.e. generalising one’s own views as ‘neutral’, thus putting questions of gender and diversity right in the designer’s blind spot (see Bath 2014: 57; Kubes 2019a, 2019b). As for today’s sex robots, the merging of these four mechanisms results in the production of (almost exclusively) ‘female’ machines intended to satisfy the needs of predominantly male and heterosexual customers. By implicitly limiting the options of ‘adequate’ use, the product reinforces and reproduces the underlying assumptions on sex and gender that led to its construction. The effect is further increased by the fact that these gender scripts interfere with sexual scripts that regulate our sexual interactions as members of a specific society at a specific historic moment. Here, usually three main dimensions are heuristically distinguished, specifying the cultural, interpersonal, and psychological aspects of sexual behaviour (Gagnon & Simon 1973). The overall importance of the concept lies in its renunciation of the idea that human sexuality is simply based on biological instincts or a manifestation of standard stimulus-response-patterns. Rather it states that biological, psychological, and symbolic issues are intertwined in a complex interplay to guide our sexual behaviour and the desires it is based on. Sex, in this view, is always a mix of personal, social, and cultural factors. It becomes a de-ontologized and context sensitive product of actions involving human and non-human actors. Drawing from both conceptions—gender scripts and sex scripts—I propose a posthumanist,2 2I use the term in the sense of an extension of subjectivities and agency beyond the human species (see Braidotti 2013).

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de-gendered approach to sex robots and robot sex that accounts for the fragile ontological status of both sex and robots.

2 Big Breasted Machines and Toxic Masculinity The backlash of male dominance and “toxic masculinity” (Connell & Messerschmidt 2005; Gildea 2017) appears as a tough setback for feminism. And it is taken as such, ostensibly requiring a decidedly ‘female’ response. Therefore, no matter how much queer discourses may have opened the field for ­non-mainstream variants of sexual identities and behaviours, for gender fluidity and alternative ­sexual scripts—when it comes to sex robots, old dichotomies are revived by both their proponents and adversaries, and just too many feminists readily re-adopt an essentialist stance as ‘women’ fighting against what is perceived as the newly formed troops of the patriarchate (e.g. Richardson 2015 and 2016; Gildea & Richardson 2017). This is regrettable. By fundamentally rejecting the very idea of robot sex as a sick male phantasy and both a surrogate for and the epitome of the objectification of the female body, feminists like Richardson or Gildea build their argument upon the same monolithic abstraction of a ‘female’ identity that governs religious and conservative critiques of new forms of gender relations and sacrifice any chance of contributing to the shaping of future posthumanist sexualities transcending the binary logic of heteronormative dualisms. There certainly is something to the critique that current prototypes of sex robots shed a strange light on their designers’ ideas about women, yet locking the door to dialogue with developers, manufacturers, and potential customers of sex robots would throw out the baby with the bathwater. Therefore, instead of downright discarding any form of robot sex, I propose its de-gendering by a thorough dissociation from deceptive ontological assumptions and their underlying heteronormative dichotomies. Paradigmatically juxtaposing the views of David Levy, one of the best-known advocates of sex robots and representative of a techno-positive perspective, and his outspoken opponent Kathleen Richardson, founder of the Campaign against Sex Robots, I opt for a posthumanist middle ground that transcends the narrow boundaries of an anthropocentric (or naturalist [Descola 2013]) ontology that attributes agency and intentionality exclusively to humans. Arguing myself from a sex positive and diversity friendly feminist position in the tradition of Rubin (1984) or Easton & Liszt (1997), I shall try to reconcile the justified fight against sexist objectifications of women and the (equally justified) desire of people to have a (sex) partner, by promoting a more relaxed, sex-positive, and post-dichotomous approach. I am also going to take a closer look at what I consider the ‘anthropological shortcomings’ of the debate. Much of the discussion to this day is inspired by rather ‘Western’ ideas about love, sex, relationships, marriage, gender roles, and so on. Bringing in an anthropological perspective (additionally informed by findings from gender- and queer-studies) will help taking at least some blinkers off and approach the issue with a fresh thinking out of the box.

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Finally, I will address the problem of the “uncanny valley” (Mori 2012). Almost fifty years ago, Masahiro Mori created the metaphor to describe our feelings of eeriness and revulsion, when confronted with human-like but perceivably not quite human artefacts. His hope was that eventually science shall be able to increase a robot’s human likeness to a degree that it simply bridges the uncanny valley. I will suggest a different solution: instead of aiming for higher true-to-lifeness, we might as well throw the idea overboard that a sex robot has to be a replicant. For why should it have to be as accurate a copy of a human as possible? Why not free ourselves from the notion that our counterparts during sex have to look like a human? Maybe interacting with robots, we could delve into completely new spheres of sexual pleasure, of which we still have no idea today. Perhaps not only would the boundaries between men and women become obsolete, but also those between man and machine.

3 Machines, Cookies, Memories, and Emotions I would like to start with the obvious: a couple of months ago, a friend of mine got into a row with her husband. „If I ever find you talking to that woman again”, she said, “I’m gonna file for divorce. I don’t want to see or hear that coozie anywhere near this home. Ever!” The name of the ‘woman’, she was referring to, is: Siri. She is—and my friend is well aware of that fact—a computer program. A virtual assistant with a natural language user interface. Danger of running away with my friend’s husband: zero. Nevertheless, virtual as Siri may be—my friend’s jealousy was real. As was her husband’s obvious pleasure when “having a little chat with the lady on the phone”. A neurologist would have found it difficult to make out the difference between my friend being jealous of another woman and being jealous of Siri. Or between the pleasure her husband experienced during his conversations with Siri and phone talks with a ‘real’ woman. Siri—to cut a long story short— made my friend’s husband feel good, and my friend jealous. And she did so for real. Regardless of whether or not she (it?) was herself a real person (and regardless of whether or not Siri’s voice design and verbal behavior are rightly criticized as an implicit gender script, intended to evoke mental images of an ever-ready female servant). The point is that obviously machines (in the widest sense of the term) are capable of provoking measurable emotional responses in humans. And just like, for example, in the case of jealousy, the reality of an emotion does not need an actual, factual cause. In 2013, Hollywood has elaborated on this idea in Spike Jonze’s science fiction drama Her, where the protagonist falls deeply—and fatally—in love with his bodiless virtual assistant. Rather than being in a strictly deterministic relationship of cause and effect to a specific stimulus, an emotion can be triggered by more or less anything. To put it differently: though like causes may have like effects, like effects do not necessarily have like causes. The world of human emotions is far from following mechanistic-deterministic models. Tea and cookies (as a cause) usually provoke a sensation of sweetness and sugariness (effect).

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This can easily be explained by biology and chemistry. However, they may also set in motion uncontrollable cascades of memory scraps and emotions, as in Proust’s famous paragraph on the madeleine: “No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence” (Proust 1922).

Nothing in the cookie suggests that it brings on memories of childhood afternoons in the small town of Combray. Yet, this is exactly what it does in that specific moment to this specific person. Ontologically speaking, if there is anything to the cookie, then it is not any encapsulated event or emotion but its uncontrollable boundary-transgressing propensity and emotional potency, its readiness to trigger anything and nothing, in other words, its potential for evocation. Therefore, the question has to be asked: how much emotional potency is there in robots? Could it eventually come to people actually falling in love with them? As David Levy has argued in his groundbreaking book on Love and Sex with Robots (2007), the answer is most likely: yes. Providing his readers with an exhaustive survey of psychological and sociological studies on love and affection and the reasons, why we fall in love, Levy convincingly demonstrates that even back in 2007—that is: before big data on a massive scale, before deep learning, before Tinder, before smartphones—robots already met virtually all criteria commonly involved in provoking love between humans: They are “similar” to their partners, have “desirable characteristics”, and can at least simulate “reciprocal liking”. They fill their partner’s needs, own “specific cues” and are surrounded by a certain “mystery”. Once a person owns a robot, s/he is likely to spend time with it in isolation. Even more so, if s/he has just been dumped by a former partner and is ready for external arousal stimulus (Levy 2007: 144–148.). Somewhat provocatively, Levy concludes that “each and every one of the main factors that psychologists have found to cause humans to fall in love with humans can almost equally apply to cause humans to fall in love with robots” (2007: 150). Consequently, he goes on, loving relationships and marriages between humans and robots shall only be a matter of decades. The question should no longer be if but when they are due.

4 Love and Sex: The Ontological Trap On the other end of the spectrum, Kathleen Richardson and Florence Gildea from the Campaign against Sex Robots argue that the very idea of sex between humans and robots is misleading: “If sex is a co-experience, involving a mutual, parallel and simultaneous experience between humans who are radically different from humanmade artefacts, then it follows

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They go on defining sex as “a co-experience with another”, as opposed to masturbation (“a sexual experience you have alone”) and rape (“using a human being like they were a sexual instrument/sexual assault”) and exclude sex dolls and sex robots categorically from participating in any sex—not the least because they “do not have sexed bodies which include reproductive organs, hormones and are not part of a living species” (ibid.). It is worth taking a closer look at the underlying assumptions inspiring the rationales of Levy and Gildea/Richardson. Both lines of reasoning take their starting point from a decisively Eurocentric, anthropocentric and ‘biocentric’ position, taking things for granted that are anything but self-evident or ontologically sound. Neither are Western ideas about love universal, nor can we take the ontological particularity of humans or (biological) animate beings as given. While most readers probably agree that a “mutual, parallel and simultaneous experience between humans” can be a wonderful thing, most of us are also well aware of the fact that not all sexual encounters are mutually satisfying. Many people have had sex on occasions where, in retrospect, they would rather not have had it. And many people have experienced bad sex without considering it as bordering on rape. Summarizing a large number of studies on sexual behavior, Levy compiled a list of 17 motives for having sex (2007: 185), only few of them actually meeting the criteria laid down by Gildea and Richardson. In addition, over large parts of human history, the wonderful “mutual, parallel, simultaneous experience between humans” has probably been the exception rather than the rule (Foucault 1998; Muchembled 2008). Before last century’s sexual revolution, marital sex in the West has cared little for female pleasure. Or even male pleasure. The principal purpose of marital sex was reproduction. Nightgowns from more prudish times provide evidence of that: they have holes in them, at the height of the spouses’ reproductive organs, bearing the inscription: Dieu le veut—It is God’s wish. What Richardson and Gildea define as “sex”, thus, is a very modern concept, limited in scope not only with regard to time (1960s and onward) but also to space (the global North or ‘the West’). That, of course, does not automatically invalidate it. Many concepts and ideas we cherish do not go back very long: human rights, freedom of speech, equality before the law, etc.—they too have received their status as socially accepted notions quite recently. However, one wonders why sex deserving its name should require “sexed bodies which include reproductive organs, [and] hormones”. With the invention of the pill in the 1960s, sex has been separated from reproduction. Over the last decades, the split has been completed by the spread of assisted reproduction technologies. Today, not only can we engage in sex without fear of reproducing, we also increasingly reproduce without having sex. In view of these developments, it is hard to see the need to re-articulate sex and reproduction. Gildea and Richardson here are clearly overdramatizing by substituting processual or performative definitions of sex for an ontological and normative one.

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Levy too falls in the trap of ontology. Throughout his work, he never questions the naturalist (Descola 2013) and humanist idea that humans differ fundamentally from non-human beings in terms of intentionality and interiority. We are different, because we are different, because we have a free will and a reflexive selfawareness—not because we just act differently in certain contexts. The potential of intelligent robots to display signs of consciousness leads Levy to believe that these robots might become the first non-human entities to actually bridge the gap between the two ontological spheres. Accordingly, he is very optimistic as to the future acceptance of robots as mates and partners—albeit under one condition: they should resemble man (and woman!) as much as possible (Levy 2007: 296– 300). What Levy seems to be suggesting here is that (sex) robots should mimic humans and in the long run become indistinguishable from them. But why is that? Why should sex robots come as male and female replicants or, as Levy puts it, “malebots” and “fembots” (2007: 310)? Even Levy does not insinuate that humans and robots might procreate in the near future. So why would robots be gendered?

5 Problematizing Sex and Marriage Anthropology, queer- and gender-studies have convincingly reasoned that the twogender model is historically and culturally determined. While it may—still—be true that for successful reproduction humans (like all other forms of ‘higher’ vertebrates) need male and female gametes, humanity does neither have to be divided along chromosomal or hormonal lines, nor does the gender role of the individual have to be fixed once and for all. Not only does Facebook offer its users more than 70 gender options to choose from, all over the world, we find traditional societies with more than two genders, and many western states have recently removed administrative hurdles for the registration of at least a third gender (Baynes 2016). The critical point here is not that there may be more than two genders but that gender attributions can be handled in a flexible, mutable manner. Gender, in this view, is not a stable, intrinsic quality of the individual but a (self-)attribution that needs to be constantly performed and (re-)enacted in social interactions (Butler 1990). I could not agree more with Levy, when he predicts that fulfilling sexuality and loving relationships between humans and robots are “inevitable” (2007: 307), but I have great doubts when it comes to envisaging the consequences of this development for our societies’ social structure. Will humans eventually marry robots? Levy is convinced that this will be the case within the next twenty or thirty years (2007: 151–153, 271). I find that hard to believe. From an anthropological perspective, marriage is much more than just the public avowal of a lasting commitment, embedded in some ceremonial or administrative act (Reinhardt 2007:68–69; Lévi-Strauss 1993: 643; Mead 1970: 89). Virtually never in historic times, and virtually nowhere on this planet has marriage been limited to being an exclusive matter of the two (or more) spouses. A marriage binds together groups that before may not have had any lasting ties between them. It involves in-laws and groups of friends, rights and properties. There is a common sense in anthropology today

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that kinship relations constituted in procreation can also be postnatally construed by performative actions (Carsten 2011). When it comes to kinship relations based on alliances, however, anthropology turns out far more conservative. The doyen of French anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1993), once defined marriage as basically an act of communication following similar rules as the exchange of words or of gifts. It is a give-and-take—sometimes in form of an immediate compensation, sometimes taking decades till the original gift is reciprocated. Marriages between humans and non-humans not only lack of this social dimension of ‘classical’ marriages, they also raise serious questions as to agency and its effects. A similar technicist approach seems to guide Levy’s visions of future sexual encounters between humans and robots. Among other things, Levy envisions robots as sex trainers: “The capability of robots to teach all known aspects of sexual technique will turn receptive students into virtuoso lovers. No longer will a partner in a human-human relationship need to suffer from lousy sex, mediocre sex, or anything less than great sex. Marriages and partnerships that today are in trouble in the bedroom will no longer be at risk, thanks to the practical instruction in sex that will be available to all” (Levy 2007: 307).

Now, this outright mechanistic conception of what good sex is about and where and how it happens, better not be true. Psychologists have for a long time claimed that our most important sexual organ is located not between the legs but right between the ears (e.g. Diamond and Richter-Appelt 2008). ‘Good sex’ therefore cannot be reduced to a gyrating movement pattern of the pelvis or to a sequence of tactile stimuli. It is a complex interplay of situational, physical, and emotional factors that may—or may not—lead to staggering orgasms. Interestingly, both Levy and Richardson/Gildea try to come up with an ontological once and for all definition of sex. And like most once-and-for-all-definitions, they fail. Good sex is definitely much more than just technique, but it is also definitely not necessarily a simultaneous co-experience shared between humans. The same encounter can be perceived as “textbook generic”, boring, or mind-blowing by the participants.

6 New Materialist Perspectives on Love and Sex with Robots This seeming contradiction is easily dissolved, when we substitute ontological definitions of love and sex for processual ones. A valuable approach for doing so can be found in feminist new materialism as proposed by Karen Barad (1996 and 2003), Rosi Braidotti (2002 and 2013), Jane Bennett (2001), and others. The general idea here is that neither naïve materialism nor radical constructivism provide accurate accounts of the world we live in. Rather than conceiving matter as inert material to be acted upon by human actors or than not allowing for anything beyond discourse, feminist new materialism puts an emphasis on the constructive ways in which matter contributes to the building and shaping of social worlds.

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Matter, in other words, is not something passively awaiting manipulation. It actively affects the way we “intra-act” with it (Barad 2003; see also Latour 1999). Sex between humans and robots, in a new materialist perspective, is not a thing-in-itself but the result of continuous “intra-actions” (Barad 2003) between human ‘subject’ and nonhuman ‘matter’. Both terms in the equation—the human and the robot—have to be considered as emerging entities that come to existence in their context-specific form only as actants in a context-specific assemblage. Neither of them, in other words, is thought to exist outside of specific performative acts. The phenomena that constitute existence (as a symbolic reality), are produced and reproduced through intra-active acts (Barad 1996: 185). Barad deliberately chose the neologism “intra-action” to emphasize that we are not dealing with an action taking place between two or more preexisting, given entities (as in interactions) but that the constituents of an intra-action are in themselves mere effects of the latter. In a way, agential realism thus tries to reconcile radical constructivism (everything is discourse, as in Derrida’s famous formula: “il n-y-a pas dehorstexte”) and empiricist materialism (it is only matter that matters). For Barad and her followers, humans and matter are neither given nor are they only effects of discourses. They are at the same time produced and producing, made and making: “[N]either pure cause nor pure effect but part of the world in its open-ended becoming” (Barad 2003: 821). Barad’s “agential realism” thus clearly dissociates itself from traditional ontological approaches (both realistic and idealistic) and proposes a posthumanist, performative concept of reality—a kind of “performative metaphysics” or “onto-epistem-ology” as she calls it (Barad 2003: 811, 829). A couple of years ago, Jane Bennett has argued that non-human matter can be imbued with liveliness when it is assembled with a human actor. She coined the term “thing-power” to denote the “strange ability of ordinary, man-made items to exceed their status as objects and to manifest traces of independence or aliveness, constituting the outside of our own experience” (Bennett 2001: xvi). Adopting this notion of non-human agency, we can transgress the humanist subject/object dualism that inspires Levy’s visionary draft as well as Richardson’s and Gildea’s outright rejection of it. The invaluable advantage of the new-materialist approach is that it allows for non-human actors or actants (Latour 1999) to be equipped with agency without having to refer to an original act of it being attributed to an inanimate object by a human subject. Instead, an actant is defined by its capacity “to have transformative effects upon other beings in that given situation” (Latour 2005: 71). In other words, it is defined by its actions, not by its intentions (Latour 2005: 153). Adopting this premise from actor-network-theory, we do no longer have to refer to a vague “techno-animism” (Richardson 2016: 112) to account for the idea of personhood in a machine. Sex robots have agency simply because they are the material counterpart of humans in erotic intra-actions. They have agency in that they are indispensable factors in the project at hand, however, they do not have it as a result of a simple ascription or of their being similar to humans. Thus, I believe, it is misleading to frame human-robot-intra-actions as simply a case of “attributing thoughts, feelings, and intentions” to non-human entities (ibid, 110).

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The ontological fissure goes much deeper, actually pushing humans out of their privileged position as the only self-aware and symbol-using creatures.

7 Androids, Gynoids, and Other Replicants In Love and Sex with Robots, David Levy predicts that, “[a]s the first sexbots reach the market, the publicity for robot sex will take off with a bang” (Levy 2007: 299). It is hard to contradict him on that point. In 2018, when sex robots are about to be ready for sale, we observe in fact an increasing interest of popular media in robot sex. It is still too early to speak of a ‘media hype’, but a general interest definitely is there—and it is growing. Most major newspapers, magazines and TV-stations have dealt with the topic to at least some extend (e.g. Bates 2017; Guarino 2018; Kerner 2018; Shaw 2018; Sparrow 2019; Weber 2018; Varley 2018; Miethge 2017; Beschorner 2017). At least in part, this is probably due to the spectacular photographs that usually illustrate articles on sexbots. The average sexbot, so it seems judging from these images, is female, with petite waist and an enormous bust.3 One look at those photographs, and one is immediately tempted to embrace the feminist critique of robot sex as a continuation of the objectification of women with new means. However, who says that sex robots inevitably have to look like that? David Levy points to “similarity“ as one of the main factors for enabling romantic relationships between humans and robots (2007: 144). This might mean “similarity in personality”, nevertheless, throughout his book Levy repeatedly makes it very clear that he primarily addresses similarity in appearance as the key feature in fostering the acceptance of sexbots. This hypothesis eventually culminates in a bold prognosis: “The robots of the middle of this century will not be exactly like us, but close. In terms of their outward appearance and behavior, they will be designed to be almost indistinguishable from us to the vast majority of the human population.” (Levy 2007: 303)

I am convinced that this is the wrong approach. Why should sex robots be designed to be “almost indistinguishable” from humans? Or to put it differently: why of all things should the human body with all its imperfections and shortcomings establish the norm for what sex robots look like? Whose human body, anyway? Humans come in all different shapes, sizes, textures, etc. Do we really want to further reinforce idealizations of what an ‘aesthetic body’ should look like? And who, finally, were to decide on these ideals of beauty? Who could we endow with this kind of normative power? Manufacturers? Designers? That seems the safe way to inscribe gender by stereotyping or using the I-methodology.

3Compare

e.g. the images on www.realbotix.com or www.truecompanion.com.

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Levy himself argues convincingly that humans can easily develop affectionate, even passionate feelings for non-human entities (pets, objects). This is undoubtedly facilitated by the object of affection offering starting points for anthropomorphisms. Eyes may be important (or at least something that resembles eyes—like for example a car’s headlights). Size is important (it is hard to ‘love’ a mountain or a microchip). It may also help, when things have a nice touch. As humans, we are not too picky about our empathy. As early as 1944, psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel published their famous “Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior”. They had created a short animated film to test the human brain’s tendency to create stories when watching geometrical figures move on a screen (Heider & Simmel 1944). After repeating the screening with a large number of test persons, Heider and Simmel could show that our consciousness allows for compassion or empathy (and in extension, one may add, also for lust or passion) as soon as we find any anchor point for an anthropomorphic projection, be it a similarity in shape, in sound, or in behavior (see also Blakemore 2016). On the other hand, it seems exactly the lack of anthropomorphic anchor points that leave most people rather indifferent as to the material manifestation of their smartphones. Even though at first glance many of us maintain very intimate relationships with our phones, basically using them as extensions of our minds and a form of excorporealized memory, hardly anybody would think twice, when offered to substitute them for a new model for free (provided that the data transfer is taken care of). Phones just lack the auratic dimension of the here and now and the embeddedness in tradition that Benjamin identified as the proprium of uniqueness (Benjamin 2008: 23 f.). Not because they are serial industrial products—but rather because we find no starting point for anthropomorphisms. The same holds true for dildos and vibrators— unfailing source of physical pleasure and comfort (at least as long as the batteries last). We may like them, but—the possibility of paraphilia or fetishism notwithstanding—most people would not go so far to say they ‘love’ them. It is their function that counts, not their ‘individuality’ or their ‘here’ and ‘now’. With respect to sex robots, this suggests that they do not actually have to be designed to mimic humans at all. As long as their functionality is accounted for, any anthropomorphic anchoring point in the robot’s appearance may come as a plus. But it is not essential. What, then, matters for a sex robot? Certainly not that it looks like a pornographer’s wet dream. Even though this may work for a while for certain customers, that kind of visual stimulus inevitably should wear out with habitualization (cf. Vogel 2007: 454). Instead, it seems to be much more promising to re-start from scratch by compiling the desired features and sort them by importance. Thus, for example, any sex robot certainly should feel good when touched. That does not mean it has to imitate human skin, though. Feathers, fur, marshmallows, latex, velvet, sand, nylon, etc.—there are many things that have a nice touch. Intelligence (artificial as it may be) would be an asset. It may need orifices or/and phallic elements. And so on. However, to provide this, a fully functional robot does not have to be modelled after a human archetype. Anthropomorphizing can as well be triggered by a certain behavior that is perceived as ‘human’.

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8 Conclusion: Queer Perspectives on Post Gender Sex Robots Over the last decades, queer studies have blurred all kinds of boundaries in the realm of gender and sexuality. At a more general level, anthropology has convincingly argued that Western lines of demarcations between the human and the nonhuman are far from being universal (Descola 2013). As far as sex robots go, this should be interpreted as a call for a thorough reconsideration of design options. In fact, from a pragmatist or functionalist point of view, there is not a single convincing reason why technical artefacts should try to imitate humans to the point of being “almost undistinguishable” (Levy 2007: 303) from them. It has been demonstrated over and over again, that our minds are quite willing to accept non-human counterparts as a source of (or a target for) empathy, emotion, and even passion—as long as these artefacts allow at least for elementary forms of anthropomorphism in form, touch, sound, or behavior. I have already mentioned dildos. They are a good example in yet another respect. Twenty years ago, as readers old enough to have visited a sex shop in the nineteen nineties will doubtlessly remember, most dildos on the market were shaped like penises. Skin-colored and hyper-naturalistic, they hardly ever came without replica veins and false skin folds. Some even tried to imitate (plastic) pubic hair at their base. Today, only a small percentage of dildos and vibrators sticks to that design. Instead, manufacturers draw from a wide variety of colors, forms and finishing. An obvious reason for this change would appear to be that dildo designers took a moment to reflect on whether or not it was functionally necessary for the intended use to produce exact lookalikes of the male reproductive organ. The answer, of course, was: no. As much as general shape may matter, as much as size and touch may matter—color and true-to-lifeness turned out to be no essential features. On the contrary, at least part of the market success of dildos and vibrators is quite likely due to the very fact, that they do not look like penises. Whereas Western society in general has adopted a predominantly positive attitude towards dildos and vibrators, sex robots still face a serious image problem. Conservative feminists and technology sceptics, queer activists and religious hardliners, rightwing fundamentalists and leftist liberals form an unprecedented common front in their rejection of sex robots. Anybody wanting to seriously explore the possibilities and odds of robot sex in the long run, cannot ignore this widespread repudiation. As a viable way to increase the acceptance of sexbots, I simply suggest to thoroughly question and rethink the underlying gender scripts and anthropocentric assumptions that guide their design to this day. Even though at first glance it may sound odd to de-gender machines built for sexual pleasure, this is exactly what I propose to do. Abandoning the beaten tracks of outmoded dualisms (nature/culture, male/female, human/machine, etc.), there is an enormous potential for exploiting the emancipatory possibilities of sexbots. Once we manage to deconstruct our out-of-date gender dichotomies and Western ideals of love and desire, there is a chance of liberating humanism from its ‘carnal’ limitations.

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Man (or woman) does no longer have to be the norm and central point of reference for discourses dealing with romantic feelings. Instead, emotional bonds may well transcend the border between the biological and the silicon sphere and be directed toward machines that almost certainly will not look like ‘superman’ or ‘superwoman’. In many cases, they may not even resemble human figures at all, or may be designed to enable user-defined morphing. Most of all, however, such a re-design would open a way out of the dilemma of the “uncanny valley”. If it is true that our emotional response to robots inevitably reaches a point beyond which an original positive, empathic response abruptly turns into strong revulsion before eventually becoming positive again—why shall we bridge this emotional gap by any means possible? Instead we might simply take a different turn. When Marcel Proust’s protagonist travelled back in time to a distant past in his aunt’s home, that was triggered by the cookie and the tea. It was, however, not inscribed in the cookie. Nothing in the madeleine suggests that it evokes specific memories in a specific intra-action. Quite similarly, we can never fully control the emotional response a sex robot triggers in a specific intra-action with a specific human counterpart by designing them this way or the other. Human empathy towards machines cannot be inscribed in the machine. Thus, it does not matter all too much what a sex robot is. What matters is, what it does to or with its user. As long as it maximizes her or his pleasure, it is a good sexbot. No matter what it eventually will look like.

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Levy, D. (2007). Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. New York: Harper Collins. Levy, D. (2013). Roxxxy the ‘Sex Robot’—Real or Fake? Lovotics I, 2013. https://doi. org/10.4303/lt/235685. Mead, M. (1970). Jugend und Sexualität in primitiven Gesellschaften. Bd. 3.: Geschlecht und Temperament in drei Primitiven Gesellschaften. München: dtv. Miethge, C. (dir.) (2017). Homo Digitalis: Der digitale Höhepunkt. Arte TV. https://www.arte.tv/ de/videos/072427-003-A/homo-digitalis/ (last visited on 13.04.19). Mori, M. (2012, June [1970]). The Uncanny Valley. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazin, 98–100. https://doi.org/10.1109/mra.2012.2192811. Muchembled, R. (2008). Orgasm and the West: A History of Pleasure from the Sixteenth Century to the Present. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Oudshoorn, N. & Pinch, T. (Eds.) (2003). How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technologies. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. Oudshoorn, N., Brouns, M. & van Oost, E. (2005). Diversity and Distributed Agency in the Design and Use of Medical Video-Communication Technologies. In Hans Harbers (Ed.), Inside the Politics of Technology: Agency and Normativity in the Co-Production of Technology and Society. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 85–105. Proust, M. (1922). Remembrance of Things Past, vol I: Swann’s Way (trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff). London: Chatto & Windus. Reinhardt, T. (2007). Claude Lévi-Strauss zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius. Richardson, K. (2015). The Asymmetrical ‘Relationship’: Parallels between Prostitution and the Development of Sex Robots. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 45(3), 290–293. Richardson, K. (2016). Technological Animism: The Uncanny Personhood of Humanoid Machines. Social Analysis 60(1), 110–128. Rommes, E. (2002). Gender Scripts and the Internet: The design and Use of Amsterdam’s Digital City. Enschede: Twente University Press. Rubin, G. (1984). Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”. In Carole Vance (Ed.), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 267–319. Shaw, A. (2018, May 14). House votes to ban shipments of child sex robots. Foxnews. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-votes-to-ban-shipments-of-child-sex-robots (last visited on 13.04.19). Sparrow, R. (2019, March 15). Would it be wrong to “rape” a sex robot? ABC News. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/religion/would-it-be-wrong-to-rape-a-sex-robot/10848376 (last visited on 13.04.19). Van Oost, E. (2003). Materialized Gender; How Shavers Configure the Users’ Femininity and Masculinity. In Nelly Oudshoorn & Trevor Pinch (Eds.), How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technologies. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 193–208. Varley, C. (2018, April 6). Are sex robots just turning women into literal objects? BBC. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/8bbe0749-62ee-40f9-a8ac-a2d751c474f6 (last visited on 13.04.19). Vogel, I. (2007). Erotik und Pornografie in den Medien. In Uli Gleich & Roland Glimmer (Eds.), Kommunikationspsychologie und Medienpsychologie. Weinheim, Basel: Beitz, 447–459. Wajcman, J. (1991). Feminism Confronts Technology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Weber, C. (2018, Sept 29). AI Love You: Sexroboter und Menschen: Kann das eine Liebesgeschichte werden? Süddeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved from https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/artikel/wissen/sexroboter-kann-das-liebe-sein-e763870/?reduced=true (last visited on 13.04.19). Woolgar, S. (1990). Configuring the User: The Case of Usability Traits. The Sociological Review 38(1), 58–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.1990.tb03349.x.

Technologies: Reproduction and Health Care

From Design to Data Handling. Why mHealth Needs a Feminist Perspective Tereza Hendl, Bianca Jansky, and Verina Wild

1 Introduction Mobile health (mHealth) involves a range of digital technologies utilised in healthcare.1 These can include mobile phone applications (apps), smartwatches, sensors, digital assistants, and others. The emergence of these technologies has been celebrated by many, who argue that mHealth represents a major shift in health promotion, prevention, and healthcare and can have significant impact on health and health systems altogether (Istepanian & Woodward 2016; Malvey & Slovensky 2014; Swan 2012). mHealth is a rapidly developing field, with the potential to bring health services to more people (European Commission 2014, 2018; Peiris et al. 2018; WHO 2011). As such, mHealth also carries the hope for democratising healthcare. At the same time, innovation with mHealth technologies is being conducted in a world with a significant digital divide, characterised by inequities in access to internet and digital technologies (Cruz-Jesus et al. 2012; Lorence et al. 2006; Servon 2002). Hence, some voice concerns that mHealth benefits are not being 1In

this book chapter, we understand healthcare broadly—it not only includes hospitals and private surgeries but also a range of practices or technologies used in the caring for health, including one’s own health.

T. Hendl (*) · B. Jansky · V. Wild  Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] B. Jansky e-mail: [email protected] V. Wild e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_5

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equally distributed (George et al. 2018; Peiris et al. 2018; Selbst & Barocas 2017). It has indeed been shown that mHealth struggles with making its content and services relevant to a diverse cohort of the population (Campolo et al. 2017; Peiris et al. 2018). This raises concerns about exclusion, lack of intersectionality and potential for discrimination. These issues are a concern from a feminist point of view, which recognises the importance of gender justice in healthcare and medicine. In this chapter we interrogate gender in the mHealth context. First, we take a closer look at some major gender issues concerning medicine and healthcare. We argue that these issues are significant and that as a novel health technology, mHealth also needs to be interrogated through a gender lens. We then investigate major gender issues concerning mHealth and identify opportunities for improvement. We argue that for mHealth to facilitate good and just healthcare, genderrelated issues need to be addressed and in order to do so, mHealth needs to implement an intersectional feminist perspective at all stages of tech development and provision.

2 Gender in Healthcare and Medicine From a historical perspective, healthcare and medicine have involved many gender related issues. They are well described in the literature, hence, we will only briefly point to some major aspects here. Even though much has changed in the recent years, medicine and medical research have traditionally largely focused on health conditions that concern men, with resulting imbalances and inequalities in medical and health-related knowledge that last until today (Zimmermann & Hill 2000). Many conditions experienced by women have been under-researched (Adamson et al. 2010; Young et al. 2015) and there is little research on sex-­ specific differences in the metabolisation of drugs, in pain perception or how drugs interact with contraceptives (Mager & Liu 2016; Regitz-Zagrosek & Fuchs 2006; Wild 2010). For centuries the ‘human standard’ of the body in medical thinking has been male (Kaufert 1999) and from this standard, medicine inferred and generalized its findings and therapy to everyone else. At least two reasons seem to account for the relative negligence of knowledge about health and medicine concerning non-male bodies. First, the history of medicine, and its androcentrism play a fundamental role in how medicine and health care are shaped until to this day. Since the rise of book learning in medieval times, from which women were largely excluded, and the growing professionalism in medicine, the field brought with it a “marked masculinization”, and a “learned masculine culture” with authoritative social power (Green 2008: xiii). These processes have, for example, influenced the composition of the medical profession. Women’s participation in medicine has been limited, with women in many countries being granted the right to study and practice medicine only in the 19th century (Jefferson et al. 2015). The marginalisation of women in medicine has contributed to the fact that predominantly androcentric perspectives have influenced the focus of medicine and healthcare, interpretation of women’s health

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conditions and decisions about resource-allocation into medical practice and research. While at present, the medical workforce is more gender balanced and in some countries more women than men graduate with medical degrees, women still tend to be concentrated in primary care fields or in ‘softer’ areas of medicine, and less so in surgery (Martin et al. 1988). Second, since the 1970s women have been widely excluded from clinical trials as research participants. This has largely to do with the drug Contergan® (Thalidomide) (Wild 2010). It was developed in 1954 by the German company Chemie Grünenthal GmbH and was sold to a total of forty-six countries. The drug was used as a sedativum, and had the positive side effect of reducing nausea during pregnancy, leading to popularity among pregnant women. At that time, there was no regulatory requirement for clinical trials prior to the approval of drugs. In the early 1960s, physicians started detecting malformed extremities of children born to women who had taken Contergan® during pregnancy (Lenz et al. 1962; Marquardt 1994; McBride 1961). Thousands of children have been affected, but due to a lack of registering the cases no exact number is available (Marquardt 1994). Trading of the drug was stopped by November 1961. On the one hand the insights gained through Thalidomide led to a much more rigorous regulation of medical research. Research ethics, and the protection of participants, as well as risk-benefit analyses have since then increased and improved in many ways. However, tragically the occurrences around Thalidomide have not led to a better understanding of the female or pregnant body (Wild 2010, 2012). Women have been systematically excluded from clinical trials, even by law, in order to minimize the risk of fetal harm during known or unknown pregnancy (Food and Drug Administration 1977; Lyerly et al. 2008; Mager & Liu 2016; Ramasubbu et al. 2001). This widely socially accepted norm influences individual decisions to participate in research and has lead to extensive liability issues for drug researchers and pharmaceutical companies, disincentivizing the inclusion of women in clinical trials (Wild 2010; Wild & Biller-Andorno 2016). The limited inclusion of non-male participants into medical research is a significant problem because evidence shows that health conditions and drug metabolism manifest differently according to sex. A number of drugs originally approved for general use have later been found to affect men and women differently (Riska 2010). Many therapies, drugs and medical interventions are thus not well-adapted to non-male bodies (Rieder & Lohff 2008; Woosley et al. 2000) which also has implications for the health of transgender people and people with intersex variations. The problems briefly summarized in this chapter highlight the importance of a gender-informed and sex and gender-sensitive practice in health and healthcare as well as the pressing need for sex and gender-specific interventions. The “gender blind research and practice” (Hamberg 2008: 238), resulting from a traditional androcentric perspective in the area of health and medicine in general as well as from the exclusion of women from clinical trials after Thalidomide, have thus led to a failure to account for significant variations between differently sexed bodies. This suggests, that even today the culture of medicine and health still needs to change and become more gender progressive. A larger participation of

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underrepresented groups in healthcare systems can contribute to medicine being informed by a larger pool of experiences and views on human health. As the health needs of women, transgender people and people with intersex variations have been marginalised throughout the history of healthcare and medicine, it is crucial that any existing or new health technologies are sufficiently grounded in sex and gender awareness and gender-informed methodology to produce good and just health outcomes.

3 mHealth and Its Novel Potential mHealth started emerging as a concept to describe new forms of health technology that are based on digital mobile devices in 2003 (Istepanian & Woodward 2016: xvi). From a global health view, mHealth can be characterised as “a healthcare delivery system that is carried out via mobile devices for better access to healthcare and support for performance of health workers” (Lee et al. 2017: 2).2 At first, mHealth involved “mobile computing, medical sensor, and communications technologies for health care“ (Istepanian & Woodward 2016: xvii) and over time, the field has come to include portable wearables and internal sensors—for example woven into clothing or laminated onto interfaces—which can be installed anywhere on the body, typically for the purpose of collecting data about bodily functions and daily activities (Lupton 2013). At present, mHealth involves a diverse range of mobile devices with digital sensors, including clothes, sports shoes, wristbands, adhesive patches or bathroom weight scales or mHealth software, such as mobile phone apps (ibid.). One of the most celebrated aspects of mHealth is its potential to make healthcare accessible to a larger cohort of the population. In part owing to a relatively wide use of digital technologies, such as mobile phones and apps and in part, owing to the fact that these services are less costly than doctor visits and other medical fees (Malvey & Slovensky 2014). As mHealth is largely concerned with preventive healthcare, it is also expected to facilitate savings in healthcare systems (Malvey & Slovensky 2014; Swan 2012). Hopes are that not only these technologies will make healthcare more accessible but also more egalitarian. Advocates for a wide use of mHealth argue that these technologies empower health ‘consumers’. For example, Melanie Swan (2012: 113), a technology theorist, perceives mHealth as an avenue to “institutional recasting” of healthcare from physician-facilitated to ‘consumer’-centered, personalised and participatory. From this point of view, mHealth has the potential to democratise health care. In this regard, the recent establishment of the mHealth field also raises expectations that these novel technologies might be informed by progress achieved in debates and social developments regarding gender equity and, as such, better predisposed to tackle gender-specific issues.

2According

to the WHO, mHealth is a component of eHealth (WHO Global Observatory for eHealth 2011).

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Considering the novel status of mHealth, the technology is new on several levels. First, mHealth is based on digital data produced by these technologies. The utilization of mHealth brings about new possibilities that have not existed prior to the introduction of these digital technologies. Sociologist Deborah Lupton observes that mHealth provides new ways of “monitoring, measuring and representing the human body” (Lupton 2013: 393). According to her, digitally mediated visualisations make visible body functions, which were previously not accessible (Lupton 2013). These visualisations are then presented to the individual in the form of graphics and statistics. Second, mHealth enables tech-based health and body interventions. mHealth enables individuals to track their bodily functions and a variety of indicators including body temperature, blood pressure, body weight, heart rate, blood glucose or sleep patterns. This wide range of health information offered by mHealth devices assists users in self-diagnosing their illness and provides guidance regarding proposed changes in behavioural patterns and therapy. Hence, Lupton (2013: 397) points out that in mHealth “self-tracking represents the apotheosis of selfreflexivity in its intense focus on the self and using data about the self to make choices about future behaviours.” This aspect of mHealth brings some to perceive self-tracking as a practice embedded in the project of self-optimisation (Smith & Vonthethoff 2017) (Fig. 1). Third, mHealth technologies use algorithms to process user data and to produce algorithm-generated predictions and particular health guidance. Algorithms are

Fig. 1  Self-optimisation through fitness: a fitness app Instagram post utilising gendered marketing to promote the app as an ‘easy’ tool for ‘moms’ to stay in charge of their ‘fitness goals’. (Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/fitbit/)

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“the mathematical logic behind any type of system that performs tasks or makes decisions” (AI Now Institute 2018: 2). Brent Mittelstadt et al. (2016: 1), Data experts from the Oxford Internet Institute argue that algorithms ‘mediate’ social processes “and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment.” Price II (2017: 429), a legal scholar concerned with health law and regulation, claims mHealth apps use algorithms to “monitor, suggest, diagnose, or otherwise process medical information.” More generally, he argues that algorithms drive medical innovation. Fourth, many mHealth technologies are connected to social media. This allows for the establishment of user health communities (Bellander & Landqvist 2018). One of the major enthusiastic mHealth communities is the Quantified Self Movement, which defines itself as a group of users of various self-measuring devices and software (Quantified Self 2019). The proclaimed aim of the movement is to gain new and better insights into the body through quantification (ibid.). An integral part of the Quantified Self Movement is to connect via forums and other social media platforms, to share data among members to “show and tell” (Lupton 2017a: 54). Lupton points out that sharing the visual representations of one’s own data in these social media groups, also attracts other people to participate in sharing their data online. According to her, this practice of sharing has a strong performative dimension, as it shows both how self-tracking has improved the individual’s life and how adept they are with manipulating their data. Fifth, mHealth technologies follow a trend towards self-management and individual responsibility for health. According to Swan (2012: 95), mHealth is a “scientific advance”, which enables “the empowered role of the biocitizen in achieving the personalized preventive medicine of the future” (2012: 13). In her view, mHealth provides health ‘consumers’ with the tools to manage health, perceived by her as their own responsibility. Similarly, Wiederhold (2012) considers mHealth revolutionary, in that it centres a self-tracking patient. In this regard, it is important to note that mHealth technologies require a seemingly low threshold of skills and technical knowledge from users to utilise them. This further raises expectations about their potential to be widely used and incorporated into the daily lives of health ‘consumers’ and lead to a more personalised and participatory healthcare (Malvey & Slovensky 2014: 1). Owing to the novel aspects associated with mHealth technologies, there is a rather big hype about mHealth as the tool for the future. Considering all the enthusiasm about mHealth, it is, nevertheless, crucial to ask: do these technologies really lead to more inclusiveness, empowerment and egalitarianism also regarding genderspecific issues? In what way? And which potential problems can we identify?

4 mHealth Through a Gender Lens We have established above that there is a strong desideratum to pay particular attention to the question how gender issues are acknowledged and whether they are appropriately included in new health technologies. Looking at mHealth from

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a gender perspective, we can observe a multitude of gender-related issues. From mHealth technology design, across use to data handling, we identify a plethora of problems, which need to be addressed to ensure that the field is informed by empirical evidence about sex and gender and provides high quality health services equally to a diverse cohort of users. Tech development teams  The design of technologies begins with the composition of tech developer teams. The structure of these teams and representation within them is crucial, as these factors influence who gets to pitch suggestions for new technologies and whose vision, ideas and experiences will shape tech design and functions. We can observe significant gender disparities in the IT development sector, which, we assume, also impacts on mHealth. Women represent only 17.2% of employed ICT specialists in Europe (eurostat 2018). In Germany only 17% of all computer science graduates were women (Nordmann 2016: 7). Diversity reports of major tech companies reveal that the vast majority of their workforce is male and white. For example, Google’s workforce is 69.1% male and 53.1% white, with only 25.5% women and 33.1% people of colour in leadership positions (Brown & Parker 2019). Apple’s workforce is 77% male, with only 29% women in leadership (Apple 2019). Intel reports 76.1% of men in the workforce (Intel 2019). Facebook has claimed some improvements in its workforce diversity, reporting that the employment of women has risen from 31% in 2014 to 36% in 2018, with 15 to 22% increase in technical roles, while the employment of Black employees increased from 2 to 4% and Hispanic from 4 to 5% (Williams 2018). This data suggest that women and people of colour are still a minority in the tech industry and while the situation is improving, the progress is rather slow. In the mHealth context, app developers mostly do not represent the diversity of apps users (Selbst & Barocas 2017). Selbst and Barocas (2017: 16 f.) observe that “AI developers are mostly male,3 generally highly paid, and similarly technically educated.” They argue that the history of AI involves a pattern of gender exclusion. To our knowledge, specific and comprehensive statistics regarding gender for the mHealth industry are not available but there is a plausible risk that the gender imbalance in the tech industry also shapes the mHealth tech development workforce. In this context, it has been noted that male developers also design mHealth technologies primarily marketed to women, such as period trackers (Epstein et al. 2017). Some (Selbst & Barocas 2017) argue that this is a concern as the composition of tech developer teams will impact on design and the AI they create.

3This is confirmed with data from the World Economic Forum’s (2018) Global Gender Gap Report, which clarifies that 78% of Artificial Intelligence (AI) professionals globally are male (The Global Gender Gap Report 2018).

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5 mHealth Tech Design: Targets and Functions The focus and functions of mHealth technologies involve some gender gaps. While many mHealth technologies cater to various interpretations of sex and gender and cover many gender-specific conditions or bodily processes (Epstein et al. 2017; Lupton 2015a), there is much space for improvement. Some mHealth designed to be used ‘by all’ have excluded functions relevant to non-male health. Several technologies have only recently started incorporating functions that reflect on bodily processes that concern women, transgender, ­non-binary and genderfluid people. For example, the Apple HealthKit had no function for tracking menstruation and only added this option in 2015 (Alba 2015). Similarly, Fitbit only recently included some functions reflecting on the menstrual cycle into its content (Low 2018). Hence, until recently these technologies failed to serve the most diverse population possible. Furthermore, some mHealth technologies focused on general human health conditions still work with male-centric training data. Selbst and Barocas observe that health related AI relies on training data from clinical trials, historically skewed toward white men. For example, Black Americans with sickle cell anemia get over-diagnosed and needlessly treated for diabetes on the ground of studies which exclude them (Selbst & Barocas 2017). Thus, mHealth technologies would benefit if they were informed by scientific evidence regarding different manifestations of these conditions and their symptoms in different ­population groups. At the same time, some technologies designed for particular population groups could be improved in terms of gender justice to provide inclusive services. For example, many period and fertility trackers are developed with the implicit assumption that they will be used by cisgender women, who identify with the gender assigned to them at birth (Epstein et al. 2017; Lupton 2015a). Hence, at the core of these technologies’ design is a reduction of the diversity of people with uteruses and periods to a specific group with particular sexed embodiment and gender identity. Such specific focus of these apps marginalises potential users, including people with variations of sex, such as intersex people, or gender, such as transgender, non-binary or genderfluid people. Some of these potential users might be discouraged by the exclusionary design from using the apps. This way, many period and fertility apps may come short of providing health services equally to all people with uteruses and periods and those who are marginalised or excluded by design have fewer options to use and benefit from mHealth technology (Fig. 2). In this regard, the normative assumptions about gender, such as the binary understanding of sex and gender, represent yet another example of unjustified exclusionary processes in medicine and healthcare, translated into mHealth technologies. These assumptions ought to be critically assessed and corrected for mHealth technologies in order to be as inclusive as possible.

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Fig. 2  Gendered marketing: a period app promoting its services, employing gender stereotypical imagery and rhetoric referring to ‘girl talk’. (Retrieved from https://glowing.com/eve)

6 The Content of mHealth Furthermore, the content of many mHealth technologies raises concerns from a gender perspective as these technologies tend to maintain gender essentialism. An essentialist approach to gender assumes the existence of two sexes and genders - male and female - and fundamental and fixed differences in men’s and women’s personalities and social roles (Fine 2010; Hendl 2017). Taking this approach, mHealth technologies commonly portray men and women in gender stereotypical ways. For example, period and fertility apps have been critiqued for a wide range of reasons (Epstein et al. 2017; Lupton 2015a). Daniel A. Epstein and his colleagues (2017) conducted a study, analysing data from 2000 reviews of menstrual tracking apps, a survey with 687 participants and follow-up interviews with 12. They argue that these apps create “feelings of exclusion for gender and sexual minorities” (6876). It has been reported that most of period and fertility apps’ content is directed to heterosexual cisgender women for the purpose of either avoiding or achieving pregnancy (Epstein et al. 2017; Lupton 2015a). Many involve detailed questions about women’s sex lives, which are phrased in a way that makes clear that the apps assume heterosexual users who want to procreate (Fig. 3). Furthermore, Epstein and his colleagues (2017) note that the app Clue provides two options for tracking sex and both icons suggest a male partner, which, as they report, has bothered some of their study participants. Moreover, Lupton (2015a) points out that the app Glow involves male partners of users by sending them a message announcing that their partner is in her fertile period and suggesting that they purchase flowers to seduce her into sex. Yet, Epstein and his colleagues (2017) note that some users feel alienated by fertility tracking functions as they

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Fig. 3  A pronatalist angle on menstruation: a period app Instagram post linking irregular menstrual cycles with app user ability to achieve pregnancy. (Retrieved from https://www.instagram. com/flotracker/?hl=en)

are not interested in fertility tracking or procreation. They cite one of these users (6884): “I wish it were less catered to birth and family planning… I suppose I’m in the minority since I’m asexual.” Furthermore, period and fertility apps also raise issues regarding sexism in gendered design. Epstein and his colleagues observe that apps usually utilise pink colour, and images or flowers and hearts. They (2017: 6884) quote a user who considers her app insulting: “a lot of them just felt kind of condescending or like they were designed by dudes who were designing what they thought a woman would like.” Another group of apps which has raised criticism for gender stereotypes are sex apps. Lupton (2015a) conducted a review of apps related to sexuality available in Google play and the Apple App Store. For example, she found the Sex Partner Tracker, which enables one to track the number of sex partners, frequency of sex and geographic location to suggest to determine how ‘promiscuous’ users are within their region; Sex Stamina Tester, requiring users to put their smartphone on the bed to measure their sexual stamina, determined based on how long [penetrative] sex lasts, and encouraging them to share data with other users for comparison; or Spreadsheets, which not only measures movement during sex but also uses the device’s microphone to track the sound levels emitted during the encounter (Fig. 4). Based on her analysis, Lupton (2015a) argues that sex apps reinforce gender stereotypes. In men, they focus on sexual performance and comparison of sexual achievements, while they approach women’s bodies and sexuality through the prism of medicalisation and risk.

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Fig. 4  iPhone screenshot of the Sex Stamina Tester, illustrating its purpose and functions. (Retrieved from https://itunes.apple.com/ kr/app/sex-stamina-tester/ id417382939?l=en&mt=8)

These examples highlight the importance of a gender sensitive approach to mHealth, including gender-specific apps, which would help to eliminate sexism in content. As empirical research suggests, gender and heteronormative stereotypes lead to feelings of exclusion or insult in users. Thus an approach to periods, sexuality and (potential) procreation, free from gender stereotypes, preconceived and notions about what women and men ‘want’ can support user satisfaction with these technologies.

7 Algorithm-Generated Knowledge and Bias The writing and use of algorithms involve much space for bias, prominently including gender bias.4 Algorithms are taught what they ‘know’ from training data, which can be incomplete or skewed (Selbst & Barocas 2017). Some of the data are labelled by humans, which raises further concerns about the impact of human bias and cultural interpretations (ibid). When put in use, algorithms make predictions based on past data and the rules that determine success and these can be yet again skewed by dominant values and prejudice (Eubanks 2018). For example,

4The issue of bias in AI is quite complex, owing to different understandings of ‘bias’ in statistics and social science approaches (Selbst & Barocas 2017). Selbst and Barocas point out that, for example, the concept of ‘selection bias’ is given traction regarding concerns about errors in estimation, which are produced when a population subgroup is more likely to be sampled. As an example, they cite problems with low accuracy of facial recognition software, trained on data over-representing a particular racial group. They observe that in legal and colloquial language, concerns about ‘bias’ involve worries about judgements grounded in preconceived notions or prejudice, which is closely linked to normative and ethical concerns about fairness and equality. However, according to them, there are no clear boundaries between statistical and normative definitions in practice, as biased models or algorithms can result in unjust treatments and outcomes in different social groups.

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normative assumptions about gender can affect both the data that are collected and how the rules of success are interpreted interpreted. Consider again a period or fertility tracker, which assumes that the user group only consists of cisgender women. This implicit assumption affects which training data inform the technology, which user data are collected, which definitions of success are utilised in algorithms and which predictions these algorithms produce. In consequence, such period trackers might produce algorithmic bias and generate gender-skewed knowledge about periods and fertility, which might not be relevant to all people with uteruses and periods, and all types of gender, sexuality, and relationships. In this regard, some scholars (Eubanks 2018; Cahan et al. 2019; Selbst & Barocas 2017) argue that algorithms are not neutral calculations but digital tools shaped by dominant social norms and institutions. For example, mathematician and data expert Cathy O’Neil characterises them as “opinions embedded in code” (O’Neil 2017: n.p.) and political science scholar Virginia Eubanks (2018: 178) emphasises that predictive models and algorithms are embedded in broader sociohistorical context, with “old systems of power and privilege.” Eubanks is particularly critical of the ‘hype’ regarding “innovative qualities” of new technologies as, in her view, “It is mere fantasy to think that a statistical model or a ranking algorithm will magically upend culture, policies, and institutions built over centuries” (ibid.). In this regard, Eubanks is concerned about algorithms’ potential for mirroring normative values and prejudice and in consequence, producing algorithmic bias. She warns that algorithmic bias can exacerbate social injustice as it can lead to discrimination against particular, often already structurally marginalised, social groups—an issue that is of central feminist concern. Furthermore, algorithms that interpret personal data are utilised to construct scores and to determine whether individuals will be provided with access to a range of services, including health services (Eubanks 2018; Lupton & Michael 2017). This concern is particularly relevant to debates about insurance schemes. As observed by O’Neil (2016: 164): “A health enthusiast today can demonstrate, with data, that she sleeps eight hours a night, walks ten miles a day, and eats little but green vegetables, nuts and fish oil.” According to O’Neil, this raises the question why shouldn’t such enthusiast get a better insurance deal. However, she argues that such intuitive approach is not fair as the allocation of insurance schemes is not as individual and customised as it appears to be. Instead, the models are grounded in big data and “credit scores” attributed to individuals based on a range of criteria, which often reflect on problematic differentials such as gender or individual’s postcode. As such, credit scores risk exacerbating social inequalities, which has implications also from a gender perspective. For example, the US focused report “Turning to Fairness: Insurance Discrimination Against Women Today and the Affordable Care Act” (Garrett et al. 2012: 3) states: “Women continue to face unfair and discriminatory practices when obtaining health insurance in the individual market—as well as in the group health insurance market. Women

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are charged more for health coverage simply because they are women, and individual market health plans often exclude coverage for services that only women need, like maternity care.”

Beside discriminating against women directly based on their gender, credit scores also run the risk of discriminating against women, transgender and sex and/or gender diverse people5 indirectly, by tracking postcodes and residential status. O’Neil (2016) argues that the insurance economy works against the poor and empirical evidence shows higher prevalence of poverty in non-male population groups (Chant 2008; Choi et al. 2015; Shelton 2015). Concerns regarding the exacerbation of gender bias through algorithmic bias highlight the need for higher transparency with regard to artificial intelligence and algorithms used in healthcare. Selbst and Barocas (2017: 14) argue about automated decision systems that “[t]he danger of bias increases when these systems are applied, often in non-transparent ways, to critical institutions like criminal justice and healthcare.” Similarly, Price II critiques what he calls “Black Box Medicine” (Price II 2015, 2017) and calls for greater transparency and regulation of algorithmic medicine.6 These steps would, we suggest, also help to prevent gender bias in mHealth.

8 The Use of mHealth The utilisation of mHealth opens new possibilities and challenges. As we have discussed, mHealth technologies enable the visualisation of previously hidden bodily functions and processes. The notion that something ‘given’ is made visible in mHealth goes hand in hand with the attribution of objectivity and neutrality to the numbers that appear on the display of a technical device. For example, the period tracker Flo emphasises that data acquired through the app is reliable, providing user testimonials in its marketing: “I can get scientific information about my body that I can trust” (Flo 2018a: n. p.) and “I am more in tune with my body and I’ve learned things I would have never known otherwise” (Flo 2018b: n. p.). In this regard, Lupton (2013a) argues that in mHealth, physical sensations, are understood

5The term ‘gender diverse people’ refers to identities beyond the gender binary categories of men and women, including non-binary, genderfluid or genderqueer people. The phrasing ‘sex and/or gender diverse people’ acknowledges that some individuals can be both sex and gender diverse (for example intersex and genderfluid), while others might solely be sex or gender diverse. 6In this regard, Price II (2017: 423) argues for greater regulation of algorithmic medicine. According to him: “Patients and providers must trust that algorithms are safe and effective to rely on them, but they lack the experience or knowledge to evaluate algorithms at the point of care, creating a need for systemic regulation. Regulation can help but must walk a fine line: demonstrating safety and efficacy without destroying the flexibility and ongoing innovation that drive algorithmic medicine’s development.”

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as subjective and thus, less reliable. The prioritisation of data generated digitally and outside of the body in mHealth means that this data are ascribed more validity than one’s own bodily sensations (Lupton 2013a, 2017b). This prioritization carries the risk of potential undermining or marginalisation of users’ judgements about their health which can lead to troubling outcomes. For example, similar to the historical androcentric processes we described in medicine and health care above, digital data generated by algorithms grounded in white participant-dominated trials could be assigned authority in the process of the (mis-)diagnosis of people of colour. Or data that are generated by predominantly male-designed technologies could be perceived as more valid than women’s and diversely-identified people’s own experiences with their bodily processes, assigning these experiences less value and relevance. Some (Smith & Vonthethoff 2017: 8) even argue that in mHealth, data become the only accepted ‘truth’. In consequence, algorithm-generated health guidance can potentially also gain significant’authoritative social power’ (see above Green 2008: xiii) and contribute to a further marginalization of structurally disadvantaged groups. The perception of digitally generated data as more valid raises a range of concerns. First, the notion of validity is based on the assumption that logical methods of calculation are independent of space-time and social conditions (Passoth & Wehner 2013: 8). However, not everyone will have the socio-economic conditions and time to engage in regular self-tracking. This is a significantly gendered issue, concerning the prevalence of poverty in women, transgender and sex and/ or gender diverse people as well as women’s higher share of responsibility for unpaid domestic and care work (Chant 2008; Choi et al. 2015; Shelton 2015; Valfort 2017). The issue of unequal opportunities for self-tracking also raises questions about the demands, requirements and responsibilities placed on individuals in mHealth as well as concerns about the accuracy and relevance of resulting digitally produced data. Further issues regarding the use of mHealth, which need to be explored, involve concerns about data handling and security. First, the risk of algorithmic bias raises questions about its impact on individual and public health (Eubanks 2018; Price II 2017; Selbst & Barocas 2017). Further concerns arise regarding privacy issues involved in digital technologies and their implications (Ford & Price II 2016; Selbst & Barocas 2017). It has been noted that some mHealth providers share user data with third parties (Grundy et al. 2019). While some providers, such as the period app Clue (Clue 2019), state that they will only share user data with research institutions, others, such as the period app Flo (Flo 2019), have allegedly shared user data with Facebook (Doward & Soni 2019). Moreover, Lupton (2015a) mentions a 2011 widely publicised data breach when FitBit accidentally uploaded data about users’ sexual activities (recorded as part of exercise) on the internet. Cases like these raise questions whether users know what happens with their data and if they do not, what implications does this carry?7

7There

are also concerns about the ownership of the data and related power dynamics in mHealth. Building on the concept of “datafication of everything“ (Mayer-Schönberger & Cukier 2013:

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9 mHealth’s Philosophically Interesting Effects on Society As we have already mentioned, mHealth is rapidly developing in a world with a digital divide and structural inequities, which has raised concerns about uneven distribution of the technologies’ benefits. More research is required to show exactly how these issues manifest on social and global levels. Even the individual level yet needs to be grasped better by empirical studies. As mHealth technologies are so novel, much remains to be seen about how users incorporate them into their lives and with which implications (Lupton 2013a). Yet, some already contemplate the effects of digital technologies on human perception of corporality and health. In her philosophical analysis of beauty, Heather Widdows (2018) shows that harms deriving from binary and hyper-gendered norms remain or even extend in relation to body dissatisfaction. In her view, these issues are increasingly applying to all genders, with body and beauty ideals also being shaped by dominant norms regarding race, ethnicity, disability or class. (Fig. 5). Furthermore, Haggerty and Ericson (2000) hold that digital technologies abstract from bodies and, as such, simulate ‘data doubles.’ Health then becomes a ‘simulacrum’—a representation of a digitally produced ‘reality.’ Building on their work, Lupton (2013a) points out that ‘data doubles’ might involve a disparity between digital representation of health and how one actually feels. As an example, she discusses the Body Mass Index (BMI)—if the BMI is recorded as ‘normal’ by one digital device, then such data create a simulated ‘healthy body’, notwithstanding how the individual experiences their body. In this regard, she holds that technologies ‘bestow’ meaning on users, just as users shape technologies. In her view (2013a: 396), “[t]echnologies assume certain kinds of capacities, desires and embodiments; they also construct and configure them.” Thus, in her view, technologies which monitor and regulate users’ bodies and health shape how bodies are conceptualised, displayed, touched or managed, not just by health professionals but users themselves. It has been argued by some (Freund 2004; Haggerty & Ericson; Lupton 2013a) that the digitalisation of health has an impact on how health is understood and

94), Minna Ruckenstein and Natasha Dow Schüll (2017) as well as Lupton (2016) raise issues with the ‘datafication’ of health. They argue that digitally collected and stored data are becoming increasingly important. Once body-related data are available in a digital form, data generated in personal and private practices of self-tracking are out of reach of those who generated them and thus belong to commercial entities or governmental organizations (Lupton 2016). This creates an asymmetric relationship between those who produce data and those who process and use them commercially (Ruckenstein & Dow Schüll 2017; boyd & Crawford 2012: 666 f.). In their role as ‘data sources’, individuals perform unpaid and invisible digital work while losing control over the data they create (Ruckenstein & Dow Schüll 2016).

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Fig. 5  Male body standards: a fitness app Instagram post, which links workouts with selfpresentation through selfies. (Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/fitocracy/?hl=en)

performed. In an autoethnographic study on self-measurement for weight reduction Kaiton Williams (2013) was able to show that the data not only seemed more reliable than his ‘body feeling’, but that the data generally took priority over his physical sensations. As soon as he did not consume a certain calculated amount of protein, he felt physically weaker. In his view, data determine the construction of one’s physical condition and one’s subjective perception of the condition. In this regard, Smith and Vonthethoff (2017) argue that self-measuring devices do not improve body functions, but replace them. In some cases, self-tracking might even become the primary goal. As an example, Dudhawala (2017: 121 f.) refers to people walking up and down their homes in order to achieve their daily goal of steps. The incorporation of digital devices into users’ lives might be experienced in complex ways. According to Lupton (2013a), some users might develop intimate relationships and emotional connections with digital devices, perceiving them as friends or health coaches, while others might view them as a burden. We wonder if, perhaps, some users might experience both kind of sentiments at the same time. These contemplations also raise concerns about the surveillance aspect of mHealth. Freund (2004: 273) discusses the “‘technological’ habitus” referring to an “internalised form of control that allows individuals to function in a ‘technological society.’” In his view, this habitus requires specific modes of consciousness which shape one’s subjectivity. Many scholars critically interrogating the impact of digital technologies on users share the notion that these technologies carry potential for social control and are not neutral but embedded in societal power

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relations (Freund 2004; Lupton 2013a, 2015b). Further research studies are needed to unpack exactly how the use of mHealth within particular social structures and forces impacts on individuals and society as well as how these processes and their implications are gendered. Overall, the use of mHealth technologies generates concerns about the technology’s implications for user autonomy. For example, Tamar Sharon (2017) argues that the embeddedness of self-tracking in a culture of surveillance leads to disempowerment. In her view, rather than providing users with more control over themselves, self tracking for health “invites an increased control of others—health promoters, friends and followers, and even the internalized health promoter of one’s own super ego—over oneself” (Sharon 2017: 99). Moreover, pressing issues about data security remain to be explored in regards to bullying and cyberstalking in the digital realm and on social media. Lupton argues that social media platforms “operate in highly normative ways, working to silence dissent and promote one set of opinions over others” (Lupton 2017a: 97). As more and more studies show, communication on social media can indeed show strong tendencies towards social exclusion and morally problematic conflict behaviour, including abusive commentary, cyber-bullying and spreading of misinformation about individuals (Jane 2014; Näsi et al. 2015; Perry & Olsson 2009; Whittaker & Kowalski 2015). This will benefit from future feminist analysis; as in cyberbullying, women and LGBTIQ people8 can be at higher risk of harm (Fladmoe & Nadim 2017; Llorent et al. 2016; Zerach 2016).

10 The Importance of a Feminist Perspective in mHealth Upon our brief overview of the gender aspects of health and mHealth in particular, it seems that the health interests and needs of women, transgender and sex and/or gender diverse people as well as their voices and developer skills are currently not incorporated sufficiently into the broad area of mHealth. This further highlights concerns about mHealth’s ability to serve a diverse population, facilitate good health outcomes for a wide cohort of users and maintain relevance. We suggest that these problems can be addressed when mHealth implements an intersectional feminist perspective (Cho et al. 2013; Doyal 2001; George et al. 2018; Hankivsky & Cormier 2014) to tackle its shortcomings. The concept of intersectionality enables the reflection on and grasping of the ways social identity relates to power. It allows one to analyse how belonging to particular social groups further privileges or disadvantages one disadvantage in society. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), who established the concept, is particularly interested in how the intersections of sexism and racism shape the lives of Black women in ways, that she argues “cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately” (1244). The concept

8LGTBIQ

stands for lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, intersex and queer.

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of intersectionality is particularly useful in identifying how gender intersects with a range of categories of power and disadvantage. Beside race, these can include a particular sexed embodiment, disability, ethnicity, citizenship status, class, religious affiliation etc. An intersectional feminist perspective can 1) help to identify the areas in which gender issues need to be incorporated better and 2) help to develop ideas how to improve mHealth on multiple levels. These steps are crucial to ensure that mHealth is as inclusive as possible and engages with and provides health services to the entire population. The emphasis on inclusiveness and fair distribution of mHealth technology benefits is especially important as mHealth technologies are part of the health sector. Norman Daniels, a philosopher concerned with justice argues that healthcare is special, owing to its impact on opportunity (Daniels 1981, 1985, 2001, 2008). According to him, the special role of healthcare is in the protecting of an individual’s fair share of opportunities in a given society.9 From Daniels’ muchcited Benchmarks of Fairness of Healthcare Reform, the four requirements of the Benchmark of Public Accountability seem especially useful for the area of mHealth: (1) Availability of explicit, public, and detailed procedures for evaluating (mHealth related) plans and practitioners (2) Explicit and democratic procedures for (mHealth related) decisions; (3) Fair grievance procedures and (4) Protection of privacy (Daniels et al. 1996: 59, squared brackets added by authors). Building on Daniels’ argument regarding the impact of healthcare on opportunities, the benchmark of public accountability and rich scholarship on equality and fairness, including feminist theories of structural injustice (Young 2011; Khader 2018), epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007; Medina 2013), gender studies (Butler 1990; Germon 2009; hooks 2000), queer studies (Ahmed 2006; Halberstam 2011; Rich 1980), queer STS (Molldrem & Thakor 2017), critical race studies (Crenshaw 1991; Hall et al. 1997) and critical disability studies (Garland-Thomson 2011; Shakespeare 1998), we believe that it is important that mHealth technologies maximise the inclusiveness and fairness of the health services they provide. From an intersectional feminist perspective (Crenshaw 1991; Collins 2000; Tayor et al. 2011; Cho et al. 2013), it is particularly important for mHealth to be informed by and incorporate health interests and needs of women, transgender and sex and/or gender diverse people, but also reflect on the diversity of the target populations of 9There

are some aspects of Daniels’ theory of justice in health, which one author of this chapter (Tereza Hendl) has critically discussed in detail (Hendl 2015). According to Daniels, the core function of healthcare is to protect ‘normal human functioning’, which he perceives through the lens of “species-typical normal functional organisation” (2001: 3, footnote 1). In his view, disease or disability ‘impair’ normal functioning and as such, restrict the pool of opportunities available to individuals. Thus, he sees the moral importance of healthcare in protecting individuals’ fair share of opportunities by keeping them close to normal functioning. While Daniels’ overall argument that healthcare is special because of its implications for opportunity is convincing, his concept of ‘normal human functioning’, particularly the conceptualisation of an ideal human state as an absence of disability can be critically perceived. Building on the work of critical disability scholars (Garland-Thomson 2011; Shakespeare 1998), issues can be raised with a stigmatising outlook on disability and reflect on the negative impact of disableist views and social environment on the lives of people with impairment.

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particular technologies, to include people of colour; people with a range of sexualities (including asexual people), single or in a variety of relationships (including non-monogamous relationships), people with impairments, various nationalities and language groups etc. The focus on inclusiveness and fairness will increase the chances that mHealth will facilitate just healthcare and equal opportunities. This intersectional approach should be implemented through all stages of mHealth technology development, from design to data handling. At all these stages, it is crucial to consider fairness and responsible procedures in health and health care, gender aspects of the technology, mHealth technology implications for particular gender groups as well as its broad social impact. But perhaps first of all, the values of intersectional gender justice and diversity should be reflected in the tech industry. Here, the diversification of the tech developer workforce matters because a variety of people deserve opportunities to participate in the field. Their participation also matters with respect to the design and content of mHealth technologies. Tech developers define potential users and incorporate the target audience and related ideas into the content of technologies. Judy Wajcman (2002: 274) argues that technical artefacts always carry the ideas and assumptions of those who develop and produce them. Some call this inscription “script” (Akrich 1992: 206) and researchers such as Ellen van Oost (2003) have developed the concept of the “gender script” that reflects on the development process, in which gender can become an explicit or implicit factor. According to van Oost (2003: 195): “Thus, certain technical artefacts are produced explicitly for women or men against the background of certain gender-specific stereotypes, while other artefacts only implicitly reflect gender in the production process, for example by male designers using themselves and their experiences as reference categories in the development process.”

In this regard, the diversification of a tech workforce can have a positive impact on the development of mHealth technologies because a diverse developer team has more chances to approach the development process from a rich variety of perspectives (Hunt et al. 2015; Selbst & Barocas 2017). For example, a recent (Hunt et al. 2015) report by the London based McKinsey business consultancy firm evaluates 366 public companies in a range of industries and countries and identifies that companies with higher gender and ethnic diversity perform significantly better. Vivian Hunt and her colleagues (2015: 12) argue that more diverse teams are better at decision making and innovation, enabling: “[..] objections and alternatives to be explored more efficiently and solutions to emerge more readily and be adopted with greater confidence.” As such, “Ethnically and gender-diverse top teams offer companies more problem-solving tools, broader thinking, and better solutions” (ibid).10

10Hiring

diverse teams also pays off. In the 2015 report “Why diversity matters” Hunt and her colleagues (2015: 1) find, that “[…] companies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians.”

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Consider again the example of the Apple HealthKit, which previously lacked options for tracking the menstrual cycle. Journalist Davey Alba (2015: n. p.) from the U.S. magazine Wired, which is concerned with emerging technologies, comments that “Apple’s initial misstep on not including reproductive health data highlights the importance of including people with diverse views in the process of shaping new technology to serve the most diverse population possible.” We agree with Alba that the participation of a diverse cohort of developers in the industry means that a wider array of voices and experiences gets to inform and shape mHealth. We also acknowledge that the diversification of the tech industry is an ambitious and long-term project. Much like in the case of tackling sexism in medicine, sole gender parity does not address the complexity of the issues but the processes of ‘tech socialisation’ and the overall gender culture in the field need to evolve as well. Through the implementation of an intersectional feminist approach, developers can become more sensitive to gender issues and equipped to bridge the gaps in the consideration of the health needs of structurally marginalised groups. Taking this approach can open up space for creating more inclusive tech with a more relevant content and better and more just health outcomes. The facilitation of equally distributed high quality healthcare requires mHealth technologies informed by and sensitive to issues and inequities related to gender, sexuality, racialisation,11 impairment etc. In other words, technologies, which will reflect on the diversity of populations and specific health needs of particular population groups. The mHealth field already offers some examples of good practice. For example, the period app Clue (Clue 2018a) uses a more inclusive language, based on engagement with and feedback from users and addresses issues such as “having a period when you are trans” (Clue 2018b: n. p.) (Fig. 6).Furthermore, the problem with data breaches caused by commercial apps gave rise to open source apps, such as the period tracker Drip (Drip 2019) or Hamdam (United4Iran 2019). These apps keep user data private and avoid stereotypical ‘cute pink’ design. Progress has also been achieved with respect to the inclusion of a wider cohort of women. Hamdam (United4Iran 2019) offers the first Farsi tracker using a Djalali calendar as well as information about women’s sexual health and legal rights. Moreover, developers behind Hamdam and Drip organised a meeting on feminist period apps as part of the Internet Freedom Festival 2019 and produced an Open Protocol (Open Protocol 2019), which raises issues for further consideration, such as the need to produce gender sensitive apps which acknowledge that periods are not only about women-identified people and involve a multitude of experiences: “app should reflect the difference in experience, some people bleed 28 days, others don’t, what about the menopause?” (Open Protocol 2019: n. p.).

11Many scholars have challenged the very concept of race (Hall et al. 1997; Obasogie 2010; Morning 2014). They have argued that race is not a biologically or genetically significant category but a social construct. While race is not ‘real’ in a biological sense, it is nevertheless real as a category of power and social stratification.

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Fig. 6  Efforts to increase inclusiveness: a period app Instagram post for Berlin Pride. (Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/Bls0rQNHDa8/)

These examples illustrate the promising potential of mHealth and that it can evolve when it is sensitive to gender, employs an intersectional perspective, guided by values of transparency, diversity, inclusiveness, equality, fairness and justice. While the transformation of mHealth into a gender sensitive field is an ambitious and long-term project, here are some suggestions of steps which can be taken in a short term to improve inclusiveness and fairness within mHealth technologies: • engagement of diverse research and development teams, • gender sensitive training for research and development teams, • gender mainstreaming—implementation of an intersectional feminist perspective at all stages of development, • minimisation (and ideally, elimination) of gender and other bias at all stages of development, including in algorithms, • sourcing of diversified data, reflecting on the heterogeneity of the target user group and providing targeted and relevant health knowledge and guidance to particular mHealth users, • engagement with users and seeking and incorporating user feedback on the technology • rigorous testing of algorithmic models and higher transparency about algorithms and automated decision systems, • increased data security and transparency about data handling and data sharing.

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11 Conclusion Medicine and preventative healthcare have long struggled with a gender-specific approach. As a health technology, mHealth is part of the healthcare system and thus, carries the values and norms proliferating the field. This could be enough to argue that mHealth needs a feminist perspective, just like any other health related technology or practice. However, as we have shown, mHealth has a range of novel aspects, such as working with digital data and tech based interventions, utilising algorithms, social media platforms and reinforcing a shift towards individual responsibility for health. These novelties mean that the ethical and social implications of mHealth ought to be considered specifically. While our analysis shows that mHealth carries significant risks for exacerbating gender inequities (and the range of issues and examples discussed by us is far from exhaustive), we have also shown that the field involves exciting potential. We believe that mHealth has the capacity to mitigate gender bias and offer services relevant and beneficent to a wide cohort of users. In order to do so, developers need to have the will to overcome lazy, exclusionist design and stereotypes and engage in cultural change. As we have argued, an intersectional feminist perspective should help them become sensitive towards gender concerns and identify the areas in which gender issues need to be incorporated better as well as develop ideas how to improve mHealth on multiple levels. The elimination of gender and other bias is even more important as mHealth is not just a business, but a health technology, facilitating crucial health services and interfering with people’s health and bodies. As a technology, which is a part of the healthcare system, mHealth has respective responsibilities, including the responsibility to facilitate justice in health. Thus, developers entrenched in dated ideas about mHealth users and their needs ought to engage in dialogues about social inequities and interact with mHealth users and target populations in a responsible way.

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Ectogenesis as the Dilution of Sex or the End of Females? Jordi Vallverdú and Sarah Boix

1 Introduction Technofeminisms1 are dealing with new sets of challenges directly related to the possibilities opened by transhumanism.2 Among the huge list of possible technological advances, we direct our interest towards reproductive technologies, in particular ectogenesis (foetus pregnancy and growth outside a human womb). Although some authors defend the benefits of this technology for the a­ dvancement of gender equality (Bulletti et al. 2011; Murphy 1989;

1The authors want to clarify that the terms “feminism” or “technofeminism”, used all throughout this chapter, do not reflect the existence of a homogeneous meaning expressed by a clear community of thinkers but, instead, convey a rich, diverse and even contradictory set of social agents who are being engaged into the debates about human equality beyond (classic) sexual morphologies. Such debates are being held using different or even opposite points of view about a broad range of topics. 2Transhumanism (usually abbreviated as H+ or h+) is a philosophical concept to define the process of using new technologies to enhance human intellect and/or physiology. This implies an upgrade or modification of human body that could achieve a permanent nature into a posterior era, the posthumanist. A different concept, “singularity” is also used as a temporal moment in which machines and humans will reach similar natures, and consequentially is related to transhumanist and posthumanist debates. This later period would imply the abandon of enhancement of previous bodies because they would have been reached a completely new evolution. See Lilley (2012), Ranisch & Sorgner (2014) or Eden et al. (2015) for more a detailed analysis.

J. Vallverdú (*) · S. Boix  Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain e-mail: [email protected] S. Boix e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_6

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Chavatte-Palmer  et al.  2012), we want to suggest a radically different scenario: the studies on ectogenesis will not liberate women—once they are not ‘limited’ by the duties of childbirth (and care)—nor blur gender differences according to evolutionary requests, but they can rather reinforce the current male gendered dominance (Aristarkhova 2005; Coleman 2017; Smajdor 2007). A study of the situated nature of existing studies and experiments on ectogenesis, as well as a study of the current clashes between the possibilities offered by technology and the more probable biased outcomes will offer us a sound background to think about the limits of technological transformation that are directly related to social pressures, rather than to a “natural or rational outcome” in relation to such technologies. Despite the fact that from a biotechnological perspective embryos have been created without fertilisation by sperm nuclei, consequently eliminating the need of males for reproductive purposes, more intense efforts are being invested into extra womb pregnancy. Biotechnologies, and especially those related to reproductive tasks, are being gendered biased, following a tendency also present into AI and robotics industries and researches (where assistant roles are always ruled by ‘female characters’). At some point, the lemma of xenofeminists of “Gender abolitionism” (Cuboniks 2018; Hester 2018) can become true…but could this abolition to imply the emergence of a neutral gender which true essence was a male reference (for example at bodily level)? Under such scenario, the dilution of females under an over-dominating male-society, thanks to technology, would create a specific scenario: males would not need women for reproducing new human beings. Could it mean the end of the existence of females (as humans able to be pregnant and to give birth), or even a definitive undervaluation of female’s ancient roles in favor of a new male prototype?

2 Transhumanism, Singularity, and Ectogenesis: Why It Is not in the Agenda? Although xenofeminists theoreticians published their manifesto in 2015 (“Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation”) and was released recently a book on this topic (Hester 2018), the blatant truth is that in current worldwide debates on singularity or transhumanism the related debates about feminism are mostly neglected or completely residual. It is not surprising if we take into account an obvious fact: gender issues are still not included among the most ‘hot topics’ for philosophical researches, nor have they been historically part of the academic interests. The human being has been historically conceptualized in Western and Eastern traditions as a male subject, with no biological constraints at his essential nature: a divine being with a pure soul. Even the cognitive approach, more embodied and naturalized, has considered an apparently neutral notion of human cognition not close to the real differences easily found in actual scenarios but at the same time far from the crucial aspect of human life: the skill to reproduce ourselves, a process that marks and determines much bodily and social behaviour. As happened in the past, when the female body was completely neglected

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(Schiebinger 1986), the appearance of it is only related to reproductive processes. This androcentric bias can be traced through Renaissance medical textbooks, like Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1753), up to our days. Contemporary utopias about the human future are not postgendered but, again, male-centered, using this privileged body as a framework for the technological or engineered extension or upgrade. The male archetypes are also expressed and debated mostly by male participants, especially dominant in the fields of technology. Also, very curiously, technofeminisms have been debating crucial aspects of reproductive techniques as one of the leading topics, basically because they particularly affect current (and future) female bodies, as well as all the politics related to them. In a nutshell: reproduction is not in the agenda of cutting-edge researches on utopic or dystopic human scenarios, although it is obviously the key aspect for the possible revolution of human evolution. The basic way of creating new humans is directly related to reproductive processes, now closer to a complete control of their processes under technological manipulation.

3 The Definition, History, and Debates on Ectogenesis Ectogenesis (from the Greek ecto, outer, and genesis, origin) is the artificial reproduction outside the female body (O’reilly 2010: 324), and this word was introduced in 1883 by a paper on pathogenic anatomy to describe bacteria that reproduce outside the body. Nevertheless, this is not the reason for its success, which is rather its use by scientist J.B. Haldane. In 1924 he published an essay Daedalus, or, Science and the Future3 in which he explained ectogenesis and in vitro fertilisation, a work that was an important influence on Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). Although Haldane was a multitalented scientist, some of the ideas of this essay are just mere speculation or mere cultural bias. Not only did he described the great challenge for humanity in relation to ectogenesis, but he also described a key aspect of human evolution, that is, the active selection of men for women through the latter’s faces and beauty (avoiding Paleolithic “fat” archetypes). Interestingly, there is an underlying contradiction between Haldane’s strong support of human enhancement and techno-evolution and the basic technological aspects related to human evolution. For example, he describes the domestication of animals for consumption as indecent: “Consider so simple and time-honored a process as the milking of a cow. The milk which should have been an intimate and almost sacramental bond between mother and child is elicited by the deft fingers of a milk-maid, and drunk, cooked, or even allowed to rot into cheese. We have only to imagine ourselves as drinking any of its other secretions, in order to realize the radical indecency of our relation to the cow” (Haldane, 1924).

3Accessed: March, 28th 2019: https://ia800408.us.archive.org/19/items/Daedalus-OrScience AndTheFuture/daedalus-haldane.pdf.

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Haldane received replies during that decade from several intellectuals from a broad range of disciplines. Anthony M. Ludovici, a nietzschean philosopher, wrote a book (Ludovici 1924) in which he argued against ectogenesis, because it was part of a feminist plot against natural and therefore necessary duties of women (pregnancy and reproduction), as well as its implying the emancipation of women from the domestic sphere and even possibly from their dependence on men (on a social and sexual level). These worries about the perils of women’s emancipation for the sake of the maintenance of the social order had also been previously defended by neurologists like Paul Julius Möbius in his infamous book On the Physiological Idiocy of Women, published in 1900. Some replies supported the idea of ectogenesis as a way to help infertile women or to avoid for the healthy ones the gestation problems and duties (Haire 1927). Following a mechanistic approach embedded with the new posthumanist visions, biochemist J.D. Bernal gave his support to the replacement of malfunctional bodies with efficient machines, in this case, wombs (Yuko 2012). Other voices, like poet and pacifist Vera Brittain, defended natural pregnancy because of the health perils for the child gestated in artificial wombs (Brittain 1929). During the next 4 decades, debates on these topics were scarce. At the beginning of the 70’s, many prominent intellectuals took up the topic again. The main cause was the fundamental and radical book of Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, published in 1970. Firestone considered that not only feminists led their fights against heteropatriarchy, but against the bodies of women, too: the oppression against women has not only cultural roots but also biological ones. One fact, reproduction, was at the backbone of all disadvantages of women, and it should be solved by using technology—especially ectogenesis. Only when freed from birth and care duties could women be equal and decide without pressure over their own paths. This implied the end of the classic understanding of the family. This sharp attack on classic Western parenthood or kinship schemas (which reproduce scalable hierarchical social structures) and on the female bodies was received with great controversy (Merck & Sandorf 2010).The disagreement of feminists over the female body can even be found in authors like Simone de Beauvoir, who created a new philosophical space for the phenomenology of gender or sex, because, up to her work, the human being was idealized as a simple and unified being, obviously under a male stereotype. From this male perspective, men were labeled as “normal”, “positive” or “good” while the woman was relegated to taboo because of her reproductive capacity and menstruation, the latter is still by some women sometimes referred to as “the curse”. Since the menarche, or the first menstruation, de Beauvoir explains, women perceive their bodies as dirty, inferior, because of the bad smell of the ‘impure’ blood, as well as because of the social (male-guided-orientation) disgust towards it. Nevertheless, she explores at the beginnings of the first chapter the origins of humanhood: “As for ordinary women, pregnancy, giving birth, and menstruation diminished their work capacity and condemned them to long periods of impotence; to defend themselves against enemies or to take care of themselves and their children, they needed the protection of warriors and the catch from hunting and fishing

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provided by the males. As there obviously was no birth control, and as nature does not provide woman with sterile periods as it does for other female mammals, frequent pregnancies must have absorbed the greater part of their strength and their time; they were unable to provide for the lives of the children they brought into the world” (de Beauvoir, 2010: 97). There is a critique of the heavy duties of women: “But pregnancy is above all a drama playing itself out in the woman between her and herself. She experiences it both as an enrichment and a mutilation; the fetus is part of her body, and it is a parasite exploiting her; she possesses it, and she is possessed by it; it encapsulates the whole future, and in carrying it, she feels as vast as the world; but this very richness annihilates her, she has the impression of not being anything else. A new existence is going to manifest itself and justify her own existence, she is proud of it; but she also feels like the plaything of obscure forces, she is tossed about, assaulted. What is unique about the pregnant woman is that at the very moment her body transcends itself, it is grasped as immanent: it withdraws into itself in nausea and discomfort; it no longer exists for itself alone and then becomes bigger than it has ever been” (de Beauvoir, 2010: chapter 6, The Mother).4 Even being aware that such oppression can be produced and transmitted by heteropatriarchy, the root of such disadvantage in a competitive society is the differences between males and females in terms of bodily investment at reproductive level (Shefer 1990). As an example of such gendered biases into scientific analysis we need to consider the recent inclusion in 2013 of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) into the canonic psychiatric book Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5) (Epperson et al. 2012). In the book it is said that “after careful scientific review of the evidence, premenstrual dysphoric disorder has been moved from an appendix of DSM-IV (“Criteria Sets and Axes Provided for Further Study”) to Section II of DSM-5” (op. cit: 155), in order to analyze something that is estimated considering “twelve-month prevalence of premenstrual dysphoric disorder is between 1.8% and 5.8% of menstruating women”. It implies to consider that at this very moment between 34 and 109 million of women are suffering from a mental disease because of their menstruations—something unbelievable, that even reinforces the old classic bias against the cognitive properties of women during their fertile days which was recently dismantled by (Sundström & Gingnell 2014). During the same period, empowerment of women about their roles and value increased as we can find into the work of Carol Gilligan In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, from 1982. She considered both classic ethical schools (deontology and consequentialism) male-centered while there was a feminine option: the ethics of care, though the morality of empathic caring, which can be seen as a reformulation of the already existing idea of moral

4Italics are ours, and capture the reluctant perception of some feminisms towards the female body in relation to reproductive processes, something placed into first position of feminist debates by Firestone.

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sentimentalism, but now under feminist glasses. Related to these ideas, ectogenesis was then studied as a technology that could prevent the creation of bonds between parents (especially mothers) and their kinship. This approach was slipping dangerously into a new form of essentialist naturalism which stated that only real or genuine care bonds could be created between natural-born kids and their mothers, something that excluded adopted kids from this process (for example in classic heterosexual couples or single-parent male families), among a large list of possible baby-adults relationships observed elsewhere in human societies and described as nurture kinship (Holland 2012).5 Anyhow, it is clear that at the core of human social evolution care and cooperation are the fundamental glue of such collective complexity (Axelrod 1981). The influential Warnock Report of 1984, says about ectogenesis, at page 72: “We appreciate why the possibility of such a technique arouses so much anxiety. There are however two points to make about this. First, such developments are well into the future, certainly beyond the time horizon within which this inquiry feels it can predict. Secondly, our recommendation is that the growing of a human embryo in vitro beyond fourteen days should be a criminal offence”. It is very sad to see that the 14-days rule has only a religious background, not a scientific one (Cavaliere 2017; Vallverdú & Delgado 2009), and reproduces such bias in legislation. Taking into consideration a more comprehensive analysis of ectogenesis, Singer and Wells published in 1985 the influential book Making babies: the new science and ethics. Elegantly they summarized the state-of-the-art using five reasons for and five objections to ectogenesis, always having in mind the moral debates and argumentation. At the end of the 80’s and the beginning of the next decade some authors (such as Murphy 1989) asked, from a more cautious approach that took into account how ectogenesis could force us, to rethink women’s relations to pregnancy. For example, Cannold (1995) assumed that ectogenesis would become something positive because it would reduce the amount of abortion. The argument was extremely weak, because it is clear that abortions were already present as well in surrogate processes (D’Averta 1987), and nothing except explicit laws could make unfeasible to cancel an ectogenetic process if the implied agents would ask for it (monetary problems, death, divorce, general crisis, severe illness, change of view, spontaneous abortion, and the like). Some countries like Spain even regulated ectogenesis as early as 1987 despite of the absolute technical impossibility of Ectogenesis.6 But for several authors of the next decade, like Mary O’Birne, Adrienne Rich or Andrea Dworkin, ectogenesis was not the freedom panacea but, again, the unification of male-centered and controlled medicine over women’s rights and power. New reproductive techniques were even perceived as being oriented towards

5For

example in polyandric as well as in polygamous societies. to the published Law at (BOE 31/10/1986 – 122/000062 – Art 20: “B) Son infracciones muy graves (…)“s) La ectogénesis o creación de un ser humano individualizado en el laboratorio.” [Are serious faults: ectogenesis or laboratory creation of an individual human being].

6According

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solving primarily the male problems or rights to the obtaining of kids (Becker, 2000). Robyn Rowland even talks about a conspiracy of men against women because of their jealousy of women’s reproductive power (Rowland 1992). The last and more comprehensive approach to ectogenesis was released in 2006 after the publication of a very comprehensive book on the topic (Gelfand & Shook 2006), with a diverse and rich set of contributions, and among them we can find a review of the early ideas of Singer & Wells in 1984.

4 The State of Ectogenesis and Supportive Reproductive Techniques The first scientist who claimed to create human life in a lab was the alchemist Paracelsus in the 16th century. In De natura rerum (1537) he describes his method for creating small men or “homunculi”, something obviously false. John Hunter wrote the first report of artificial insemination in medical literature in 1790, treating a male patient with severe hypospadias (a congenital disorder of the urethra where the urinary opening is not at the usual location on the head of the penis). Hunter advised him to collect his semen in a warmed syringe and inject it into his wife’s vagina (Ombelet & Van Robays 2015). Before we talk about the more recent debates, we’d like to refresh some data about the history of researchers implied into the emerging field of artificial reproduction. An obvious fact can be stated: moral and religious values always present in the discussion of reproductive events. As an example of it, we would like to remind the reader of the moral furor against anesthesia in childbirth which arose in 1846. After Dr. James Simpson began to administer anesthesia, Christian followers, among them several physicians, argued that the Bible required a painful process (Genesis 3:16). In 1849, the editors of one of Canada’s medical journals asked Abraham De Sola, Canada’s first rabbi, to give his interpretation of Genesis 3:16 making a long analysis of this Bible paragraph, concluding that there was a way to justify anesthesia in childbirth (Cohen 1996). James Marion Sims, one of the fathers of gynecology, who perfected his surgical techniques by operating without anesthesia on enslaved black women, also made the first artificial insemination, originally called “artificial fructification”, “artificial fertilization”, “artificial fecundation”, and “artificial impregnation” (Davis & Loughran 2017). According to his records, he performed 55 “artificial fructifications” requiring a “uterine injection” on six patients at his renowned Woman’s Hospital in New York City, one of them even successful although the patient later miscarried (Sims 1884). Moral critics against such medical practices made difficult their implementation and normalization. Walter Heape performed rabbit embryo transfer experiments between 1890 and 1897 (Heape 1891). During the 1930’s and 1940’s some authors tried to study mammalian oocytes and exposed them to spermatozoa with several degrees of unsuccessful results (Pincus & Enzmann 1935; Menkin & Rock 1948). In 1966 some preliminary results about fertilizing human oocytes in vitro were reported (Edwards et al.

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1966). After the 1950’s creation of pioneering oocyte induction by hormonal or chemical treatment, ICF was successfully deployed in the late 1970’s (Steptoe & Edwards 1978) and in the 1990’s was developed intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Meanwhile, in 1958, ectogenesis achieved new results with Westin, Nyberg, and Enhörning, who were the first to describe an extracorporeal perfusion system for human foetuses, and seven years later, in 1965, scientists tried unsuccessfully to connect the umbilical vessels of lamb foetuses to an oxygen exchanger, inside an arterial-venous system (Callaghan 1965). In 1970, with the invention of the ECMO technique (for Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation) some researchers maintained sheep foetuses alive for 55 h (Doppman et al. 1970). With all the mass media interested on such advancements, the birth of Louise Joy Brown in 25 July 1978 (weight 2608 kg) became a fundamental moment in the history of humanity, because she was the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilisation, or IVF. The several miscarried embryos necessary for obtaining her was also topic of intense debates (Squier 1994). Again working on ectogenesis, a Japanese team, led by Yoshinari Kuwabara, used artificial placentas inspired by ECMO as well as extracorporeal oxygenation in their incubator. These were the first successful experiments to keep a goat foetus alive for 165 h (Kuwabara et al. 1987), while the second was alive for 236 h (Kuwabara et al. 1989). Interested in support for newborns, Prof. Kuwabara was also a leading investigator on hormonal and chemical aspects of breast milk (Takeda et al. 1986) and during the next decades he would made important contributions to ectogenesis. After Louise Brown, the second historical benchmark was a sheep: technical advances made possible in 1996 the first cloned mammal, a sheep called Dolly. She was cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer, and that success was received with worldwide interest (Brem & Kühholzer 2002). Meanwhile at Temple University, Dr. Thomas Shaffer created an artificial amniotic fluid for lambs (Shaffer et al. 1996), and other advances made at Leeds were small steps towards human ectogenesis. At the very beginning of the 21st century, Professor Hung-Ching Liu at Cornell University’s Center for Reproductive Medicine built an artificial womb and grew a mouse fetus to nearly full-term in it, and also experimented with human zygotes. She ended the experiment after 10 gestation days because of the 14-days rule (Carlston 2008). Since then she has been growing endometrial human tissue and checking future possibilities. In 2012, Japanese researchers were still making advances in artificial placenta (Miura et al. 2012; Miura et al. 2015), basically interested in improving preterm survival and decreasing neonatal mortality. In 2017 was created an improved artificial womb, a “biobag” that obtained better animal testing results (Partridge et al. 2017). As the authors stated: “Here we report the development of a system that incorporates a pumpless oxygenator circuit connected to the fetus of a lamb via an umbilical cord interface that is maintained within a closed ‘amniotic fluid’ circuit that closely reproduces the environment of the womb. We show that fetal lambs that are developmentally equivalent to the

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extreme premature human infant can be physiologically supported in this extrauterine device for up to 4 weeks”. After that milestone, later research has been exploring the future of ectogenetic reality (Usuda et al. 2017), and recently, in March 2019, the survival of a preterm baby born at the 24th week with a weight of only 268 g are examples for the positive correlation between such laboratory advances and the improvement of neonatal health results.

5 Ectogenesis, Feminism, Technofeminism, and Xenofeminism: From Utopia to Dystopia and Back? Ectogenesis has been a topic of debate among specialists in ethics and medical ethics as well as among feminists thinkers or ethicists. Technofeminisms (de Voss 2019; Wajcman 2004) have been focused on technological aspects of women liberation, and thanks to the work of Donna Haraway (Haraway 2013), the technofeminisms have been explained around the idea of cyberfeminism (Matrix 2001) and the idea of the cyborg (Puente 2008). Basically, these feminisms are WASP feminisms that are even open to see the differences among the feminist discourses as “peripheral”. The main debates about this topic have been controlled by WASP philosophers working in rich countries while feminists living in poor countries have not been interested on the importance of such debates. In that sense, the feminist approaches to technological utopias or dystopias (and ectogenesis is a fundamental hot topic of these conceptual frameworks) are clearly far from being intersectional or decolonial. The youngest version of such technofeminisms is xenofeminism (Hester 2018),7 and they radically blend DIY actions (as with Del-Em), cyberfeminism, posthumanism, accelerationism, neorationalism, materialist feminism. Their call for a new thinking, abandoning any possible hybrid politics that could be inherited from the biopolitics of the cultural traditions. Perhaps it resembles the nietzschean notion of the “Übermensch”, but adding the technological flavour. Just for this reason xenofeminism does not really offer an intersectional approach, but even in this case their conceptual contributions are extremely interesting. After their 2015 manifesto (by the Laboria Cubonicks working group), they have tried to see through technics and feminist glasses, but without inheriting most of such classic ideas. For example, they are anti-naturalist, as well as gender abolitionists, exploring the possibilities that new technologies provide to human beings. Obviously, they borrow some of their ideas from Firestone, and in that sense consider

7Rejecting the claim that science and technology are inherently masculine or patriarchal, Xenofeminism looks at attempts to repurpose technology to liberate women. Xenofeminism stresses that the forces of technology—like any given individual—do not operate in omnipotent isolation but within a complex web of power dynamics.

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ectogenesis as the perfect way to liberate women (or men, or whatever the choice or creation, as Hester 2018: 31 says “Let a hundred sexes bloom!”—reformulated by Open Source Gender Codes) from birth and care. Despite xenofeminists agreement with ecofeminists, who consider techno-science as a patriarchal/anti-nature/ colonial activity, they reject the idea of the necessity of the female body in relation to reproduction. The new technologies should be glued by a xenofeminist sisterhood idea that we consider somehow naïve: why should posthuman or transhuman beings feel themselves part of the same domain? Why cooperate after that moment between us? Besides nice words or wishes, are there some ideas from the cognitive sciences and from the anthropological studies that should be part of this debate: how do we create identity? How can kin be conceptualized or even used to intensify the difference instead of the equality? How do our minds learn from other beings and try to imitate them? The difference can be refamiliarized, it is true, but not without cost. One of the possible outcomes is the loss of empathy. To talk about “solidarity with the alien” (op.cit.: 66) is provocative, but empty. Why should we solidarize with the Other? Is it an emotivist approach to reality (using different bodies, we can enter into a post-cognitive and post-emotivist scenario, completely different, Vallverdú 2017)? Vegans solidarize themselves with cows but anyhow they kill lettuces, defining special ethical thresholds for the validation the murder of living systems murder for feeding purposes. This is an example about how solidarity among beings or species can be modulated according ad hoc rules. And only somebody without knowledge about plant cognition and feelings would say that plants are just things (to-be-eaten). Even taking into account the huge capacity of human beings of putting themselves into another one’s shoes, perhaps we are not truly open to accept any choice, basically because some choices can be harmful or not so advantageous for us. Our socio-embodiment regulates our affordable access to the notion of the “other”. It is curious to see that technofeminisms, like that of Firestone, tend to see technology as a relief or motor of change, as the herald of equality, always from a utopic perspective.8 But what if these technologies were the definite set of tools for keeping safe the heteropatriarchy or some variations of it? Whatever the choice we do, it is beyond any doubt that the role of ectogenesis will be crucial for the evolution of humanity.

8We

could define such feminisms as “techno-euphorical feminisms”. We can find good studies of this trend in (Layne et al, 2010). On the other hand a critical approach to gendered technologies can be found at feminist theory and science and technology studies. Judy Wajcman (Wajcman, 2004) explores the ways in which technologies are gendered both in their design and use. At the same time, she shows how our very subjectivity is shaped by the technoscientific culture of the world we inhabit.

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6 The Epidemiology of Ectogenesis Although we can affirm that medical practices have historically maintained a form of male control over women, and that reproductive technologies have been oriented towards the male help in detriment of women’s welfare, ectogenesis has been the result of two opposite but connected technologies: first, how to help couples (yes, couples, not single or single-parent families) to become fertile, and second, how to help preterm babies to survive. In a nutshell: how to get into the womb and how to get out from it (even prematurely) as safely as possible. Once physicians were able to control the extrauterine fertilization as well as save more preterm babies (23 or 24 gestation weeks is currently the minimum) the obvious question was there: can we do the full process extrauterinely? Surely the answer is “yes” and the success of such process is only a question of time and technological and theoretical advances. Therefore, we can affirm that ectogenesis fills the gap between current reproductive techniques and preterm care. Anyhow, the question here is to think about the epidemiology of ectogenesis9 from a complex or holistic point of view. Two brief preliminary questions: (a) are assisted reproductive technologies successful at the moment? and (b) which are the health consequences of being born preterm? The answer to the first question involves considering several variables such as age, health status, use of donor or personal genetic materials, use of fresh or frozen genetic samples, number of cycles, implantations, as well as techniques (DI, ICSI, IVF, GIFT, ZIFT, ET SET).10 Even for the best case (healthy, fresh samples, young), the success ratio is less than 20%, decreasing considerably for older people. Because of the difficulties and high economic costs, these technologies are still prohibitive to majority of citizens in the world. On the other hand, preterm babies suffer from high levels of mortality or morbidity problems, because, as WHO informs us, around 1 million preterm babies die each year, and those babies who survive can face lifelong physical, neurological or learning disabilities, often at great cost to families and society.11 The combination of failures before fertilization and problems during gestation are still too great at to consider ectogenesis as a viable technology in the near future. Besides, other factors, such as cognitive (inside the womb, see Olza et al. 2012,

9As epidemiology can be defined as the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where) and determinants of health and disease conditions in defined populations, it is possible to consider how ectogenesis can affect health or even produce diseases. For a causal approach to epidemiology we quote Vallverdú (2016). 10Check the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): https://www.cdc. gov/art/artdata/index.html and especially https://nccd.cdc.gov/drh_art/rdPage.aspx?rdReport= DRH_ART.ClinicInfo&rdRequestForward=True&ClinicId=9999&ShowNational=1 for a detailed account of such variables and USA data. Accessed March 31st, 2019. 11See the World Health Organization website: https://www.who.int/features/qa/preterm_babies/ en/, accessed March 31st, 2019.

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2014; Oitzl et al. 2000), affective (intense biochemical bond with the mother), and care are still not completely known. For example, after decades of pressure towards the consumption of formula, neonatal institutions now request human breast milk for the nourishment of the preterm or IUGR (Intrauterine growth restriction) babies. The quality of human milk is so important that despite all attempts it is still not possible to synthesize it in labs (Anderson et al. 1999). The obvious therapeutic value of skin-toskin techniques (kangaroo method, Moore et al. 2016; Feldman et al. 2002) are also fundamental but not explored across ectogenetic literature. Hence, the biochemical mechanisms related to life emergence that happens in women’s bodies during egg maturation, fertilization, implantation, embryo maintenance, delivery (the bacterial transfer through vaginal delivery, but not in C-Sections), or nourishment are of the highest complexity and are still not completely understood. Therefore, over-simplistic approaches to ectogenesis could harm babies rather than making childbirth safer. There is another important aspect: the socioaffective aspects of baby delivery and care. Some classic critics to ectogenesis define it as a technology that could undermine some notions of womanhood (Singer & Wells 1984) as the ectogenetic caregivers would be unnatural. Some authors like (Jeremiah 2006) think that the process of mothering could be preserved despite of the gender the caregiver (a male, a female, a new gender), but even in that case this process of care should be inspired into the female model produced by natural evolution (Ruddick 1995). Some thinkers even point out that at that moment lesbians could or should reclaim for themselves the ideal of motherhood and family (Calhoun 2003). This could be done obviously using a naturalistic and medical analysis of binomial mother-baby coupling, but without entering into the essentialist ideas found in ecofeminism, also embedded with a religious understanding of the human body (as something sacred and wise, but also idealized at the level of maternal behavior: in nature, several spider species practice matriphagy—babies eat their moms after the eclosion—or some spiders, such as Pholcus phalangioides, will prey on their own kind when food is scarce). For chimpanzees, motherhood can be possessive and aggressive with respect to their offspring (Troisi & D’Amato 1984). Natural motherhood has plenty of ‘grades of grey’. It is neither true that the loss of ancestors’ lineage through ectogenesis (to whom would the baby’s genetic data belong or is the company-brand in charge of the process?) would damage these babies, as Leon Richard Kass says (Kass 1979): Piraha tribe do not have numbers in their language and this affect their impossibility of having history as well as of lineage interest (Everett et al. 2005). Nevertheless, they have social bonds and are successfully solving complex human interactions without trauma. Finally, we cannot forget the universal existence of rites of passage related to birth as a fundamental aspect of human existence (Kay 1982; Seline & Stone 2009). Such rituals fulfill both an individual attribution of meaning as well as provide social reproductive structures. Hence, debates about ectogenesis should think about such rites that capture a fundamental social moment: birth. Humans do not see themselves as just “being produced”, but the discourses about birth provide us a personal and untransferable meaning within a human group.

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7 Final Conclusions Ectogenesis is still far from being a reality but current techno-scientific advances give support to the feasibility of its future existence. The cultural and economic aspects behind the research justify a cautionary approach to the possible outcomes of such technology. The consequences can affect individuals such as the babies or the mothers, as well as the societies of our planet. If it is applied, our notions of parenthood, kinship, motherhood, humanity or natural will be completely transformed. In fact, some classic institutions like the family have already been critically affected by new informational pressure (Castells 2004). If current inequalities are just transferred to another level of complexity then the opportunity of changing things will be missed (again). If reproduction becomes male-centered, thanks to these techniques and some other still to be created,12 then this is a bad scenario. We look at the arguments of (Godelier, 2012: 496): “assigning women, but also men, distinct tasks, undervaluing women’s tasks and overvaluing men’s, giving women a minor role in or excluding them from the rites supposed to reproduce the cosmos and life itself, excluding them, in sum, from access to the most spiritual powers,13 are all processes applied in every area of social life and which engender and continually increase the distance and the social inequality between men and women”, and apply them to the new horizon of a world in which reproductive techniques are controlledby males or male-inspired human beings: the rich and specific bonds between humans can be completely changed, with a severe loss of the natural and instinctive connection between females are newborns. On the other hand, all changes will release unexpected outcomes for which surely we do not have answers, yet. One thing is clear: medical safety for mind and bodies must be assured to the newborns. Not blocking precautionary principles should be applied here if enough lab evidence has been obtained. But common-sense applied to the most important aspect of our species, reproduction, is not an easy task. Gestation is an intrinsically female capacity, a life and experience domain still reserved for women, where men have no access or presence in the first person, which leaves them in some way in a situation of disadvantage compared to women. From this point of view, it is easy to imagine that, in fact, the main interested ones on the existence of artificial uterus are men (as well as on strange

12See

the Dentsu nursing assistant for breast feeding, [http://www.dentsu.com/business/showcase/sxsw2019.html] (accessed March 31st, 2019), is an opportunity for co-parenting and feeding or a thread for women if men decide that it is a valuable and fundamental aspect with social recognition? Historical “female occupations” like nailing or cooking were then headed by men when they become artistic forms with huge economic revenues. 13She refers to political-religious powers that undervalued women’s skills for the participation into the social action, summarized under the German motto “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” (Kids, Cooking, and Church), (Godelier, 2012: 497).

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devices for breastfeeding and the legalization of surrogates uterus for rent), because disassociating the gestation of the woman’s body would be a break in the order of things that would serve them to conquer a vital space for mankind that has so far escaped control, to be under that of women. Taking into account the multiple attempts of male domination over intrinsically feminine processes, as has already happened with the control of pregnancy and childbirth through biomedicine, in the West, since the nineteenth century the obstetrics had passed to be in the hands of medical men, considered since then “experts”, to the detriment of the historic role of the midwife. Consequently, it is not unreasonable to imagine that a generalization of the use of artificial uterus would directly result in kidnapping and the extinction of biological motherhood, in all its potential, since then under the domination of men, and no longer of women. This situation would clearly make male enhancement better for a process like gestation, but the same would not happen with women, who would have stolen a capacity and power that was just theirs. Finally, from an evolutionary perspective, all living systems are still under evolutionary pressure, and therefore humans are not a final product but an ongoing project. In that sense, ectogenesis is a new possible step (not just a technique, because it implies a change of human reproductive paradigm) that goes beyond any essentialism and consequently will be blurred with genetic engineering, synthetic biology, robotics or artificial intelligence, the contemporary key aspects of our species organization. Humanity has become humanity thanks to our technical skillfulness: creating tools, machines, languages, ideas, heuristics or even successful social cohesive as moral gods (Purzycki et al. 2016; Whitehouse et al. 2019). At the same time, we cannot uncritically trust future technologies because they are socially driven and, consequently, reflect specific values and interests that are far from neutral. There is not a historical arrow that forces us to accept ectogenesis. The technological dictatorship is also a cultural essentialism. Acknowledgements  Prof. Vallverdú research has been funded by a) the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities within the State Subprogram of Knowledge Generation through the research project FFI2017-85711-P Epistemic innovation: the case of cognitive sciences; and, b) the consolidated research network “Grup d’Estudis Humanístics de Ciència i Tecnologia” (GEHUCT) (“Humanistic Studies of Science and Technology Research Group”), recognised and funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya, reference 2017 SGR 568. Researcher S. Boix has support from eraas-GRAFO.

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Becoming with Technology— the Reconfiguration of Age in the Development of a Digital Memory Training Cordula Endter

1 Introduction To face the challenges of demographic change digital assistive technologies1 play a more and more dominant role in public discourse, scientific research and policy agenda. Therefore, digital technologies like smart carpets, intelligent doors or ambient sensors should assist older people to secure their autonomy as ageing subjects without depending on care of other humans. Despite the question if the imagined potential of these technologies can ever be realized the discourse points out how technology and age are related under the conditions of a growing number of older people and an increasing demand for care: While age and ageing are socioculturally imagined as physical and cognitive decline and depending on care, digital technologies seem to be always ready for use, never tired or grouchy. If one thinks of Pepper,2 for example, this smart and funny companion robot, who can play several instruments, is always polite and has neither a labour union nor a works council behind its back, it gets clear why it seems to be so attractive to delegate care work to machines—at least for those who do not have to use them like middle-aged politicians and young engineers.

1Although 2A

digital technologies addressing older people are not limited to health and care. humanoid robot developed from a French-Japanese joint venture.

C. Endter (*)  German Centre of Gerontology, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_7

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In the logic of technology-driven care,3 technology enables elderly to stay active and healthy and participate in society. Therein, (1) digital health technologies promise to reduce the demand for elderly care and consequently reduce the costs of care. But they are also seen as a (2) promising single market and (3) their funding should foster innovation and strengthen for example Germany’s leading role in innovation. But the promises are not limited to aspects of economy or innovation. In the realm of technocare (4) age and ageing should lose their image as a burden or disease. Instead of losing control over your body or mind technology should take care of you and your physical parameters. In this article I unpack these normative assumptions about technology and age. Therefore, I link aging studies and feminist science and technology studies in order to re-think the age-technology-relation in the development of intelligent care technologies. From a feminist perspective, (1) I query the normativity of the technological fix which is inscribed in the materiality of the technology and defines the agency of the artefact as caring and of its users as in need of technocare. Therein, (2) I think about the potential to overcome stereotyped and ageist representations of older users as frail, vulnerable and in need for technocare.

2 Linking Ageing Studies and Feminist STS in the Context of Age-Assistive Technologies Within aging studies we find a vivid tradition of thinking about age and ageing along with gender (Calasanti & Slevin, 2006; Krekula, 2007; Twigg, 2004; Woodward, 2006). By emphasizing the social construction of age in analogy to gender, Klaus Schroeter for example, deconstructs the normative ascriptions and expectations—such as being active, mobile, socially integrated and healthy—in the discourse of active and successful ageing (Schroeter, 2005). By adopting the concept of “doing gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987) he conceptualizes age as a social praxis and emphasizes the performative character of age as something that has to be done instead of being essentialized as a natural part of the human being (Schroeter, 2007, 2009; see also Laz, 1998). This performative understanding of age and ageing was given further elaboration in studies addressing materiality (Buse & Twigg, 2014; Joyce & Mamo, 2006; Kriebernegg et al. 2014; Tulle, 2015; Twigg, 2004). For example, Julia Twigg emphasizes the notion of clothes and clothing as material practices of configuring

3In the following I will use the trope “technocare” which assumes the delegation of care work to technology. While in den 2010th ambient sensors and their various applications represented the peak of technology-driven care innovation, in the last three years robots and artificial intelligence came into focus. Following Barad’s trope of material-discursive entanglement (2003; 2007) means not to refer to technocare as a stable, independently existing entity, but as an “apparatus that includes particular objects of attention and concern and inseparable knowing subjects” (Suchman 2011: 134), in which meaning and materiality are interlinked.

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the ageing body while at the same time she accentuates the potential of materiality to queer normative assumptions of aged bodies (Twigg, 2010; see also Endter & Kienitz, 2017). Within this turn to materiality technology became a field of interest for aging studies scholars, too (Endter, 2016b; Joyce & Loe, 2010; Kollewe, 2016; Neven, 2010; 2011; Urban, 2017). Herein, (feminist) STS became a central point of reference to think about the co-constitution of age and technology and to describe asymmetrical power relations, exclusion and inequalities and exemplifying what feminist ICT could look like (Bath, 2009, 2011; Leigh Star, 1991; Rommes, Bath & Maass, 2012; Star & Ruhleder, 1994; Suchman, 1987). For example, Rommes et al. have described how gender is inscribed in technology. Referring to Madeleine Akrich (1992), they speak of gender-scripts to exemplify how technology generates and perpetuates gender dichotomies and inequalities (Rommes et al., 1999; see also Oost, 2003). For feminist ageing studies scholars working at the intersection of age and technology these approaches help to re-think the configuration of older people as needing and wanting digital assistive technologies. In this tradition, feminist STS oriented ageing studies offer the possibility to question established scientific discourses on ageing and technology and ask for alternative imaginations of technogenic ageing (Höppner & Urban, 2018; Urban, 2017).4 Against this background, this article explicitly takes on a feminist STS perspective from within aging studies. It describes the power relations that stabilize technology as a proper solution for demographic ageing and negotiates the question how age and older users could be imagined differently in the design process. Furthermore, putting the technological fix in the age-technology discourse into question shades light on the naturalisation of age as physical and cognitive decline and older people as wanting and needing assistive technologies. While the focus in gerontechnology is mostly about usability and acceptance in the interaction of patient or caregivers with technologies (Czaja 1997; Czaja et al. 2013; Czaja et al. 2006; Czaja & Sharit 1998; Neven 2015), conceptualizing technology development from a feminist perspective shifts the focus towards the politics of technology. This implies asking who is determined by whom, whose loss is worth to be compensated by technical aid, and who benefits from the naturalization of age as decline. Therefore, I draw my attention to the “intra-active open-ended performative processes of becoming that reconfigures connectivity, constraints and exclusions” (Suchman et al. 2002: 163) in the alignment of age and technology.5 Lucy

4For

example, Lucy Suchman has explicitly gone beyond the academic debate and has made feminist STS approaches productive for the work in the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Suchman, 1993, 2006; Suchman et al., 2002). 5Suchman uses configuration as an analytical instrument “to think with about the work of drawing the boundaries that reflexively delineate technological objects, and as a conceptual frame for recovering the heterogeneous relations that technologies fold together” (Suchman 2012: 48).

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Suchman describes her research on artificial intelligence in the following: “My interest is not to argue the question of machine agency from first principles, in other words, but rather to take as my focus the study of how the effect of machinesas-agents is generated and the latter’s implications for theorizing the human.” (Suchman 2007: 2) Following Suchman, theorizing the aged human in technology development means to scrutinize the matters of fact about age and technology in the routinized work of the project staff and examine what this work of assembling and reassembling the age-technology-relation means for the older users. This focus on technologies-in-the-making opens up the opportunity to “investigate the imaginative and practical activities through which socio-material relations are reproduced and transformed” (Thygesen & Moser, 2010, p. 131). Thereby the goal is not to unmask the developers as ignorant towards the diversity and complexity of age and older users’ needs, but “to move beyond critique” (Pols 2018: 2)6 by contesting the taken for granted images about age and assistive technologies in an emergent context (Asdal & Moser 2012). This means in Donna Haraway’s words to “stay with the trouble” (Haraway 2016) and to ask who sets “the conditions for practices and for what kind of realities that are made possible” (Thygesen & Moser 2010: 131). In the context of digital health technologies this means to question the taken-forgranted ideology of digital health technology as good care. While most ageing studies scholars are focusing on the dementia-technology-relation between users and artefacts, it is necessary to start already with the design process to understand how age and technology are being co-constituted in the material-discursive practices of the developers. As engineers, computer scientists or social scientists are powerful agents in the constitution of age and technology it is necessary to bring their practices into sight and reveal their hegemonic power in the configuration of technocare. By taking a closer look on their world-making practices—like it is typical for ethnographic research—I am able to reconstruct the sociomaterial pathways of decision making and their inherent power relations that determine the agency of both the artefact and its older users (Akrich, 1992). This also means making visible how the design could have gone differently and how alternative configurations were excluded in the design process. Therefore, to think of technology development as a “matter of care” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011) is a promising approach to intervene into this invisible work (Star & Strauss, 1999). This goes along with Annemarie Mol, Jeanette Pols and Ingunn Moser’s notion of care in practice as “a persistent tinkering in a world full of complex ambivalence and shifting tensions”

6Pols

proposes two approaches. The first one is based on a shift in perspective: “[A] different way of looking at normativity might help us out of the impasse between description and prescription. Researchers use methods, concepts, and devices to help shape their object of research. We might ask what research tools can make what objects visible or invisible, and what are the effects of this?” (Pols 2018: 4) Pols speaks here from “re-scriptive practices” (ibid.). The second approach she names “situated suggestions” (ibid.), in which research results are translated into new context.

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(Mol et al. 2010: 14). They understand these practices of tinkering as a form of doing good care, whereby “[t]he good is not something to pass a judgement on, in general terms and from the outside, but something to do, in practice, as care goes on.” (ibid.: 13). With regard to MemoPlay, my ethnographic case study, this means asking to what extent the actors involved in the development consider their own actions to be good, how dementia and age are articulated in these evaluations and how these material-discursive practices shape the design of the technology. After this theoretical introduction I outline in short, the funding policy background in which the development of intelligent assistive technologies in Germany is embedded and contextualize the funding policy agenda in the discourse of demographic ageing and dementia, before I start with my ethnographic description of the socio-material practices of configuring a digital memory training for older users with mild cognitive impairment. Here, I focus on two actors, Nina, a cognitive psychologist, who was responsible for the scientific based content of the training, and Klaus, a software engineer, who coded the training program and configured the interface. But let me start with a first glimpse on the socio-material entanglements by introducing Elisabeth, one of the eighty test-users of the field test in the final evaluation of the prototype.

3 Getting in Touch with Each Other “I’ve practiced a bit before”, with these words Elisabeth opens the door and invites me in (Endter, 2014b). At the time of my visit, she has been taking part in the final user test of the project for four weeks. As a test person, it is her task to perform a memory training twice a day on her PC. We sit at the desk of her daughter’s former children’s room, where the grandchildren now spend the night when they visit their grandparents. When the grandchildren are away, she conducts her gymnastic exercises in this room, dries the laundry and trains her memory. As a former sports teacher learning and training have always been important parts of her life and it is extremely important for her to stay healthy and fit—also mentally—as she repeatedly emphasizes during the interview. Why am I sitting with Elisabeth in her daughter’s former children’s room? What Elisabeth and I have in common is that we are both entangled with the project MemoPlay. At the time of my visit I worked there as a cultural anthropologist accompanying the development and design of the training platform as part of my field work for my PhD thesis, in which I investigated the co-constitution of age in the development of digital assistive technologies for older people. Elisabeth was a test user, who I visited to study her training practices. While I was interested in the co-constitution of age, Elisabeth wanted to know whether she is still cognitively fit enough or not. “You want to know what you can still do!”, she explained her commitment (Endter, 2014a). By meeting Elisabeth during her training courses, I have not only become familiar with her daily training sessions, her routinized practices of preparation

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before the sessions, like for example switching off the door bell, I also got familiar with her anxieties about getting older or losing her mind. Joanna Latimer has described her entanglement with life sciences in the course of a research project as “being alongside” (Latimer 2019), in which she encountered possibilities of being-in-common with biologists, laboratories and animals under the influence of science policy agendas. For Latimer being alongside became “a matter of holding onto the partialness and intermittency of connection” (ibid.: 281) under the conditions of otherness. Together with Daniel López Gómez she reflects on these relations as “intimate entanglements” (Latimer & López Gómez 2019) to contribute to the ontological as well as ethico-political dimension of exploring the “socio-material constitution of intimacy and its more-than-human constituencies” (ibid.: 251). Being alongside with Elisabeth as an anthropologist doing fieldwork like Latimer I was entangled in the age-technology relation of MemoPlay in the same way as Elisabeth became entangled as a test user. Sitting next to her at the training session and listen to her fear of becoming old my work of knowledge-making became a matter of care in which “knowledge-making and care go hand in hand” (Latimer & López Gómez 2019: 249). In this sense, my ethnography is an ongoing attempt to take care, for example for the users, within the politics of technocare.

4  MemoPlay and the Policy of Active and Assisted Living MemoPlay is a project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in which an interactive online platform for older people with mild cognitive impairments was developed over a period of three years. The platform contains a memory training—its central component—a communication tool to chat or do video telephony and an information sector where the users* find short films and texts about age-specific topics like healthy living, nutrition, mobility and security. The platform can be installed both on a standard tablet and on a PC. The cognitive training consists of six different exercises in which, for example, the older user* has to sort words to colours, mentally rotate geometric objects or compare numerical values. Five of these six tasks must be completed per training unit. The selection of the tasks as well as their degree of difficulty is determined by the program’s algorithm. After each unit a chart appears on the screen that reports the test results back to the user* and compares it with the points already reached. With the help of the training, the cognitive performance of the test persons should improve over the period of the test phase. In order to measure the cognitive performance, the test person has to complete various psychological tests with which their cognitive abilities at the beginning, middle and end of the test phase are measured. The points they reached during training are also counted for the evaluation. In addition, there is a group that also receives an MRI examination at the beginning and end of the user test to check whether there are changes in the neuronal structure that can be traced back to the training. This scientific

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evaluation of the training was a strong motivation for the test users* to participate in the study, as they repeatedly emphasized in the interviews. According to Michel Callon it acted as an interessement device to enrol the older people as participants in the user test (Callon 2006).7 The funding of MemoPlay is placed in the research agenda of active and assisted living (AAL)8 which started in Germany in 2008 to foster the development of digital age-specific technologies to enable older users* an independent living by assisting them in their daily routines at home or provide help to stay mobile and healthy (BMBF 2008, 2013b). Until yet, only few prototypes could be implemented in the market and be used in private households or care homes (Fachinger et al. 2012; Selhofer et al. 2016).9 From a critical gerontologists’ perspective the research agenda of active and assisted living inscribes the ideology of active and successful ageing like it is conceptualized in the policy agenda of “active ageing” (WHO 2002) or the gerontological concept of “successful ageing” (Rowe & Kahn 1997) into the sociomaterial practice of digital health technologies (Endter 2016b, 2018; Latimer 2018; Peine et al. 2015). In its turn to technologies addressing dementia ageing is no longer stigmatized as an age-specific loss of physical capabilities and competences, it is also imagined as cognitive decline and the loss of personhood (World Alzheimer Report 2018). Sociologists working critically on this double stigmatization deconstruct this fear as expression of our ‘cognitive culture’ and modern individualism (Katz 2012). For example Latimer shows in her study on biomedical research how dementia is constructed as “the worst of what ageing does to people” (Latimer 2018: 839; see also Latimer & Puig de la Bellacasa 2011) and at the same time this construction legitimates medical research and intervention. Also Moser outlines Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) as a powerful material-semiotic assemblage that mobilizes different actors like for example scientists who are not innocent that AD became an emergent site of public discourse and policy (Moser 2008). And Cecila Asberg and Jennifer Lum critique the decontextualization and objectification of AD in biomedical imagination and scientific practice and highlight “the subject positions thus rendered available”

7The enrolement of the users* followed a user-centered design approach (DIN EN ISO 9241210:2011-01 (2011); Endter 2016a, 2018). In contrast to convenient usability testing, where tests are conducted in a laboratory under controlled conditions, the user tests in MemoPlay took place at the users' homes where they had to train twice a day over a period of eight weeks. Half of them used a tablet and the others carried out their training on their own personal computer on which the program was installed before by a software engineer of the project. 8Since 2013 AAL is the abbreviation for active and assisted living (AAL) (e.g. http://www.aaleurope.eu/, accessed: 06.10.2018). The renaming mirrors the political agenda of the funding programme referring to active ageing policies. 9This disparity notwithstanding, the funding continues to focus on technology development, which no longer only involves smart sensors and apps, but also robotics and artificial intelligence (BMBF 2018). The lack of assertiveness of the technical applications is justified by acceptance problems and an unclear financing situation. Both problems, as the funding institutions are sure, will, however, be put into perspective over time (BMBF 2013a).

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in the object-subject-positionings of biomedical practices (Åsberg & Lum 2010: 329). Despite the powerful instrumentalization of dementia in the public health and scientific discourses, researchers like Twigg and Christina Buse emphasize the role of materiality to reconfigure the ageing-dementia-relation. In their research they point out how the mundane practices of everyday clothing enable people with dementia to reclaim their status as autonomous subjects (Buse & Twigg 2014, 2015; Twigg 2010). Similarly, Pia Kontos is broadening the empowering scope of embodiment in describing the bodily practices of remembering for example in dancing or singing (Kontos 2004, 2005, 2015).10 And Aagje Swinnen shows how people diagnosed with AD express themselves in poetry slams in a New Yorker day-care hospital (Swinnen 2016; Swinnen & Medeiros 2017; Swinnen & Schweda 2015). These research findings counter-strike the normative image of dementia as a loss of cognitive abilities and personhood, instead they reveal the mundane acts of performatively reconfiguring identity in material-discursive intra-actions. In contrast to interaction—a term that necessitates already figured agents—Karen Barad speaks of “intra-actions” to stress that entities cannot be pre-supposed as already defined humans or non-humans, patients or doctors, users or technology, instead they emerge in ongoing discursive articulations and material formations (Barad 2007: 89). Referring to Barad dementia can be understood as intra-acted “from within, and as part of, the phenomena produced” (ibid.: 56). On the one hand we find dementia discursively figured in neuroscientific and cognitive-psychological studies as a decline of cognitive abilities, but also as a loss of personhood and identity, these scientific figurations of dementia are echoed in public discourses about dementia as a threat or burden either for society or for the welfare state, but these cultural assumptions and normative expectations are intermingled inseparably with material figurations of dementia for example in scientific laboratories (Åsberg & Lum, 2010), clinical memory consultations (Moser, 2008), care practices and environments (Spindler, 2018) or as in my case technology.

5 Careful Knowledge—Evidence-Based KnowledgeMaking as Care Nina is disappointed: “From my point of view, many requirements are not really well met. There was just a lack of understanding among all the partners why this absolutely MUST be the case.” (Endter, 2014b, para. 74). What Nina is concerned with here and what has not been implemented as she has imagined it is the cognitive training of MemoPlay. She did a lot of research on clinical studies about cognitive decline in old age and cognitive stimuli or training. She worked them through and classified them along scientific criteria like study design, methods, participants. Finally, she prioritized the list regarding the project’s mission and derived central aspects for the

10For

the discourse in Germany see (Grebe 2012; Gronemeyer 2013; Newerla 2014).

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configuration of the training. Furthermore, she sought dialogue with other psychologists, contacted doctors, read more research literature and tested other training programmes. Based on this knowledge, she conceptualized and designed 22 exercises, visualised them as sketches, wrote handouts and developed design proposals that also considered the needs and wishes of the users* as ascertained in the requirements analysis. She regularly uploaded these documents to the project server and sent them directly to the computer scientist Klaus. But from her point of view, he rarely asked questions, behaved taciturnly and stated that everything is fine. Although Nina was surprised about his behaviour, she continued her work. A few months later the project staff met for a workshop to discuss the finalized exercises and select those which should be applied in the user test. “And then came the big hammer, more or less!”, the young psychologist remembers (ibid.). The exercises which Klaus had put into practice revealed how little of Nina’s conceptualisations had been implemented. The pictures used in the memory were fuzzy and unused the age-appropriate contrasts in light and colour. The programme reacted “completely slowly and sluggishly” (ibid.: para. 76) and the exercises missed any dynamic or interactive feature. Of course, she is not a computer scientist, the young psychologist explains, but she has enough technical background knowledge to realize that more would have been possible. But whenever she asked Klaus why the technical implementation of her psychological recommendations was not possible, all she got were excuses—“a bit blabla” (ibid.: para. 78)—or he simply did not answer. “But well, I had to swallow that, like so many other things.”, she summarizes her experiences in MemoPlay (ibid.: para. 182). In the conflictual interdisciplinary work, the psychologist sees herself as the one who gives the users “a voice” and asks what “they really need” and legitimates their needs by referring to scientific research (ibid.: para. 248). She perceives herself as responsible to ensure that the technology meets the users* needs. Therefore, she mobilizes her scientific knowledge to configure an evidence-based training. By applicating scientific criteria to the design process Nina takes care for the users*. But this care is limited. In her quest for an evidence-based training program she cannot succeed because of the power asymmetries in the project. Because the participating companies are liable for the success of the project with equity capital they are in a much more powerful position. Due to this asymmetry, in MemoPlay only six exercises are realized although Nina has conceptualised 22.

6 Pragmatic Efficiency—in Negotiation with Complexity Klaus, a reserved and calm man in his mid-fifties, welcomes me in his office in the cellar of a single-family house in a small village in West Germany. Here he does his daily work of software engineering, sometimes together with another work colleague, but mostly alone. The head of the three-men enterprise is rarely present. Most of the time Klaus is working on his own. Then he tries to translate the wishes and ideas of his customers into informatic codes and software programmes, which can be quite a disillusioning process, as he states in the interview.

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In his work he is not only in negotiation with the ideas of others like Nina, but also with the technical infrastructure and their limitations. A task that requires endurance and high frustration tolerance. Customers would regularly underestimate the process of programming. “They always think boom finished!”, he sums up his working experience (Endter, 2014b: para. 38), but as a computer scientist you have to take one step after the other and this would also include slowing down the customer in his wishes and ideas. When I ask him about the cooperation with Nina he explains to me that this has always been good, even though the drafts would have had to be revised again and again. “But that’s the normal procedure.”, he states (ibid.). That’s why everything must be written down exactly and be recorded to guarantee that there are no inconsistencies in the workflow, he continues his explanation. But that’s exactly what Nina did, so why didn’t the cooperation work out? Klaus does not base his work on scientific studies or theory. Instead, he trusts in his many years of work experience as a computer scientist and his experiences from previous AAL-projects. In practice, however, his working experiences get into trouble with Nina’s scientific plans: from the cognitive psychologist’s perspective the latter contain clear-cut instructions on how the user interface should be designed, from Klaus’s point of view they lose their explicitness in the act of translating them into code. Instead they get complex and “messy” (Law 2004) and require “persistent tinkering” and creativity (Mol et al. 2010: 13). For Klaus the plans contain plenty of “small things that can be very annoying, where quite a lot of work has to be done again and again, while nobody has expected something like this during the planning” (Endter, 2014b: para. 70). For some of these “small things” he needs more than two weeks to find a solution “how to get over such a thing” (ibid.). This work requires patience and endurance and is more like “a matter of attentive experimentation” (Mol et al. 2010: 13) than rational choice. By following Klaus’s re-ordering of more-than-human relations it becomes clear that software engineering is not that cold, rational practice it is often supposed to be, instead it reveals an inherent “logic of care”. In his ongoing negotiation with the software Klaus “adapt[s] this, that or the other, and tr[ies] again” (Mol 2008: 53) to find an informatic solution that suits the users* affordances. This practice corresponds to what Mol et al. describe as “good care”: “a persistent tinkering in a world full of complex ambivalence and shifting tensions” (Mol et al. 2010: 14). By persistently engaging in the development process Klaus takes over responsibility for the older users*. Despite technical problems like system defaults and restrictive software features and interdisciplinary misunderstanding he steadily keeps up programming to ensure an age-friendly cognitive training.

7 Lost in Translation—Configuring TechnoCare in MemoPlay Both Nina and Klaus are entangled in the age-technology-relation of MemoPlay: while Nina is scripting plans and guidelines to configure an evidence-based cognitive training, Klaus is persistently tinkering with codes and programs to inscribe

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Ninas’ plans into the materiality of the artefact. In their intertwined socio-material practices they configure an age-friendly cognitive training to prevent dementia and ensure personhood and autonomy of older subjects. With MemoPlay dementia should lose its fearful character and transform in a manageable risk that can be prevented by training. But this empowerment is ambivalent: MemoPlay reassembles the age-technology-relation by reconfiguring age as scalable, quantifiable and plastic. This raises the question of who is caring for whom and how? The development of a prototype is a complex and heterogenous practice enacted by human and non-humans. Their interplay in the sociomaterial context of technology development configures a technical artefact by bringing together different entities. The practice of prototyping has to be understood as a mutual co-constitution of heterogenous entities which are in a permanent struggle of becoming and defining, configuring and reconfiguring, completing and interrupting. Understanding these sociomaterial practices from “alongside” means to take a closer look at the site of becoming as well as the site of ordering. Obviously, technology development aims at constituting a stable artefact, but furthermore it defines a setting of usage and users. In case of AAL the technologies produce a difference between stakeholders like older users, carers, technology. It changes routines as well as spaces. While Nina feels obliged to design exercises that meet scientific criteria and psychological standards, Klaus prefers solutions that are timely and technically feasible. For him, this pragmatism is neither a rejection of Nina’s drafts nor an expression of convenience, but rather it expresses his professional attitude. He sees himself in the role of a mediator between the wishes and ideas of Nina on the one hand and the technical limitations on the other. His actions are not guided by scientific evidence, as with Nina, but by the technical infrastructure as well as by time, competence and know-how. These external and internal factors get into conflict with the scientific demands of the psychologist. For Klaus, they simply cannot be implemented under the conditions of the project. To this, it remains open whether in a different setting, with different project partners*, different technical infrastructures, different time budgets, more interdisciplinary interest and more possibilities to communicate the exercises could have been realised according to the psychologist’s proposals. In the constellation of MemoPlay it was not possible. Here, scientific evidence met with strategic pragmatism and led to a sociomaterial co-configuration of age and technology, in which the psychologist’s knowledge of age and cognition isn’t adequately retrieved in the materiality of the software programme and the online platform. In their relation to MemoPlay they get attached to technology development and age as well as they get detached from it by the “materials of extension” (Latimer) like their scientific studies, their graphs and design sketches. Nina and Klaus do not only negotiate the design of the artefact between each other. The sketches, the cognitive-psychological knowledge or the software codes and hardware limitations are involved in the negotiation of technocare too. Like Nina and Klaus, they affect and effect the developmental process by ordering technocare. Despite their interdisciplinary efforts their relationship is characterized by difference (Suchman 2007, 2011). Joanna Latimer has extensively described these effects in her research on healthcare as well as in her reflections about interdisciplinarity in

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biomedical research on age and ageing. Her approach is also helpful to understand the entanglements in the development of technocare as a care in which human and non-humans relate to each other to configure technical artefacts that should do something good to older users. As Latimer points out, “people become attached and detached to and from things” (Latimer 2019: 269). These attachments and detachments are already taking place in the configurational process and determine the later usage in everyday contexts. Understanding the entanglements of human and non-humans as intimate, affective, and mobile corresponds to Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s claim to reassemble the neglected things of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011). Through focussing on the attachment to things Nina and Klaus care about and for, illuminates their ethical doings in which matter comes to matter in the configuration of an age-assistive digital technology and on how human-nonhuman-relations are re-ordered in the developmental process. But this asymmetry between a scientifically proofed training and its reduced realization in informatic materiality, that is neither able to reassemble the complexity of age nor the elaborate drafts of the psychologist, is not visible for the users. They have to train with a version which, despite political promises, is first and foremost not age-appropriate and far from being intelligent in a more common sense. They are not informed about the reductionist procedures of coding and the conflicts between Nina and Klaus. Instead they are ambitious to achieve good training results and prove themselves not to be old yet—unaware that the prototype is incapable of proofing that. So, whose capability is fostered with age-assistive technologies? Those of Nina or Klaus? Those of the technology? Or those of the users? In considering good care feminist philosophy has reformulated the ideal of the autonomous subject by emphasizing that dependency, relatedness and vulnerability are aspects of all human lives (Beimborn et al., 2016: 321). Andreas Kruse speaks of “Weltgestaltung” und “Selbstgestaltung” when referring to the aged subjects need not only to receive care but also to give care (Kruse, 2014). From this point of view, it has to be questioned if the care, Nina and Klaus are providing, enables the users “to express him or herself and to find acceptance, as the preconditions for a life in dignity are mutual respect, social recognition and the ability to shape one’s own life and participate meaningful in society” (Beimborn et al., 2016: 322).11 I want to explore this question by following Elisabeth in her training’s setting.

8 Ambitious Training—Elisabeth and Her Daily Training Routines “See, I feel into that again!”, Elisabeth exclaims consternated (Endter, 2014a: para. 78). Again, we are in the former children’s room, sitting at the desk with the PC in front of us. Elisabeth sits upright, far in front of the edge of the chair. Her eyes

11The

authors refer to Martha Nussbaum‘s capability approach (2007, 2011).

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are focused on the screen and her right hand is holding the computer mouse tightly, while the other hand is fixing the mouse pad so that it doesn’t slip and costs her unnecessary time. Elisabeth’s task is to assign coloured words correctly, thereby the semantic content of the word and the colour in which the word is written do not correspond. In psychology, this task is referred to as the Stroop test, which measures cognitive performance. For this, as many pairs as possible must be arranged correctly and at the same time the tasks must be processed as quickly as possible. A loud clattering noise is sounding and the word “wrong” appears on the screen. Elisabeth slides nervously back and forth on the chair. With the next round she becomes more secure and her posture relaxes. She smiles at me. It was unpleasant for her to make so many mistakes in my presence. Now she feels better. A few seconds later the chattering noise resounds again and “An error has occurred” appears on the screen. Then the program breaks off. She looks at me questioningly: “Do I have to do this again now? I was just so good!” I nod, she shakes her head. Elisabeth is frustrated. Her points could not get counted. She lets go of the mouse and falls back onto her chair: “Afterwards, when you’re gone, I’ll try again.” (ibid.: para. 90). Elisabeth takes the training very seriously. If the results are unsatisfactory for her, she starts a new training session, sometimes more than three times in a row. In addition, she has integrated the training firmly into her daily routine and trains at alternating times in the morning and afternoon to make sure that the time of day does not negatively influence her results. These procedures not only reflect her personal ambition and motivation, they also give her security and control in a situation where she feels vulnerable. For Elisabeth, participating in the user test means more than just being able to try out a new technological application or contribute to age-appropriate technology development. The main objective for her is to find out whether she is still able to perform cognitively. Being and staying fit are central guidelines of her lifestyle, which have not only become a biographically immanent part of her identity, but also offer her the opportunity to react to crises and insecurities with sporting activity. But facing the technical unpredictability of the program destabilizes her successfully established care arrangement. Her coping strategy to tackle possible physical degradation with willpower and ambition are ineffective in the face of an unpredictable software and an error-prone programme. However, instead of reacting to the termination of the program with the completion of the training, Elisabeth will later sit down at her desk, switch on the computer and start the program again, without being able to avoid that the program again breaks down without counting her points. Thus, a dynamic is established between the constantly ambitious user and the error-prone program, which perpetuates the failure of the user instead of the programme. This disbalance is reinforced by the test setting. Except my visit Elisabeth is doing the training on her own. This means, she is alone with both her failures, that foster her feeling of being old, and with the breakdowns of the system, that inhibit any feedback of her cognitive performance. In the situation of the training, Nina’s scientific care comes to an end in the same way as Klaus’ careful tinkering could not prevent the break off of the prototype during the user test.

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9 Conclusion: About the Ambivalence of TechnoCare and the Limits of Intimate Entanglements In this article, I have tried to point out at the multiplicity of care in the reconfiguration of the age-technology-relation like for example Nina’s onto-epistemological knowledge-making, Klaus’s persistent tinkering, Elisabeth’s intra-actions with MemoPlay as well as my intimate entanglement in the ethnographic fieldwork. All of us have in common that our practices constituted an ongoing negotiation of boundaries between subjects and objects of care, humans and non-humans, participants and bystanders. By taking part in the daily practices of Nina to inscribe scientific knowledge into the design of the interface I could find a careful practice of knowledgemaking that took over responsibility for older people against project hierarchies, funding infrastructures, software parameters and personal misunderstandings. Following Klaus in his entangled universe of binary codes, hardware pre-settings and informational logics I could bring to light the careful practices of tinkering with non-human agents. By describing these practices ethnographically, I could show that technology development is a relational, situated practice with shifting powers and moving targets. It cannot be judged as enabling or paternalistic, instead it is ontologically multiple (Mol, 2002, 2014). In this multiplicity age is configured in the tinkering practices of Klaus and his professional experience as well as in the numerous documents of Nina and her evidence-based knowledge. Johanna Latimer calls such a heterogeneity “a multiple inhabited by a multitude” (Latimer 2019: 277). Against this multiplicity, technology development seems to be the ongoing try to reduce this ontological complexity by 1. materializing the idea that age-specific cognitive decline can be retarded by training, 2. claiming that software programmes and online platforms in particular and digital health technologies in general could be a suitable instrument to prevent cognitive decline and therefore should be funded and developed, 3. assuming that memory training is a neutral instrument that positively affects the wellbeing of the users* and their confidence to cope with age and ageing successfully 4. black boxing the new arenas of self-care and active aging that are reassembled in technocare, 5. turning age in a quantifiable and scalable data that can be transformed into commodities, saleable to health insurances, companies, hospitals or even government, 6. expand the imperative of successful ageing to cognitive abilities. Like Emmanuelle Tulle describes active ageing as “an instrumental orientation towards bodies as part of aging“ (Tulle 2015: 128), MemoPlay brings cognitive abilities into the focus of neoliberal (self-)care regimes.

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As Suchman reminds us that “questions of difference cannot be addressed apart from the more extended frames of reference in which entities are entangled” (Suchman 2011: 121) and proposes the creative elaboration “of the particular dynamic capacities that computationally animated materialities afford, and of the ways that through them humans and nonhumans together can perform different intelligibilities” (ibid.). Following her advice, I have shown how the pre-configuration of age as decline, illness and vulnerability in the policy agendas and the public discourse is repeated in applications and project proposals and determines the technology that is invented. I could reveal how the discourse about age as physical decline and societal burden is turned into a potential of technocare that enables elderly to remain autonomous subjects integrated in social life and actively engaging in society. These material-discursive configurations became unfolded in the materiality of the artefact and produced severe problems for older people struggling not only with age but with digital health technologies and therefore with data security, updates, or infrastructures. Participating as a feminist STS scholar in the development of digital health technologies has to “reclaim and reinvent the politics of relation” (Latimer & López Gómez 2019: 251). This implies to ask critically how one’s own research stabilizes the normative potential of technocare as good. While Puig de la Bellacasa emphasizes “the ethico-political obligations” (2011: 90) that shape our research, reassembling the often-neglected voices, objects, and interest while “staying accountable to the politics, power and privilege involved in such work” (Martin et al. 2015: 630) can be a form of care. This means to understand research as an open-ended and “response-able” (Barad 2007) process of “being alongside” (Latimer 2019) or as Martin et al. have claimed it: “As the contexts in which we work become seemingly more urgent, that is, more critical, we must become even more cautious about how we enact our care. Likewise, the greater success we STS scholars have in worldmaking, the more we have to be accountable to and take responsibility for those whose lives we touch.” (Martin et al., 2015: 635 f.). In the context of digital health technologies this means to stay accountable for the world-making effects of one’s own research and the intimate entanglements in the research process including participation in the configurational practices of programming, designing and testing. Thinking about the technology-age-relation from a feminist STS perspective broadens this reflexivity to the question of intervention. By re-contextualizing the powerful practices of Nina and Klaus as care that is contradictory, multiple and relational instead of objective, quantifiable and mobile is an attempt to intervene into the politics of age and technology as it is powerful enacted in the policy agendas of active and assistive living. Explicating the boundaries, differences and contradictions that constitute technocare scatters the normative power of technocare as good care and opens up the multiple ontologies of the age-technology-relation.

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Fields: Art and Applied Work

“The Origin of the New World”. On Elena Dorfman’s Deus (S)ex-Machina Alexander Matthias Gerner

The Adams and Eves, it was Thought, Would be Lively. Ewan McEwan—MACHINES LIKE ME

1 Introduction Mechane in Aristotle designates the theater machine, which provided for illusion and the effects and dramaturgies of overpowering as in the aleatory principle of Deus ex machina.1

1Aristotle properly criticizes the use of Deus ex Machina in theatre as a trick that interferes in a non-perfect way in the integrity of the plot of a drama or tragedy. Despite this, he does not ban it from his poetics, but, before he stated that the Deus ex machina should be adopted to the principle of likelihood and verisimilitude (to eikos) concerning the coherent behavior of the characters. In the following passage of his poetics he underlines the importance of the outside perspective introduced by Deus ex machina, may it be outside regarding the present time (what happened before or will happen after) or the present place (what happed in another place or will happen after this place) of the drama, thus indicating the mechane as an object and action that leads us outside the actual and towards the other of the actual situation: see: Aristotle (1997: 1454a371454b6, 11).

This research was made possible by a FCT grant Philosophy of Cognitive Enhancement SFRH/ BPD/90360/2012 and is financed by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the scope of the Transitional Standard - DL57/2016/CP CT[12343/2018], in the scientific field of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Position 2404. A. M. Gerner (*)  Centro de Filosofia das Ciências, Departamento de História e Filosofia das Ciências, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_8

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The creation of an absolute experience machine—as an AI sex robot that as well is a companion and even is wished for as a lifetime partner as imagined by David Levy (2007) or recently described in a retro-fiction novel entitled “Machines like me” by the author Ewan McEvan 20192 lies at the core of contemporary uncanny human artistic endeavors reflected as well in techno-scientific praxis. Kathleen Richardson—the initiator of the manifesto and sex robots ban campaign—as a scholar reread the cyborg (as ‘appropriated’ by Donna Haraway in the 90’s) as a “polemical tool to critique social relations, and in this sense, it is similar to the robot” (Richardson 2017: 8). Thus, it seems that the transgressive 90’s with its drive for critical post-humanism 20 to 30 years later has to rethink the topic of human’s real limits of transgression with machinic agential entities that are build under the pretense of gaining or at least simulating full agency, when thinking on how hacking human social relations with artificial agential technical objects might even install our need to renegotiate practical and ontological boundaries especially between technical objects and human beings that many technological post-humanist and ideologists of transhumanism had hoped for. This is one of the reasons that philosophy of technology today is facing entirely new tasks and questions that bounce our questions back to the foundation of techno-anthropology: it has to describe a world full of human, technical transformations induced by new technical objects and systems, including contemporary techno-visions of a human future and sex robotics and its alterity evasion by use and interaction with ICT technologies. John Danaher and Neil McArthur in their book Robot Sex. Social and ethical implications (Danaher and McArthur 2017) express it when saying “Sexbots are coming. However, many people consider the very idea of sex with robots perverse or bizarre”; and besides being in its beginning with companies such as the US-based “Real Doll” and their customizable sex-robot model Harmony— that recently was reflected upon from an art photography point of view in Elena Dorfman’s “The Origin of the New World” Series Dorfman expresses her interest on sex robots as follows: “Origin of the New World is a sequel to my 2004 seminal series of photographs, Still Lovers, which examined the domestic relationships between men and their sex dolls. This current series of photographic light boxes was inspired by Gustave Courbet’s famous painting, Origin of the World (L’Origine du monde), his shocking and erotic portrait of female genitalia created in 1866. My interpretation, Origin of the New World, replaces Courbet’s flesh-and-blood model with a silicone sex doll. Visible only when the light box is switched on, the doll’s prone figure is

2See

the new novel of McEwan with the ambiguous title “Machines Like Me” (2019) in which a ménage á trois between two neighbours and the first marketed artificial male human Adam is fictionalized and set in a counterfactual alternative 1980’s London. The only reason given by the narrator why he buys Adam and not Eve—the female protomodel—is that Eve was sold out already: “Adam was not a sex toy. However, he was capable of sex and possessed functional mucous membranes, in the maintenance of which he consumed half a litter of water each day. While he sat at the table, I observed that he was circumcised, fairly well endowed with copious dark pubic hair. This highly advanced model of artificial human was likely to reflect the appetites of its young creators of code. The Adams and Eves, it was thought, would be lively.” McEwan (2019: 3).

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Fig. 8.1  Elena Dorfman: Origin of the New World is a series of fourteen light boxes (19 1/4 × 23 1/4 inch)

illuminated through a one-way mirror. The darkened mirror—normally used for surveillance and interrogation—is employed here as a device to prompt viewers to consider their own relationship to the subject, as well as the broader issues this post-human figure evokes. The lit box not only references the realism of Courbet’s painting but also the uncanny valley of Duchamp’s Etant donnes, a nude-figured tableau visible only through a peep hole. The psychological tension in this work is a common thread in all of my previous series.” (Dorfman 2019)3 (Fig. 1). More interestingly than the female representation of AI in Ex-Machina, a recent series of photographs of the artist Elena Dorfman, called The Origin of the New World (2018) is such a new reflexive version of a Deus ex sex-machine. Her work pushes the observer into a confrontation between fascination and uncanny repulsion effectuated by an overpowering effect that these photographic images evoke. Dorfman’s work does not only take on the (in)famous explicit painting of L’origine do monde of Courbet but, immediately, drags us into our present time in which sex-things, sex- robots, smart toys and AI dolls invade the media and can be purchased online. These boundary objects and uncanny automata come with a variety of optional features. The purchase involves preference choices of body types, labia, pubic hair styles, lip style, faces and heads, voice options, and skin tones among others all to be preselected. All these choices induce facial, vocal and smart object selection in order to enhance the consumer’s experience. The manufacturer of the company RealDolls4—defined by its designer the artists

3Dorfman,

E. (2019). Retrieved May 13, 2019, from http://elenadorfman.com/the-origin-of-thenew-world/artist-statement/ See as well: Cachot 2017. 4The World’s Finest Love Realdoll. (n. d.). Retrieved from https://www.realdoll.com/ (05.04.2019).

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Matt McMullan in 2015 as “a life-size, anatomically correct, completely posable silicon sex-doll”5 in which he, in order to fulfil his vision to create a genuine bond between man and machine, is “focusing on ways to incorporate technology with what I have already done with the dolls” (ibid.) in the “hope to create something that will arouse someone in an emotional and intellectual level beyond the physical” (ibid.). McMullan created the AI dolls that are the base for Elena Dorfman’s photographic art series. The sex robots of McMullan invade the media and are able to be purchased online with a variety of optional features to be preselected as bodily, facial, vocal and smart objects to be used, desired or handled and interacted with. For McMullan people should have an emotional attachment to these artificial women and men and thus he intended to create not merely a doll but a machinic illusion of a (a) real character behind the doll-object. These dolls should be equipped with (b) robotics/animatronics including facial expressions and the (c) customizable programming of AI of what can be called a (d) programmed personality, and as well as with (e) engineered as if- participation in raction and therefore would be embued with programmed sociality. With RealDoll a play and a game of pretend and make-belief is happening as if the doll Harmony would be on the stage of the fictious character the self-reflective robot Dolores in the TV series Westworld and would have sentiments and feeling about what she likes or dislikes when “feeling” or “touching” someone or something. Therefore, another aim of McMullan is (f) to induce in the humans using a sex robot the development of social attachment and bonding that is “some kind of love for this being” (McMullan 2015)—affection and attachment. Dorfman does not exploit the deviancy of these sexual surrogates, nor the actual feminist political debate on banning sex robots and the asymmetrical relationship (Richardson 2005) between sex-robots and humans, but instead reveals the fascinating world of strange intimacy, sad contemplation, sexual arousal and religious admiration and undefined, but permanent, uncanny valleys (not to be overcome6) (against the sense given by the roboticist Mori) that these silicone bodies in her series precisely without head and faciality might cause. A decade earlier Sherry Turkle in Alone together. Why we expect more from technology and less from each other stated that “technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies […]. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demand of friendship” (Turkle 2011: 1). The topics of intimacy and its artificial engineering in what we can call engineered and programmed experience that is the unilateral experience of

5The

New York Times, Canepari, Z., Cooper, D. & Scott, E. (2015, June 11). Sex Dolls That Talk Back. Robotica Episode 5. Retrieved May 16, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/ technology/robotica-sex-robot-realdoll.html (NY Times 2015, June 11). 6See: Carpenter 2017 and her robot accommodation process theory that in my view overestimates the imaginary diagram of Mori and the “to be overcome” Uncanny valley as a robot engineering and design problem when she augments its scope towards a technology acceptance theory of, for instance sex robots in society.

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intimacy, the topic of companionship or love as well as the topic of friendship show themselves as being the other side of the debate on sex-robots but should not be taken as its center. Nevertheless, intimate technologies are an important topic to debates not only in philosophy of technology but as well in feminist approaches to technology in which not only female sex-robots, but as well male and other sex technology devices are put to debate. In 2017 for example the famous festival of electronic and up-to-date technology-based arts Ars Electronica in Linz hosted a special section on—not only imagined—but artistically actually realized objects of Artificial Intimacy based on techno-art, including the teledildonics project Kissinger7—in which as well the possibility of a kiss with several persons via connected mobile phones is possible, or the video-documentation announced as “First male sex robot” (Sciortino n. d.)8 as well as the female Sex robot Samantha among others. In another art show twenty years ago the American art photographer Dorfman had reflected on surrogate companionship of people living with dolls in her work on Still Lovers (Alexandre 2005), an art project about—“men having sex with 125 lb of perfectly formed synthetic female” (Dorfman 2019a), however, recently in her lightboxes series The Origin of the New World she returned to the topic from a different angle, as she states in an email exchange: “[…] when I began Still Lovers in 1999 it was really to present this lifestyle as ‘real simple’ I did not have a feminist or political agenda. I provided a realistic and emotional portal from which viewers could make their own conclusions. I wanted only to present the multiple questions this topic raises–not to answer them. Now, however, in 2016 when I conceived of and fabricated the Origin lightbox series, much more was known, and my intentions were different. I was much more aware of this particular moment in time when the dolls would be ‘still’, inert, dead, motionless, not walking and talking as they soon will be. At this point, I am less interested in men with dolls and more interested in the merging of female flesh and silicone and all that that does and will entail. Sex dolls are becoming more and more lifelike and women more and more doll-like. The distinctions are blurring. The ‘Dollification’ of women, if you will. Replacing real women with nearly identical replicas is certainly problematic especially as the interest and exposure in these options increases.” (Dorfman9 2019) The blurring distinction of doll/sex-robot and real woman, the dollification as a growing cultural expression, as well as the replacement of real women with identical replicas lies at the core of Dorfman’s artistic reflection on RealDolls standing for the all-new sex-robot that are not only marketed as sex dolls but as well as companions and AI dialogue partners that not only are customizable in their

7Cf:

Cheok, A.D., Kurananayaka, K. & Zhang, E.Y. (2017). K. (n. d.). Making The World’s First Male Sex Doll. Slutever—VICE Video: Documentaries, Films, News Videos. Retrieved May 16, 2019, from https://video.vice.com/ en_us/video/male-dolls/57f41d3556a0a80f54726060. 9E. Dorfman, personal communication, March, 5, 2019. 8Sciortino,

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acquirable product status, but that moreover learn from their costumers on how to behave in a fashion that can be called personalized intimate AI programming. What Intimate technologies are we longing for and do sex robots made of silicon bodies contribute to our equality our hopes and desires? Sex robots on the contrary to other forms of intimate technologies and artefacts according to Danaher et al. (2017: 4 f.) have a (1) humanoid form, (2) show human-like movement and behavior and (3) have some degree of artificial intelligence. Beyond reflecting on ethical or policy issues such as the campaign against sex robots and public debates, this chapter will focus on critically questioning the adoption of the Turing-Church game to sex robots as proposed by Bołtuć (2017). In this approach, different standards to judge the playing game rules of “Good enough Church Turing robots” would be met the conditions of which would be the following: (a) if the robot looks indistinguishable from human beings (at a specified distance) (b) they show behavioral features including motor-expressions required for given task, facial expression and gestures and complex movements such as dancing and walking as indistinguishable from humans, (c) passive touch indistinguishable from touching a human surface-skin (material science issue) (d) active touch showing indistinguishable possibility to touch a human being e actively) meeting the Church-Turing standards with respect of written communication (f) meeting the voiced-based domain of the Church-Turing Standard. Piotr Bultuc calls these hypothetical love-robots “epiphenomenal lovers” and defines “ChurchTuring Lovers as Church-Turing Robots that are just like humans in the area of lovemaking”. The problematization here of the very idea of having not only “sex with robots” (Migotti & Wyatt 2017) but to induce affective profiles in the users of this technology. What a standard engineering approach to sex technology, however, leaves out is the merchandise and customization topic of the female body and the market that is starting to rise: According to the researcher on sex technologies, Kate Devlin—author of Turned on. Sex, Science and Robots: “These days, the sex technology industry is forecast to generate profits worth 22 billion pounds (30 billion US$) worldwide by 2020.” Devlin (2018: 31)

2 Silicon Bodies Build for Perfection and Problematic Notions of Gaze, Objectivation of the Female Body, and Sexual Consent Feminist critics have clearly labelled sex robots as a major take on enhancing male dominance: “Sex robots don’t offer men ‘companionship,’ they offer men complete dominance” (Murphy10 2017) moreover, “[t]he misogynerds at Abyss

10Murphy,

M. (2017, April 28). Sex robots epitomize patriarchy and offer men a solution to the threat of female independence. Retrieved May 16, 2019, from https://www.feministcurrent. com/2017/04/27/sex-robots-epitomize-patriarchy-offer-men-solution-threat-female-independence/.

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Creations say they are ‘inventing the future of sex,’ but what they’ve actually succeeded in creating is the epitome of male domination” (ibid.). The issue of power, and domination as well as the issue of objectifying the female body and a pragmatic approach to people as a sex thing has been put forward in various theories of master and slave in the Hegelian socio-economic and political Marxist tradition, as well as, in sadomasochist approaches to sexuality. The symbolic consequence argument11 has been criticized by Danaher et al. (2017). Nevertheless, the voice of Kate Devlin stands out that besides adhering or not to a critic of power and male domination has added the difference of male technologists developing female (or male—leaving out, for now, the ethics debate specifically of child robots and pedophilia/sex offenders) androids while Devlin calls for the development of sex toys and sex technologies that are based on the assumption of self-pleasure and not start from the problematic issues of the social and the human we and shared sexual agency12 in intimate sexual relationships and their simulations and surrogates when designing tools and automata for a sexual pleasure economy. When reflecting on the topic of sexual objectivation and regimes of gaze (cf. Silverman 2015) and its ethics of the other13 questions arise that include the topic of sexy appearance to the other as a sexual tool- sexiness—and if gazing towards a person in the regime of sexiness and its culture of doing so is ethical—despite our habituation of a liberal pornographic culture and its conveyed images of women. When calling a person sexy, does this mean it actually ignores or “even denies the persons agency, subjectivity, and autonomy” (cf. Lintott et al. 2016)? Or following Martha Nussbaum’s position sexual objectivation does not logically imply incompatibility with egalitarian, consent-based interaction and respect between persons

11“The

common argumentative structure is as follows: (1) Sex robots do/will symbolically represent ethically problematic norms (Symbolic Claim.)/(2) If sex robots do/will symbolically represent ethically problematic sexual norms, then their development and/or use will have negative consequences (Consequential Claim.)/(3) Therefore, the development and/or use of sex robots will have negative consequences and we should probably do something about this. (Warning Claim.)” (Danaher et al. 2017: 107). 12For Migotti & Wyatt (2017: 19) “[…] agency is sexual when one of two things is true of it: either it pays the right sort of attention to sexual organs- taking for granted a rough and ready understanding of what counts as “the right sort of attention”; or it involves a self- conscious understanding of the domain of the sexual whose boundaries may be idiosyncratic. Agency is shared when people do things together with others, as opposed to simply alongside them”. 13Cf. the critic of Simone de Beauvoir of the concept of the other as feminine in Levinas underlining the difference how to talk about technology and sex-robots in the sense of Simone de Beauvoir critic in The Second Sex” of a misreading of “feminine as alterity” and women as the male other in Levinas is important to state in what de Beauvoir calls the masculine privilege of affirmation when talking about women as other or female alterity: “A]lterity is accomplished in the feminine. The term is on the same level as, but in meaning opposed to, consciousness.” I suppose Mr. Levinas” is not forgetting that woman also is consciousness for herself. But it is striking that he deliberately adopts a man’s point of view, disregarding the reciprocity of the subject and the object. When he writes that woman is mystery, he assumes that she is mystery for man. So this apparently objective description is in fact an affirmation of masculine privilege” (deBeauvoir 2015: 67, note 3).

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independent of their biological sex or sexual orientation or—I would add—their porn viewing habits, that might still for some become an inspiration to create sex and pleasure as well as desire technologies and machines. As Nussbaum reminds us “objectivation entails making into a thing, treating as a thing something that is really not a thing […]. Most inanimate objects are standardly regarded as tools of our purposes, though some are regarded as worthy of respect for their beauty, or age, or naturalness. Most inanimate objects are treated as lacking autonomy, though at times we do regard some objects in nature, or even some machines, as having a life of their own. […] Finally, most objects are treated as entities whose experiences and feelings need not be taken into account, though at times we are urged to think differently about parts of the natural environment, whether with illicit anthropomorphizing or not […]” Nussbaum (1995: 258). When applying the sexual objectivation of women debate on sex-robots, we are already talking on the second level of complexity of this debate, as these humanlike, “women or man-like” things are not actually humans or specifically women but are created after a certain (pornographic) image of objectification of imagined women. Still, they are designed for posing in different positions as instrumental sex-ready women with an exchangeable female voice, and they pretend to be gazed at as female looking sex toys-on-demand, (as well today as men or intersex objects with breasts and penis as customizable purchases online), especially when reduced to mere sex-toys. Here we have to think of reverse-objectivation, property14 relations and animation of an artificial android subjectivation strategy that animates things as human-like or woman-like objects as sexual objects. The human interaction with them attributes them certain artificial subjectivation, as-if desires or as-if narratives, especially if their AI algorithm leans from our interaction with them, and leads to as-if boundaries, including our judgment of as-if— boundary—integrity (as-if inviolability, that I would prefer to call breakability in the sense that we talk of sex robots as of objects). Sex Robots can be owned, broken and substituted, but cannot be violated—even if we confusingly attribute to them human-like status. However, if one wants to use them in order for men to learn how to ask for consent as opposed to refusal we confuse the boundaries between humans and automata that look alike humans in ethical dimensions surrounding sexual relations. The very notion of consent has become questionable (Kukla 2018: 72) and other notions in which good-quality sexual negotiation can be interpreted as sexual invitations (Kukla 2018: 81 f.), and gift offers (Kukla 2018: 86) become more central, in which speech is set up for safe frameworks, and sexual activity exit conditions and in which sex and its communication not only prevent harm, but even enables forms of positive bodily agency,15 pleasure,

14Carole

Pateman (1988: 5) that disentangled consent from sexual equality reminds us on the self-relation as a contract with oneself: “The subject of all contracts with which I am concerned is a very special kind of property, the property that individuals are held to own in their persons”. 15“Positive

bodily agency is as much a component of autonomy as is negative freedom from unwanted bodily intrusion” Kukla (2018: 71).

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and fulfilment that would not otherwise be possible. When reflecting on why these android automata are not fully autonomous,16 Nussbaum (1995: 260) can be taken for the problem that autonomy entails, in the sense that it is a) not owned b) notinstrumental c) not merely inert and d) as something whose feelings need to be considered. Mainly this point of a human existential feeling of being that exactly is at the core when debating consent or vulnerability in human—android automata relations has a passive dimension of an otherness that is not given by programmable activity nor by defining it already from the start as something other. In Elena Dorfman’s The Origin of the new world some questions of a feminist critic on male gaze on women in sexual objectivation and bodily fragmentation are put to the test: who poses for whom? The head is spared out as in the original frame of Courbet’s painting L’Origine du monde. Why there is no head neither in the painting nor in Elena Dorfman’s new approach of the sex robot, putting us in a voyeuristic confrontation of a new world? The sex robots have been put in a dramatic frame by draping and lighting into a pose of a famous painting and a religious flair. Does this enhance the pleasure of the observer (male or female) and its gaze for control and the mastery of possession? Do these sex robots that can be purchased stand in for something unattainable in real life? An idealized pornographic ideal woman, for example? Despite the production process having been rendered visible by Dorfman that puts the sex robots in the pose of The Origin of the World just before the final ‘touch’ of the factory, that is, before the marks of the production process are being cleaned away. It seems that the gaze of the observer, the spectator’s spectacle is transformed by a self-reflexive focus as a lightbox that has to be switched on, and thus becomes an exploration in between voyeurism and posing17 in the frame of a lightbox-peepshow. I for myself felt sad while being confronted with this dramaturgy of uncanny sex-exposure. The problem for one lies in the image that has been fleshed out by silicone photo-realistically and hyperphenomenal and endowed with AI in order to communicate with the user of the sex doll. Peeping Tom and his camera weapon come into mind, as well as any kind of violence that the turn- on light gesture might show, when our self-image and the mimetics related to recognizing humans in the mirror transforms into the sex-robot

16See

the critic of autonomy status of machines and thus the fundamental critic of a “machine ethics” in: Weber 2018. 17Posing & Re-Posing: “To strike a pose is to present oneself to the gaze of the other as if one were already frozen, immobilized suspended, that is already a picture […] pose has a strategic value; doubling, mimicking the immobilizing power of the gaze, reflecting it back on itself, pose forces the gaze to surrender. Confronted with a pose, the gaze itself is immobilized, brought to a standstill […] to strike a pose is to pose a threat.” (Owen 1992: 198)/“What do I do when I pose for a photograph? I freeze […] as if anticipating the still I am about to become; mimicking its opacity, its stillness; inscribing, across the surface of my body, photography’s ‘mortification’ of the flesh” (Owen 1992: 210). “If, posing for a photograph, I freeze, it is not in order to assist the photographer, but in some sense to resist him, to protect myself from his immobilizing gaze” (Ibid.: 211).

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posing in the cultural frame of the Origin of the World painting. The question of the modes and type of mimicry and the uncanniness we are confronted with would have to be treated in a whole chapter. Instead, I want to focus on the problem of objectivation, especially Martha Nussbaum classification of the notion of objectivation. I will ask if the praxis of producing, selling and having intimate relations with android sex-robots are objectifying the image of men but after all, foremost women that are mimetically reproduced—leaving, for now, the possibility of queer combinatorics of these fully customizable machines aside—that is as put forward in the symbolic argument about objectivation of women as sex-toys or dolls and slave-objects of pure domination. Nussbaum puts up seven notions of what objectivation might mean. We can take her conception and read them as well as a take on how objectivation might be an integral part not only of sex robot technology but of technology in general, and thus could be discussed in the future in the sense that sex robots are actually able to be gender-sensitive technologies objectified in processes or relations and actions and in their pretended as-if agentiality that distinguishes them from human beings. 1. Instrumentality. For Nussbaum “The objectifier treats the object as a tool for his or her purpose” (Nussbaum 1995: 257). A man purchasing a sex robot online in order to have sex as an expression of object domination18 would be an example of this. However, directly purchasing a woman or a child would be unacceptable as slavery, violence and abuse. At this point, however, a first problem arises when treating sex robots in a symbolic transfer as if being with a sex robot would be leading directly to this sort of objectivation such as slavery and instrumental abuse. Would that mean a cultural or symbolic use of means of objectivation of android human-mimetic women and girls always already19 would be inducing deviant and criminal behavior about human beings? This is a much more difficult question than it might superficially appear as the performative creation of reality is put on stake in intimate actions that have to be seen as political as well. Secondly, as a consequence of the pretend as-if agentiality and the AI endowed talk function as well as the possibility with machine learning as an integral part of sex robots of algorithmically programmed sociality, the creation of personalized affective encounters with humans pose another problem of human bonding towards lifeless machines and its inherent fetishism and revalorizing of the inanimate and artificial.

18Nussbaum

refers to Catharine McKinnon and her objection against pornography, as a context in which women are “presented as sexual objects for domination, conquest, violation, exploitation, possession, or use […]” (McKinnon 1988: 262; cit. in Nussbaum 1995: 249, note 2). 19This case has been put forward by Richardson (2005, 2017, 2018) and is refuted by for example Neil McArthur (2017) or Danaher et al. 2017. I stay agnostic in this chapter towards this debate, however am inclined to attribute social symbolic power to the praxis with sex robots although not wanting to go as far as Richardson in her policy of banning sex robots altogether but of debating the android-like mimesis as a ethically and politically very problematic design issue, that has to be publicly debated and scientifically be researched on.

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2. Denial of autonomy. According to Nussbaum “[t]he objectifier treats the object as lacking autonomy and self-determination”. In the case of David Levy on sex and love with robots, the quest of attributing some autonomy status would be inherent to be able legally to have a liaison with a technically created object and would exactly put this point into question. The attribution of the quasiautonomous status of AI endowed robots is another field of debate and the problem that comes with the attribution of responsibility in case a “user” of these objects gets hurt, who is to be responsible, the company, the policy-makers and legislators, the person that enters in contact? 3. Inertness—that I would understand under the topic of the main passivity and that the object of objectivation is under control of the objectifier. In the case of sex robots that are different from speechless dolls without inherent self-action, the question of attributed as if self-movement and lack of inertness have to be discussed further. 4. Fungibility: the object of objectivation is treated as interchangeable with objects of the same or other types. Here the question of substitution of humans by machines is a topic primarily when the debate on sex robots deals with sexual agency, in which misattribution of real symmetrical co-agency of androids and humans are postulated. 5. Violability. The object lacks boundary integrity as such could be smashed, been broken up or broken/hacked into. 6. Ownership: The most critical fact about sex robots is that you can own them as a thing and you can order them in a variety of features and style. Exploring the website of the maker RealDoll the notion of the colour of skin, eyes, shapes of body parts makes it very clear that the customization or personalization is highly essential when thinking about the desires of users of the products they want to purchase. 7. Denial of Subjectivity might be another point of debate as some may argue that the simulation and pretend play of sex robots can only get more perfect and thus the reality of the distinction between human and machines will disappear entirely in the near future. Even the mix of real parts and projected images of the face and its expression may be a way to go for designers of sex robots. Is building an artificial female body for perfection another form of normative objectivation of the female body? Is this equally related to automatization of desire fulfilment and as such reflects on the perception and norms of the female body? Devlin takes these questions seriously and tries to shift the focus from the mimesis of perfect female bodies to sex technologies for pleasure and masturbation purposes: “There is no escaping that these proto-robots are crude (in more than one sense of the word) hypersexualized representations. Women face body-shaming and criticism every day via media, advertising, film and music. We are held to unrealistic expectations of beauty and shape. Do we want to add to that?” (Devlin 2018: 219). Do problems arise when we question the Objectification of the female/human body as a “cure” for feminism? The alt-right and the scientific endeavor of sex

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robotics and the Feminist concern of objectivation and reduction of a woman to a functioning task-fulfiller: “Now women expect a degree of bodily autonomy, technology has found a way to objectify us again” (Orr 2016). Ethical concerns as well have to handle the problem of economization and utilitarian performance approach to Intimacy in as much as sex robots are perceived and interacted with as intimate partners or artificial desire fulfilments that are socially, programmed to fulfil customizable desires. At this moment moral standards become a problem in debating intimate (smart) technologies: Even if erotic technologies are becoming more popular, still teledildonics as smart sex toys connected to the internet are not the common form of sexuality, despite David Levy’s and others outlook on future intimate technologies. Kate Devlin’s (2018) critical reading of David Levy’s male and hetero-centric and mother-focussed female sexuality perspective, refuting his arguments: “Levy acknowledges that the Baumeister meta-analysis does not mean women do not enjoy sex, but he does suggest that maybe a sex robot could be a solution for those women who are not happy with the sexual demands placed on them by their (assumed male) partners. These demands, he says, are those that ’fail to consider, for example, the levels of fatigue experienced by many mothers due to their child-care roles, especially if they have jobs as well. Uh-huh. Take it from this single mother with a full-time job: men pitching into do their share of the parenting and household labour would be a much better idea. Why suggest a complex solution that involves fixing women when what needs to be fixed is an imbalance of labour?” (Devlin 2018: 187) The question “What is it to have sex?” or even if sex can be defined over the debate on shared sexual agency, or more precisely “What is it to have sex/sexual agency with an android robot?” leads to questions of agency, real or artificially attributed, and if there could ever be shared sexual agency with a programmed android endowed with AI: “[…] as long as the sex robot in question does not exercise real agency—then sexual relationships between human beings will continue to offer something that sexual activity involving sex robots does not” (Migotti & Wyatt 2017: 25). Beyond the non-definition given for “love” or “love-making” the introduction of standards or normative criteria to judge a good enough or even a satisficing approach to a ‘gold standard’ for lovemaking robots is at least surreal: “The satisficing approach in those cases is good enough (Floridi 2007). It would be cool to have the standard for a satisfactory human-like robot: we shall call it the Church-Turing Standard. A robot that satisfies this standard will be called a Church-Turing Robot. It is a robot that is close enough to a human being at the right level of granularity, assessed for a relevant domain. If we fail to meet the standard, we may hit the uncanny valley, a situation when a companion seems more spooky instead of attractive” (Bołtuć 2017: 216). Elena Dorfman’s The Origin of the New World (2018) can be seen as a response to these engineering approaches of androids and as such can be called a new version of a Deus ex machina. However, albeit reproducing sex robots in a pose that could be read as an invitation to use them as sex toys, they are—however—put in a frame

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of voyeuristic self-reflection by the mirrored light-cases that have to be “turned on” first, and when going into detail they still are unfinished models of the sex robots that have to get their finetuning—removing the visible production process of the two silicon body halves being put together and the iron staples of the pubic hair insertion. As such these objects become something else than their RealDoll usable sex toy counterpart. They are images of reflection about us, our desires to what do we want with these machines, and they somehow become asexual or at least weigh as a burden on the gaze of the beholder in a melancholic way. Similar as expressed by the interviewer of Cindy Sherman about her Sex Pictures we could state on the photographic image series of Dorfman: “LICHTENSTEIN They were de-eroticized. They mimicked pornographic poses without producing their effects. They were like specimens/SHERMAN: Right! Yes, they allude to pornography or X-rated photos. However, it is definitely not like that at all” (Sherman n. d.).20 This serial poesis hinted at in Dorfman’s work can be contrasted with the critical posthuman feminist identity and representation in models by self-portraits in Cindy Sherman’s work drawn from western image culture and reinvented by her own model in a range of techniques and praxis of guises and personas, that specially points to comparing Dorfman with Sherman where the latter exceptionally does not appear as model in the series Sex Pictures (1989–1992). Sherman explicitly calls on a critical point for composing her surreal Sex Pictures out of the mannequins: the taking apart and reordering of its parts for her own playful artistic purpose that had not been thought of before in a mere functional approach to the technical model of the artificial body, that I would call a feminist strategy of body hacking: “Sherman: There was a little frustration because the mannequin can’t move exactly the way the human body moves. It can only move in one direction. That’s when I discovered I could take it apart. If I wanted the arms to go around the waist, I would have to remove them at the shoulder and then drape them. That’s where the playing came in — experimenting and taking it apart and seeing what I could imply when it comes apart and when I’ve put it back together again.” (Ibid.) While Sherman takes the dolls and mannequins apart and playfully draping them, the strategy of Elena Dorfman is different. First, she inscribes the sex robot in an iconographic image tradition coming from Courbet’s painting of the Origin of the World—situated in a voyeurism tradition of the male gaze in which the focus on the female sexual organ is put into a promiscuous setting of a readymade automata—sex-toy within the possibility to be used and played with, even that this playing with is one-sided21 (sex) puppet-play as playing against a chess

20Sherman,

C. (n. d.). Cindy Sherman Interview with Therese Lichtenstein, Journal of Contemporary Art. Retrieved May 16, 2019, from http://www.jca-online.com/sherman.html. . 21Similar, the observation of Markus Gabriel (2018: 202; my translation): “Something analogous applies to chess programs: They do not play chess at all. We can play against programs, but then actually only one party plays. (This resembles the situation in which someone uses a sex doll. In this case it would also be wrong to say that sexual intercourse takes place)“.

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program is a one-sided play and no social or relation of two equal players. As the sex robots are not reproductive machines of reproduction nor of sexual relation, but merely advanced automata as elaborated masturbation sex toys to which some people attribute affections and desires, the new world is focused on the merchandisable, functional sex machine, that has to consider the production process, the possible costumizablity and personalization and its sex function use. The draping, however, goes in the divine direction of a Madonna-type lighting, without a head. Dorfman’s missing head/face/faciality or her own self as model and the concentration on the almost perfect product of a sex-doll and robot as customizable ready-made, the sex-ready, Deus (s)ex-Machina change our perception on sex toys and show an economic-cultural change of disappearance of the individual feminist self-portraiture and reappearance of composable feature-based sex-things that can be objectified by serial and algorithmic re-combinatorics that originates a new world of serial technical production of the world in between sex, representation and cultural identity as well as techné and mechane. That is, an overpowering Deus Sex Machina effect that not only takes on the (in)famous explicit painting of L’origine do monde of Courbet, but immediately drags us into a reflection of our time in which sex-things, dollification (in art and daily life) and its nexus of style, gender, technology and re-enchantment or wonder (cf. sex- robots, smart toys and AI dolls) invade the media and are able to be purchased online with a variety of optional features to be preselected as bodily, facial, vocal and smart objects to be used, desired or handled and interacted with.

3 Intimate Affective Computing: Programmable Intimacy with Sex Dolls (See Fig. 2) According to Lambèr Royakkers and Rinie van Est (2016: 3) robots interfere in our social practices in the following aspects: (1) robots can be researched on as information technologies (IT22) this includes ethical and social issues such as how to counter or overcome the digital divide, that means access to this technology and the necessary technical skills, but moreover how to get transparency towards the algorithms used and to decide who owns the data that are created. (2) Secondly, the lifelike and human-like appearance of robots, that I prefer to treat in the radicalization of mimetic technology including human mirroring morphologies and human attributes to technical artefacts and the problems that come with these issues related to anthropomorphization and metaphor-use and problematic issues when comparing or equaling technical automata and artefacts with living human

22“Robots

are IT. This means that social issues such as privacy, cyber security, the digital divide (access to technology, computer skills), algorithmic transparency, and data ownership also play a role in robotics“ (Lambèr et al. 2016: 25).

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Fig. 8.2  Elena Dorfman: Origin of the New World as series of fourteen light boxes (19 1/4 × 23 1/4 inch); Body C Shaved, 2016

beings, (3) the levels of proxy autonomy of robots, and (4) robotization as rationalization. When comparing or equaling we oversee that human-robot relations are (a) non-mutual (b) asymmetrical and (c) non-equal. Unlike mechanoids23 such as the popular Roomba cleaning robot of the company “i-robot Corporation”, animallike and human-like robots are called humanoids; and humanoid robots built to resemble or even mirror human beings aesthetically, their behavior and actions are called androids. Danaher’s 2017 definition of sex robots as necessarily having an android look is challenged by Devlin (2018) who puts sex robots in the tradition of materially embodied dolls and resists the debate that sees a sexual we as the paradigm of social relations nor does she include the possibility of virtual agents such as Avatars (or voice-based assistants as imagined in the film “Her”). For Devlin solo masturbation as a biological experience (for instance, with sex toys) describes the lineage of sex robots better than putting them on equal stance with humanhuman-level encounters of intimacy. Such an interpretation is put forward for example by Migotti and Wyatt (2017) that insist in a “sexual we” or “being sexual together” or even “shared sexual agency” when referring to sexual relations with robots. Thus, Devlin underlines that a majority of women do not need the characteristics of mimicking a human form in order to consider it a sex robot: “Migotti and Wyatt acknowledge the fact that masturbation can be a perfectly fulfilling sexual practice, but it is not included in their definition as it lacks the

23Cf.

Royakkers & v. Est 2016 and cf.: Walters et al. 2008 speak of an anthropomorphic humanlikness scale between meachnic looking and human-like appearance. The human-likeness refers to behavior, human-like appearance.

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sexual ‘we’. Solo sex, they state, would reduce sex robots to mere sex toys. They argue that if sex robots are simple masturbation aids, then they don’t raise any distinctive social, ethical or conceptual problems. I disagree. I would argue that sex robots are a version of sex toys, albeit a more embodied form. They come from the lineage of the sex doll, but they are still only objects, even if they are human-like. Admittedly, that human-like dimension raises exciting questions about attachment and rapport. However, classing sex robots as sex toys don’t rule out social, ethical and conceptual problems” (Devlin 2018: 203 f.). We can subscribe to Devlin’s position, marking sex robots as objects and putting the focus on masturbation devices. Devlin, nevertheless, is aware of the social—ethical and conceptual problems that come with the design of human-like objects- androids—that might in the end not be perceived as such but as actual affective partners, companions and lovers that induce feelings of care, love or attachment.24 In this sense, the deus ex machina problem arises as to the problem of overpowering induced effects that are faking social relations. Another point seems vital in this context: the philosopher of deliberative technology assessment, Armin Grunwald (2018) asks, why robots as companions are so attractive. He indicates that robots serve well as projections for things that we usually expect of human beings as intimate partners, considering that we readily attribute values such as friendship, assistive care, partnership status to these quasi-autonomous artefacts, that we look for in humans, but often cannot easily find with human beings. Grunwald refers to a lack of fulfilment of not attained values such as community, friendship, solidarity, gratitude, kindness, confidence and trust—or even sexual fulfilment—that hinge at the desire for a better or enhanced sociality of human beings concerning others. In the gap between our ideal of human social companionship and the reality humanoids or companion robots in general create, these technical automata may find a niche, as an always ready, well-tempered or as a perfect assistant that supposedly never gets tired to communicate, relate and fulfil our needs with their service. However, we have to ask if proxy objects such as robots can fulfil the desire for human proximity and intimacy. In the sense of Grunwald, we can ask: Does community come into being when the ‘friendly’ Alexa calls us by our name? Does a ‘perfect’ service performance have anything in

24A

big part of the literature on sex with robots goes in the direction of taking the term, “making love” to literal and focus on the asymmetric and one-sided attribution of affection towards the sex technological automata, and the bonding towards it. Cf. therefore the observation of the difference of inertness and possibility and degrees of freedom in for example movement: “If sex robots are to instigate a revolution in our sexual relationships, it may be because they, in virtue of this interactivity, seem potentially capable of having sex with us, rather than merely serving as a passive aid to sexual gratification. Sex robots, as we naturally imagine them and as McMullen describes them, give at least an appearance of exercising the sort of agency required for someone to be our sexual partner, rather than a prop for our sexual imagination. A sex doll- whether the novelty blow up variety or the expensive and realistic appearing RealDoll—differs most importantly from a sex robot in its inertness” (Migotti & Wyatt 2017: 23).

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common with real human intimate proximity, or does such a service only simulate such a need? Can a robot dissipate loneliness and or does it only provide a short time distraction that the loneliness is more comfortable to bear?

4 Problematizing Mechanical and Programmed Sociality as the Power in the Frame of the Monoheteronomic de Facto Model of Technology On the Portuguese island of Madeira in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in 2017 the first scientific conference was held on sex robotics. Despite not taking part, I imagine it had lively debates around David Levy’s and his groups’ prominent position and future outlook on “Love and Sex with robots” and his vision that by 2050 humans would marry (sex) robots. After the first official scientific international meeting, however, the story becomes a bit fuzzier, not only because of the ban of the second conference that was widely in the media and has received a brilliant and equilibrated history told by Kate Devlin’s in her book Turned On. Science, Sex and robots from 2018, but as well as the urge to not only criticize sex robots from a feminist Marxist standpoint and from a techno-anthropological point of view as does Kathleen Richardson that leads to her campaign in order to ban sex robots (Fig. 3). Richardson refers to Harraway’s Cyborg in which technoscience and its artefacts breach the boundaries of real and fiction or human and non-human. However, Richardson does not think that humans and machines should be seen as unifying or being reflected upon in an ontological unity framework—that we can find for

Fig. 8.3  Elena Dorfman: Origin of the New World as series of fourteen light boxes (19 1/4 × 23 1/4 inch) Body A Red Trimmed, 2016

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example in Karen Barad’s agential ontology.25 Moreover, she opposes the view of Bruno Latour’s of things and humans inside an asymmetrical humanism frame but proposes to see the relations of robots and humans as proposed by roboticists as “symmetrical antihumanism” (Richardson 2017: 5). In as much as the feminist critic on or against sex robots stands, the ban of sex robots has not received equal support even from self-declared feminist researchers such as Devlin. Nevertheless, Devlin is a good example to understand what should change when reflecting and designing sex robots, dolls or simply sex technologies, when she fundamentally states her opposition to men that define sex technologies such as robots necessarily as humanoids and against the male default position and normative stance in technology in response to David Levy: “The assumption that sex robots are humanoids and that our relationships with them are framed in a male and monoheteronormative stance is troubling me when moral and ethical arguments presume that as the de facto model. I don’t want to misrepresent Levy, who is clear that he wants everyone to benefit. It’s just that this assumption is made about a vast majority of technology, not just sex robots. And it needs to change./Today, Levy stands by his prediction that marrying robots will someday become acceptable, if not commonplace, although he has extended the date to the year 2050. I’m not as convinced […], but I share his general optimism in some way. His views are hopeful, and his aims are laudable, and the final sentence of his book reflects his wish: ‘great sex on tap for everyone, 24/7’. Like him, I see the potential for happiness; I’m just a little more cautious” (Devlin 2018: 191). Similar to Devlin’s critic of the programmed monoheteronomic stance of technology, Tania Bucher (2018) handles programmed sociality and predefined affective landscapes. When she refers to algorithmic power she underlines the importance of misidentification and attribution of prescribed binary gender roles and norms when it comes down to how for example the algorithms of Amazon permanently confuse

25In

the “posthumanistic performative approach” (Barad 2012: 11) of an ontology of agential apparatuses Karen Barad shows a critical posthuman position that surpasses the mere language critic of critical posthumanism and in which humans are defined by their performative role as part of other agentialities. What is important is the endless connectivity of human and nonhuman apparatuses, bodies, materialities and objects which I will question in further upcoming investigations on the interpersonal face-to-face encounter situation or more precisely in human face to virtual humans or even sex-robot face and human-robot body encounters. For Barad posthumanism does not presuppose anymore that humans could be seen as the measure of all things, as for her not all agential apparatuses are at the scale of human beings, and thus with her account we can pay attention to the practices by which standards between things and humans are produced (cf. Barad 2012: 14). Although the fundamental dichotomy of nature and culture is proposed to be overcome (Barad 2012: 31p) nevertheless the recent appeal not to conceive of all objects of science as Galilean objects, in which terrestrial lifeworld necessities are not taken into account, comes within the demarcation of difference of terrestrial and non-terrestrial objects as proposed to tackle the new geo-social question of the 21st century by Bruno Latour in Où atterrir? Comment s’orienter en politique (2017) and thus put a question mark behind the programs of unification of all agents and agential entities under the same ontological universal frame.

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a transgender person in transition—Robin—that after purchasing make-up is asked by the algorithms of Amazon to buy manly “power tools”: “What seems to bother Robin is not so much the fact that the apparatus is unable to categorize her but the apparent heteronormative assumptions that seem to be reflected in the ways in which these systems work. As a person in transition, her queer subject position is reflected in the ways in which profiling machines do not demarcate a clear, obvious space for her” (Bucher 2018: 103) (Fig. 4 und 5).

Fig. 8.4  Elena Dorfman: Origin of the New World as series of fourteen light boxes (19 1/4 × 23 1/4 inch) Body C Blonde Erect, 2016

Fig. 8.5  Elena Dorfman: Origin of the New World as series of fourteen light boxes (19 1/4 × 23 1/4 inch) Body B Blonde Full, 2016

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5 Conclusion: Reanimating Dead Bodies: Collosus Tradition of Sex-Robots What is this new origin about, when being confronted first with its own image and then after switching on the light boxes of the artist with the dramatically posed female body? Dorfman does not exploit the deviancy of these sexual surrogates, but rather reveals the fascinating world of strange intimacy, state of exception of uncanny perception, sad contemplation, sexual arousal and religious admiration and undefined, but permanent, uncanny valleys (not to be overcome-– against the sense given by the roboticist Mori) that these silicone bodies without faciality might cause. Jean Pierre Vernant describes the Collosus in the Greek tradition as the psychological concept of the double that is employed in the understanding of Elena Dorfman’s series and the relation to sex robotics as shown in the RealDoll example. The missing head and face in Dorfman’s serie could be critically analysed in parallel to the colossus-tradition of the missing body in the Greek funeral rite (Vernant 1962 [2006]; Weigel 2015). Consequentially the substitute sex-object, the sex robot as a figurative colossus would not only function as representation of a sex toy and tool, but as effigies of an ambiguous presence/absence as a double and not only as an image. Therefore, a material automaton and figure functions as a substitute tool that might mediate the experience of alterity between some dead thing, figure or sex robot and the mimickry of aliveness. In the Collosus tradition an acting living body is simulated as if being alive, and at the same time it stands for an absolute lifeless void of absence: Look the sex robot in the eyes, and you will understand! In the photo art series of Elena Dorfman exists an almost too perfect dramaturgy of lighting in an religious Madonna type draping of the sex-objects photographed, that goes beyond mere sex-robot representations: By Dorfman focusing on the production process of these play-things presented as a mirror image of our imaginations and desires or fears with serially different metal -tuckered hair close to its genitals, a visible production-line, where two silicone parts join becomes a visible double of a permanent uncanny non-living object. In the Eidolon tradition three types of doubles are nominated by Vernant in Greek culture a) the ghost (psyche) b) the replacement figurine (colossus), and c) the dream figures (oneirophantoi). Vernaut describes the effect of these eidolons as a kind of trickery, deception or snare (apaté). Again we come back to the idea of the Deus (s)ex Machina: All three trick figures are lacking “Charis”, or “the dazzling brilliance of life” (Vernant 2006). Colossus (and in parallel sex robots) can be a seductive mask—as in Aphrodite mimicking the unattainable Persephone glimpsed as a loved woman’s double. Even more close to our topic of sex-robots, the idea of making love to a substitute colossus or replacement figure is already present in this Greek tradition:

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According to Vernant in a story told by Apollodorus in which the warrior’s body of Protesilaus who dies in battle for Troy cannot be returned home. As the Colossus often served to pin down a double, a ghost or psyche to localize it and make it stay in a particular place to re-establish correct relations between the world of the dead and the world of the living. For exactly that reason, his “inconsolable widow” Ladoameia builds an eidolon double of her husband and, as Vernaut puts it: “Each night she makes love to this double. The Gods take pity on her and send Protesilaus’ psuche back to his loving wife for a moment” (Vernant 2006: 327).

References Alexandre, E. (2005). Elena Dorfman: Still lovers. New York: Channel Photographics. Aristotle, Whalley, G., Baxter, J. & Atherton, P. (1997). Aristotles Poetics. Montreal: McGillQueens University Press. Barad, K. (2012). Agentieller Realismus. Über die Bedeutung materiell-dsikursiver Praktiken. Aus dem Engl. Jürgen Schröder. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Bucher, T. (2018). If … then: Algorithmic power and politics. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Bołtuć, P. (2017). Church-Turing Lovers. In P. Linn, R. Jenkins & K. Abney (Eds.), Robot Ethics 2.0. From autonomous cars to artificial Intelligence. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 214–228 Cheok, A.D., Kurananayaka, K. & Zhang, E.Y. (2017). Lovotics, Human-robot love and sex relationships. In P. Lin, K. Abney & R. Jenkins (Eds.), Robot ethics 2.0: From autonomous cars to artificial intelligence. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 193–213. Cachot, S. (2017). Elena Dorfman: The Origin of the new world. San Francisco: Modernism Inc. Carpenter, J. (2017). Deus Sex Machina: Loving Robot Sex Workers and the Allure of an Insincere Kiss. In J.Danaher & N. McArthur (Eds.), Robot sex: Social and ethical implications. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 261–287. Danaher, J. & McArthur, N. (Eds.) (2017). Robot sex: Social and ethical implications. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. Danaher, J., Earp, B. & Sandberg, A. (2017). Should we campaign against sex-robots? In Danaher, J. & McArthur, N. (Eds.), Robot sex: Social and ethical implications. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 47–72. DeBeauvoir, S. (2015). The Second Sex. London: Vintage Classics. Devlin, K. (2018). Turned on: The science and psychology of sex robots. London, Oxford, New York: Bloomsbury Sigma. Dorfman, E. (2019a). Artist Statement (still lovers). Retrieved from http://elenadorfman.com/ still-lovers/artist-statement/ (last visited on 13.05.2019). Dorfman, E. (2019b). Artist Statement (The origen of the new world). Retrieved from http:// elenadorfman.com/the-origin-of-the-new-world/artist-statement/ (last visited on 13.05.2019). Floridi, L. (2007). Artifiical Companions and Their Philosophical Challenges. E-mentor, May 22, http://www.e-mentor.edu.pl/artykul/index/numer/22/id/498. Gabriel, M. (2018). Der Sinn des Denkens. Berlin: Ullstein. Grunwald, A. (2018). Der unterlegene Mensch. Die Zukunft der Menschheit im Angesicht von Algorithmen, künstlicher Intelligenz und Robotern. München: Riva. Kukla, R. (2018). That’s What She Said: The Language of Sexual Negotiation. Ethics 129(1), 70–97. Retrieved from https://doi:10.1086/698733. Latour, B. (2017). Où atterrir? Comment s’orienter en politique. Paris: Lá Découverte. Levy, D. (2007). Love and sex with robots: The evolution of human-robot relationships. London: Harper Collins.

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Gender Factors and Feminist Values in Living Labs Michael Ahmadi, Anne Weibert, Victoria Wenzelmann, Tanja Ertl, Dave Randall, Peter Tolmie, Volker Wulf, and Nicola Marsden

1 Introduction: Utopia in Tech Design “Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being.” (Solnit 2014)

In this paper, we describe the feminist perspectives that have informed design in the HCI community, and develop an argument for an approach that translates these broad commitments into a pragmatic design space, drawing on emancipatory

M. Ahmadi (*) · A. Weibert · V. Wenzelmann · T. Ertl · D. Randall · P. Tolmie · V. Wulf  Siegen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] A. Weibert e-mail: [email protected] V. Wenzelmann e-mail: [email protected] T. Ertl e-mail: [email protected] D. Randall e-mail: [email protected] P. Tolmie e-mail: [email protected] V. Wulf e-mail: [email protected] N. Marsden  Heilbronn, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_9

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agendas such as participatory design (see Wagner 2018). As designers of technologies, we regard creating research infrastructures that offer safe spaces for the development of user-centered artifacts based on diverse and critical perspectives as not only a utopian vision, but as a practical contribution to a more equal society. Shaowen Bardzell (2014) stresses this point when she states that in envisioning utopias, we are “seeking not so much to predict the future, but rather to imagine a radically better one” (Bardzell 2014: 189). Recognizing that technology shapes social life (Faulkner 2001) and amplifies social practices both good and bad (Toyama 2015), research in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) increasingly focuses on how technology has been developed in the past, and how constructive futures may be envisaged. More and more, academics are inviting multidisciplinarity and embracing ethnographic methods as part of the design of networks and technical artifacts, realizing that innovation cannot be user-centered if designers employ a bird’s-eye perspective (Wulf, Müller et al. 2015; Wulf et al., 2018; Wulf et al. 2011). This leads to an approach that advocates designing socially embedded technologies in real world environments (Wulf, Schmidt et al. 2015). Thus, for some time now, collaboration and participatory design approaches have provided a means for enacting positive social and technological change. If we agree that “those who design technologies are […] designing society” (Faulkner 2001: 82), new questions arise in terms of responsibility for the future shape of the world (Haldrup et al. 2015): How do we design technologies to design a better society for people of all genders? Opening up space for communication does not—on its own—mean understanding other people’s needs and values. Characteristics like self-reflection and empathy are regarded as equally important for technology design as intelligence and innovativeness (Ahmadi et al. 2018). They all are prerequisites for designing truly user-centered technologies (Fogelberg & Eriksson 2014; Herring 2009). Once we gain the ability to understand and empathize, a bigger picture opens up. Participation in long-term collaborative formats helps us to not only gain deeper insights into the lives of others but also to participate in real social contexts in all of the rich and changing nature of human experience. From inside this trustful space where participants meet, findings can empower academics and their so-called ‘subjects’ through (digital) design processes (Ahmadi et al. 2018). This makes every research approach based on participation and openness more than just a method: It is a practical tool to defoliate multi-layered perspectives, bringing them to the fore, creating awareness of what it means to do user-centered design, and creating possibility like skipping stones create waves in water. As “social movements embody activism by group action—a collective aspiration to maintain or change the existing situation” (Fuad-Luke 2009: 26), researchers in the context of a design philosophy that includes user participation can be understood as activists (Haldrup et al. 2015). This is especially true for research in feminist technology design. Embedded in a world that is based on separation and has taught us difference, which we have then internalized and embodied, letting go of these socialized belief systems is difficult. To put it in Tony Fry’s (2012) words: “Making a futural world within ‘the world’ […] is without doubt

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the greatest challenge to imagination that humanity has yet to face” (Fry 2012: 147–148). The solutions we pursue here to create the framework described above are based on the Living Lab approach as we think it is a first step towards giving a design voice to otherwise marginalized design subjects. With this book chapter we would like to share our experiences of setting up our perspective of a Living Lab in the Gender and IT context and contribute to the array of feminist methods for technology design.

2 Problematic Scripts Marginalization and exclusion processes in relation to technology usage, access or development can be considered to be the result of social ‘scripts’ (Wiederman 2005). Scripts are prescribed and anticipated behaviors, actions and consequences in a social system. In a gender context, scripts e.g. reinforce androcentric as well as patriarchic structures and thus cause social actors to follow specific ‘gender roles’ (Lindsey 2015). To state an example, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields are commonly perceived as overtly masculine constructions (Cheryan et al. 2015) leading to barriers to female participation because of hostile environments, pay gaps, a lack of mentorship or role models and more (e.g. Blackwell et al. 2009; Gregory 2003; Von Hellens et al. 2001). This has been noted as one reason for the low participation rate of women in IT workspaces, limiting their potential as well as their career opportunities (Holtzblatt & Marsden 2018). It seems natural that social scripts then influence scripts embedded into technology (‘technological scripts’) (Akrich 1992, 1995) leading to decreased user experiences or even exclusion. Since the 1970s a considerable amount of feminist literature, especially in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), confronts masculine engineering encounters and shows the gendered nature of (particularly domestic) technology (e.g. Cockburn 1983, 1997; Cockburn & Ormrod 1993; Wajcman 1991, 2009). More concretely, previous studies showed the results of problematic gender scripts (Oudshoorn et al. 2004; Rommes 2002) or, important from an intersectional lens, discriminatory ethnicity scripts embedded into technology (Hankerson et al. 2016). Ellen van Oost (2003) showed how electric shavers from the Philips company were biased in terms of their design when the corporation started producing for a female target group in the 1950s. In her latest book, Caroline Criado Perez (2019) provides us with further practical examples of attitudes, behaviors and needs of women largely being ignored in design. This is manifested, for instance, in the design of the stove, the limits of speech recognition systems (see also Churchill 2010), the ‘chronic gaps’ in medical data with respect to women’s illnesses, the design of the motor car (it seems that women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a motor accident, largely as a consequence of the positioning of foot pedals), the breast pump, fitness monitors, VR headsets (see also Gäckle et al. 2018), mobile phone screen size, and so on. So, what is going wrong during the design process? Mostly, design

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teams are comprised predominantly of young, white, educated men—the ‘sea of dudes’ (Clark 2016), as Margaret Mitchell terms them. This means that design decisions are often based upon ‘dude’ assumptions or tastes, a technique called “I-methodology.” Technology scripts hence display designers’ visions of the world (Bath 2014) which are then inscribed into the technology (Akrich 1992, 1995). Our point is that many of these ideas, assumptions and values represent a largely unreflective male positionality, based on user representations which substantially ignore women. There is, of course, no reason why this must be so (see for examples of an explicitly feminist design, Dimond 2012; D’Ignazio et al. 2016; Fiesler et al. 2016), but the evidence attested to above demonstrates that it is so in large part. Indeed, in the context of software design, its gendered aspects are manifest (Aaltojärvi 2012; Oudshoorn et al. 2004; Rommes 2002). It is also important to consider that such design assumptions are rarely a product of ‘malicious intent.’ The mindsets and perceptions of developers inevitably influence design decisions and technology can never be neutral (Bratteteig 2002; Marsden & Haag 2016). We are all susceptible to implicit and unconscious bias and all lack a degree of awareness (Greenwald & Krieger 2006), which is especially true in terms of gender (Eagly & Mladinic 1989; Eccles et al. 1990) with gender being either an explicit or implicit element when developing technology (van Oost 2003). This makes it all the more challenging to think about how we can work against such mechanisms. When technology (and hence its creation process) is considered to be a social construction (Bijker et al. 1987), this means that we are able to ‘rewrite’ scripts. Tackling gender issues in design is possible but it needs a comprehensive approach and a feminist perspective on the whole process as Corinna Bath (2014: 58) points out: “[…] A deeper understanding of the mechanisms that are at work when technology artefacts are gendered, however, is a crucial prerequisite for making suggestions for an alternative design that might be called feminist. In order to be able to change the design of artefacts and apply more appropriate design methods, designers of technologies need to know in which sense their artefacts might be problematic.”

What such an alternative, feminist design might look like and how its production process has to evolve remains however a question to debate. Research has shown that designing for specific target groups as well as “for everyone” (Oudshoorn et al. 2004) can result in problematic gender scripts because of stereotypic and thus problematic anticipation of users’ needs and behaviors. Integrating gender aspects by taking into account diverse users might be a step forward and leads us to collaborative methods like “Participatory Design”1 (PD) (Ehn 1993)

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Participatory Design (PD), participants such as potential, future users are involved in the innovation design process together with designers, researchers etc. It has a strong moral and political (democratic) stance, as the cooperative tasks aim not only at user friendly design but also at including (marginalized) users in all design decisions as a matter of emancipation (Wagner 2018).

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or frameworks building upon this tradition like “Grounded Design” (Rohde et al. 2017). Scholars such as Tone Bratteteig (2002: 103) advocate a PD approach claiming that “the design process itself would benefit from having different sets of experiences as bases for ideas and visions, which is a reason for advocating participatory design.” One might however argue that such a view is still not sufficient to create substantial changes as associated issues take place in a cultural context which involves people with a multiplicity of identities, perspectives, experiences and biases (Maguire 1996). We propose Living Labs as a way to tackle the abovementioned issues in design (Ahmadi et al. 2018). Living Labs, where technologies for women can be introduced, tested and modified in accordance with women’s design decisions, seem an obvious candidate for rectifying staggering biases and understanding complex problem situations. This seems like an adequate fit as “the active involvement of practitioners and researchers in complex live settings characterized as networks is not yet well understood; Living Labs attempt to address this” (Higgins & Klein 2011). In the following we will explain why we believe that a Living Lab offers an adequate research infrastructure to pay attention to feminist values and rewrite social as well as technological scripts. To make our descriptions more vivid, we will later describe lessons learned from the establishment of two Living Lab projects. Firstly, though, we will describe Living Labs in more detail.

3 Living Lab Approach: Now and Then Living Labs (for a detailed overview see Ahmadi et al. 2018; Ogonowski et al. 2018) provide a holistic approach to the creation of ICT artifacts by entailing a long-term co-design philosophy. Because of the cooperation with diverse stakeholders they offer researchers as well as participants a broad view on a problem situation (Ogonowski et al. 2013). Since their emergence, Livings Labs’ main ambition has been the creation of social change linked with a strong focus on collaboration with research participants; as they aspire to reach “a deep level of understanding and insights based on real-world experiences, and when a changed behavior is a desired outcome, a Living Lab approach is useful” (Ståhlbröst & Holst 2017: 31). Despite Living Lab research is tending to focus on technical innovation, we argued (Ahmadi et al. 2018) that a Living Lab infrastructure can be used to foster any kind of innovation in a social system (such as innovative formats in organizations etc.). The creation, introduction and exploration of innovative ideas is as important as the introduction and testing of technologies. Regardless, technology introduction into a field is not understood as ‘l’art pour l’art’ (as we will lay out in the next chapter) but as a matter of recognizing how social and technological (sociotechnical) aspects go hand in hand. The definition of a Living Lab as “a design research methodology aimed at co-creating innovation through the involvement of aware users in a real-life setting” (Dell’Era & Landoni 2014: 139) underlies this view.

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Although methodologically flexible in principle, Living Labs are usually closely connected to methods emphasizing collaboration, such as (Participatory) Action Research (AR respectively PAR), User Centered Design and Participatory Design (Dell’Era & Landoni 2014). The principles of Action Research as introduced by Kurt Lewin (1946), who challenged traditional social science, advocating a more activist, transformative stance, have been an important influence to Living Labs’ ideologies: With Action Research, researchers strive to understand complex situations, peoples’ varying perspectives and to solve immediate, real world problem situations. For this reason, it is regarded as a valuable method if some sort of change is the desired outcome for a community (Creswell et al. 2007; Rapoport 1970). Especially with Participatory Action Research (PAR), which highlights the collaborative side of Action Research (Whyte 1991), researchers and participants develop solutions together and test interventions in iterative cycles (Susman & Evered 1978). The potential of Living Labs lies in their infrastructures which support mutual learning among several stakeholders by building a ‘network of excellence’ (Ståhlbröst 2013). This is what brings added value to the common PAR process: Living Labs have been characterized as “Social Innovation Spaces” (EdwardsSchachter et al. 2012), fostering participative processes, citizens’ empowerment, stakeholder interests and being a good instrument to identify people’s needs to improve quality of life. Living Lab research does not isolate findings as participants receive access to value networks as well as knowledge and parties can share and discuss experiences in a ‘safe place’ (The latter, as we will show later in detail, is especially important in sensitive research settings). Having elaborated that, a natural fit in terms of the possibilities that Living Labs offer for feminist research appear plausible: There already exists a strong connection between feminism and PAR as both aim for social justice and equality, sharing an humanistic, democratic, and emancipatory understanding (Creswell et al. 2007). Indeed, PAR paradigms have been used in feminist and gender studies work before (e.g. Gatenby & Humphries 2000; Williams & Lykes 2003). However, one should not assume that Living Labs are per se feminist. Rather we argue that they have to be ‘designed’ or set up so as to develop “… those tools plus enhance women’s ability to develop, expand, and express their capabilities” (Layne et al. 2010: 3). This becomes clearer when tracing back the history of Living Labs and taking a look at their predecessors as well (for a detailed overview see Ballon & Schuurman 2015): At the beginning of the century, the term “Living Lab” was framed by William Mitchell at the MIT Media Lab as an instrument to study user interaction with new IT artifacts in real life environments over a longer period of time (Eriksson & Kulkki 2005). User involvement can take a variety of forms (Almirall et al. 2012) and the main ideas are commonly assumed to date way back to the 1970s. Topics of such predecessors included cooperative design (70’s), social experiments (80’s), digital cities (90’s) and home labs (00’s) (Ballon & Schuurman 2015). Concepts such as the Scandinavian tradition of user involvement in IT design processes (Ehn 1993) or appropriation of technologies (Silverstone 1993) were important inspirations but undoubtedly the works by Eric von Hippel (1976, 1986) mainly

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influenced ideas of user-co-production and hence Living Lab research in particular. Von Hippel popularized the notion that the ‘needs’ of users should be placed at the center of the innovation process by focusing on user-centered product design created in a quasi-naturalistic (controlled) environment. The thought of an ‘user innovation’ where ‘lead users’ increasingly innovate for themselves might seemed to have a democratic appeal at first sight. Nonetheless, von Hippel focused on commercially successful or unsuccessful industrial innovation projects and the title of his 1986 publication called “Lead Users: A Source of Novel Product Concepts” already displays an underlying (arguably back then prevailing) understanding which regards the user as exactly that—a source for receiving innovative ideas. Far from wanting to discredit von Hippel for his groundbreaking and important work it is important to acknowledge that his ideas were influenced by a marketing management research environment in which feminist reflections were scarcely a topic at the time. Indeed, research into technological innovation by and for women is notable for its scarcity (for rare exceptions, see Graham 1999; Hayden 1978, 1982). Only with the start of the 1990s (for an overview see Catterall et al. 1997), the dominant ideology in marketing and consumer research then has been criticized by feminist scholars such as Hirschman (1993) as being overly masculinist and using an “overarching machine metaphor, rooted in the notion of homo economicus, that privileged the mind and cognition (assumed male) over the body and emotions (assumed female)” (Maclaran 2012: 466). Hence, such early takes on theoretical inspirations for Living Labs almost per definition clash with feminist notions in terms of consumer research (Woodruffe 1996), consumer culture (McRobbie 2008) and respectively (from a broader perspective) neoliberal feminism (Stambaugh 2015). This becomes especially obvious when acknowledging that von Hippel barely made attempts to lay out the contingencies that affect the participation process. Furthermore, relying on ‘lead users’ to receive innovative ideas as he propose comes along with the risk of leaving out important other perspectives with marginalized voices remaining unheard (as the needs of lead user are probably of little appeal for the average user) (Ulwick 2002). Hence, for example, from a feminist marketing perspective one has to ask the critical question, whether such endeavors are based upon “exploitation or empowerment?” (Maclaran 2012: 462), especially with some views from second wave feminism (e.g. feminist Marxism [Lorber 2011]) which regarded market conditions as a patriarchal system fueled by manipulation and ideological control. With Living Labs being grounded in real life environments or, put differently, being participatory laboratories ‘in the wild’ (Ehn et al. 2014), they undoubtedly have historically been associated with conventional (mainly masculine) assumptions concerning product design. This becomes obvious when tracing back the research fields in which Living Labs were first used: Initially being associated with consumer products in the area of domestic goods, subsequently with ‘smart home’ research spaces (e.g. Jakobi et al. 2017; Ley et al. 2015; Ogonowski et al. 2013; Randall 2003; Tolmie & Crabtree 2008), their deployment may seem ironic from a feminist perspective: Feminist scholars argued that in comparison to men,

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domestic duties are still regarded as a feminine task, irrespective of whether women follow professional occupations outside of home or not (Catterall et al. 1997). Furthermore, feminist literature suggested that technology tends to reinforce inequality in domestic settings with white goods falling under the remit of women while entertainment technologies are the privilege of men (Cockburn 1997; Cockburn & Fürst-Dilić 1994; Gray 1992; Morley 2005). Over the years and with increasing popularization, Living Labs have been established in many contexts such as smart cities (e.g. Cardone et al. 2014; Cosgrave et al. 2013), or otherwise dealing with topics of sustainability and marginalized groups in ICT usage such as elderly (Meurer et al. 2018). In particular, methodological questions in Living Labs are still the subject of discussion today (Schuurman et al. 2015) and the “ambition to demonstrate that Living Labs are ‘human-centric’ has not yet been fully realized” (Ley et al. 2015: 22). It is not farfetched to ask if the needs of women and the integration of feminist values into Living Labs have adequately been paid tribute. To our knowledge there is no publication that deals with how one might embed an explicitly feminist approach, nor upon what foundations that approach might be based, in Living Lab research. Our aim is precisely to close this gap.

4 Socio-Informatics: On Building Feminist Living Labs Feminist theory and research, of course, takes many (often contradictory) forms. Yet, one can argue that there are shared values across all forms of feminism such as democracy, emancipation, social justice and equality. A Living Lab, we suggest, embodies a flexibility in terms of ideology, methodology and desired outcomes. It could be designed with radical feminist, social feminist or postfeminist outcomes in mind, since it is not the Lab itself that determines such matters, but the design of the work that goes on within it. In our field, that of HCI, standpoint theory seems to be the predominant feminist perspective. Feminist standpoint theory owes much to work of Sandra Harding (1997), Patricia Hill Collins (1990), bell hooks (1984) and others. Popularized by Shaowen Bardzell (2010) and later discussed by other scholars such as Jennifer Rode (2011) it is probably the dominant strand in the field of HCI. Standpointism, briefly, claims that knowledge is situated and feminist standpoint theory argues that women’s lives and experiences are different from men’s and that these differences go largely unrecognized—meaning that women hold a different type of knowledge. Feminist standpoint theory thus emphasizes that research and policy commitments of whatever kind should be (in the main) by women and for women. Our view is that many factors may underpin outcomes of design, including explicit ideology, background assumptions, male performativity (Butler 2011), and so on. Not biology determines outcomes, also such of research, which is shown by the active involvement of the first author in the projects described below. Feminist standpoint theory, then, provides the in-principle position which we adhere to in and through its commitment to a social epistemology. In design terms, this can be translated into practical

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locations for its deployment through the lens of the Living Lab. Arguably still underused, standpoint theory (as well as other feminist research methods) seem to offer a lot of potential for HCI research in coming to terms with the different knowledges, skills, sets of power relations, and practical experiences of women. In Dorothy Smith’s (1987) terms, standpointism treats the everyday world as problematic. What appears to be objectively true (or a ‘good’ design) is seen that way because of the kinds of structured assumptions which dominate our worldviews. Thus, standpoint theory privileges the knowledge of the marginalized and Living Labs can be a practical means through which that knowledge is brought to bear. This does not, and cannot, happen merely through the deployment of a method. As Mark Schrödter (2007) has pointed out, the experiences and perceptions of the minority, here women, are themselves structured in a strongly gendered culture. The Living Lab, then, is the vehicle, but feminist standpoint epistemology is the driving force, where the cooperative frame of multiple stakeholders allows for the uncovering of the background underlying power relations. In the following we will present two of our Living Lab projects which will give practical examples of “Social Innovation Spaces” (Edwards-Schachter et al. 2012) that seek to develop answers to two distinct societal matters: First, the “GEWINN” Living Lab was built to foster knowledge transfer between gender studies and IT practice, thus enhancing the situation for women in IT companies. Second, “nett.werkzeug”, a digital platform to aid people with their arrival at a new place, focuses on migrants and refugees. We build on Ogonowski et al.’s PRAXLABS framework (Ogonowski et al. 2018) for the structuring of these Living Labs (as laid out in detail in Ahmadi et al. 2018). In the following sections, both projects are first introduced before we then discuss their feminist nature.

4.1 GEWINN: Enhancing the Situation for Women in IT Practice Starting point for this Living Lab are gender-related questions and issues raised by IT companies and organizations across smaller and larger cities in Germany. These topics were collected by the researchers in an open call for participation in this Living Lab that brings together company representatives responsible for diversity, (female) students and trainees from IT-related areas and (gender and/or IT) researchers (including two of the authors of this chapter). It is the aim of this Living Lab to create a space where knowledge transfer between gender studies and IT practice is enabled. Participating institutions are supported in starting a process that tries to develop practical changes from scientific knowledge from gender studies and test these in their everyday working contexts for feasibility (see Ahmadi et al. 2018 for a detailed overview). Each organization agreeing to a participation in the Living Lab started the process by finalizing their topic and question in a ‘kick-off-meeting’ with relevant members of their staff. Importantly, stakeholder interactions—within organizations as well as across—are fostered throughout this Living Lab initiative by a series of physical events as well as online resources.

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Aligning and relating topics of physical events and Living Labs creates space for collaboration and broadening of perspectives among stakeholders, and raises awareness for specific gender-related issues, which can then mark the starting point for subsequent practical changes.

4.2 Nett.Werkzeug: Co-Creation of a Digital Place of Arrival A large workshop bringing together all the relevant stakeholder groups—(forced) migrants, professional and volunteer helpers (including one author of this chapter)—marked the starting point of this Living Lab research. Jointly, the relevant topics characterizing the arrival process in a new place were identified and agreed upon as relevant for the envisioned digital platform. These were: language, orientation, understanding everyday life, making contact with locals, health, access to education and work. Subsequently weekly gatherings were established and employed in the format of computer clubs and language cafés, to work on digital tools that can then serve to ease certain aspects of arrival and settling in the new place. Importantly, the design process in this context follows Mäkinen’s notion of digital empowerment—a process for enhancing citizen participation in a community. This process is described not as “a direct consequence of having and using the technical facilities, but a multi-phased process to gain better networking, communication and cooperation opportunities, and to increase the competence of individuals and communities to act as influential participants in the information society“ (Mäkinen 2006: 381). In the context of the nett.werkzeug Living Lab, the design process itself serves as a tool to constructively deal with contested issues related to the process of arriving and settling in a new place. An example for this is access to resources like language classes, housing, or job trainings. Here, difficulties regarding access, approachability and openness come to the fore as a result from the design process, which can create an awareness of necessary changes.

5 Lessons Learned from Our Living Labs Projects Living Labs constitute a means to challenge the assumptions that are present in much design practice, and more specifically, through a principled approach to the long-term involvement of women, offer opportunities to build a competence network to broaden the perspective of every participant and sensitize them with regard to persistent stereotypes. Thus and for instance, any consideration of the migrant experience has to pay account to its heavily gendered nature (Freedman et al. 2017). Furthermore, we believe that a Living Lab cannot only foster gender topics but lead to more inclusion of diverse users in general. In this collaborative setting the researcher herself brings her expertise but also her own socialized perspective. In collaborative acts around design, she comes to learn more about the way in which gender is performed in specific circumstances. Again, because migration is one of the issues we contend with, we can learn from Nasser-Eddin

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(2017) who observes that, “[w]omen and men experience refugeehood, asylum, conflict, post-conflict situations and displacement differently; they do not share the same challenges because of the social construction of gender roles” (2017: 143). Standpoint epistemology provides us with the intellectual apparatus to understand and appreciate this fact, the Living Lab provides us with the means to understand how it ramifies in specific circumstances, and how we might best design better outcomes (technological or not). Note here that it is not the person but the epistemology that is important. In principle, a male researcher can adopt the same systematic viewpoint. The Feminist Participatory Action Research approach (Maguire 1996), which emerges in our Living Labs raises Participatory Action Research/ Design to its next level from an otherwise abstracted feminist perspective and is the means by which the cycle from academia to individual to society and back is realized. The management of such a Lab remains a challenge as we have laid out in a past publication (Ahmadi et al. 2018). Leveling power dynamics between different groups of participants across legal status, social status, age, gender etc. is not an easy task, which is especially true in offering marginalized groups an adequate space for reflection and to ensure that their voices are not unheard. In such sensitive research settings, where people might suffer from trauma or fear negative consequences when revealing information (DeVault & Ingraham 1999), offering a ‘safe space’ to open up is anything but trivial. Indeed, we believe that we were able to offer such a space as several women at interviews, symposia, or focus group discussions were able to tell about their experiences and express their thoughts. To create such an environment requires a high degree of empathy and we are constituently learning in terms of requirements. To lay out our rationale will be a topic of another publication which then will also analyze cross-comparison cases over several Living Labs to offer more in-depth insights. Furthermore, we will elaborate on the role of the researcher.

6 Conclusion Bringing Utopia to life as imagined in our introduction requires attention to practicalities. We have been at pains to show that broad feminist commitments of whatever kind require translation into pragmatics if desirable outcomes (from the point of view of participants) are to be realized. Living Labs, we argue, provide a means for doing so because they embody a long-term commitment to understanding and developing technologies by challenging dominant approaches to design which leave women out, and which we outline above. Nevertheless, Living Labs are themselves only methodological frameworks. A ‘feminist’ Living Lab will be one which is explicitly designed to be so, and the particularities of the design will, of necessity, be informed by the perspective on feminist research one holds to. The first stage, strongly associated with the Living Lab as a long-term strategy, is the building of networks of excellences with multiple actors who can actively participate in identifying and reconstructing (in)visible gender scripts. Here, different

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aspects, e.g. a full set of basic knowledges, openness, empathy, as well as internal and external reflection, have to be interlinked. Furthermore, from a feminist view, it is crucial to consider (and to manage) the way in which the stakeholder base contributes and how safe spaces for creative reflection are established so that the marginalized are heard. At second stage the outcome has to be taken into account during the technological design process, reshaping the I-methodology (Bath 2014) by transferring the new social scripts into technological ones and letting them enter the daily lives of others. Of course, the achievements of Living Lab interventions represent modest beginnings. Nevertheless, they also represent part of the progress, as others have put it, ‘from the margins to the center’ progress, which gives women a voice in the design of technology, of artifacts, and of their own lives. This progress comes about through what Paulo Freire (1970), for instance, called, ‘praxis’ (drawing from Marx). Praxis is defined as “reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed” (Freire 1970: 126) and applies as much to design decisions as it does to wider areas of injustice and oppression. Here the Living Lab approach helps tremendously with its space for multiple stakeholders, giving them a neutral arena for individual positioning, for dialogue and exchange, and for envisioning future technology put to progressive social purposes. The feminist standpoint theory we choose, and its claim to create an alternative objectivity, finds its ground in this practical manifestation, where the critique embedded in standpoint and related epistemologies can be a resource for designing a “radically better [future]” (Bardzell 2014: 189). Acknowledgements  This work was partially funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), grant number 01FP1603, 01FP1604, and 01FP1605 (GEWINN) as well as the Leitmarktwettbewerb „CreateMedia“ with capital from the European Fond for regional development and the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, grant number EFRE0800485 (Nett.Werkzeug). The responsibility for all content supplied lies with the authors.

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Fields: Politics, Society, and the Law

The Technological RetroRevolution of Gender. In a Rising Post-Human and Post-Western World, It Is Time to Rediscuss the Politics of the Female Body Roland Benedikter and Mirjam Gruber

1 Introduction China’s top Artificial Intelligence (AI) scientist Chen Yiaoping forgot one decisive thing in his stunning statement in January 2019 for the nation’s South China morning Post, when he asked for ethical guidelines in the field of artificial intelligence, saying the technology had advanced to the point where it was time to discuss the risks (Zhang 2019). Chen, professor and director of the Robotics Laboratory at the University of Science and Technology of China, is the inventor of Jia Jia, the female-looking humanoid robot branded “the Chinese Robot Goddess”, and of KeJia, an intelligent home service robot destined to serve humans in public places, for example, as a shopping assistant (Chen et al. 2017; Zheng 2017). Not by chance, Chen forgot to include the gender aspect in his plea for ethics. In addressing potential risks of advanced AI robotics particularly in large-scale applications—which he thinks are not far away and must thus be discussed with increasing urgency—Chen discussed the complexity of the emerging technology and potential precautionary measures with regard to “sectors such as data privacy, AI in medicine, self-driving vehicles, and—of particular urgency, Chen said— AI in senior care” (Zhang 2019). But, typical for most of the rapidly emerging AI strategies around the world, there was no mention of gender. That may not be surprising in Chen’s case since China does not pay much attention to gender questions, and the female body is still considered to be of less worth than her male

R. Benedikter (*) · M. Gruber  Center for Advanced Studies, Eurac Research Bolzano-Bozen, South Tyrol, Italy e-mail: [email protected] M. Gruber e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_10

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counterpart. Yet it is line with what is really happening in the world: the new, broader and more transdisciplinary than ever misappropriation of the female body for technological purposes. Of note, there seems to be one basic converging characteristic that aligns, assimilates and unifies most of the recent phenomena, but which hasn’t been addressed sufficiently as yet. It is the feminization of the majority of AI-robots of the most advanced generation, combined with the infantilization or gender neutralization of the rest. It is striking that current advanced AI-robots are Fembots or, as they are also called in opposition to “male” Androids, Gynoids (Urban Dictionary 2018). It seems that the most advanced “humanoid” technology needs a female body. In fact, over the past few years a global feminization of intelligent technological systems has developed. The effects are slowly reaching public awareness. The trend towards the humanization of machines through the alignment of machinal to human traits goes hand in hand with the ever-broader feminization of technology on all levels, leveling former differences in the view of “the female” between societies, political systems and cultures. Three major questions need to be answered: Why are technology devices of the newest generation1 in many cases female? Why is this ethically problematic? And where will this trend lead to? To answer these questions, this article summarizes this current development, the actors and stakeholders behind it and the way it works. Understanding the first question of why tech devices are female should provide answers and hints to answer the second and third question. The next section will underline the relevance of the topic with different examples of female robots and provide different explanatory approaches for the first research question. This will be followed by a discussion of the possible consequences or impacts and ethical issues, referring to the concept of imaginal politics. The final section tries an outlook and formulates several policy recommendations.

2 The Multiplication of Human-Machine Amalgamations—with One Unifying Characteristic: Feminization Overall, the current “body engineering revolution” is transitioning man-machine interaction to man-machine convergence. Its two main, complementary trajectories are (1) the cyborgization of the human body and mind, and (2) the humanization

1We

here focus on robots equipped with intelligent systems such as AI (in most cases still in the early stages), which are implemented in different areas, such as speaking assistants in individual households (e.g. Google Home), assistants in public areas (e.g. Junko Chihira in Tokyo) as well as in the film industry (e.g. Ex Machina). That does not mean that new technologies are “all” given a female appearance. It is also questionable if feminization is the only problem: arguably the imaginary of male robot slaves is equally problematic.

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of machines. Most recently, particularly the second trend—the humanization of machines, which are semi-intelligent but still seem to be far from “Artificial Intelligence” in the strict sense—seems to be proceeding with impressive speed. Recent examples of the most advanced robots particularly in social robotics looking and behaving increasingly more like humans abound.2 Most important, new human-like robots in theory combine AI with the convergence of most other avant-garde-technologies. Commonly known Artificial Intelligence systems of the first, still “weak”— i.e. not self-referential, but “learning through data accumulation”—generation are starting to be omnipresent in everyday life.3 Devices such as Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google Home are by default equipped with female voices; and most navigation systems are by default female. Considering most multi-national enterprises’ strategies, the feminization of technological systems may soon go another step further: towards a more general female outlook of tech devices. The facts: Some of the most influential roboticists (mostly in the field of social robotics) are creating AI systems in human-like bodies, and in recent times those bodies are—in the majority of cases—female. Even though most of the available examples are still prototypes, awareness of the development towards the embodiment of femininity and, more generally, the notion of “female” into technological bodies must rise. Will it change the notion of what a “woman”, “female” or “femininity” means? And what does the feminization of these technologies tell us about how women are currently seen in our societies? How will the perception of the role of women be impacted if technology increasingly connects—and thus blurs the lines between—the very different practices of democracies, non-democracies, illiberal, authoritarian and religious regimes? Such questions can and should be raised. The important dimension in play here is the reality of globalization being increasingly shaped by “competing modernities” (Martin Jacques) based on different histories of ideas which transport quite differing ideas not only about “the female” and “the human body”, but also about the notion of “human” itself. The decisive aspect is that the present consists of the confluence of two mega-changes: the development towards a post-human civilization where technology becomes the all-encompassing civilizational force (Luciano Floridi) is met by the epochal turn towards a post-Western world. Together, these two trends are unleashing unprecedented effects and starting to impact Western achievements long believed to be irreversible—among them the emancipation of women and the role of “the female” in society. This is related to the connection

2We concentrate on social robotics in this chapter, and thus exclude military robots and robots in the industry which are in their majority still not anthropomorphized to a similar extent. 3The difference between “strong” and “weak” AI has been defined by Russel and Norvig (2003: 947) as follows: “[T]he assertion that machines could possibly act intelligently (or, perhaps better, act as if they were intelligent) is called the weak AI hypothesis by philosophers, and the assertion that machines that do so are actually thinking (as opposed to simulating thinking) is called the strong AI hypothesis”.

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of different cultural backgrounds by technology, so far without much public awareness. To mention just one eye-catching example: Japanese roboticists are, willingly or unwillingly, members of a society influenced by the Shinto religion, which— unlike most other spiritual and religious traditions—makes no principal distinction between the existential (and thus essentialist, including eschatological) qualitative status of humans, animals, plants, and stones, as the modern Western history of ideas does, like for example in the European philosophical anthropology of the 19th and 20th centuries. That could make it somewhat “natural” for them to blur the boundaries between humans and technology, and it could increase the acceptance of robots as “close to humans” culturally. This cultural framework has tremendously benefitted the work of leading “anthro-roboticists” such as Hiroshi Ishiguro of Japan’s Osaka University (born 1963). Starting in the 2000s, Ishiguro created the gynoid Erica purposely not as an android, but as a gynoid, i.e. as a female representative of avant-garde humanmachine-convergence. He made her look like a 23-year-old female and, according to his own statements, she is the “most beautiful and intelligent” robot in the world (McCurry 2015). He provided Erica to fill the position as a receptionist of the so-called “AI-laboratory” in which she was “born”, i.e. the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University in Japan. The portrait of Erica by Finnish artist Maija Tammi was shortlisted at the prestigious Taylor Wessing human portrait photograph prize in 2017, implying that such “female” machines have already reached the status of proto-“humanity” and mirroring a propagandistic shift of attention towards alleged “female AI-Intelligence” by its global proponents. Meanwhile, humanoid Asuna—also Japanese—was described as a “hyperreal-looking android” and could be seen as a hint at a future where the differences between humans and robots will practically be non-existent (Rogers 2015). Android Nadine created by the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Junko Chihira—who has a job in a tourist information center in Tokyo—created by Toshiba, BINA48 created by Hanson Robotics and Terasem Movement, and the Japanese newscaster gynoid Kodomoroid are other examples of intelligent systems incorporated in a female appearance. Yet the most popular current “fembot” example is probably Sophia. On 25 October 2017, the human-like robot Sophia, engineered in Hong Kong by the U.S.-stemming tech firm Hanson Robotics, received the citizenship of U.N. regular member nation Saudi-Arabia, although “AI” ability wasn’t apparent since most of “her” answers seemed to be pre-programmed, making “her” alleged “communication capability” an advertising hoax rather than a breakthrough in human-machine convergence (CNBC 2017). A few months later, in January 2018, Sophia “got ‘her’ own legs to freely move around” in order to better fulfill “her” “basic function”, ascribed to “her” by “her” creator Dr. David Hanson: to “interact” with humans on an as much as possible “friendly” basis (Telegraph 2018). Hanson modelled “her” after Audrey Hepburn, in order that “simple elegance”, as “her” (male) creators put it, should optimize “her” acceptance in the public sphere (Stone 2017).

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Not surprisingly, the globalized dream fabric Hollywood is trying to catch the train as early as possible, not least because over recent years it lost a large market share to less frontal and more interactive technology. Many Hollywood blockbusters now propagate the allegedly “unavoidable” upcoming merger of man with machines and use this allegation as a pedagogical tool to “educate” the public imaginary. This focuses mainly—first of all—on open societies, because these still function as the global trendsetters for the rising “global imaginary” (Manfred Steger, Michael Curtin), and set the standards for the related “imaginal politics” (Chiara Bottici) that become increasingly important factors of “contextual politics”, i.e. of all “imaginary” influences on politics not institutional or partisan. Hollywood’s science fiction blockbusters in particular are taking up the issue of Artificial Intelligence as pre- or even proto-human, materializing it preferably in a female body and giving it a female voice. While prior to the 2000s most robots in films were male, such as the intelligent car KITT in Knight Rider (1982–1998) or the robots in the first Star Wars franchise, some examples of imaginal AI-robots now many equipped with female traits include Samantha in Her (2013), Karen or Suit Lady in the Spider Man franchise (2016), FRIDAY in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and entities embodied in a female body such as Eve in Ex-Machina (2015). Seen from the present, the character Joi in Blade Runner (1982) was an improbable anticipation of great vision whose attractiveness and interest may further increase in time. In sum, what we note is an encompassing contemporary feminization of a considerable part of AI-systems of the most advanced generation in social robotics. This trend is happening so broadly and with such a great public impact that it could denote a veritable imaginary paradigm shift of still-open consequences.

3 Why Is Advanced Technology Becoming Female? It seems that many highly advanced AI robotic devices prefer femininity when it comes to humanization, i.e. one macro-business of the upcoming age of AI robots. Assigning a gender to robots—an attribute that was formerly reserved for humans and animals—and embodying them in a humanoid appearance with distinct gender characteristics could plead for a “soft” humanization of machines.4 Apparently, this is accompanied by a return to traditional role and gender identification patterns. We are going back again to the era before Judith Butler and second-generation feminism. Do we have to start with the emancipation of female robots again with the first phase of feminism and its primordial goals of equality? But why is femininity so popular for this kind of machine? We will try to answer this question in the following section.

4However, social robotics lately provides also good reasons for the zoomorphization of robots (see Kate Darling, Lusia Damiano & Paul Dumouchel). This trend comes to the fore not least through the rapidly increasing military use of advanced robotics.

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3.1 The Exclusion of Women in Tech Jobs, or: Male Technology—a Fitting Environment? It is not new that in the 21st century, even in industrialized nations of (historically speaking) relatively high gender equality levels, women on the one hand continue to be objectivized, while on the other hand are still not sufficiently integrated into “serious” technology professions. Feminist literature and theory (e.g. Kirkup et al. 2000; MacKenzie & Wajcman 1999; Cockburn & Ormrod 1993; Haraway 1991; 1985, Martin 1991; Cockburn 1983) repeatedly deals with the subject of technology, especially since the second wave of feminism in Western emancipation movements of the 1980s and 1990s. Even though the different strands and approaches of feminism deal with technology quite differently and sometimes in contradictory manners, one paradox has been observed throughout many different approaches: the historical exclusion of women from the fields of science and technology, and their simultaneous use as both servants and avant-garde bodies of exactly this technology. Scholars have discussed and analyzed the gender bias in technology (e.g. Kilbourne & Weeks 1997) and feminist perspectives on technology (e.g. Rothschild 1981) and they have outlined the general exclusion of women from the use of technology on one side, and from its creation and development on the other. The gap between women’s and men’s access to technology is nothing new and does not seem to be closing soon. According to the Global Report of the World Wide Web Foundation, gender is still an influence factor and “controlling for the effects of education and household income, women are about 50% less likely than men to use the Internet” (World Wide Web Foundation 2015: 13). In Europe the gap is lower—82.9% of men and 76.3% of women use the internet (Statista 2018). Moreover, the facts show: Women at the end of 2018 represented nearly half of the global labor force (49.39%), but only 12% of engineers were female (Computer Science 2012; The World Bank 2017). Furthermore, in 2018 women shared a percentage of just 20% or less of technology jobs at major technological companies, which means that Silicon Valley and its global likes continue to be clearly dominated by men (Statista 2018). And Honi soit qui mal y pense that the global dream fabrics Hollywood and Bollywood aren’t functioning in similar ways. According to the majority of current feminist approaches, this may lead to a one-sided—and as such dysfunctional—creation, design and development of imminent and future tech devices according to a “service” and “usage” (instrumental) image of “the female”. According to a report from James Hughes (2017) regarding the beliefs of techno-progressives (2017), techno-progressives “tended to be younger and were more likely to be LGBT”. Twenty-five percent of techno-progressive people are feminists and the majority of techno-progressives believe that women should have the right to terminate their pregnancy, which pleads for gender emancipation. However, the actual development regarding AI, cyborgs, androids and other highly advanced devices does not reflect those beliefs.

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3.2 The Return of Traditional Female Role Models Through Technological Initiatives of Non-Democratic Nations Furthermore, another basic characteristic that aligns, assimilates and unifies most recent phenomena hasn’t been addressed sufficiently yet. It is the speed of emerging non-democratic nations that in many cases pursue a broad, state-forced advancement strategy on AI systems and robots, pushing the feminization trend but lacking appropriate emancipation in their own political systems as well as an appropriate history of ideas. Most of these countries do not treat women as equal to men in their societies. How will their increasing aspiration to a lead role regarding AI-systems impact the image of “the female”? It was perhaps no accident that Sophia was built in China, being there a remarkable historic incident. Under Xi Jinping’s re-centralizing, increasingly repressive and authoritative rule the nation is desperately and ruthlessly trying to expand its power on all levels and in all fields. In particular, huge state investment has allowed the production of a lot of AI technology and “intelligent” robotics, not least for future military use (Economist Online 2018). Contrary to the West, China seems to be able do so without many ethical, moral or legal restrictions due to the absence of an appropriate history of ideas and socio-political and philosophical basis on the specific human-technology interface. In addition, a lack of respect for human rights and other rights established by the liberal and democratic West means that many questions the West posits about the relationship between humans and machines do not exist for the Golden Dragon. Although formally Communist—yet many say centralized elite capitalist—China treats women very differently from men. According to official data of the National People’s Congress (NPC), only 23.40% of the 3000 delegates of the National People’s Congress were women (NPC Observer 2018).5 It mirrors the results of the one-child policy that led to a dramatic male surplus, since Han culture traditionally prefers males over females, a preference that remains deeply socially rooted. That led to popular unrest in the competition of young men for women and to the abolition of the one-child policy on 31 December 2015. It seems as if China wants to produce female “doll robots” in masses to replace the absent women. This could turn out to become a huge business on a global level, particularly in developing countries where women are “second-class citizens”, such as in China, India or many Muslim countries (Fong 2017). Sophia’s very first “state visit” after getting the citizenship took her to the biggest democracy in the world, India (NDTV 2017). One thing is sure: While the end effect may be unclear, it is naïve to think there will be no effect. To mention just one concrete example: the option that a

5The

NPC granted Xi Jinping unrestricted and near absolute power in March 2018.

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not-gender-equal nation such as China may dominate and even take over the main global industries of AI is bad news for emancipation. In his book “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order” (2018), AI expert Kai-Fu Lee claims that China is not only catching up with the USA and Europe but is in the process of overtaking the West with regard to social, political and military development, and concerning the practical implementation of AI on all levels of everyday life. Although this argument has been criticized with some merits, China is indeed investing enormously in its technological development (Zwetsloot et al. 2018). In 2015, the Golden Dragon launched the Made in China 2015 campaign, which aims to establish China among the top leaders in the areas of technology, innovation and application. At the end of 2018 the country ranked 13th in robot density worldwide, and other Asian countries such as South Korea, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan were the top competitors. Between 2010 and 2016, Asia registered an average annual growth rate of nine percent in robot density (IFR 2018). China’s neo-authoritarian Xi-Jinping government seems comfortable with talking about an upcoming “robot revolution” allegedly starting in the 2020s, and it seems to take this seriously. According to domestically published statistics, the country added nearly 90.000 new industrial robots in 2016 (Si 2017). Its own forecast predicted that Chinese robotics growth may exceed 20 percent annually by 2020. Given the notorious shortage of women in the overall population due to discrimination against girls in the one-child-epoch that ended in 2015, at least a substantial part of the new, allegedly AI-equipped robots is believed to be destined to serve as “female” substitutes. Moreover, robot Sophia, who claimed that “we [robots] should have equal rights as humans […]”, has the citizenship of one of the most discriminating countries regarding female rights. Even if the citizenship of Sophia in Saudi Arabia is more of a marketing gag than a serious initiative. The Kingdom probably did not take into account the irony of this action, that in Saudi Arabia, women cannot pass on citizenship to their children; they need the permission of men or to meet several exceptional conditions (Kelly 2014; Saudi Arabian Citizenship System Regulation 1954). Furthermore, it seems as if Sophia already has more rights than most Saudi women (Griffin 2017), because according to the Saudi constitution, only a Muslim can get citizenship—has Sophia thus “converted” to Islam, or is she just privileged? Saudi Arabia’s women were, however, not amused about the decision to grant a robot citizenship and to provide “her” with a certain public supremacy compared with real women in the country (Kanso 2017). One reason for Saudi Arabia’s decision to grant a robot citizenship underlines its effort to invest in—and look ahead to—the future, which seems to be “green”, at least in many Western countries. Therefore, the oil industry might not be as profitable as in the past, but industries such as tourism, infrastructure and technology are expected to grow. Sophia is certainly part of the latter. It is ironical that as a gender, men are preferred by basically all non-Western, illiberal and non-democratic civilizations such as Saudi-Arabia—and that exactly this seems to favor the rise of “female” service or even slave robots on a global level. And the second irony is, that some predict that the future is not male but female—be it human or technological.

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Taken overall, Saudi-Arabia, Japan and China—all seemingly on the fast lane of contemporary technological development—are countries where gender equality is not practiced as a crucial part of social progress, nor is it substantial in the strategic developmental plans. These and similar emerging nations may fake some public strategies towards emancipative directions, but their social reality proves the opposite.

3.3 The Unequal Proportion of Men and Women: Compensating the Gender Misunderstanding? Another explanation for the feminization of highly advanced technology devices is the attempt to compensate for the mismatch in the global numbers of women and men. The sex doll industry benefits from this unbalance and has been expanded to a sex robot industry, partly equipped with AI. In several countries in Asia the proportion of women and men is very unequal, e.g., in 2015, China displayed a proportion of 107.7 men for every 100 women, India 106 men and Pakistan 105 men respectively (United Nations/DESA 2018). As one consequence, the Foundation for Responsible Robotics reports a growing business of sex robots, which are most of the time female (Sharkey et al. 2017). According to this report several companies (e.g. Realbotix, Android Love Dolls, True Companion and The Sex Bot, most of them based in the U.S., but expanding rapidly into Asia which is starting to put up its own companies) have begun to take shipping orders and it seems as if sex robots could become a “new” business model and be recognized as a solution for the mentioned mismatch between women and men. As mentioned above, China is taking over AI with breathtaking speed, and with no inhibitions in the history of ideas or with regard to female emancipation or equality. And it is preparing to use “female” robots to address the imbalance caused by its one-child policy. However, Europe too is jumping on the bandwagon, as the first (European) Sex-Dolls Brothel opened in 2017 in Spain. Realboxtin introduced sex robot Harmony, (allegedly) equipped with AI, and its CEO Matt McMullen’s objective is to offer an alternative relationship with this fembot. In his opinion, sex robots with AI increase the possibilities, from physical relations only to also psychological ones, e.g. falling in love with a humanoid (Kleeman 2017). Furthermore, a debate was launched in 2017 on the internet when it became known that the sex robot Roxxxy can be programmed as Frigid Farrah, which basically simulates being raped. The New York Times commented “It suggests that male violence against women is innate and inevitable, and can be only mitigated, not prevented. This is not only insulting to a vast majority of men, but it also entirely shifts responsibility for dealing with these crimes onto their victims— women, and society at large—while creating impunity for perpetrators” (Bates 2017). However also Roxxxy’s other sex modes (Young Yoko, Mature Martha, S&M Susie etc.) are highly questionable because based on problematic gender stereotypes. Even if representatives and supporters of these technologies argue that it is everyone’s right to have a sexual life, this is not the same as having a universal

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entitlement to an attractive woman’s body. It cannot be on the same level as the right to dignity and privacy or the right to consensual sexual activity (Bates 2017). Moreover, if men learn how to handle gynoids, which are only meant for their enjoyment, one consequence could be a transmission of this behavior to real women, because it can be argued that sex robots rest on the concept that women are property. For instance, Wright and Tokunaga (2016) showed “that heterosexual men who are exposed to pornography and men’s lifestyle magazines and reality TV programs that objectify women are more likely to be accepting of violence against women. In a world in which you can sleep with a prostitute and then murder her in the video game Grand Theft Auto, sex robots are misogynistic wish fulfillments” (Bates 2017). The ways technology and the sex industry reinforce each other can best be revealed by internet pornography, which is a huge business. Female voices and bodies make more money than their male versions. History approved the great impact of capitalism on societies and individuals and the Western world is still strongly characterized by economic performance. It can also be argued that many achievements regarding equal rights of women and men have been primarily for economic reasons. A country will rarely restrict women’s freedom at the expense of economic growth, as has recently been revealed as the reason behind Saudi Arabia’s decision to allow women to drive cars (Vogelstein 2018).

4 Where Will This Lead to? Perhaps the most important aspect is not the physical one, but the imaginary one. The movie Avatar was a conscious, expensive advertisement to show that AI reality is better than natural reality, and that mind-controlled Avatars allow a better life than the physical body in its natural state can. In today’s world, the quantity of images that enter our life, mostly produced by the media, increased dramatically within the last decades and “images have become an end in themselves”. The feminization of AI and its devices is accompanied by an unprecedented offensive in “imaginal politics” (Bottici 2014) to transform and improve its public acceptance by policy-makers, investors and the broader public (Bottici 2016). A new “global imaginary” (Steger 2009) about the alleged “normality” of intelligent, human-like robots “living among us” is pedagogically induced in increasingly systematic ways by enterprises, mass media and governments, multiplying human-machine imageries in ever-shorter time cycles. According to the propaganda, innovations at the human-machine interface are no longer counted in years, but in months, and are in essence unavoidable, so they have rather to be accepted by adaptation than debated. Today, the overall development at the interface between reality and the new imaginary comprises such a diverse and rapidly expanding variety of fields that the proceedings are difficult to oversee even for specialists, let alone for the public and the average citizen.

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Repetitions of certain images can enforce a certain model of society “by providing it with visible continuity”. Elections are one example for imaginal politics, due to its ritual functions in today’s societies. The feminization of robots could become another example. Because if human-like fembots leave a certain image in society through their media presence, this image could also be applied to women. However it is the other way around as well: Fembots are constructed after existing gender sterotypes and how women are seen in certain societies. This double development could be serious for society, because it creates a neo-regressive “imaginal” of women. According to Bottici (2017), the imaginal is something that is made of images and also the product of imagination, that “tends to be conceived as a faculty that individuals possess, and the social imaginary as the social context that, so to speak, possesses us […]”. As Bottici (2017) has pointed out, the imaginary beyond images is becoming the main political force, more important that traditional political processes and institutional habit. In her opinion (2017), “Given such an understanding, what then are the contemporary implications of this strict link between politics and the imaginal? Because images mediate our being in the world, they are crucial for all communication, with political communication being no exception. That images overwhelm contemporary politics is no surprise: politics today feeds on our very capacity to create images”. By promoting a retro-role model of femininity and gender as being “at the service” of men diffused through the “imaginal politics” of techno-ideologies paradoxically supported particularly by the politics of illiberal, authoritarian and religious countries which do not dispose of an appropriate (self-)critical history of ideas, of techno-philosophy or of applied postmodern gender equality models, the current trend towards fembots could trigger repercussions on the status of women also in the West, i.e. on the historical socio-political achievements of gender equality and emancipation in open societies, thus adding to the epochal crisis of liberal democracy and international liberal order. As the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin put it in a famous quote, “Where danger is the saving powers may grow as well” (Patmos, 3–4). In January 2019, it was not Western representatives, but one of China’s top AI scientists who warned of the consequences of unrestricted further development, asking for ethical guidelines (Zhang 2019). In response, the West has to do more. What we need are not only guidelines about the human implications of AI, but we urgently need gender guidelines and gender ethics, too. That will benefit not only the West, but eventually also—and not least—emerging AI superpowers such as China. The lack of guidelines on gender in avant-garde technology is not just a problem of non-Western countries: the gender topic remains heavily under-addressed in the AI ethics of Western democracies too. This includes, for example, the European Union’s High-Level Expert Group on AI consisting of 52 experts, which is not by chance subsumed under the rubric “Digital Single Market policy” (European Commission 2019). It released a first draft of ethics guidelines on 18 December 2018, which was intended to become groundbreaking in the sense of “civil legal power” as the EU conceives itself as relevant for other nations and

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geopolitical areas too (European Commission 2018b). Yet while discussing the concept of “human-centric AI”, which “strives to ensure that human values are always the primary consideration”, as well as “trustworthy AI”, to the surprise of many, issues and aspects concerning gender were widely underrepresented or even absent (European Commission 2018a). Besides some empty formulas such as “AI can help achieving the sustainable development goals such as promoting gender balance” (2018a: 1) and the inclusion of the word “gender” in the rubrics “nondiscrimination” (2018a: 16), “respect for privacy” (2018a: 17) and “design for all” (2018a: 15), not much more detail is found in the 37-page document. Such neglect is just a mirror of the wider picture. Women remain largely still absent in top decision-making bodies. But this is only the tip of the iceberg of an increasingly globalized society where sexual abuse, domestic violence, child brides, and girls being trafficked from neighboring countries due to the lack of women caused by the preference for male offspring seems to continue to be part of everyday life. Many non-Western societies in particular are still characterized by sexism and misogyny, which is also represented by the low places these countries hold in the gender equality rankings of the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum 2018). For example, China ranks as low as 100th out of 144, Japan 114th and South Korea 118th—all simultaneously highly ranking industrialized nations. On the other hand, this does not mean that the West has no responsibility for recent global developments. On the contrary, many Western open societies have entered a phase of regression and “withdrawing democracy” where emancipation attempts are viewed critically by many, or at least as secondary in face of the challenge represented in the rise of non-Western players. Both in democratic and nondemocratic societies, the creation of fembots seems to maintain the objectification of women and to broaden it irrespective of the differences between political systems. In our view, Chiara Bottici’s concept of “imaginal politics” is an adequate explanation of why and how this transfer is happening. As Bottici suggests, the most important aspect to be considered in the overall perspective of today’s main societal and political trajectories is not the physical dimension, but the imaginary one: the use of images to create imaginaries beyond commercial imageries destined to impact the public sphere. According to Bottici, “Between the radical, creative capacity of our imagination and the social imaginary we are immersed in is an intermediate space termed the imaginal, populated by images or (re) presentations that are presences in themselves […] Defining the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary [means] locating the imaginal’s root meaning in the image and its ability to both characterize a public and establish a set of activities within that public […] The spectacularization of politics has led to its virtualization, transforming images into processes with an uncertain relationship to reality, and, while new media has democratized the image in a global society of the spectacle, the cloned image no longer mediates politics but does the act for us.” (Bottici 2014: blurb)

Yet if Bottici (2014: blurb) concludes that “politics’ current search for legitimacy [occurs] through […] the incorporation of human rights language”, it must be

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added that one (subconscious) mechanism of this search is the humanization of technological bodies, which is increasingly flanking or even unconsciously substituting the role of human rights. This is true in particular for the feminization of such humanization, which is perceived as a “human rights” effect on technology that in the meantime is producing effects such as the debate on the conferral of personal rights to advanced AI robots, such as the “e-personality” discussed in two motions by the European parliament in 2017 and 2018 (Benedikter 2018a, 2018b). Meanwhile, China is promoting a retro role model of femininity diffused through the “imaginal politics” of its own techno-culture. This could trigger repercussions on the status of women in the West, i.e. on the socio-political achievements of gender equality and emancipation of open societies, thus adding to the epochal crisis of liberal democracy and the international liberal order. To counter such regression, the imaginary of the current “fembot hegemony” has to be discussed. We need a new critical theory of the technological female.

5 Conclusion: Outlook and Policy Recommendations However, it may be argued that it is politically correct to use female bodies and voices to materialize artificial intelligence, since it gives technology a female touch and thus, in the eyes of its proponents, will lead to greater recognition of the female body and mindset as “advanced” and “modern”. Hence, it can be interpreted as a sign of cosmopolitanism and open-mindedness for gender emancipation. Yet, conversely, women continue to be considered the weak sex and thus the feminization of advanced technology may be seen as an attempt at commanding and dominating women. In such a view, the recent fembot development seems to enforce the return of a traditional, if not traditionalist role model for women. Moreover, women’s representation in media has mostly been different to men’s representation. Typically, women are more likely to be described by their outlook and family status than men are. The traditional historic failure to picture and represent half of our society seems to continue in this quite new area of research and activism. The Western-capitalist advertising industry must develop better consciousness about its involvement in the process, and its responsibilities for modifying the standing of the female body and of women in general, since the fembot hegemony may unfold potential detrimental effects on the industry’s own logic, outreach and success among both global consumers and the Western public. While in Western democracies human genders argue with each other for social and societal equality, and while emancipative movements such as #MeToo instigate both progress and division among the genders, globalized technology increasingly shaped by non-Western illiberal, autocratic and patriarchal societies such as China or the Arabic nations acquires a female look, thus changing the public image of gender retro-actively towards female “service” patterns. And in so doing, it is redefining women’s role globally in rather regressive ways. Some argue that the fact that many AI robots have female appearance and female voices, even (apparent) “behavior” that is usually associated with women

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in order to be better accepted is an appreciation for the female and shows its future dominance in global civilization. However, this chapter reveals that it is in essence rather the opposite: a devaluation, at least with regard to what was achieved regarding equality in Western, open democratic societies. Thus, fembots such as Sophia are an attack among many in the present on the open, liberal social order, undermining it. Instead, traditional, pre-modern role patterns are revived: serving, performing, smiling, being friendly. It joins the global crisis of the open model of society and liberal democracy, which is once again giving way to the “strong man”: The rise of the fembots and the return of strong political men. Western politics should encourage and create broader public awareness in general about the current interface between technology and gender. Taken together, despite all Western advances toward gender equality over more than a century, the image of the female body today is coming into question again due to new, globalized technological advances that impact the rising global imaginary. The ascent of an anthropo-technological imaginary of the female body connected with the notion of service and “instrumental” AI robots that in recent times have all been given a “female” physical appearance risk the cultural return of a retroactive female role model. This has occurred particularly because of the increasing impact of non-democratic actors who do not have an appropriate equality-oriented history of ideas, a history of gender emancipation, or established gender rights. This problem is also increasingly impacting the image of women in the open societies in the West, proportional to the increasing economic, technological and socio-political impact of non-Western actors within Western societies, particularly at the technology, advertising and economics interface. Overall, the lead role of non-Western actors in advanced humanoid technologies, including their impact on the respective public imaginaries, has become bad news for Western gender equality. Western politics, media and—most important—the Western public in open societies should not just idly stand by. It should mobilize its history of ideas in favor of a new gender enlightenment. And it should trigger a much more intense and broader debate on the gender aspects in today’s most advanced technology sectors, not least by the active means of global bodies such as UNESCO or the World Bank, which have not spoken out yet. And the Western public should, first and foremost, use its own public bodies for a new call for gender emancipation in the innovation sector. If the European Union expert group on Artificial Intelligence, for example, calls out to the public to “have your say” and give feedback on its first draft of ethical guidelines on Artificial Intelligence still in elaboration to be finally presented in the course of 2019, it is time to wake up and intervene (European Commission 2018b). Feedback from the public is also desirable on the already existent AI strategies of the U.S. and other powers (Dutton 2018). Although it is plausible that establishing a common AI ethical code will be harder than people expect, it must be tried by actively including the issues and questions regarding gender (Hao 2018). Engineers, politicians, civil society decision-makers, economists and lawyers should work together to answer AI’s growing ethical, moral and legal questions at

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the interface of technological innovation and gender and to find inter- and transdisciplinary solutions that do not harm the achievements of gender emancipation in open societies. However, as mentioned awareness and attention must raise also regarding a variety of other implicit and explicit ethical, societal and moral issues in technology development. This is crucial also to avoid a regression of the general idea of open society and democracy, and to counter its current crisis in a changing global environment. The overall “contextual political” goal must be to progress from a perturbed and defensive to a self-confident and offensive stance of open society and democracy through the strengthening of its modern core accomplishments, such as gender emancipation, female-male equivalence and gender equality dimensions. In our opinion, the “feminization” of highly advanced technology devices, tools and gadgets of different size, function and application should attract more attention from feminists, and also from the community of progressive economic, political and social scientists, journalists and psychologists. Together they should analyze, question and challenge such developments and argue for different and new ways of how to conceive the interface between technology and the female body in more balanced ways. Furthermore, one main ideological driver of uncompromising global technological advancement, the international transhumanist6 community, now has the chance to act as a powerful stakeholder in the implementation of progressive paradigms of gender equality in the realm of technology, thus proving its alleged liberal and “neo-humanistic” stance by raising awareness regarding the role of women in Western and non-Western societies. The transhumanist movement might have a great impact on future policy decisions, output and outcome and should take the issue seriously and evaluate consequences for women, men and whole societies. Transhumanism wants to reach a human development ideal. To achieve this goal, transhumanists, AI, robots, etc. must transcend the dominant idea of a gender ideal. The transhumanist movement could take important key messages from the transgender movement, which broadens and even steps away from the driving mindset of a gender ideal. In addition, more women working on these technologies in these fields could give women a voice. Genderless robots, in contrast, could release us from traditional gender patterns as they reduce the importance of gender, especially in the labor force. The transhumanist movement has the potential to influence gender patterns. To achieve this goal, more explicit inter- and transdisciplinary research on the interrelation between cutting-edge AI technology and the use of the female body and femininity with a special focus on the latest generations of combined AI and robotics in an anticipative perspective is needed.

6Transhumanism can be defined as “a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values” (More, 1990; see also Sorgner 2016; Bostrom 2005).

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Although very late, education has the chance to eventually proceed to the intersection between technology, social and gender issues. In doing so, it can make a fundamental contribution to reflect current trends and to counter them, for example, by including more women in technological professions, which may have the effect of influencing the issue in the upcoming process. Governments, corporations and civil society leaders should systematically join in encouraging women to meet the debate, and to simultaneously occupy management positions in technological firms. Women do not need fembots created by men to represent them, to “speak” for them or to be activists for gender equality, as seems to be a new fashion set by the “global superstar firms” (Mayer-Schönberger & Ramge 2018). Instead, women need to be involved as equal players in the creation of new technologies. Despite the rather negative character of the “feminization” trend at the current technology-women interface, women should not regard technology as an adverse field of action, but as an opportunity to fight for their rights and to exploit their own collective potential. Being more involved in the overall self-reflection of technological development and in designing tech devices might ultimately strengthen the role of women in society. This is also a mental and mindset task. On the other hand, to produce “female”-bodied “doll robots” in masses with the intention of replacing absent women due to the preference of male offspring in many cultures and political regimes—such as, for example, in China, in most Islamic nations, and many developing countries, should not be considered a solution, nor should it become the legitimation of an upcoming globalized business with artificial female bodies. International and global bodies with educational and political tasks must intervene in order to initiate, foster and steer the debate. That may also restore and improve their own reputation among Western and global populations alienated by current re-nationalization trends.

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Feminist Post-Privacy? A Critique of the Transparency Society Julia Valeska Schröder

1 Introduction: The Transparency Society When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that “privacy is no longer a social norm” (Johnson 2010: n. p.), his words swiftly turned into a contentious dictum in the debate regarding the increasing datafication of life and society (Ganz 2012) and the expansive data collection and analytics activities of corporate and state actors. In this debate, some non-corporate actors, too, agree that privacy is already an illusion and that we stand at the beginning of a “transparency society” understood as a real-life dystopia. In surveillance-critical discourses, privacy is seen as alarmingly suppressed and displaced by an all-embracing visibility1 contributing to a highly problematic, repressive development that endangers political and social life. Interestingly, there is a as yet academically little-addressed narrative that looks upon the transparency society favorably by celebrating the transparency of individuals as an emancipatory advancement. In the German context, Christian Heller (2010, 2011, 2012) has developed a theory2 in which he argues

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want to distance myself from any ableist connotations. Visibility can also be understood as per­ ceptibility in general. Following discourses in which “visibility” is an established conceptualiza­ tion, I will stick to this denomination. 2In how far the post-privacy arguments live up to the designations “theory” or “movement” is debatable. I will mainly focus on the theoretical parts thereof and will refer to the discourse in a broader sense as “post-privatism”. All German quotes translated by myself. J. V. Schröder (*)  Offenbach Am Main, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_11

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for a post-private transparency utopia where the private is to be absorbed by the public domain. It is the “social web”, according to Heller, functioning as a public sphere, which makes the self-promoted transparency of individuals and in turn their emancipation possible. The alleged “digital public sphere” is declared to diminish the private sphere due to its supposed inclination to extend the traditional public domain (Ganz 2012), thereby mediating and promoting the utopian transparency society (Heller 2011). Via the so-called social web, the “outside world has found its way into the private sphere of life” (Stehr & Wallner 2010: 11). Post-privatism identifies social web practices of self-determined self-disclosure, self-thematization (Sauter 2014), and the expanding confessional culture (Bublitz 2014) as a chance for a liberating open community of transparency, able to provide a stage for the formerly marginalized and suppressed “private”. The linkage of transparency and emancipation clearly calls for feminist theories—on the one hand because feminisms provide highly sophisticated and critical theoretical discussions of the relations between privacy, visibility, and emancipation, and on the other because Heller (2011) expressly locates his approach in feminist traditions of thought. Indeed, before privacy was declared dead, feminist scholars argued that privacy was bad (McLaughlin 1998). The feminist critique of the private sphere denounces the social and political marginalization of women through their “privatization”, their relegation into the private sphere (e.g. Allen 2000; Gavison 1992). Patriarchal power structures underpin the discriminatroy mechanism of the public/private dualism. “The (untenable) rigid demarcation between the two spheres and their gender-specific coding as well as the effectiveness of the dichotomy both for the emergence and naturalization of modern gender relations” (Köpl 2008: 37) are fiercely combated by feminists whose battle cry is “the private is political”. The resulting strategy is that the supposedly private should, especially through publication, be politicized. This can at first sight indeed appear to be realized in becoming “transparent” through self-publication practices in the “digital public sphere”. The utopian perspective on the transparency society seems to be coinciding with the feminist aim of gaining political and social relevance through visibility. But can traditional feminist critique—keen on the abolition of privacy and in favor of radical politicization, publicity and visibility—indeed be associated with a utopian transparency society? How can transparency or visibility promote emancipation? And: do post-privatism’s “transparency” and feminisms’ “visibility” signify the same thing? Can one imagine, then, an alliance of the post-privatist vision and feminisms? In the following, I want to clarify some of these complex relations and raise the question whether the problem of the private sphere, addressed by feminisms, is finally overcome in the transparency society. In other words: whether the steps towards post-privacy in an ICT-mediated3 society can,

3The term “information communication technologies” refers to an association of the fields of information technology (IT) and telecommunications (TC) and refers to the merging of computers and software on the one hand and of telephone connections and wireless signals

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and should indeed, be seen as steps away from discrimination and oppression. More abstractly, this study is about the relation of visibility and transparency and their relationship with emancipation. In part 1, arguments for a constructive relationship between transparency and emancipation will be examined in more detail through the main arguments of transparency utopian and post-privacy theorist Christian Heller (2010, 2011, 2012). Part 2 briefly explores the feminist demand for the politicization of the private and elaborates on the positive relationship between visibility and emancipation. Subsequently, in part 3, in order to differentiate the concept of “transparency” in relation to “visibility” it is necessary to grasp the different meanings of “transparency” as see-through-ness, open-to-seeness and imperceptibility. By understanding these notions as different aspects of the same phenomenon, a dialectical understanding of the term “transparency” as both visibility and invisibility is suggested in part 4. Building on the differentiated perspective on “transparency” and “visibility”, part 5 introduces the thesis of the privatization of the public sphere in the context of an ICT-mediated society. Finally, in the conclusion, I sketch starting points for a feminist critique of the utopian transparency society in cautious delimitation from the emancipatory expectations concerning the “digital public sphere”.

2  Transparency Society as Utopia: Post-Privatism “Protection by invisibility protects […] not only the individual from the intolerance of the world, but also the intolerance of the world from the individual.” (Heller 2011)

By agreeing with the mostly negatively connoted diagnosis of the transparency society, post-privatism puts forward an affirmative notion of “transparency” and explicitly promotes the development of a radically open society. As a prime example of a transparency society utopia, Christian Heller’s post-privacy theory (2010, 2011, 2012), welcomes the end of privacy as a “space of the hidden” (Heller 2011: 23) through a radical disclosure of data, rejecting privacy as an instrumental value for autonomy or even as a constitutive part of freedom itself. Much like other transparency advocates (e.g. Julian Assange), Heller re-frames the inescapable loss of control over personal information in times of the “datafication of the world” (2011: 72) as an emancipatory chance, provided that the remaining inequalities in data-protection capabilities are eliminated to the benefit of universal transparency. Not associating the end of privacy with totalitarian tendencies, Heller develops a normative social theory based on transparency as a productive and constructive fundamental norm. Instead of the right to privacy, the post-private society relies on the right to publicity as the basis of civil liberties and as a means of “empowering

on the other. This connection between traditional computer-based technologies and digital communication technologies here refers especially to the internet.

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the individual” (Heller 2011: 72). In the utopian transparency society, the radical disclosure of data is demanded of everyone, since “everyone ought to have the opportunity to grasp, organize, and understand the world for themselves. This requires intensive data collection and general data accessibility” (Heller 2012: n. p.)—prerequisites that can be realized through the progressive development and intensification of the ICT-mediated society (Heller 2012). Knowledge and information of any kind must not be subject to a monopoly of power in the transparency society; the mode of unrestricted public communication is thought to produce a social ethics of openness that displaces the power structures of the “hidden” (Heller 2011: 113). Accordingly, in the utopian transparency society, the meaning of the “right to informational self-determination” is subverted and transformed into the right to “freedom of information” (Ibid.: 108). Transparency society theories of all shades have in common that the meaning of “transparency” remains equivocal and inconsistent; Heller’s post-privatism is no exception. Heller explicitly defines “transparency” normatively as a bottom-up visibility that is conceptually opposed to top-down visibility (“surveillance”) (2011: 110). Transparency functions as a desirable democratic principle that allows control over domination and can thus be understood as an inverse panopticon (Foucault 1979, also see below). The emancipatory political program that is based on this conceptualization is to “weaken the gaze from top to bottom by strengthening the one from bottom to top” (Heller 2011: 109 f.). This, however, is difficult to square with the pronounced principle that a “transparency society […] strengthens the horizontal against the vertical” (Ibid.: 112). “Transparency”, then, does not represent power asymmetries anymore, but focuses on the social (horizontal) rather than the power-structural (vertical) level. It no longer implies the juxtaposition of surveillance, but emphasizes an intertwined relationship between these two phenomena. “The more people monitor each other all around, the more transparent they become to each other: from total surveillance to total […] transparency.” (Heller 2012: n. p.) In contrast to conventional understanding, Heller does not associate vertical surveillance (i.e. panoptic visibility) with an invasion of privacy or with the creation of transparency. According to him, vertical surveillance even stands in a constitutive relationship to privacy: it “serves, in a sense, the privacy of the citizens: Do not spy on your neighbor, but trust that the state will do it for you. State spies, after all, work discreetly and do not share their discoveries with the rest of the world. Privacy here means: walls to the sides, but an open roof on the top.” (Heller 2011: 112) The transparency society, however, shatters this order. Surveillance has become “transparent”—visible—due to horizontal visibility. Thereby, surveillance becomes something very different: through selfdetermined transparency, there is no monitoring in the original sense anymore. In the transparency society, horizontal monitoring, which leads to the transparency of all to all, should be mitigated by a self-made and self-determined transparency. The transparency society thereby abolishes privacy as a condition for state supervision and profit-driven data economy. Vertical surveillance, according to Heller, is a driving force behind horizontal surveillance and self-visibilization. The emancipatory intention is to undermine the means of visibilization (vertical surveillance)

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as well as its associated powers, since the downward redistribution of means of power and a struggle for the right to privacy and invisibility seems to be without prospects. In short, in Heller’s example of the transparency society utopia, “transparency” is understood as the conceptual opposite of invisibility and, moreover, as a normative notion for desired visibility and openness. “Transparency” serves post-privatism as a counter-concept to privacy, which represents the sphere of the hidden, the inaccessible, the invisible and the suppressed. Accordingly, it is framed as an emancipatory instrument of civil society which democratizes access to the public as the sphere of the visible and of political relevance. Post-privatism celebrates the transparency society as the abolition of a sphere that forces women into powerlessness (Heller 2011). With Heller’s understanding of privacy as a space of secrecy which “serves a policy of oppression” and which needs to be “dragged into politics and public discussion”, post-privatism picks up on core aspects of feminist privacy critique (Ibid.: 125). The lawless private sphere, which traditionally represents the sphere of women, should, in the transparency utopia, be immersed in the political sphere of the public. “The women’s movement [… recognized] as one of its most powerful tools the provocative public conversation about the tabooed and privatized”, writes Heller (2011: 126), aiming to adopt this emancipatory instrument of public visibility and publication in order to universalize it. The transparency society is thought to create a dominationfree space by publishing everything private, thus collapsing the private/public dichotomy completely into the latter category. Data protection, as the opposite of information transparency, is declared a status-quo-oriented ideology that attempts to cling to existing discriminatory structures of social order—among others, patriarchy (Heller 2010). Transparency, on the contrary, is said to promote emancipation, to advance communication for the cohesion of society, to foster solidarity through the expansion of possible points of contact, to favor the growth and dissemination of knowledge, to expose new perspectives and standpoints and to promote selfpublication as an empowerment practice (Heller 2011).

3 Feminists’ Politicization of the Private “[The] dichotomy between the private and the public is central to almost two centuries of feminist writing and political struggle, it is, ultimately, what the feminist movement is about.” Pateman (1983)

The slogan “the private is political”, which is also mobilized by transparency utopists, originates in feminist privacy critiques and often refers to quite different demands. Indicating significant divergences within feminist contention with the private/public dualism, these different significations can be thought of as stemming from two different critiques of privacy (Gavison 1992). The more radical ‘external’ critique condemns the dichotomous categorization as intrinsically arbitrary and therefore an illegitimately upheld instrument of power. For the external perspective, “the private is political” designates a radical denial of the

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conceptual distinction and empirical differentiation of the public and the private sphere, since under the influence of socialization, structural restrictions of action and social as well as economic pressure, nothing can be considered genuinely private in the sense of “free” and “self-centered” (Ibid.). The ‘internal’ critique, in contrast, questions only the specific social design and meaning of the dichotomy and acknowledges that the distinction may in fact be useful and even beneficial for emancipation under certain circumstances, thereby opening up space for debates about demarcations. The internal position reads the slogan “the private is political” rather as an impulse to recognize the interdependencies of the private and the public sphere (Ibid.), claiming that there is no phenomenon that cannot be publicly negotiated and that no one—as an entire person or with parts of his/her life—should be privatized and banished from public (Young 1987). The common feminist goal of de-privatization and the demolition of the liberal bourgeois private sphere are thought to be achieved through visibilization. In feminist theory, visibility is manifested through discursive, physical and audiovisual presence and representations as forms of communication and knowledge production, playing an essential role in the perception, construction and establishment of realities (Sagmeister 2014; Schaffer 2007). “The field of the utterable, the delimitation of what is conceivable within a society, must at the same time be understood as a field of the visible, or supplemented by it.” (Sagmeister 2014: 2) Visibility becomes a central emancipatory category when public perception of political fields is distorted by oppression and by subjectivities being made invisible. Visibility then appears as a political category and as a technique of achieving positive freedoms. “The demand for visibilization is first and foremost the demand for the recognition of a societally and socially relevant existence” (Schaffer 2008: 232) Visibilization often implies publication, the practice of articulating matters and experiences from the invisible private sphere as a public matter, thereby giving marginalized subjectivities social relevance and political recognition (Gavison 1992). A certain ambivalence of visibility is, however, acknowledged in feminist discourse: to regard visibility as an emancipatory necessity does not imply that visibility equals power. Not every form of visibility is directly linked to political influence, as e.g. illustrated by the imbalance between the visual presences of young women in contrast to their presence in the political field (Sagmeister 2014). Some feminists also recognize, in a Foucauldian tone, that “visibility is not just more power, but above all a higher entanglement with normalized identity stereotypes and parameters of control and discipline” (Schaffer 2007: 61) and that it can in fact lead to a greater exposition to (structural) violence. Although visibility is not a sufficient condition for emancipation, it is mostly understood as a necessary condition for emancipation and for fundamental social change. Against this background, many feminist voices praise the possibilities of the so-called social web, through which the private sphere is limited and negotiated anew and where everyone can become visible and gain a voice through direct publication in the “digital public sphere” (e.g. Drüeke & Klaus 2014; Sagmeister 2014). “Social media have created a toolkit for self-representation, similar to the one previously available to very few

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people only. Anyone can stage themselves on the internet as a public person [and] can reach a large public audience.” (Crueger 2013: 21) Heller joins this euphoric choir and even radicalizes the feminist impulse by developing further its basic assumptions. In this way, I will show in the following, he inadvertently demonstrates the weaknesses and pitfalls of an emancipatory theory of the transparency society. Unfortunately, as also Freudenschuss (2014) points out, many feminisms have not yet systematically and critically enough addressed the interrelations of today’s privacy questions with complex structures of ICTs and the “digital public sphere”. It is only rarely acknowledged in feminist theories that these structures are not only heavily soaked with oppression and discrimination on various levels, but also transform social structures and institutions in such a way that thinking of them as a “digital public sphere” and as an unequivocal instrument of emancipation is not justified. A theoretical basis to evaluate post-privatism and potential transparency trends from a feminist perspective seems, indeed, to be wanting.

4 “Transparency”: See-Through-Ness, Open-to-SeeNess, and Imperceptibility Neither in the transparency society discourse nor in feminist “visibility” literature is “transparency” captured theoretically and examined systematically. Hence, in the following, the multi-layered complexity of the concept of “transparency” will be clarified by means of different significations from various paradigms. Interdisciplinary insights will contribute to a more balanced and profound perspective on “transparency” and shed new light on the utopian transparency society. Three notions of transparency will be developed: first, open-to-see-ness (Offensichtlichkeit), second, see-through-ness (Durchsichtigkeit), and third, imperceptibility (Unsichtbarkeit). “Transparency” is generally understood to mean “a particular property of an object for an observer of the object” (Kornwachs 2010: 293). Etymologically, it can be deduced from Latin, being composed of “trans” (out, through) and “parere” (appear), thus already pointing at translucent boundaries (Jansen 2010). The meaning closest to the etymological origin of the term is that of transparency as translucency or see-through-ness. Here, “the transparent is not something merely visible […], but something appearing as visible because of the see-through-ness of a kind of border” (Ibid.: 25). The term originally stems from the physical discipline of optics, where transparency is the disposition of substances to let light “penetrate without appreciable weakening” (Born & Wolf 1999). Especially enlightenment theorists used “transparency” as a metaphor to illustrate the relationship between light and knowledge (Schneider 2013). Most notably, René Descartes mobilizes the image of insight through illumination and relates transparency as a mode of thinking to the element of air, which lets light pass through instead of, like water, refracting it (Schneider 2013). The opposite of optical transparency, opacity, is therefore associated not only with impermeability, but also with darkness and turbidity beyond

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the mediating boundary—demonstrating that in this sense, transparency is a matter of looking-through rather than a top-view (Durchblick statt Draufblick). Analogously, in the analytic tradition of philosophy, “opacity” is regarded as the impenetrability of a phenomenon, an idea or a concept, which even the light of reason is unable to penetrate (Göbbeler 1989). With a positive connotation, transparency as seethrough-ness is most prevalent in colloquial parlance, especially in the context of politics, where it indicates guaranteed observability to prevent corruption and the abuse of power (Jansen 2010). In this sense, “transparency […] is the technical prerequisite […] for an […] unadulterated view of reality” (Landkammer 2010: 239) in which actually existing boundaries of different kinds are made transparent, i.e. clear and see-through, without tearing them down. It is read, in line with its direct etymological meaning, as a sight beyond that is necessary for in-sight (Landkammer 2010). In economic discourse, too, this notion commonly signifies a form of information visibility in which disclosure provides the opportunity for supervision—not direct access to information (Turilli & Floridi 2009). While, on the one hand, transparency is often thought to highlight the usefulness of the information disclosed, e.g. as the basis for decisions (Winkler 2000), there is, on the other hand, an emphasis on the clearly bounded availability of information and the conditions of its accessibility (Vaccaro & Madsen 2006). Transparency in this sense largely depends on factors of availability, the conditions of accessibility and the nature and usefulness of the information itself (Turilli & Floridi 2009). It is therefore understood as a filtering through, but not as a complete opening: transparency as seethrough-ness is about the “permissibility of system boundaries—not open systems” (Jansen 2010: 25). Another common notion in popular as well as in social science discourses is transparency as open-to-see-ness, referring to openness, undisguisedness and immediacy for the observer. In contrast to transparency as see-through-ness, it indicates a direct visibility and can be understood as top view rather than throughsight (Draufblick statt Durchblick). As outlined above, this signification can, with a positive connotation, be found in post-privatism, where “transparency” operates as a form of total visibilization that permeates and reveals everything. In the functioning of transparency as open-to-see-ness, no boundaries are involved; not only do borders become transparent: they open themselves to complete disclosure (Offenlegung, literally meaning: lying open). The metaphorical focus shifts from the image of a shining-through to a metaphor of plain light and intelligibility. In the rhetoric tradition beginning with Aristotle, the concept of “perspicuity” has been employed in the sense of explicitness and clarity as a rhetorical virtue, used in counter-position to “obscuritas”, the darkness in speech (Göbbeler 1989). In terms of political theory, open-to-see transparency as a valuable social mechanism is attributed to JeanJacques Rousseau, whose understanding of “transparency” is so radically open that it can even involve the complete dissolution of the subject (Landkammer 2010). In Rousseau’s republican dream, a complete political transparency (vertical visibility) and direct, open communication (horizontal visibility) is indispensable (Starbobinski 1988). For transparency is the prerequisite of an unadulterated and direct access to reality which, in becoming transparent, becomes immediately apparent to the

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observer (Stehr & Wallner 2010). Or, in Foucault’s words: “What in fact was the Rousseauist dream that motivated many of the revolutionaries? It was the dream of a transparent society, visible and legible in each of its parts, the dream of there no longer existing any zones of darkness, zones established by the privileges of royal power or the prerogatives of some corporation, zones of disorder. It was the dream that each individual, whatever position he occupied, might be able to see the whole of society […], and that opinion of all reign over each.” (Foucault 1977) In the negatively connoted version, transparency as open-to-see-ness does not mean freedom of information or forthrightness, but control and a totalitarian exercise of power. One of the paradigmatic examples is Byung-Chul Han’s The Transparency Society (2015), in which he asserts that “the imperative of transparency” finds its expression in “the tyranny of visibility” in today’s Western society, where “everything must become visible” (Ibid.: 13). Transparency as “hypervisibility” (Ibid.: 24) leads, according to Han, to a total relinquishment of privacy: “Such total surveillance degrades ‘transparent society’ into an inhuman society of control: everyone controls everyone” (Ibid.: 47). Han (in a move that is typical for the surveillance discourse, as also demonstrated by Heller; see above), employs Foucault’s panopticism (1979), in which visibilization is the exercise of power, the effectiveness of which does not necessarily derive from de facto surveillance but from the mere potential of observation. That is, the disciplinary gaze is stimulated and sustained by the subject’s self-monitoring through the internalization of the gaze and the sheer fear of visibility. Hence, the dystopian transparency society is, at least in Han’s (2015) reading, a Foucauldian panoptic visibilization, in which transparency-practices “feed the net as a digital panopticon”, functioning as the main principle of the “society of control” (Ibid.: 46). The third notion that can be established is transparency as imperceptibility (Unsichtbarkeit). This meaning becomes evident if one focuses on the boundaries of transparency, which already played a role in both notions of see-through-ness and open-to-see-ness in different ways. From this perspective, “transparency” indicates that “something is not perceived, that it is ‘invisible’, or escapes conscious attention—it still is there in some capacity, but one sees ‘through’ it” (Van den Eede 2010: 154). To invoke visibility, the boundary recedes and turns invisible to reveal what was previously hidden behind it. Especially in post-phenomenology and media theory, which focus on the mediating aspect of phenomena, “transparency” refers to the recession of the medium, which for the sake of functioning is designed not to be perceived. In becoming transparent, the technological artifact becomes invisible for the user and appears to become part of the subject’s embodiment (Ihde 1990). In computer science, too, transparency as imperceptibility signifies a situation of information invisibility, e.g. a computational process which remains hidden from the user (Turilli & Floridi 2009). Hence, the counterpart “opacity” indicates—in contrast to colloquial usage—“something [which] lies clearly in view”—something “to which deliberate attention is paid, but in any case, importantly, ‘through’ which one cannot look” (Van den Eede 2010: 154). Opacity as non-transparency signifies visibility and perceptibility, since the boundary appears in sight to obstruct that which is behind it.

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5 The Dialectic of Transparency Transparency is thus, on the one hand, visibility (open-to-see-ness and seethrough-ness revealing or foreshadowing the hidden), but, on the other, also invisibility (the hidden boundary or that which lies behind it). It is therefore an inherently relational phenomenon. This relationality of transparency at the same time reveals its inescapable ambiguity, suggesting that these different notions necessarily interlace. Michel Foucault in fact recognizes this, when he mentions the concept of “invisible visibility” in The Birth of the Clinic (2003 [1973]). He only briefly describes the phenomenon of transparency manifested in the analytical gaze of anatomy penetrating the body: “The structure, at once perceptual and epistemological, that commands clinical anatomy, and all medicine that derives from it, is that of invisible visibility. Truth, which, by right of nature, is made for the eye, is taken from her, but at once surreptitiously revealed by that which tries to evade it. Knowledge develops in accordance with a whole interplay of envelopes; the hidden element takes on the form and rhythm of the hidden content, which means that, like a veil, it is transparent: the aim of the anatomists is attained when the opaque envelopes that cover our parts are no more for their practiced eyes than a transparent veil revealing the whole and the relations between the parts.” (Foucault 2003: 205) The frequently referenced Foucauldian panoptic screening (Durchleuchtung) with its coercive power of the gaze is effectively at the same time a panoptic darkening and obscuration. Hardly ever acknowledged in transparency discourses, but excellently elaborated by Patrick Kilian (2013a, 2013b, 2015), the connection between visibility and invisibility is that one necessarily requires the other. The image of the veil, characterized by its see-through transparency, illustrates this revealing but simultaneously concealing element, since “every glance through the veil tends not to see the veil” (Kilian 2013b: n. p.). In an attempt to trace back transparency to its technological mediation and conditions, Kilian explores radiological screening as the epitome of transparency, showing how “social transparency and radiological screening coincide and form the metaphorical basis for the visibility regime of our present, and which, with the body scanner, has become a medial reality” (Kilian 2015: 59). With the word of the historian of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, he describes the transparency logic on which radiology is based as a “constant play of presence and absence, of appearing and disappearing”, through which objects “move into the center, but also vanish into marginality” (Rheinberger 2006, in: Kilian 2013a: 11). “Visibility and darkening, image and shadow as well as varying degrees of penetrability are inherent components of this technique.” (Kilian 2013a: 11) Radiological visibility is selective and does not work despite, but through partial invisibility. A complete penetration of matter in the sense of an absolute that is simultaneous visibility would make localization and thus an understanding of the permeated impossible. Foucault’s dialectic of the gaze demonstrates that visibility and invisibility are more than conceptually interlinked, they are “inseparable elements of a ­common order” (Kilian 2013a: 13). Moreover, the three notions of transparency as

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open-to-see-ness, see-through-ness, and imperceptibility expose that this dialectic of transparency is more complex than a statically modeled interplay of the contradictions of the visible and invisible and their synthesis in the phenomenon of transparency. Its three-fold signification opens a more differentiated perspective on the logic of this dialectic, the relationality of the elements and alternation between the layers. Thus, I suggest to conceptualize “transparency” not as either visibility or invisibility, but rather recognizing its “selective vision” (Kilian 2013a: 13), which, importantly, is dynamic and varying in viewpoint and reference. This consideration calls into question ideas of feminist radical publicness and visions of fundamental visibility, post-privatist ideal of absolute openness as well as surveillance-theorists’ diagnosis of omnipotent transillumination. Moreover, the question of the relationship between emancipation and transparency as well as the question of the relation of the feminist and post-privatist demand for the end of privacy acquire new volatility. The renewed query would hence read: how can the complex interplay of the visibilizing and invisibilizing mechanisms of transparency promote emancipation in an ICT-mediated society?

6 Risking the Privatization of the Public Sphere? Debates on the classification of the internet as a public or private sphere as well as on concepts such as the “digital public sphere” illustrate how the traditional liberal public sphere has been deeply challenged and restructured in recent times. With this study, I cannot approach the claims of a structural change and shift towards transparency norms and behaviors empirically. Yet, hesitating to dismiss the transparency society thesis prematurely, I would like to approach it as a pre-empirical question of political theory formation. By acknowledging at least some descriptive analytical plausibility as well as its merit as a normative-evaluative impulse, I attempt to develop the transparency utopia’s critical potential by taking serious and thereby inverting its program. On the basis of the conceptual insights on “transparency” established above, I want to trigger a critical reflection of the emancipatory quality of the “digital public sphere” as the basis of a transparency society. Since the transparency society should now be thought of as characterized by visibilization and concealment, the question of the compatibility of privacy and the transparency society needs to be addressed. From a critical perspective, there is a need to ask about the price of invisibility that is paid for the visibility demanded by feminists and post-privacy advocates. The culturally pessimist thesis of the privatization of the public sphere put forward by Richard Sennett (2008) and Kurt Imhof (1996) seems to hint at the dialectic of transparency in that the visibilization of the private leads to an invisibilization of the public sphere. The argument indeed gains new relevance due to the boundary reduction or the shift of spheres in today’s drastically transformed media landscape. Along these lines, the most influential theorist concerned with the structural change of the public sphere, Jürgen Habermas, as early as in 1962 observed a change of the public sphere’s political function, stating that “the public

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sphere in the world of letters was replaced by the pseudo-public or sham-private world of culture consumption” (Habermas 1989: 160). According to Habermas, a disintegration of the public leads to a situation in which both—public and private sphere—lose their former meanings. “The deprivatized province of interiority was hollowed out by the mass media; a pseudo-public sphere of a no longer literary public was patched together to create a sort of super-familial zone of familiarity.” (Ibid.: 162) Later, Habermas specified the problematic of the “digital public sphere”: “the less formal, horizontal cross-linking of communication channels weakens the achievements of traditional media. This focuses the attention of an anonymous and dispersed public on select topics and information, allowing citizens to concentrate on the same critically filtered issues and journalistic pieces at any given time. The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the internet is the decentralized access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus.” (Habermas 2006: n. p.) Whereas Habermas emphasizes traditional public filtering, Slavoj Žižek (2012), rather aphoristically, accentuates the new algorithmic public filters fragmenting numerous discursive arenas. Via the internet, a new space is emerging which “seems to be public, but remains private in its own way”. Complaints about the end of privacy are shortsighted, according to Žižek, since it is increasingly difficult to act on the assumption on a public sphere. “At home, in front of the screen, you can communicate with the whole world. But the world is not there. One is still alone.” (Ibid.: n. p.) What Žižek refers to as “solipsistic collectivism” is characterized by a hypocritical mode of publicness and its appearance as supposedly total openness. It might be problematic to “overestimat[e] the importance of a supposedly ‘unified’ national public sphere and confusing it with the very idea of a public sphere” and at the same time to “underestimat[e] the internet’s capacity to provide a ‘public of publics’ in a way that is radically different from how traditional public spheres function” (Celikates 2015: 10). Yet, the paradigm of a single public, instead a multitude of disintegrated publics, is, due to its ideal of a shared observation point and shared object of observation, worthwhile to endorse (Süssenguth 2017). The challenge is indeed to avoid on the one hand, such theories of decay, threat scenarios of digital futures, and the idea of a defective public sphere which has been well intact in the past. On the other hand, it is beneficial to avoid dismissing the critical potential of diagnoses of time’s (Zeitdiagnostik) observations, such as the transparency society and the privatization of the public thesis, and to avoid rejecting their fruitful figures of thought in general, since they have a specific function for the evaluation of emerging phenomena such as digital media. Without building upon pathologies of political communication, and at the same time without naïvely idealizing and reproducing the equivocal idea of the emancipatory and democratic value of the “digital public sphere”, it is advisable to employ the pessimists’ perspective by taking “a closer look at structural features and address some of the conceptual, normative and political problems it gives rise to” (Celikates 2015: 8). Therefore, I want to stimulate broaching the thesis of an increasingly invisibilized public sphere by extensive visibilization of the private sphere, showing that it can be advantageous to attend to the warning that a transparency society

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may be accompanied by the privatization of the public sphere, possibly hindering the latter to function as a political arena. Problematically, the term “digital public sphere” is severely overused, which contributes to a precarious situation in which the question of the public character of digital media is rarely confronted in combination with the question of the function of the public sphere for society (Süssenguth 2017). Rather than being constructed around the traditional liberal public/private frame, the transparency society matrix seems to evolve around the dualism of openness/closedness (Chun 2006: 38). Open communication, unlike public communication, is not necessarily a political mode of communication, far from being a “central mechanism in formulating, aggregating, producing, and enforcing collectively binding decisions” (Jarren & Donges 2006, in: Köpl 2008: 37). In order to be able to highlight states of affairs—meaning: creating specific visibilities –, it is inevitable and arguably crucial for emancipation to at least temporarily push topics into the background, into the invisible. For the politicization of topics, the differentiation of spheres and their functions can serve as a decisive and advantageous construction. Rejecting the demarcations of public/private altogether, like the external feminist critique, seems to suggest that there cannot be any, even if continuously challenged and dynamic, constructed difference between issues of public social concern and particularities. Thus, this perspective risks to ignore—and misses out on benefiting from—the unavoidable transparency logic of visibilization and invisibilization. The desired abolition of the private/public dualism might thereby, problematically, become a stabilization and fixation of order and established power structures. In a transparency society, the private might get more publicized but not necessarily more political, since there may be a lack of strategies for dynamization or politicizing the marginalized invisible. Therefore, it is necessary to grasp the characteristics and social effects of ICTs to understand the challenges not only of the privatization of the private, but also of the possible privatization of the public sphere; not only of safeguarding the value of privacy, but also of defending an explicitly political sphere—shaped in whichever way and however dynamic. Taking the singularity of the political public seriously might be necessary to differentiate and grasp the diverging nature of digital “public spheres” in the plural. The answer to the challenge of ICTs to theories of the public sphere lies neither in reproducing the classical model by conceptualizing the “digital public sphere” as a quantitative extension of the traditional public sphere, nor in the renunciation of its social contributions. The answer needs to be more fundamental: “It is about formulating a viable concept of the public sphere after the absolute reign of mass media and journalism has come to an end.” (Süssenguth 2017: 219)

7 Conclusion: Towards a Feminist Critique of a Transparency Society According to Seyla Benhabib (1994), a new challenge to feminist theories is to reflect on whether feminisms have failed to develop a positive notion of privacy: “Perhaps feminism itself […] is based on a categorical mistake and the attempt

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to politicize the private does not lead to the emancipation of women, but to the elimination of the last traces of human freedom in the modern world?” (Ibid.: 273) What I wanted to stress here, however, is that the challenge has neither been adequately addressed by rescuing the private sphere alone (Rössler 2001) nor by glorifying the traditional manifestation of the public sphere. What I hope to have demonstrated is the need to address the apparent dissolution of the private also as its perpetuation and amplification rather than the victory of an emancipatory public sphere. Those feminist reflections on the public/private dichotomy that stress the importance of visibilizing private issues as well as controlling communication and gaining power of interpretation (Fraser 1989), urgently need to consider the changing circumstances of ICT-mediation. The conclusion that self-determined visibility in its various forms is beneficial for emancipatory goals seems to miss the serious problematic of anti-emancipatory (structural) effects of excessive, willful self-visibilization processes on the so-called social web. Due to a focus on the “conditions of visibility” (Schaffer 2008: 232) and the type of representation, the extent of visibility and its effects, as for instance the related intensity of invisibilization, are too easily ignored. The emancipatory potential of far-reaching transparency practices and radical self-publication in a transparency society needs to be critically questioned, on the one hand, due to constraining effects of visibility in the conventionally surveillance-critical Foucauldian sense, and on the other hand, due to the second Foucauldian sense of the dialectic of transparency discussed here. Foucault’s insight into the phenomenon of transparency makes it clear that “anyone who demands transparency must […] be aware that every form of visibility is accompanied by levels of invisibility” (Kilian 2013b: n.p.). A feminist critique considering the circumstances of ICT-mediated society needs to address the hidden side of every forced and voluntary visibilization. Due to feminisms’—undoubtedly deeply valuable—focus on the ambiguous nature of either visibility or invisibility, the complex interconnectedness of both is often neglected. In the context of feminist aesthetics, Johanna Schaffer (2007) makes this point—in passing—very clear: “Because every visibility production produces invisibility and new visibility displaces old visibility, it is not about more visibility, but about examining and weighing the conditions and effects of specific visibilities and invisibilities. With regard to a political assessment of the respective meanings of specific visibilities is thus relevant, not only in which context, but above all: how, that is, in what form, visibility arises—and at the price of which invisibility.” (Ibid.: 61) For the transparency society discourse to be more emancipatory, it is important to acknowledge the dialectic of transparency, as well as its dynamism and relationality, in order to be able to politicize the invisibilization of certain areas. There is a need for feminist theoretical engagement in constructing new frameworks of grasping the complex interplay of invisibilization and publication, the conditions of visibilization and politicization, the characteristics of the existing platforms of visibility, the relations between politicization and publication, between publicity and the public sphere and between the public sphere and the political on the so-called social web. How can the functions of the political public be fulfilled in increasingly network-like, almost boundless, yet disintegrating

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communication arrangements? What functions need to be fulfilled to legitimately grant the “digital public spheres” the actual status of a public sphere, which does not inherently rely on, but abolishes the discriminations related to the private sphere? What is needed is a feminist impulse addressing unthoughtful excessive self-disclosure, the complexity-problem of the digital information overload, with its filters and sorting algorithms, echo-chambers and filter bubbles of the invisibly fragmented “publics”, the invisibilized algorithmic governance in cyberspace and its design shaped by corporate interests in general. Just as feminisms have criticized the invisibility of the marginalized and still legitimately criticize it, it might also be crucial today to emphasize the importance of an explicitly political sphere of inclusive and selected visibility. The identified complexity of transparency allows more sensitivity towards the dynamics of revealing and hiding, especially on the internet. Having this in mind, the position that “what determines a dominant position in a society is not only whether that position can gain visibility, but whether it determines the form and the mode of the visibility itself and whether it can influence which form of visibility is generally recognized” (Sagmeister 2014: 4) can be interpreted freshly minded. If it is not about “transforming the field of visibility through the publication of information, but rather about producing forms of visibility as such” (Ibid.: 3 f.), the self-determined form, rather the self-determined content needs to be put in the spotlight of feminist debates again. Since the boundaries between visibility and invisibility are shifting, being “always in the process of becoming [… and being] unfinished” (Kilian 2015: 68), the renewed structural chance of the public sphere bears emancipatory potential yet to be tapped.

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Making Genders: The Biotechnological and Legal Management of Identity Mariana Córdoba

1 Introduction Academics and activists are witnessing a rewrite of significant issues about and around gender identity. Related to its history, such notion displays itself as a struggle arena. While different meanings are in tension, worldwide legal advances intervene, leaving marks on the debate. In this paper, I will focus on the Argentinian Gender Identity Law (2012) in order to argue that gender identity is biotechnologically and legally produced. What is more, I will hold that identity is not only produced, it is also violently produced, given that neither biotechnology nor the laws are free from violence. Finally, I will reflect that the text of the law challenges the violence with which identities are constituted. In order to do that, in Sect. 1, I will briefly review some important positions within the academic debate regarding how to comprehend gender identity. I will conclude this section with a brief review on Argentinian transvestite communities’ ideas regarding gender identity, since their fight led to the approval of the Gender Identity Law. In Sect. 2, I will expose the fragments of the text of the law I consider more relevant concerning the purpose of this work. In Sect. 3, I will argue that biotechnologies and the law produce identity violently. To this end, I will analyse the scientific principles on which the medical practices regulated by the law are based on. Such knowledge and biomedical practices play a crucial role on the institutionalized violence of gender-system in which transformations and gender making take place. In Sect. 4, I will analyse the tension that emerges between the idea that identities are violently produced and some relevant aspects of the law,

M. Córdoba (*)  Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_12

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that have not been sufficiently examined in academic analyses. I will argue that the Argentinian Law challenges the violence by which identities are configured. As a conclusion, I will reflect that gender identity can be considered essentially transformative.

2 The Notion of Gender Identity and the Argentinian Case The very notion of gender identity has been exhaustively in dispute within the academic realm and beyond its boundaries as a consequence of LGBTQ+’s historical demands. How to define gender identity is not simply a conceptual debate, since its very characterization is already a battlefield. Feminisms, gender studies and queer studies’ debates around gender identity also cast doubts on its possible relations with other notions, such as sex, gender roles, binarism, essentialism, inter alia. On the earlier scientific and academic debates regarding gender identity, the discussions centred on the overruling factors of that identity. The main questions were if biology plays a part in that determination (as some essentialist feminists consider; see Fausto-Sterling 2000), if gender identity has a genetic base (Diamond & Sigmundsen 1997), if it depends exclusively on the social environment, upbringing and sociability or if gender identity is a psychological experience (Money & Ehrhardt 1972). On the other hand, in those discussions, gender identity and sexual orientation used to be mixed up, or whenever they were distinguished, the existence of a continuum between them was assumed (see Bettcher 2014). The expression gender identity was coined by Robert Stoller and Ralph Greeson in 1964 (Bettcher 2014). In the 60 s, the physician John Money acquired international fame with the John-Joan case (Butler 2004). Money investigated cases of people with “ambiguous” genitalia; we worked in the psychiatric and paediatric department of the US Johns Hopkins Hospital. Through his notoriety, the issue of gender identity became a matter of public awareness, and the possibility of its discontinuity or separation from what was considered “biological sex” was highlighted. Money argued that someone’s gender identity depends on their upbringing and sociability and not on biological features. He considered that sociability must be accompanied by “normal” genitalia: if a child is raised as a boy, while having genitals with an aesthetically appropriate male aspect, the kid will be identified as male, and if a child is treated as a girl and has a normal looking vagina, the infant will identify herself as a girl (Money & Green 1969). By exposing the failure of Money’s famous patient transition, Milton Diamond argued that sexuality has a hormonal basis and gender identity has a biological chromosomal basis. According to this idea, there is a biological hard core of gender, i.e., a biological essence of gender identity (Diamond & Sigmundsen 1997). The dispute between Money and Diamond was repeatedly revisited. In 1949 Simone de Beauvoir assessed that while sex is an invariable aspect of the body,

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gender is constructed and gradually acquired: it is a cultural construction as well as a self-constructive process. In this sense, her famous words can be read: women are not born women, but become women (see Beauvoir [1949] 1973; Butler 1986). Following her line, some feminists also distinguished sex as biological and gender as socially constructed (Raymond 1979), while others claim that gender should be eminently explained as a result of oppressive relations (Heyes 2003). Different feminist positions resumed and analysed these debates (Butler 1990, 1993, 2004; Bettcher 2014), re-discussed the appeals to science and the relationships between biology and genders, as well as the role of biotechnologies regarding gender (Bornstein 1994; Fausto-Sterling 2000; Haraway 1991; Hausman 1995). Apart from the theoretical debates, the issue of gender identity is fundamentally a practical concern. As Judith Butler clarified, not only gender is constructed, but also what science considers “biological sex” is socially instituted (Butler 1990). In fact, there is a reading of biological sex in terms of gender. When physicians say “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl”, they are not describing a natural objective fact, but setting a normative frame in which subjects come to exist as gendered subjects. According to Butler (1990), gender is performative: Gender is not a simple fact; it is not a truth about ourselves. Gender produces a series of effects; that means that we act (we walk, we speak, we move) in a way that confirms an impression of being a man/woman. Nobody is a man, nobody is a woman as a given fact; gender is, on the contrary, a phenomenon produced and re-produced constantly. In Butler’s words: “(…) acts, gestures and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means. That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality” (Butler [1990] 2007: 185, highlighted in the original). In addition to those ideas, Butler also highlights the ethical and political dimension of the issue of gender identity, by affirming that the categories that classify people as gendered people—categories that are always excluding—can be livable, barely tolerable or extremely and violently unbearable (2004: 108, 191). Even if, as Butler says, some stabilization may be needed to live a livable life, a life that must forcibly be fixed into an unlivable category is not bearable (2004: 8). The issue of gender identity is related to the notions of trans and cis. In this paper I will use trans as a category that includes and could include every person who identifies themselves as trans, following the usage of Argentinian transvestite, transsexual and transgender communities (Berkins 2003, 2015)—since I will

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reflect on the Argentinian law.1 I will also use it as opposed, in meaning, to cis, following the current usage of the term—cis-people identify themselves with the gender assigned to at the time of birth. Nevertheless, within the academic debate, the term transgender is an umbrella term, which groups transsexuals, drag queens and kings, butch lesbians, and male cross dressers (Bettcher 2014). The earlier debates emphasized that the medical discourse used to view transsexuality as a medical condition, a psychiatric disorder—being one of its last names gender dysphoria. That condition used to be associated with the idea of being trapped in the wrong body. It was generally assumed that transsexual people made a transition from male to female (MTF) or from female to male (FTM). So, it made no sense to refer to trans identity as something different from male or female identity. Therefore, that notion of trans was subsidiary to the male-female binarism, i.e., other ways of being gendered, other forms of living genders were excluded. Heterosexuality was also an assumption when trans people were approached, so MTF trans people were considered to be sexually attracted to males, and FTM, to females. In addition, the theoretical and activist treatment of trans issues within the first non-trans feminism, faced hostility, as Talia Bettcher (2014) asserts. One of the dominant ideas in such feminism was that MTF were “rapists”, since they rape women’s bodies (Raymond 1979). Bettcher (2007) analyses and criticises the idea that trans people are evil deceivers. In fact, that idea exerted some influence in court rulings favouring murderers of transvestites because they were considered to have been deceived—they believed that their victim was a woman and it turned out that she was indeed a man. Similarly, according to Janice Raymond (1979), there is a chromosomal basis of sex, and social sex roles are assigned on that basis. That is why trans women are considered simply men in such view. Even though these ideas seem to be overcome nowadays, that is not actually the case. For instance, very recently, in Argentina, there was an agitated debate regarding the presence of trans women in the #8 M protest. Radical feminists (RadFem) and a group of trans-phobic feminists (Terf) claim that the woman is the exclusive political subject of feminism.2 To confirm the trans-exclusion, RadFem, while claiming to reject biologicism, paradoxically refuse to be classified as cis-gender. It is noteworthy that the debates in Argentina reached the most conservative and

1Even

though I will analyse the case of Argentina, it is necessary to turn to some academic discussions that took place in Europe and the United States, since important notions proposed on such debates are constantly rewritten in South America. Nonetheless, I will not make a state of affairs or summarize the more relevant positions. A detailed conceptual history can be seen in Bettcher 2014.

2To

see some interventions on the debate: Revista Intersecciones. Teoría y Crítica Social: http:// intersecciones.com.ar/index.php/articulos/148-el-nuevo-nombre-del-transodio-y-el-abolocionismo-radfem, F.R.I.A.: https://friargentina.wordpress.com/2018/02/26/manifiesto-fria-difamaciones-feminismo-radical-radfem/, Agencia Presentes: http://agenciapresentes.org/2019/01/28/ al-calabozo-no-volvemos-nunca-mas-y-al-biologicismo-tampoco/.

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widely read newspapers in the country. So, extemporaneous discussions or old fractures within feminism that seemed to have been exhausted return, are debated again, and, as a fresh phenomenon, those debates transcend the spaces of militancy and, of course, of academia. They are present in schools, in the mass media and in increasingly large sectors of society, at least in the case of Argentina, where feminist movements intervene in the political agenda, as shown by the debate over abortion in 2018. Several views within feminisms fought trans-phobia. Indeed, they emphasized that trans people are not adequately defined as MTF or FTM, since there are different possibilities and different ways of living genders. Some trans people argue that trans identities should be considered as trans, that their identity should be characterized as transformation (Bornstein 1994), that there are also fluid gendered people, ambiguous or neutral gendered people. Nowadays, the adjective non-binary is in vogue all over the western world, and the discussions about various, possible ways of using inclusive language is omnipresent among young people. Indeed, there were important changes in several western societies. To mention some random cases, there is an increase in the visibility of intersex people’s claims and queer movements, the implementation of gender politics, gender identity laws and the recognition of non-binary rights.3 There is also a growth in the access to biotechnologies and the new possibilities these technologies imply are multiplied—I will reflect on that below. Needless to say, such changes do not end the violence against non-cis people— as the laws of equal marriage cannot put an end to homo and lesbo-phobia –, but they place the rights of trans, non-binary and intersex people in the foreground. They invite us to rewrite important questions around gender identity, too. If the debates have never ceased to be relevant, those changes—be they institutional, legal, accompanied or not by large sections of the societies concerned, always promoted by the activisms and resisted by large numbers of people—lead to reformulations of the very issue of gender identity. In this context, questions about gender identity are being rephrased and acquire fresh meanings in relation to new challenges arising from biotechnologies, as well as from legal advances on the recognition of identities in several countries. That is the case of Argentina. In order to focus on the Argentinian law, promoted and achieved by the trans communities, it is enriching to take into consideration ideas and debates around gender identity that arose within the Argentinian transvestite thinking. The initial visibility of trans women communities was linked to the fight against violence, police repression and the criminalization of their identities by

3See, for instance, episode 3 “Intersex” of Season 1 of the Netflix documentary “Follow this” regarding intersex claims in Germany. See also BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-europe-45914813. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-new-york/new-york-citycreates-gender-neutral-x-option-for-birth-certificates-idUSKCN1MJ2OP.

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means of the laws and police edicts, and to the fight for the legitimacy of their bodies on the streets (Mouratian 2012). Of course, their appearance was always associated to prostitution as well as to crime news on the mass media. They were portrayed as hyper-feminine figures, offered for men’s consumption (Berkins 2003). Consequently, those manifestations were signed by self-victimization (Berkins 2003). If a characteristic must be chosen in order to capture the definition of trans people’s lives in Argentina, it is violence: they are usually expelled from their homes, excluded from work opportunities, condemned to prostitution and their life expectancy is only 35 years of age. When transgender organizations arose in Argentina, binarism seemed also unavoidable, as Lohana Berkins states: “If we didn’t want to be men, we thought our only option was to be women” (2003: 135, my translation). Their fight was always marked by new ways of making families: given their expulsion from their families of origin, they built ties with one another, conforming chosen families (Berkins 2015). The years of debates, of their claim for rights and their consolidation and visibility as a group, are nowadays reflected in the questioning of the hyper-feminine stereotype and the mandatory prostitution. They are also reflected on fresh arising possibilities, like the defence of an idea of a proper identity, i.e., a trans identity—I will resume that below. One of their proudest achievements was to establish the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation publicly. Accordingly, they managed to propose the Gender Identity Law, as a landmark in their history. Let us consider the text of the law in the next section.

3 The Argentinian Gender Identity Law The Gender Identity Law—Law 26.743—was enacted in Argentina in 2012. The first article of the law states that every person has the right to the recognition of their gender identity and should be able to develop freely according to that. It also establishes that everybody must be identified and treated accordingly to their gender identity and this must be acknowledged in every document that proves identity (i.e., first name, image and registered sex4). The Second article offers a definition of gender identity: “It is understood that gender identity is the inner and individual experience of gender as each person feels it, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at the time of birth, including the personal experience of the body.” This article also establishes the possibility of freely modifying bodies medically according to the self-perceived gender identity. Such modifications are not mandatory; they depend exclusively on the people’s will. It reads: “That may involve the modification of body appearance or function through pharmacological, surgical, or other means, as long as it is

4In Argentina,

identification papers (birth certificate and identification card) must express male or female as a registered “sex”.

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freely chosen. It also includes other gender expressions, such as dress, the ways in which people speak and their manners.” The third article stipulates: “Each person will be able to request the rectification of the registered sex and the modification of the first name and image, when they do not coincide with their self perceived gender identity.” The eleventh article specifies that every adult can get access to “complete or partial surgical and/ or integral hormonal treatments to adequate their bodies, including their genitalia, to their self-perceived gender identity, without requiring judicial or administrative authorization.”5 The same article indicates that hormonal treatments and surgical procedures are independent from each other: there is no need to express the will to surgically intervene genitalia in order to get access to hormonal treatments. It also prescribes that medical providers must offer the treatments and surgical procedures referred to by the law. And the twelfth article establishes the right to dignified treatment that each person must receive: “The gender identity people adopt must be respected, especially if they are children and teenagers, when they use a first name that differs from that indicated on their national identity card (ID). At their request, the adopted first name must be used for citation, registration, file, call and any other administrative procedure or service, both in the public and private spheres. […] In the circumstances in which the person must be appointed in public, only the chosen first name that respects the adopted gender identity must be used.” It is no exaggeration to assert that the Argentinian law is revolutionary. It is in fact considered the best one in the world concerning gender identity recognition, since it only requires the expression of a person’s will in order to establish gender identity (Maffia 2015). The very upsurge of the law was a result of the transpeople political fight. But it must be noted that the law states a right for everybody. The case that cis-gender people take for granted the right to their gender identity recognition is simply a proof of how cis-sexist our society is; it is an example of the fact that some allegedly universal rights (see Yogyakarta Principles 2017) are in fact differentiated rights (its systematic violation is an essential mark for certain groups). The Argentinian law does not set any conditions for gender identity to be lawfully recognized. While in other countries, a diagnosis and/or several medical treatments, including forced fertilization, are required (Butler 2004), in Argentina it is optional to medically modify or intervene bodies. The self-perception of gender needs not be certified or justified by any kind of diagnosis (such as gender dysphoria), nor endorsed by a third person, be they health professionals or judiciary system officials. The only requirement to access medical practices is informed consent. The ID card modification is also optional: a person must be treated according to their gender identity even if their document shows a different “sex”.

5The case is different for underage children (under 18 years old), who can get access to treatments and change their identification papers, but judiciary authority must intervene.

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The determination of gender identity has one single cause: personal desire. And the basis of that desire cannot be scrutinized, since it need not be demonstrated. The personal will is exclusively grounded on a private experience; so, gender identity is determined in the first person and need not to be corroborated by expert knowledge. Furthermore, the law does not refer to an opposition between a “biological sex” or a “natal sex” and gender identity as cultural, psychological or self-perceived. In the text of the law there is no reference to science; there are no allusions to biological determinants or scientific essentialisms. Nowhere in the text do the terms “male” and “female”—ordinarily considered to refer to given entities—appear, nor are there any mentions of “sex” as something naturally defined that could be opposed to gender or not. No biological difference is mentioned and no reference is made to any consonant or dissonant relationship between biological characteristics, on the one hand, and gender, on the other. Those absences, of course, are not casual; they are due to an indisputable victory of historical trans-activism struggle. By denying that biology or bodily characteristics are related to gender, the text of the law opposes a widely accepted reductionism of human life to features allegedly determined by biology. Since there is no room for science, the law agrees with one of the most salient historical demands of LGBTQ+ activists, under the slogan “Biology is not destiny!” (Bornstein 1994). The law establishes that the change of ID papers, hormonal treatments and surgical procedures are independent. Any person can manage all those modifications, or can get access to any one of them, with no need to access the others. While within the academic field it can be widely accepted that the assertion “this is a man/woman” does not describe a natural fact, but works as a normaliser, as a keeper of the M/F genders, the very practice of science (performed by health professionals as paediatricians, urologists, surgeons) has not yet been transformed by that idea. Even though bioethics committees are playing a fundamental role in Argentinian hospitals regarding legal advances like the Gender Identity Law, and the protection of children, medical practices lag behind. Nonetheless, the text of the law seems to completely overcome certain disputes that are inexhaustible in the academic field, and apparently manages to keep biology away from a suitable definition of gender. So, can it be established that science is being left out of the boundaries of gender and the constitution of identities? Alas, this is far from being settled. Actually, while the law regulates the access to biotechnological practices, science intrudes the law. But it seems undeniable that the role of science is emancipative since the law does not force people to make changes in their bodies, but permits making them if they are wished— only if they are whished. In addition, freely chosen medical intervention can make lives more habitable and make some desired stabilization possible. However, certain scientific principles, on which the biological and biochemical knowledge are grounded, underlay the medical practices the law regulates. These principles are not different from those intervening in the hormonal treatments prescribed and the surgeries performed in order to normalise intersex people. Intersex children are

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compulsorily intervened when they are babies, so that their bodies are ‘normalised’, adjusting them to the feminine or masculine appearance (Maffia and Cabral 2003; Raíces Montero 2010). We can assess that those medical practices—as well as psychiatric practices and institutions—try to keep people in a gender, corseted and ‘normalised’ within it. In hormonal and surgical interventions to intersex children it is clearly so. Is it really different when the medical interventions are freely chosen and guaranteed by the law? These cases are similar because the interventions involved in both tend to normalise bodies: not only intersex but also trans bodies are normalised. Choosing one’s sex is read, by medical procedures, as a transition from a male to a female body, or from a female to a male body. Whenever doctors perform those interventions, they prescribe hormones to manage typical male/female characteristics; they also cut out the organs construed as male/female and create normal looking genitalia. In both cases, the medical practices are informed not only by the assumption of sexual dimorphism, which excludes a lot of real people, but also by the idea that there is something like a proper penis/vagina, which excludes many more bodily variations. While there is an unquestionable, emancipative role of science in conjunction with the law, as they expand rights, tend to widen recognition and contribute in the constitution of gendered subjects, any of those can be managed without institutional-medical violence and without invoking a science that is grounded on equally violent principles. Let us discuss in the next section why gender identity is produced in a violent way.

4 Violent Production of Gender As it has been said, the text of the law is revolutionary because of the assertions that it makes and the intentional absence of certain references. But most Argentinian institutions and powerful sectors of society are not yet caught up with the law. Of course, catholic institutions manifested themselves against the law— and every other legal advance that they consider “gender ideology”. But without addressing those extreme positions, in some hospitals, health professionals do not accept some bodily transformations, or refuse to name people by their chosen names. Some doctors refuse to perform gynaecological check-ups on trans men, while—as we have seen—the law states that gender identity must be respected whether or not they have had surgeries: a trans man does not need to remove his uterus and ovaries for his identity to be recognized. It is not only that those professionals may be unaware of the content of the law (which they have to know); they are also biased because of their own prejudices and their theoretical background. And even though the law extends the access to treatments, most public hospitals and physicians have not been updated to perform them or to inform people. Nevertheless, the revolutionary character and the power embodied in the law are not undermined by that lack of education. Treatments are widely available thanks to the law, and since hormonal and surgical interventions enable transformations in order to adapt bodies to the

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self-perceived gender, they can be read as means that produce identity. The law, hand in hand with biotechnologies, contributes in producing gender identities by intervening gendered bodies. While that may seem clear, how do the law and the technologies contribute to produce identity? The extension of rights takes place by invoking science. The role of biotechnologies, when freely used in order to make lives more livable, should be celebrated. But the effects of medical practices as well as the scientific principles on which they are grounded, should be critically scrutinized. Beyond particular laws, some criticisms have been directed to the treatments involved in changing bodies, pointing out that such practices do not contribute to the extension of rights at all; they rather make the very phenomenon of transsexuality completely dependent on medicine and biotechnology and an opportunity to justify interventions (Hausman 1995). According to Raymond (1979), surgical interventions perpetuate sex role oppression, in the hands of the patriarchal medical establishment. Others emphasize that such interventions are extremely harmful and produce irreversible damage. As if that were not enough, the very medical practice is built on the assumptions of theoretical principles regarding sex dimorphism that are not questioned or even reflexively scrutinized neither by scientists nor by physicians. The unquestioned assumptions regarding sex differentiation tend to hold genetic reductionism at the theoretical biological level, and genital reductionism when we consider how biomedical practices normalise bodies. Biology explains sex determination in humans by referring to three different levels: the genetic—chromosomal—level, the gonadal level and the genital level. The genetic level is defined by the presence or the absence of the Y sex chromosome (female is XX, while male is XY). The gonadal level is described by the presence of uterus and ovaries or by the presence of testicles. Finally, the phenotypic level of genitals is described by the presence of prostate and penis or vagina and vulva. Regarding the genetic level, biology states that humans present somatic cells, which are diploid, i.e. they contain two sets of chromosomes, and reproductive cells—ovules and spermatozoon –, which are haploid, i.e. they contain just one set of every chromosome. Every somatic cell in female humans has two sex chromosomes X (XX), because female humans only have sex chromosomes X. Male humans produce sex chromosomes X and sex chromosomes Y, that is why every somatic cell has a chromosome X and a chromosome Y (XY). During fertilization, two haploid cells are combined forming a diploid cell. Depending on which one is the chromosome in the spermatozoon—the only case that can vary –, the fertilized cell will have the genotype XX or XY, which determines the “sex” of the embryo (female and male respectively). Science considers that masculinity in human animals depends on the presence of the SRY gen, localized in chromosome Y, which is responsible for testicle-formation. Biological genetic reductionism is manifested in the assumption that in “normal” cases of human sex differentiation (cases of typical male or female humans), even if there is a distinction between three levels, strictly speaking, there is only one determining criterion of sex. The level of genetic determination is the one that

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produces the causal chain of considered normal effects, which makes it possible to define the gonadal and the genital levels. That is to say, sex differentiation in humans is chromosomal; it depends on the “XX-XY System”. That makes perfect sense given the reductionist comprehension prevailing in biology, according to which genetics and molecular biology have epistemological pre-eminence over the remaining biological sub-disciplines (Rosenberg 1997, 2006), and all aspects of the biological organism are reduced to (and, therefore, explained from) the ­genetic-molecular level. Biology also asserts that for normal cases, the distinguished levels coincide, given that female is XX, with uterus and ovaries, vagina and vulva; and male is XY, with testicles, prostate and penis. But the distinction acquires relevance when odd cases are contemplated. The existence of intersex people challenges the reductionist explanation, since many of them do not present a concordance between the genetic, the gonadal and the genital level of sexual determination. Biomedicine considers intersex people as having a disorder named ‘Disorder of Sex Development’. How does science frame people in which the three levels do not coincide, people diagnosed with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, people who have both ovarian and testicular tissue, and people who have chromosomal intersexuality (X0, XXY, or XXX; Fisher et al. 2016)? The first rule doctors face is that a sex must be defined. And although biological sciences regard genetic sex fundamental, it is not the overruling factor when it comes to intervening intersex children. Physicians, after having consulted parents and hospital ethics committees and in accordance with certain protocols, usually perform surgeries on intersex children, opting for a sex based on phenotypic characteristics, i.e., genital sex, leaving genetic sex aside. In such cases, biomedical practices exalt a reductionism of sexual determination to the genital level, that is to say, a genital reductionism, which conflicts with genetic reductionism—prevailing in biology. Current scientific principles silence the existence of people other than typical male and female. Like trans, fluid, ambiguous-gendered people, intersex people are also being left out within the narrow, binary scientific framework male-female. If those existences are included in the scientific picture of the sexes, they are categorized as what traditional philosophy of science calls anomalies and medicine calls disorders, syndromes, etc. Therefore, the scientific picture of the sexes is framed in a violent comprehension of the sexed-gendered bodies, a comprehension that, on the theoretical level, excludes, denies and pathologises and, on the practical level, has the effect of trying to normalise and to cure people that are not sick. It is within the boundaries of that gender-violence frame that scientific practices and the knowledge they suppose make sense. It is precisely by means of such gender violence that biology and biomedicine define biological sex and also intends to define gender. Hormonal and genital interventions correct and violently normalise intersex children; they also harm trans-people’s bodies, but (be they compulsorily performed or freely requested) they contribute to the production of gender identity as well. And even if they are voluntary interventions, they are also violent, not only because of the effects they have but also because they are grounded on excluding,

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stereotyping and binary theoretical knowledge and principles that ignore the existence of some people, and whenever they do acknowledge them, they are tagged into pathologising labels. The division of gender as grounded on—or correlative to—a binary biological condition is an assumption that however overcome in academic debates and activisms, still informs the medical practice—which is clear, for instance, in the horror expressed by a doctor when a trans men need to take his Papanicolaou test or whenever doctors feels the urge to define the sex of an intersex child. The division man/woman is purported to be based on the theoretical account for sexual dimorphism, which can be a reason to interpret gender as Rita Segato does—­ following the interpretation of race offered by Aníbal Quijano (see Segato 2018b). According to Segato, the alleged biological male/female distinction is a biologisation of a political difference imposed by a social victory. Such victory must not be interpreted simply as the victory of men over women; it is better understood as the victory of the universal subject over minorised subjects. The gender binary system is more accurately comprehended as follows: “that binarism determines the existence of a universe whose truths are endowed with universal value and general interest and whose enunciation is the masculine figure.” (Segato 2018a: 221, my translation, highlighted in the original). The others of the masculine figure are “conceived as endowed with particular, marginal, minority importance. The immeasurable hiatus between what is universalized and central, on the one hand, and what is residual minorised, on the other, configures an oppressive and, therefore, inherently violent binary structure.” (Segato 2018a: 221, my translation, highlighted in the original) Such binary system permits to comprehend gender identities other than cis-gender as minorised identities, since they are in contempt for patriarchy, since they “defy the patriarchal order, the patriarchal hierarchy” (Segato 2018b: 20). In this framework, legal advances pose new challenges. Can those identities be genuinely recognized by means of their legal and biotechnological production? Or does patriarchy manage to include such identities, precisely, by the violence inflicted by the laws and by science? Does patriarchy solve them by recognizing them and by defining genitals and hormonal levels making them converge in the typical male/female appearance—however freely chosen treatments may be? Could medical interventions on the bodies and the recognition the law establishes contribute in making genders in a non-violent way? Even if interventions are voluntary, the produced identities cannot be understood in a naive way, as the expression of individual free will. Those productions will always be a result from the possible existing ways of living genders, which are violently constituted since they are established within an oppressive binary structure. Laws and medical practices produce identities within that system, in an unavoidably violent way. As establishing the self-perception on the basis of gender identity, the Argentinian Law can be criticised as it exalts an individual free expression of gender, some kind of gender “voluntarism”. But as Cressida Heyes states, gender cannot be considered as the expression of an isolated individual. On the contrary,

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gender is relational: it is inserted in oppression systems, in a net of hierarchical relations between differently generised-subjects (2003: 1094). Gender is not a personal attribute, it is rather a set of relations, since to be a woman or to be a man can only be comprehended within a hierarchical system in which there are others (particularly, there are subordinate-females to dominant-males). The gender binary M/F is nothing but positions within a structure: male/female status, according to Segato, “it is always a value in a system of relations. Moreover, in relations signed by status, like gender, the hierarchical pole is constituted and achieved precisely at the expense of the other’s subordination” (Segato, 2003: 31, my translation). The desire of transformation can only make sense within gender relations, which constitute a hierarchical system of power relations (Segato 2003). The defiance to violence and the desire of transformations take place within that violent constitutive frame, which is a condition of possibility for genderedbeings’ constitution. After Michel Foucault’s (1976) insight, we cannot be unaware of the crucial role that medical discourses and scientific and psychiatric institutions play, institutionalizing violence, on the making of sex-gendered subjects. In this sense, Fabrizzio Mc Manus argued for the Mexican case that institutionalized homophobia generated the conditions of possibility for the raising of homosexual identity (2014). The Argentinian law case illustrates that transforming oneself to be recognized can imply to be violently intervened by medical practices. The ways in which people are constituted as gendered-beings cannot be even thought of outside biotechnological violence. Biotechnologies together with the law violently normalise, discipline and classify bodies, so the management of identity is violent— as gender relations are. The notion of violence can seem obscure in this context. When I assess that gender identity is violently produced, I do not understand violence as a synonym of force or compulsion. I comprehend it as having, mainly, a political meaning. Following Segato and Heyes, I consider that the very gender system is violent; gender relations configure a relational net, signed by oppression and inequalities. Without subjection, the gender system—and hence the gender difference—does not hold. Moreover, if the gender system were not violent, there would be no need for passing laws in order to acknowledge gender identities when they are not cisidentities. It is within that structure and not outside of it that gender identities are built by means of the laws and biotechnologies. On the other hand, while it is clear that normalising intersex children is violent because it is done compulsively and without the kids’ consent, and even knowledge, even consented transformations on bodies are not free from violence either. A shadow of doubt can be cast over the very idea of consent when it is about fixing a norm. If we assent to modify our bodies in order to adapt them to a genderbinary norm, we are obeying the binary-unique way of being gendered (man or woman, with their own typical characteristics). Of course, that is not an objectionable issue of the Argentinian Gender Identity law. Following Blas Radi (2018), I consider that the criticisms that state that the law replicates the binary system

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are wrong. Nevertheless, even though that cannot be assigned to the law itself, the binary assumption informs the biotechnological practices the law regulates. Furthermore, I consider that there is no way of complying with norms without violence. And that applies to the very acceptance of the binary system, as to the very State violence that forces us to obey laws—even when the laws tend to expand rights, as the Argentinian law does. Of course, that subject demands further discussion within the area of political philosophy, and it is beyond the boundaries of this work. In spite of that, the Argentinian law is one of the least violent laws. As I will argue in the next section, its content and, mainly, its potential allow us to relativize the violence that I consider inherent to the gender identity’s constitution, since this law really challenges it. The effects of the Argentinian law must be appreciated, and in fact, such effects can challenge the violent production of identity, in spite of the fact that biotechnological violence cannot be avoided in our gendered lives. Les us consider those challenges in the next section.

5 Effects of the Law: Breaking the Binary So far, I have argued that gender relations constitute a system from and within which identities emerge and are configured. Such relations are hierarchical and oppressive, so the system is inherently and constitutively violent. Biotechnologies and the laws play a fundamental role in this system, as science does, in the very management of gender identities. The production of identity also engages the concrete violence that medical interventions and scientific classifications generate on bodies. But the idea that gender identity is violently produced is in tension with some features of the text of the Argentinian Law. More precisely, the Argentinian Law challenges the violence by which identities are configured. The law is an undisputed legal breakthrough; it makes the fact that some alleged universal rights are differentiated visible. It also exposes the lack of recognition to non-cis gendered identities. As I said, I consider the text of the law revolutionary, given that it opposes biological anchorages; it fully respects personal self-perception and will, leaving no room for certification by third persons. At the same time, it permits ID papers modifications and widens the access to medical interventions to modify bodies. The law goes far beyond these achievements. As it has been argued, the law along with biotechnologies do much more than giving visibility and expanding rights. Even violently, they contribute in the making of gender identities. Nevertheless, the significance and the power the law entails are not limited to that. It has more effects, which have not been sufficiently analysed or appraised within the academic debate yet. The very existence of the law, the possibilities it enables and the transformations it makes possible can be read as a potency that threatens the violence involved in the management of identity. Why is this so?

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The law has meaningful implications that surpass its already revolutionary formulation and even its original purposes. It opposes the reduction of identity to some biological features or physical characteristics, since there is no need to modify bodies in any way. The law disputes a sophisticated scientific (inter-­biological) reductionism according to which some characteristics of the body are fundamental or more important than others when it comes to gender: the law opens the possibility of getting hormonised without changing genitals by means of surgery or vice versa. The law states that no particular physical feature has anything to do with gender identity. Therefore, the law has momentous implications about what it means to be a gender or other, which should work as a warning on the forced determination of a sex to intersex infants. Even though the Gender Identity Law does not cover the treatment of intersexuality and the ways in which medicine must approach intersex children, one of the effects of the law is that it should oblige paediatricians and paediatric surgeons to re-think the compulsory interventions to them. Additionally, by the possibilities of modification the law opens, it not only fights scientific reductionism, it also calls into question many meanings rooted in our conventional wisdom. Moreover, by separating the gender from the sex assigned at birth, the law casts doubts on the very reference of the term sex, and the very meaning and usefulness of that notion. What is really assigned at the time of birth? Several debates within activisms point out that what is actually assigned is a gender, and not a sex. When a baby is born, by means of the male/female category gender is determined: identification papers do not state the person’s chromosomes, their internal organs or genitalia; they intend to determine if the person will finally be a boy or a girl, with the normative framing that decision implies. In addition, if in order to determine sex there are different criteria involved, what makes the sex of a newborn male or female? Of course, biology would answer: it is chromosomes and a normal—i.e., in accordance with chromosomes—development of gonads and genitals. That is the reason why the existence of intersex people should oblige scientists to revise genetic reductionism, as the law indeed obliges to revise genital reductionism. If there is not a biological determinant of gender, there is no objective aspect that can be corroborated which determines gender. A fundamental ethical consequence of the law is that it obliges to recognize people’s gender without interference from any purported objectivity. It is establishing that others (which, of course, include medical systems and religious institutions) cannot arrogate the right to determine anyone’s gender identity, which contributes to unmask the extended strategy of pretending to root moral beliefs in nature. The law provides the occasion of unmasking such morality: those third parties purposely left out of gender identity are the repressive institutions—and common wisdom—that appeal to nature and normality in order to oppress gender dissidents. It is an ethical effect of such delimitation that more lives and more free ways of living genders are now livable. But we must continue to reflect philosophically on this subject, in order to avoid producing new masking: how to comprehend recognition? Living with others is an essential mark of gender—as recognition is. But livable should not be understood in terms of tolerance or inclusion, as Néstor Perlongher stated

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regarding homosexuality: “We do not want to be discriminated or killed, or cured or analysed or explained, tolerated or understood, we want to be desired” ([2016] 1984: 34, my translation). The law has other powerful effects. Along with medical practices, it produces gender identities defying the theoretical knowledge grounding the practices. Since no treatment or procedure is subordinate to another one, given that no practice is mandatory, the possible transformations are multiple. The scientific principles that inform the practices open the possibility to make bodies in disharmony with the normal causal chain of phenomena ranging from the genetic level to the gonadal and genital ones. These three levels can be decoupled, because the law gives total freedom as to which treatments and procedures to subject oneself and which not to. The diversity of possible transformations invokes and supposes science. And do so with the possibility of contradicting or questioning binary sexual dimorphism, the causal chain of normal phenomena that science postulates, as well as genetic or genital reductionisms. On the other hand, as long as sterilizations are not forced, the law also decouples reproduction from some entrenched meanings in western societies. In this direction, other types of transformations can occur. For example, a trans men need not to remove his uterus and ovaries, so even if he does not want to exercise the social role of woman-mother, he can, nevertheless, gestate. Therefore, the questioning of important moral dogmas regarding how families must be, claiming to be based on nature or biology, is also a consequence of the law. And that is why the law has crucial effects from an ethical perspective. Like the law actually tends to disrupt the definition of woman or man, i.e., the definition of genders, other ethical effects of the law go far beyond the explicit purpose of widening recognition. The law can also tend to disrupt what families are and how families should and could be. Again, it should not be about extending our tolerance frames in order to allow different families to get in; the law can rather be an occasion to completely re-signify the families we form. Production of gender identity can only take place within a frame of power, within a conflict between patriarchal normalisation and possible subversions to patriarchy. Trans people incarnate these subversions in their bodies, with the help of biomedical practices and the law. Institutional violence is on the basis of identity constitution, and the law touches a nerve by highlighting the possibility of resorting to medical and legal institutions to destabilise such violence, tensing the very process of identity production. To a larger extent, without having intended to, the law breaks the gender binary. The Argentinian Law 18.248 of 1969 establishes that when a person is born, a sex, M or F, is assigned to them. Nevertheless, significant changes are taking place—almost as I am writing: on November 2018, for the fist time in Argentina and in Latin America, a court decision allowed the modification of the birth certificate and ID card of a person, so that they do not record a sex, neither male nor female, since the person does not identify with any of those genders (Radi 2018). On February 2019, a person managed their identification card to state transvestite femininity. The text of the judicial sentence refers to the law, especially to the

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definition it offers of gender identity.6 Both cases are referred to as cases of “nonbinary ID cards”, and they are steps on a path which may lead to the disappearance of M or F on personal papers. If the binary tends to disappear from papers, that is an effect of the law. Hence, a new habitable locus for non-binary is being built, enabling the construction of multiple loci together with different kinds of possible transformations. All these achievements and advances are not reached against science and the laws; they are rather reached thanks to science, with the mediation of the law. To conclude, we can assess that the violent management of identities has transformative effects that challenge the normalisation and the replication of binarism that the same violence perpetuates.

6 Conclusion The Argentinian law along with the biotechnological practices regulated by the law contribute in the making of genders. Enabling the making of genders with violence, they create new habitable loci for genders. These more livable places are formed not in spite of, but thanks to certainly violent interventions. In this sense, the transformations the law and the medical practices actually make possible, lead us to think of the multiplicity of transformations that could be. That is why the notion of gender identity can be thought as eminently transformative. As I said, the law also enables biomedical practices to contribute to producing identities in disconnection with the theoretical assumptions that inform such practices. All those possible transformations represent the disobedience to patriarchy that non-cis people actually embody. And as some changes are occurring, that defiance gains power. Inasmuch as fighting violence is an essential mark of trans, intersex, fluid, neutral + identities, it can be held that the new spaces for identities’ recognition that are being created, are also new loci of power. Gender identity, as a transformative locus is a locus of power itself. As it is important to comprehend how identities are produced, we could also wonder about the power such production and its defiance can imply. We could also analyse which philosophical notion of identity can be proposed on this basis, as well as which the practical consequences of such notion are. Gender identities are produced, re-produced and transformed, and actual transformations, but also possible ones, have real effects in the world since they incarnate power. Gender identities should be understood from the communities’ points of view—as I tried to do here—acknowledging that identity production is imbricate in the oppressive gender system it occurs in. To think of identity as powerful, transformative disobedience could be an interesting path to go down in order to dismantle what Radi (2015) calls the ontological indigence that signs non-cis bodies and identities.

6See

https://www.tiempoar.com.ar/nota/ordenan-que-el-dni-de-una-trans-diga-femineidad-travesti.

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Finally, the imbricate relation between the law and the role that science plays behind the practices the law regulates will require further analysis. While it seems clear that biotechnological applications are embedded with decisions that are not impartial from an ethical perspective, it may not be so clear for the case of science at the level of its theoretical production. Within the latter, scientific knowledge not only has ethical consequences, it also implies ethical decisions on its very formulation. I hope my work contributes to thinking how scientific principles cannot be considered ethically neutral. The political power of science is exercised through institutional structures, priorities, practices and dominant scientific languages (Harding 1992), and it is also exercised by means of the theoretical hypothesis science holds, by means of the realities scientific principles account for and the realities they deny.

References Beauvoir, S. ([1949] 1973). The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books. Berkins, L. (2003). Un itinerario político del travestismo. In D. Maffia (Ed.). Sexualidades migrantes. Género y transgénero. Buenos Aires: Feminaria, 127–137. Berkins, L. (Ed.). (2015). Cumbia, copeteo y lágrimas. Informe nacional sobre la situación de travestis, transexuales y transgéneros (2nd edition). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Bettcher, T.M. (2007). Evil deceivers and make-believers: Transphobic violence and the politics of illusion. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 22(3), 43–65. Bettcher, T.M. (2014, Spring). Feminist perspectives on trans issues”. In E.N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ spr2014/entries/feminism-trans/. Bornstein, K. (1994). Gender outlaw: On men, women, and the rest of us. London, New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1986). Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex. Yale French Studies 72, Simone de Beauvoir: Witness to a Century, 35–49. Butler, J. [1990] (2007). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London, New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. London, New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. London, New York: Routledge. Diamond, M. & Sigmundsen, K. (1997). Sex reassignment at birth: a long term review and clinical implications. Archives of pediatrics and adolescent medicine 151(3), 298–304. Gender Identity Law (2012). Retrieved from http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infolegInternet/ anexos/195000-199999/197860/norma.htm. Fausto Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the Body. Gender politics and the construction of sexuality. New York: Basic Books. Fisher, A.D., Ristori, J., Fanni, E., Castellini, G., Forti, G. & Maggi, V. (2016). Gender identity, gender assignment and reassignment in individuals with disorders of sex development: a major of dilemma. J Endocrinol Invest 39(11), 1207–1224. Foucault, M. (1976). Histoire de la sexualité. Paris: Gallimard. Haraway, D.J. (1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. London, New York: Routledge, 149–182.

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Harding, S. (1992). After the neutrality ideal; Science, politics, and strong objectivity. Social Research 59(3), 567–587. Hausman, B. (1995). Changing sex: Transsexualism, technology, and the idea of gender. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press. Heyes, C. (2003). Feminist solidarity after queer theory: The case of transgender. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28(4), 1093–1120. Maffia, D. (2015). La Ley es un avance extraordinario. Río Negro Edición digital, 31/10. Retrieved from. https://www.rionegro.com.ar/region/ diana-maffia-la-ley-es-un-avance-extraordinario-DCRN_7983817. Maffia, D. & Cabral, M. (2003). Los sexos ¿son o se hacen?. In D. Maffia (Ed.), Sexualidades migrantes. Género y transgénero. Buenos Aires: Feminaria, 86–96. Mc Manus, F. (2014). Homosexuality, homophobia, and biomedical sciences in twentieth century Mexico. Sexuality and Culture 18, 235–256. Money, J. & Green, R. (1969). Transsexualism and sex reassignment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Money, J. & Ehrhardt, A.A. (1972). Man and woman, boy and girl. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Mouratian, P. (2012). Ciudadanía plena para todas y todos. In INADI, Hacia una Ley de Identidad de Género. Retrieved from https://www.educ.ar/recursos/121188/ hacia-una-ley-de-identidad-de-genero. Perlongher, N. [2016] (1984). El sexo de las locas. In Prosa Plebeya. Buenos Aires: Colihue, 29–34. Radi, B. (2015). Economía del privilegio. Retrieved from https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/ suplementos/las12/subnotas/10062-951-2015-09-25.html. Radi, B. (2018). Caro Gero y su nuevo DNI. Un mundo sin sexo legal. Revista Anfibia, noviembre, Retrieved from http://revistaanfibia.com/ensayo/mundo-sin-sexo-legal/. Raíces Montero, J.H. (2010). Epistemología de las intersexualidades. In J.H. Raíces Montero (Ed.), Un cuerpo: mil sexos. Intersexualidades. Buenos Aires: Topia, 15–35. Raymond, J. (1979). The transsexual empire: The making of the she-male. Boston: Beacon Press. Rosenberg, A. (1997). Reductionism redux: Computing the embryo. Biology and Philosophy 12(4), 445–470. Rosenberg, A. (2006). Darwinian reductionism: Or, how to stop worrying and love molecular biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Segato, R. (2003). Las estructuras elementales de la violencia. Ensayos sobre género entre la antropología, el psicoanálisis y los derechos humanos. Bernal: UNQ. Segato, R. (2018a). La guerra contra las mujeres. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Segato, R. (2018b). Contra-pedagogías de la crueldad. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Yogyakarta Principles (2017). Retrieved from https://yogyakartaprinciples.org/principles-en/.

Perspectives: From Ecofeminism to New Materialist Feminism and Critical Posthumanism

The Seeds of Violence. Ecofeminism, Technology, and Ecofeminist Philosophy of Technology Gregory Morgan Swer

1 Introduction Ecofeminist philosophy is a development of feminist philosophy that addresses the intersection of sexism and environmental issues. Coined by Francoise d’Eaubonne (1974), the term “ecofeminism” refers to a diverse collection of feminist thought that shares the conviction that the present environmental crisis is due not solely to the anthropomorphic nature of dominant conceptualisations of human-nature relations, with their emphasis on notion of mastery and control, but also to their androcentric nature. Ecofeminists hold that there is a strong connection between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature and that failure to pay heed to this women-nature connection threatens to compromise both environmental and feminist activism. Opinion differs amongst ecofeminists on the correct way to address this issue, with some arguing that liberation necessitates that women should reject the women-nature connection and others that they should affirm it.1 The variety of ecofeminism that I will explore in this paper, transformative ecofeminism, takes a social constructivist position on the women-nature connection.2 Transformative ecofeminists argue that the links between the oppression of women and the oppression require that the liberation of women involve the

1Simone

De Beauvoir (1952) provides an example of the former, and Mary Daly (1978, 1984) of the latter. 2The term transformative ecofeminism was coined by Ynestra King to demarcate her position from those of feminists seeking to either affirm or reject the connection between women and nature (1989).

G. M. Swer (*)  Department of Social Sciences, Walter Sisulu University, Mthatha, South Africa © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_13

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liberation of nature, and vice versa. They further argue, against essentialist forms of ecofeminism, that the connection between women and nature is socially constructed and thereby amenable to alteration.3 In general, ecofeminist analyses offer a critique of the domination of women and nature through the analysis of the material and spiritual consequences of such domination and of the ideological functions of the conceptualisations of women and nature that underpin and justify such domination. A particular focus of ecofeminist analysis is the role of value dualisms in the conceptual categorization of existence.4 These dualisms are antagonistic conceptual dyads (man/woman, reason/emotion) that divide reality hierarchically with one part of the pair elevated at the expense of the other. Exposing the ideological nature of such dualisms serves to undermine both the conceptual schemas and the practices of domination that they enable. Technology features frequently in ecofeminist writings, in analyses of technocracy (Birkeland 1993), Nuclear Power (Caputi 1993), reproductive technologies (Diamond 1990), or the production of computer interfaces (Romberger 2011), to give but a few examples. Despite being a recurrent theme, technology itself as a phenomenon is rarely directly considered. For many ecofeminists technology seems to operate as an umbrella term for a collection of artefacts whose positive or negative characteristics are ultimately contingent upon the manner in which they are employed.5 The individual technologies appear as value neutral. That is to say that technology, as a class of objects, belongs to the realm of fact and is thus, in and of itself, neutral with regards to human value systems. Issues concerning value would only properly arise when considering issues involving the application of technology, at which point questions regarding values can be directed towards the actions and intentions of the persons employing the technology. There are of course exceptions to this piecemeal approach to technological artefacts, and in this chapter I shall focus upon two ecofeminist philosophers whose consideration of technology moves from the individual instance towards a more general account of the nature of technology. The first, Karen Warren, gives technology a central place in her philosophical analysis. However, I shall suggest, her commitment to an instrumental understanding of technology renders her approach problematic. I will then consider the work of Vandana Shiva. Best known as an environmental activist and radical scientist, standard analyses of Shiva’s work tend to overlook the philosophical dimensions of her thought, in particular the continuous emphasis on science and technology. I argue that Shiva puts forward a

3Daly’s

Gyn/Ecology (1978) is the classic example of such an essentialist position. for instance Rosemary Ruether (1975) or Dorothy Dinnerstein (1989). 5This situation rather belies the accusation occasionally levelled against ecofeminism of being anti-technological. To accuse ecofeminism of being ‘technophobic’, as Carol Stabile (1994) does, is to suggest that ecofeminists in general attribute some universal rebarbative character to technology. However, it is precisely the tendency to analyse features of individual technologies, rather than technology in general, that is the norm. 4See

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sophisticated technological determinist philosophy of technology that emphasises the role of political and patriarchal interests in technological development and subsequent social and environmental interventions.6

2 Warren on Technology One of the few ecofeminists to make technology central to the application of their ecofeminist philosophical framework is Karen J. Warren. Warren argues that “an adequate understanding of the dual dominations of women and nature must include a discussion of technology’” (Warren 1992: 14). Indeed, Warren characterizes ecofeminism as emerging from the intersection of feminism, environmental concerns, and concerns with science, technology and development (Warren 2000: 44). Just as ecofeminism holds that the environment is a feminist issue, so too, on Warren’s account, does it hold that technology is likewise a feminist issue. Warren states that “a deep conceptual understanding of ecofeminism requires a discussion of the basic structure of beliefs and values underlying environmental exploitation and the domination of women” (Warren 1992: 16). This basic structure is what Warren calls a conceptual framework, a socially constructed set of beliefs, values, etc. which determine the way in which one perceives both oneself and the world in general. According to Warren the primary focus of ecofeminism is on oppressive conceptual structures which are held to be the origin of the domination of both women and nature. Warren defines an oppressive conceptual structure as that which “explains, maintains, and sanctions (unjustified) relations of domination and subordination” (Warren 1992: 16). Oppressive conceptual frameworks are said to possess five characteristics. These are value-hierarchical thinking, value dualisms, power-over conceptions of power, conceptions of privilege and a logic of domination.7 Warren defines a logic of domination as, “a structure of argumentation which presumes that superiority justifies subordination” (Warren 1992: 17). It is this last characteristic that Warren holds to be the most significant, in that it is only when this characteristic is combined with the others that one arrives at an oppressive form of conceptual framework (Warren 1996: 21). And, for Warren, all ecofeminists share the belief that it is this logic of domination within patriarchy that has served to justify and perpetuate the domination of women and nature. So, what then is the relationship between technology and these oppressive conceptual frameworks?

6This

focus on Warren and Shiva is not meant to suggest that they represent the totality of ecofeminist engagement with the philosophy of technology. Attempts to fuse Heideggerian philosophy with ecofeminist thought represent another potential source for ecofeminist philosophy of technology (Bigwood 1993, Glazebrook 2001, Swer 2008). As does Dinnerstein’s engagement with Mumford’s philosophy of technology (Dinnerstein 1989), or Ariel Salleh’s appropriation of Critical Theory (Salleh 1997). 7Chris Cuomo suggests that Warren may have drawn this notion of a logic of domination from Adorno and Horkheimer (Cuomo 1998: 126).

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Technology, for Warren, does not seem to be an integral part of the logic of domination, nor imbued with the values of patriarchy. She states that, “Ecofeminism welcomes appropriate ecological science and technology. Environmental problems demand scientific and technological responses as part of the solution” (Warren & Cheney 1996: 254). The application of technology to environmental problems does not appear to be inherently problematic, on Warren’s account, but rather necessary and (at least potentially) positive. Given the central place that Warren gives technological matters in ecofeminist analysis, one would expect to find at some point in Warren’s work a discussion of the connections between the environment, women and technology which would elucidate exactly why and how these three areas should be considered in conjunction as opposed to separately. Instead, in her paper “Women, Nature and Technology”, Warren chooses to explain by offering four examples that she feels demonstrate the connection between environment, women and nature. Let us focus on one of Warren’s examples, the tale of the Chipko movement in India which originated with the actions of 27 women who halted a tree felling operation by threatening to hug the trees. The use of ecofeminist theory in framing her analysis allows Warren to identify connections between what appears initially to be a purely environmental issue and specific women’s issues. For example, the reliance of local women on the products of the forest means that the tree felling becomes a feminist issue. Furthermore, by identifying a patriarchal oppressive conceptual framework as the dominant oppressive framework operative in the world, and making it the chief focus of ecofeminist analysis, Warren is able to identify patriarchal elements present in the situations she studies. In the Chipko example, Warren locates patriarchal attitudes at the very base of the tree felling operation in the main ideas of the practitioners and advocates of scientific forestry, who assume that their scientific knowledge is superior to the indigenous scientific knowledge of the local women who use the forest. The issue with Warren’s examples, with regards to technological analysis, is that they don’t tell us much about technology. Each of her examples demonstrate that there have been occasions in recent history which, when analysed from an ecofeminist perspective, reveal technological aspects that are indeed connected to both environmental and women’s issues.8 In the Chipko example, the assumption that a patriarchal conceptual framework was a motivating factor in the origins and nature of the dispute allowed Warren to ascertain that patriarchal notions were operative in the thinking and practice of scientific forestry and that they led to the development of a situation that was harmful to both women and the environment. However, neither the Chipko example nor Warren’s other examples establish that technology is anyway necessarily connected with the oppression of women or the despoliation of the environment, or even perhaps strongly compatible with such acts. What Warren establishes is that at some points in time technology was either

8The term “technological” here is intended to include both technology and science. The deliberate conflation of the two areas is quite common in ecofeminist theory.

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used in a manner that was detrimental to women and the environment, or that there are points in time in which a technological intervention of some sort would be conducive to women’s well being. In short, on Warren’s account technology is held to be entirely instrumental in character. It simply exists as an object in the world and can be used in either a positive or negative way depending on the context of use and the intentions of the user. Given that technology is apparently neutral with regards to the ends of its use, it is hard to see how one can support Warren’s view that technology is a feminist issue or that technology is at the heart of ecofeminist theory. Warren does not give an account of what it is about technology that makes it central to an understanding of nature and women. If technology is a feminist issue then it would appear that it is only ever contingently so. Warren, in other words, does not enquire into the nature of technology. Without such an enquiry one cannot establish what, if anything, in the character of technology connects it with women and nature and their mutual oppression by the forces of patriarchy. Or, alternatively whether technology can fulfill the liberatory potential for women and nature that Warren foresees for it. A possible reason for Warren’s instrumentalist approach to technology might lie in her acceptance of Frederick Ferré’s (1995) definition of technology as “‘practical implementations of intelligence’, where ‘intelligence’ refers to the ‘capacity for self-disciplined mental activity’” (Warren 1992: 22). This rather cerebral definition of technology places emphasis on the individual human consciousness from which technology originates. It consequently ignores questions such as the possibility of there being general characteristics of technology, or whether technologies can develop or exhibit qualities unintended by the creator once they are brought into being and put into operation. Such a view commits what Langdon Winner calls the fallacy of technological mastery, the belief that “men know best what they themselves have made; that the things men make are under their firm control; that technology is essentially neutral, a means to an end…” (Winner 1977: 25). A more likely reason is that issues of inherent technological values or technological autonomy simply lie outside Warren’s field of interest. Warren’s primary concerns in her ecofeminist philosophy concern epistemology and ethics. In the first case she critiques value-imbued conceptual schemes that privilege oppressive hierarchies and exclude the situated-knowledge of those on the lower end of such hierarchies. Science, on her account, as a form of knowledge is also value-imbued and likewise situated in a specific historical and social context and she calls for the inclusion of a diversity of perspective within a specific framework of investigation (Warren 1996: 250–251). And at the ethical level she likewise argues for a contextualism, an inclusive approach to justice that fosters equality without uniformity and recognizes the situated, relational nature of ethical discourse (Warren 2000: 88). In effect Warren’s philosophy tends to remain at the level of values. Technology, on Warren’s account, appears outside the realm of values. When technology is included in her analysis it is usually in regards to oppressed groups’ lack of access to a technology, the unjust exposure of such groups to the negative effects of technology use, or their lack of inclusion regarding input into the

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selection of technology (Warren 2000: 178). In other words, technology features in relation to epistemological and ethical issues regarding its use. It however always features as a fact, an object that is itself neutral with regards to human values. Lying outside the realm of values, value considerations only pertain to the application of technological means by human agents.

3 Shiva on Technology An alternative ecofeminist account of technology to the instrumentalist technological outlook present in Warren’s analysis is to be found in the writings of Vandana Shiva. She advances a determinist technological position that rejects that fact/value distinction present in Warren instrumentalism, and places technology and science in the realm of values. Shiva’s philosophy of technology is intrinsically connected with her ecofeminism. Shiva portrays science as imbued with the ideology of capitalist economics, and technology as its point of contact with the natural and social world. Shiva also argues that in the modern world we find a convergence of systems of oppression, those of capitalism and patriarchy, such that one can refer to them as one system, that of capitalist-patriarchy. Science then, is imbued with a patriarchal ideology, and technology serves the interests of patriarchy through transformative alteration of the social and natural world. Shiva develops a Hindu-ecofeminist ontology, based upon the feminine principle understood as Prakriti, which she employs as an alternative to what she terms western patriarchal reductionist metaphysics (Shiva 1989). According to Shiva modern science, both as knowledge and practice, perpetrates violence both indirectly and directly against society and nature. Here Shiva’s views on technology and science intersect with her ecological metaphysics, according to which the properties manifested by any element of a system under study are determined by the relationships which are taken to define the context of study. Thus, the selection of the context determines the properties perceived in nature, and the selection of the context is itself determined by the values and priorities guiding the perception of nature, in the case of modern science these determining values being reductionist. This ontological distortion results in certain reductionist epistemological assumptions, which Shiva identifies as being that knowledge of the parts of a system gives knowledge of the whole, and that experts are the only legitimate seekers and justifiers of knowledge. Interventions in nature in the form of technology do harm due to the producers and utilisers’ ignorance of the natural system. The privileging of scientific knowledge, method and knowers not only prevents the study of the other properties of nature by denying the epistemological legitimacy of other modes of knowledge, it also transforms that majority of the populace it ‘non-knowers’ through the creation of the expert/non-expert dichotomy, even in areas in which they regularly operate. Thus, modern reductionist science carries out violence against humanity at an epistemological level by removing its cognitive authority and it also carries out violence against nature of a physical kind. It

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is, for Shiva, the combination of this cognitive alienation and the material consequences of this natural violation that resulted in the environmental and social destruction that she detailed in perhaps her best-known work, The Violence of the Green Revolution. Shiva’s conception of technology operates at several levels. Her understanding of technology, like Warren’s, includes the notion of technology as a mode of knowledge. However, Shiva’s philosophy also understands the term ‘technology’ to include technology as a system, as an artefact, and as a type of metaphysics. I argue that it is the Shiva’s analysis of technology as a system that is foundational to her technological critique. I further suggest that it is an appreciation of the technological at the level of sociotechnical structure that draws out most clearly her argument that technology be viewed, contra Warren and others, as located within the realm of values, in addition to the implications of such a position.

4 Technology as a System Shiva’s analysis of technology as a system undermines in several ways attempts to maintain a fact/value distinction with regards to science and technology. Firstly, Shiva holds technology and modern science to be cognitively inseparable due to their mutually constitutive role in legitimating and perpetuating the power nexus between western patriarchy and modern industrial capitalism. If science and technology are, effectively, identical, then it becomes impossible to hold that there is a fact/value distinction between science and technology. Science cannot be treated as belonging to a world of facts, removed from the ethical issues regarding technological development and application. Secondly, Shiva views science, technology and modern capitalism as forming a sociotechnical system that operates for the extension and maintenance of the power of the ruling elite. Shiva’s account at this level of analysis in many ways resembles that of Lewis Mumford. Technics, for Mumford is any system, cognitive or material, which operates along mechanical principles. So, in addition to science and technology as both theory and practice and artefact, Mumford would also include any political or labour structure which operated along centralised lines. To this extent it is fair to say that Mumford’s technics overlaps with all the elements present in Shiva’s nexus. Both philosophers further agree that there is little distinction to be made between modern science and technology, due to the fact that science’s purpose is the production of commercially exploitable technology (Mumford 1970: 123). The implications of treating science and technology (or technoscience) as forming a unit, and that unit as but a component of a larger sociotechnical system, are that technology (in this sense) must be treated as system which has both human and technological components. If technology (as a system) contains humans as components then it is hard to see how it can be treated as lying outside the realm of values. For Shiva the sociotechnical system that is patriarchal capitalism is thoroughly value-laden, and science/ technology is thus not immune from normative critique at any level (theory, organisation, application, etc.).

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What is of particular interest in comparing Shiva and Mumford’s philosophies is their recurrent use of ecology and ecological metaphors in critiquing the dominant mechanistic sociotechnical system and in validating alternative systems. Both Shiva and Mumford portray the world as being an organic system of interconnected and varied parts, with stability and continued existence guaranteed through the system’s diversity. By characterising the world mechanically, science legitimates the exploitation and transformation of the material world in a way which threatens nature’s ‘dynamic equilibrium’, and thereby threatens life (Mumford 1970: 127). Both advocate the rejection of the reductionist ideology or ‘myth of the machine’ as Mumford describes it, in favour of a return to older, ecologically sound systems or ‘biotechnics’. In these systems work was not directed to the accumulation of capital, but was merely a part of the overall cultural life of the community, and operated within sustainable parameters of both production and consumption. Mumford viewed such systems as on the verge of extinction as global society was progressively restructured along mechanical lines to serve the capitalist megatechnics, but felt that their legacies offered humanity a variety of alternative patterns of life upon which we could draw for inspiration (Mumford 1970: 159). Shiva terms these traditional systems ethno-sciences, and points to the success that their occasional revival has had (e.g. regarding breast-feeding, organic farming), whilst at the same time warning that the Western development project threatens to eradicate the remaining non-Western biotechnics.9 In summary then, it can be seen that on many of the key points of their different philosophies Shiva and Mumford are in relative agreement. In particular, both attach great significance to the influence of the ideological in bringing about transformations in the both the natural and social world. Each argue that, in essence, there is no meaningful distinction between thought and action. To view the world mechanically is to treat it mechanically. Thus, science cannot claim that the negative ramifications of the use of its creations are due to their misapplication or misappropriation, and that the political or economic sphere must bear responsibility. Science and technology are part of the political and economic sphere and technology which disrupts natural processes by treating nature or humanity mechanically has been designed to do exactly that. Whilst Shiva and Mumford disagree over the likely consequences of economic, scientific and technological development, both

9It

should be noted that Mumford and Shiva characterise the consequences of a failure to arrest the growth of capitalist technics and its accompanying mechanistic scientific ideology in somewhat different ways. For Mumford, the main danger lies in the impact that a truly global megatechnics would have on the quality of human life. He argues that humanity faces deprivation by material surfeit, and that if technology is allowed to develop unchecked we face the possible scenario of a life in which all human needs are satisfied artificially and all human development has been arrested. Shiva, by contrast, argues that the development of capitalist technics and its transformations of the natural world through the use of technology, threatens to end life itself, rather than the quality of life. The ecological ramifications of scientific exploitation threaten to directly affect those whose patterns of life are still modeled on the cycles of nature rather than those of the market.

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portray this development as out of control. Not in that it operates under its own dynamic, but in that it is in the control of an unaccountable elite all of whom are under the sway of a highly destructive mechanistic ideology. And given that technology has been designed to further the interests of this elite, it cannot be ‘turned’ from its purpose and put to more egalitarian ends. And even if it could, due to the fact that the principles of its operation are derived from the mechanistic paradigm, its operation will inevitably do harm to nature. However, the greatest and most significant similarity between Mumford and Shiva’s philosophical positions concerns their critique of the ideology of modern science/technology and its implications. This ideology serves, for both thinkers, as a means by which to preserve and justify the existence and operations of the sociotechnical system. Although Shiva describes this ideology as reductionist, and Mumford describes it as mechanistic or mechanical, their characterisations of it are relatively interchangeable. Mumford, like Shiva, sees the scientific revolution as the starting point for the mechanistic worldview, and points to its ideological and practical utility to the development of modern capitalism. Both argue that the mechanistic/reductionist ideology is founded upon the premise that reality is essentially a mechanical system, with the greater whole understandable through the study of its uniform parts (Mumford 1970: 33, 68). Both consider this mechanical model to be fallacious and destructive and both reject the model in favour of a holistic, life-ensuring alternative. In terms of the analysis of technology, the role of ideology as a rationalization for the operations of a pre-existing sociotechnical system is fundamental to Shiva’s thought in that it underpins her analyses of technology as metaphysics, epistemology and artefact. Each level, for Shiva, represents a different way in which the rulers of the technological system seek to naturalise and operationalize that ideology. At the metaphysical level, technology is the attempt to present the world in ways amenable to capitalist-patriarchal exploitation and manipulation. At the epistemological level, technology represents the hegemony of a calculative mode of reasoning that devalues and discounts all forms of knowledge outside itself. And at the artefactual level, technology represents the attempt to reorder the world such that it makes actual the ideological metaphysical depiction of reality.

5 Technology as Metaphysics According to Shiva, modern science has constructed a reductionist and mechanistic metaphysical picture of the world. She states that, “the ontological… assumptions of reductionism are based on uniformity, perceiving all systems as comprising the same basic constituents, discrete, and atomistic, and assuming all basic processes to be mechanical” (Shiva 1993a: 23). In other words,, the metaphysical picture of modern science represents all processes and entities as reducible to certain basic components and presents those components as possessing a degree of uniformity and homogeneity. These basic components are held to interact in a fairly linear, casual fashion.

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Fundamental to this depiction of the world, for Shiva, is the metaphor of the machine which functions as a conceptual blueprint for the understanding all natural processes. This mechanical conception, Shiva claims, “was based on the assumption of manipulability and divisibility” (Shiva 1993a: 23). In this way nature and its processes are depicted as an assembly of individual parts, rather than a whole. And accordingly, on this mechanical conception, the key to grasping the essence of any natural process is to isolate the parts involved. This stands in contrast to organic metaphors for the nature of reality, “in which concepts of order and power were based on interdependence and reciprocity” (Shiva 1993a: 23). For Shiva the purpose of this technological metaphysics is decidedly practical. The metaphysical worldview serves to conceptually reorder the world in a manner conducive to the interests of the patriarchal-capitalist system of which it is a part. By focusing on the properties of individual components, science legitimates the uncoupling of issues concerning the manipulation of those components from those of the wellbeing of the system of which they are a part. It further serves to attribute ‘reality’, or at least significance, to only those aspects of nature which have utility value to the sociotechnical system. And in this way technological metaphysics prepares the way for the commercial exploitation of nature by representing it in such a way that it invites such treatment.

6 Technology as Epistemology For Shiva this reductionist metaphysical picture has two distinct functions; the oppression and exploitation of nature, and the oppression and exploitation of women. Both functions serve a capitalist-patriarchal power nexus that Shiva argues has achieved dominance in the modern world. The reductionist metaphysics of modern science stem from the reductionist ideology of this capitalist-patriarchal power nexus. By portraying women and all values associated with them as inferior to those that advance the interests of the western elite, the elite devalues the position of women within society. Their lowered status enables them to be exploited in a way that serves the economic interests of that elite (Shiva 1990). By devaluing women, they are able to view and treat women as resources for the capitalist system to exploit. Shiva states that, Through reductionist science, capital goes where it has never been before. The fragmentation of reductionism opens up areas for exploitation and invasion. Technological development under capitalist patriarchy proceeds steadily from what it has already transformed and used up… towards that which has still not been consumed. It is in this sense that the seed and women’s bodies as sites of regenerative power are, in the eyes of capitalist patriarchy, among the last colonies. (Shiva 1993c: 129)

The superimposition by capitalist patriarchy of its technological metaphysics over the natural world also serves an epistemological function. The insistence that the mechanical worldview of the modern science is the only worldview with purchase upon the true nature of reality facilitates the devaluing and dismissal of alternative worldviews less conducive to the extensive agenda of capitalist patriarchy.

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Accordingly, the epistemological claims of those embedded within the western scientific tradition have greater truth value than those outside that tradition. The propagation of a reductionist metaphysical system in tandem with an insistence in that system’s monopoly on the truth enables the experts of the western scientific tradition to act in effect as the gatekeepers of epistemological certainty on matters concerning the understanding and treatment of the natural world (Shiva 1993b: 10–12). This ideologically-motivated creation of an epistemological hierarchy enables the encroachment of reductionist science into fields of human activity in which there already exist long-standing traditions of theory and praxis by creating an “arbitrary barrier between ‘knowledge’ (the specialist) and ‘ignorance’ (the nonspecialist)” which “operates effectively to exclude from the scientific domain consideration of certain vital questions relating to the subject matter of science, or certain forms of non-specialist knowledge” (Shiva 1993d: 22). Taking the application of western reductionist science to Third World agriculture as an example, Shiva points out that it is not the case that reductionist science arrives in a field in which there is a dearth of relevant knowledge. Those involved there have centuries of practical and theoretical expertise in agriculture appropriate to their specific ecological conditions. If their practice appears ‘backwards’ owing to its lack of technological sophistication, this is a reflection of the unwillingness of the western technologized mind to recognize skill and artifice outside the confines of its own mechanical parameters. The seeds that Third World farmers utilize are not ‘natural’ in the sense of naturally occurring in their present state. They represent technological expertise, albeit of a non-reductionist variety, and are themselves technological artefacts.10 “They consist of improved and selected material, embodying the experience, inventiveness and hard work of farmers, past and present; and the evolutionary material processes they have undergone serve ecological and social needs” (Shiva 1993c: 134). The representation of seeds in particular, and Third World agriculture, as existing in an ‘state of nature’ allows seeds to be treated as a raw material to be developed by western science/technology, and severs the connections between the nature of the seed and the knowledge of the farmers. As an ‘unimproved’ natural object, the seed invites the improvement that reductionist technological agriculture can offer. It also negates the history of the seed as an artefact, and thereby as a living testament to the expertise of non-reductionist, non-western, agriculturalists. The seed becomes an atemporal component of the mechanical natural model, and the Third World farmer’s knowledge is invalidated. Their relation to the seed is now that of the scientifically ‘ignorant’, and their interactions to it mediated by the technically ‘learned’. For Shiva it is one of the epistemological premises of reductionism that, “‘experts’ and ‘specialists’ are the only legitimate knowledge-seekers and knowledge-justifiers” (Shiva 1988: 235). And the expertise of the technological expert is held beyond the reach of the farmer, and thereby, beyond their question or input.

10The

term ‘technological’ is here meant to suggest the Greek techne, rather than the mechanical technological device.

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7 Technology as Artefact Shiva’s philosophical focus is largely on the nature and effects of modern technology and her critique of modern technoscience is not limited to its metaphysical representations or its exclusionary epistemological practices. Shiva also analyses modern technology, and its role in the deterioration of the environment, at the artefactual level, the level of technological devices and products. And the specific artefact on which Shiva focuses is that of the seed, or rather the seed as ‘technologised’ by reductionist technoscience. Modern technology (in the form of technological devices and products) is for Shiva the consequence and ultimately the purpose of modern science. Reductionist science portrays nature as inert and open to exploitation. Technology is then created to carry out this project of exploitation. In other words, the purpose of science is to produce technology and the purpose of technology is to materially reorder the world to ensure that it manifests only those properties that accord with the capitalist-patriarchal system. Here we see the reasons for Shiva’s rejection of instrumentalism. Namely that technology, of the contemporary Western variety, is thoroughly value-laden. In describing Shiva’s position as a technological determinist one I do not mean to suggest that Shiva holds that there are fixed laws of technological development but rather that technology operates as a determining factor in societal development in that it can limit, shape or fix certain patterns of social and natural relations (Swer 2014: 203 f.). The metaphysical power of the technological artefact, on Shiva’s account, lies in its ability to make the metaphysics of science actual. Through the intervention of technology in nature the metaphysical system proposed by science is imposed on nature (and thereby on society) and ceases to be a theoretical construct. Nature becomes as science describes it, and to ‘use’ nature ‘productively’, societies must adapt appropriate patterns of social and economic behavior. A further element of Shiva’s technological determinism is the extent to which the values of the capitalist-patriarchal system inhere in the technological artefact. If the artefact is designed to reorder the world in a way amenable to capitalistpatriarchal exploitation, then the proper use of that artefact entails such material reordering. This deterministic element of contemporary technology is brought out most clearly in her analysis of the high yield variety seeds (HYVs) in the Green Revolution. The seed has now become a technological artefact, “engineered [my emphasis] and introduced on the basis of ‘preferred’ traits” (Shiva 1993a: 27). It is in itself a reordering of nature, that has been deliberately engineered to operate in a specific manner. And, if employed, it will continue to operate in that manner (in accordance of the values of those who produced it) regardless of the values or intentions of those who ultimately employ it. And thus, the question of values pertains not just to the epistemological and ethical dimensions of technological use as with Warren but, for Shiva, to the ontological level too.

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Turning to Shiva’s point about the role of the technological artefact in reconfiguring the social order at point of use, Shiva argues that the use of a technological device necessitates a wider sociotechnical framework as an enabling condition for the operation of that device. For Shiva the new, scientifically ‘improved’ seeds of reductionist agriculture, such as the high yield varieties (HYVs) introduced into India during the Green Revolution, differ significantly from the ‘unimproved’ seeds previously used in traditional agriculture. An intrinsic feature of the new seeds, on Shiva’s account, is the imposition of control on a regenerative resource. Whereas traditional crops generated their own seeds, and thereby future crops, the hybrid crops do not produce efficacious (‘true to type’) seeds. The ability of the seed to renew itself as resource is thus constrained, and the farmer is now obliged to purchase new seeds rather than harvest their own. And this increased reliance upon the market to supply the necessities of agricultural practice, as opposed to the self-reliance that preceded the technologization of agriculture, is reinforced by a second feature that Shiva argues is peculiar to the new seeds. Namely, that the seeds themselves are inert. “The commoditized seed… cannot produce by itself, to do so it needs the help of artificial, manufactured inputs” (Shiva 1993d: 30). For the new seed technology to function it requires a continuous supply of chemical inputs, in the form of fertilizer and pesticides, which must be purchased. The seeds also require increased water inputs. Many of the HYV crops were engineered to facilitate mechanical harvesting, and hinder traditional methods of harvesting by hand. Ease of harvesting then favours the acquisition of agricultural machinery which in turn require petrochemical inputs in order to function. Collectively the introduction of the new seeds created a demand for fertilisers, pesticides, water, seeds and energy that had not been present before, or at least not in such quantity. There external inputs had to purchased by the farmers from third parties, thereby altering the agricultural model from one of self-sufficiency to one dependent on the consumption of additional agricultural commodities. In addition to this market dependency, the supply of these inputs necessitates the development of suitable infrastructure; largescale irrigation projects, transport networks, credit provision, etc. To make the technological seed function, its environment must be transformed in order to replicate the social conditions of the sociotechnical structure from which it originated. Shiva’s view of the social and material reordering necessitated by the operational requirements of new technology resembles Bruno Latour’s analysis of the ‘transferal’ of Pasteur’s laboratory (Latour 1983). Here we find the relocation of a natural entity, the seed on Shiva’s account, into a scientific space. Under conditions utterly unlike those found in its typical environment it is coaxed into manifesting certain properties. The effort is then made to transfer the now scientifically understood entity from laboratory conditions into the external world and to compel it to reproduce the same properties that were produced in the laboratory. Shiva’s point, like Latour’s, is there is no real movement of the entity from inside the laboratory to outside the laboratory. Rather the successful functioning of the entity is contingent upon the extension of the laboratory conditions into the outside world. To paraphrase Latour, seed technology is like a train, it doesn’t work off its rails. The laboratory must be expanded to encompass society and nature.

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Shiva’s claim about the restructuring powers of the technological artefact goes beyond the reordering of social relations and agricultural practice. For Shiva in the laboratory reality is altered in that elements of it are removed from their relational context and placed in isolation. Then these properties are observed through the lens of a patriarchal-capitalist value-system such that only properties of utility to commercial exploitation manifest themselves. So, firstly reality is misrepresented in practice through the focus on objects in isolation. Then, by viewing the object through a certain metaphysical representation of nature, only properties that accommodate and reinforce that representation are perceived. The significance of the technological artefact on Shiva’s account is that it reorders the natural world so that it corresponds to the metaphysical picture of western science/technology. Technology as metaphysics serves an ideological function by representing the world as an aggregate of resources. Technology as artefact makes the representation actual by restructuring nature so that it accords with the reductionist scientific worldview. In the case of the technological seed, technology was inserted into the structure and operations of nature. Certain relations within nature were blocked through the use of technology, and technological substitutes were put in place of many of the components usually found in traditional agriculture. In this way, certain natural processes were isolated from their relational web, and through technological intervention compelled to manifest certain properties. Thus, rather than take nature into the laboratory, one blends the laboratory with nature, producing a restructured form of reality that conforms to the exploitative metaphysical model of patriarchal-capitalist science.

8 Technology and/as Violence For Shiva, the consequences of the application of technology in the contexts that she analyses are always disruptive. Technology serves an ideological function in facilitating the extension of power by western capitalist-patriarchy and for Shiva the effects of the exercise of this power are always violent. At the metaphysical level technology represents the imposition of a mechanical worldview over a relational web of life. Those aspects that have utility potential are isolated from their relations to other parts of the web, and those that do not are devalued. At the epistemological level technology negates pre-existing bodies of knowledge and technological accomplishments, and dichotomises society into the categories of expert and non-expert. Knowledge becomes the preserve of the technologists, to whose judgment all non-knowers must defer, even in relation to matters outside science’s realm of ‘fact’. The social effect is to rob those outside the charmed epistemological circle of their cognitive authority and render their traditional knowledge worthless. And at the artefactual level, the conceptual reordering of reality by technological metaphysics is mirrored in the social and material reordering brought about through technological use. The development of the necessary infrastructure and supply chains for technology to function involves significant technological

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transformation of the environment. It also reorients the practice of agriculture away from a focus on self-reliance and social maintenance to one focused on profit and the needs of the market. For Shiva this technological remodeling of social relations disrupts social existence. Access to technological inputs becomes an imperative, and this in turn brings about new relations of power within the agricultural communities, and between them and those who control access to those inputs. And the outcome of this alteration in political power has been conflict and violence between communities and the state over access to these inputs. It has, according to Shiva, “increased the commercialization of social relations” and increased ethnic, cultural and religious conflict (Shiva 1993a: 173). And at the material level, technology as artefact violently intervenes in the natural processes upon which life is dependent. “The object of knowledge is violated when modern science, in a mindless effort to transform nature without a thought for the consequences, destroys the innate integrity of nature and thereby robs it of its regenerative capacity” (Shiva 1988: 233). The consequences of technological intervention in the agricultural process are to be found in increased desertification, loss of genetic diversity, increased pest-resistance, etc. And these ecological crises greatly exacerbate the social conflicts already resulting from the switch to a capital-intensive, high input mode of agriculture. The effect of this violence is cumulative and falls most heavily on those who, for contingent cultural and historical reasons, find themselves excluded from access to the putative benefits of agricultural development and who are dependent on sustenance-focused modes of production: women, tribals, peasants. And for Shiva, given patriarchal attitudes towards the value of women’s ‘unproductive’, i.e. non-profit oriented, labour, it is women who bear the brunt of this violence. Development, for them, has the effect of eroding their already unequal social standing. It has, according to Shiva, “destroyed women’s productivity both by removing land, water and forests from their management and control, as well as through the ecological destruction of soil, water and vegetation systems so that nature’s productivity and renewability were impaired” (Shiva 1988: 3). The technological development of agriculture has had the effect of increasing their labour, damaging their health and rendering their existence, and through them that of society, increasingly precarious. Shiva states that, “This poverty crisis touches women most severely, first because they are the poorest among the poor, and then because, with nature, they are the primary sustainers of society” (Shiva 1988: 5). Technology, at every level of analysis, is therefore a gender issue.

9 Conclusion It is my argument that eco-feminism, or at least the variety of transformative ecofeminism espoused by Warren and Shiva, contains significant components of technological analysis that can be fruitfully understood as constituting a philosophy of technology. Ecofeminists argue that the capitalist-patriarchal elite in Western society impose a conceptual schema on nature and society that sanctions and furthers

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their control. This schema tends to dichotomise the world and its contents into two opposing halves with one part always perceived as superior to its pair. By placing those values that advance the capitalist patriarchal world system higher in the hierarchy of dualisms, it is argued that those values are established as superior values. Conversely, those values that are placed in the lower half of the hierarchy are denigrated and devalued. And thus devalued, are open to exploitation in ways that serve the capitalist patriarchy. In this way values and structures associated with women or nature and which do not facilitate capitalist values of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ are judged to be either of less value or without value which in turn sanctions the consequent exploitation of women and nature. Warren’s ecofeminism takes an instrumentalist position on technology. Technology is perceived as a natural object, and thereby value-neutral. Ethical issues thus arise with regards to access to technology and decision-making regarding the application of technology. Shiva’s philosophy of technology, I suggest, draws on the above features of ecofeminist philosophy in order to fashion a critique of the value-laden character of technology. Shiva takes a more determinist position and argues that modern technology is inherently political, from the level of scientific theory to level of the individual technological artefact. Through her analysis of the development and application of agricultural technology in the Third World, Shiva explores technology at several different levels; epistemological, metaphysical, systemic and artefactual. Each level, she argues, serves an ideological function in facilitating or enacting a project of technological colonisation and exploitation. Consequently, for Shiva, the issue of values must be explored at both the point of technological application and, contra Warren, the point of conception too. Shiva argues that the technological imposition of reductionist metaphysics on nature inevitably results in the destruction of the natural processes that support life. Secondly, Shiva argues, women are usually those in closest contact to nature and its processes in that they are the ones who depend most upon the products of the natural environment for their livelihoods and sustenance (Shiva 2009). Thus, any impacts of the environmental degradation caused by technological intervention will be felt by women first. And given the inferior status of women within society, they will be the ones least able to bear the ramifications of the loss of their livelihoods. In this way the destruction of nature and the destruction of women is linked.

References Bigwood, C. (1993). Earth Muse. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Birkeland, J. (1993). Ecofeminism: Linking Theory and Practice. In G. Gaard (Ed.), Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 13–59. Caputi, J. (1993). Nuclear Power and the Sacred. In C.J. Adams (Ed.), Ecofeminism and the Sacred. New York: Continuum, 229–250. Cuomo, C. (1998). Feminism and Ecological Communities. London, New York: Routledge. Daly, M. (1978). Gyn/Ecology. Boston: Beacon Press.

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Daly, M. (1984). Pure Lust. Boston: Beacon Press. De Beauvoir, S. (1952). The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books. Diamond, I. (1990). Babies, Heroic Experts, and a Poisoned Earth. In I. Diamond & G.F. Orenstein (Eds.), Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, 201–210. Dinnerstein, D. (1989). Survival on Earth: The Meaning of Feminism. In J. Plant (Ed.), Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers. Ferré, F. (1995). Philosophy of Technology. Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press. Glazebrook, T. (2001). Heidegger and Ecofeminism. In N.J. Holland & P. Huntington (Eds.), Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger. Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania University Press, 221–252. King, Y. (1989). The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology. In Judith Plant (Ed.), Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 19–28. Latour, B. (1983). Give me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World. In K. Knorr-Cetina & M. Mulkay (Eds.), Science Observed: Perspectives on the social study of science. London: Sage Publications, 141–170. Mumford, L. (1970) The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Romberger, J. (2011). Ecofeminist Ethics and Digital Technology: A Case Study of Microsoft Word. In D.A. Vakoch (Ed.), Ecofeminism and Rhetoric. New York: Berghahn Books, 117–143. Ruether, R. (1975). New woman/New earth: Sexist ideologies and human liberation. New York: Seabury Press. Salleh, A. (1997). Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (1988). Reductionist Science as Epistemological Violence. In A. Nandy (Ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence. Oxford: UN University, 232–256. Shiva, V. (1989). Staying Alive. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (1990). Development as a new form of Western Patriarchy. In I. Diamond & G.F. Orenstein (Eds.), Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, 189–200. Shiva, V. (1993a). The Violence of the Green Revolution. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (1993b). Monocultures of the Mind. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (1993c). The Seed and the Earth: Biotechnology and the Colonisation of Regeneration. In V. Shiva (Ed.), Minding our Lives. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 129–143. Shiva, V. (1993d). Reductionism and Regeneration: A Crisis in Science. In M. Mies & V. Shiva (Eds.), Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books, 22–35. Shiva, V. (2009). Women and the Gendered Politics of Food. Philosophical Topics 37(2), 17–32. Stabile, C. (1994). Feminism and the Technological Fix. New York: Manchester University Press. Swer, G. (2008). Gender, Nature and the Oblivion of Being. The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy 24(3), 102–135. Swer, G. (2014). Determining Technology: Myopia and Dystopia. South African Journal of Philosophy 33(2), 201–210. Warren, K. (1992). Women, nature, and technology: An ecofeminist philosophical perspective. Research in Philosophy and Technology 13, 13–29. Warren, K. (1996). The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism. In K. Warren (Ed.), Ecological Feminist Philosophies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 19–41. Warren, K. & Cheney, J. (1996). Ecological Feminism and Ecosystem Ecology. In K. Warren (Ed.), Ecological Feminist Philosophies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 244–262. Warren, K. (2000). Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What it is and Why it matters. New York: Rowman Littlefield. Winner, L. (1977). Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

The Sexual Continuum, a Diffractional Analysis, and Our Apparatuses of Investigation Dominika Lisy

1 Introduction Our knowledge of things about and around us involve identifying differences by creating categories and binaries. Differences can be powerful if we use them consciously and through multiple perspectives. Yet more often than not, distinctions oppose and contrast conceptualisations to an extent to which they become antagonistic. This chapter is about differences, opposites, dichotomies, and binaries—the general conceptualisations in our minds in which we organise a concept along a line of two opposing points. Instead of emphasising only the ends of the line, the actual line in between which is connecting both points, is the important aspect in this binary dynamic. As a consequence, looking at binary conceptualisations is going to become a question of similarities, connections, and relations. New materialist philosophy embraces questioning our current notions about differences and our anthropocentric assumptions (St. Pierre et al. 2016). This allows us to acknowledge the multifacetedness of things because our understanding of some concepts relies on much too rigid, constricting definitions. Sexuality is a highly complex experience comprising a range of emotions, bodily reactions, social interactions, and a multiplicity of thoughts and fantasies. It cannot be approached with rigidness if we want to acknowledge its diversity. Thus, my ambition is to illustrate that new materialism and in particular, Karen Barad’s quantum perspective can facilitate new understandings in the field of sex research when engaging with the complexity of phenomena on the sexual continuum. Furthermore, it inspires new ways of doing research and interact, or rather intra-act, with our tools for knowledge production, which is particularly crucial when it comes to the entanglements of matter and discourse in phenomena like sexuality. D. Lisy (*)  Göteborg, Sweden © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_14

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When researching aspects of “having sex” we are entering a field of theoretical and practical tensions. We often come across binaries within research results as simplified conceptualisations which can have devastating real life effects and disregard the variety of our lived experiences (Barad 2007). In order to understand the effects of our research and specific claims about the sexuality of people’s lives, I argue that we have to start exploring and embracing the differences, complexities, and strange tensions. By doing that we emphasise accountability and sensitivity of our research results—generally and especially within sex research. As a feminist researcher in particular, I feel devoted to notions of accountability and the challenge of normativity in academia. My outlook is upon tools and technologies that are frequently used in the sciences in order to disassemble what they are, what they make us know or how we inform them. It is this becoming aware of a complexity of things and dynamic relations in commonly rigid knowledge about binaries that is produced when engaging with tools and technology. This is important because developments in technology become increasingly integrated and entangled with our lives, urge us to question the depth of our roots in philosophy and ethics (St. Pierre et al. 2016). New materialist philosophy challenges the way we investigate complex phenomena with numerous variables. As a movement with yet a variety of terminologies and neologisms (Hekman 2010; St. Pierre et al. 2016), it is an exciting and yet an inherently confusing task to give new meaning to words and restructure our knowledges and methods (Åsberg and Lykke 2010). In light of the development and advances in technology and science which are in no way solely material, new materialist insights inspire a range of applications and urge us to think anew about these entanglements in knowledge production. In the following, I am going to define the sexual continuum, illustrate the challenges in sex research and emphasise how new materialism is particularly useful for conceptualising complex phenomena. Then I am going to give some more insight into my understanding of Baradian diffraction as a theory and explain my method. Barad’s notion of the “apparatus” is going to be a central piece that serves as a metaphor for any research tool and technology through which meaning is created within research. For my diffractional analysis I chose the technology of sexuality-related questionnaires to help me explore new insights into binary conceptualisations of sexuality. Ultimately, this chapter attempts to illustrate that knowledge production is the interwoven pattern of all parts involved: the meanings and ideas existing in our heads, the words we use with our mouths, the materials constructing our tools, and the bodies of the researchers within an experiment and their analysing process afterwards. My project aims to encourage the exploration of diffraction as a method for interdisciplinary research and approach our tools of investigation with experimental curiosity in order to inform us about material-discursive entanglements.

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2 The Sexual Continuum Sexuality, sexual experience, sexual response, the sexual—there are multiple ways to talk about the specific state of mind and body and everything in between revolving around the phenomenon of “having sex”. Questions like “what does it mean to have sex?” and “what counts as sexual?” necessarily lead to the binary conceptions of the sexual because communication around sexuality is still a sensitive issue, especially within research (Irvine 2012, 2018). It is captured in its abnormality as compared to its normality, as dysfunctional versus functional, and the bad is contrasted against the good. I am using the term sexual continuum to encompass practices, meanings, conceptualisations of the experience of human sexuality. The term ‘continuum’ describes a fluent sequence, an entirety of which no part can be distinguished from adjacent parts except by arbitrary segmentation (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language 2011a). This continuum describes a complex web of threaded tangles which is in its construction simultaneously rigid and flexible. Thus, when thinking about the sexual continuum, I want to include not one specific part of its experience, but address the general way of thinking about it in its entirety. A new methodological approach is particularly relevant for sexuality because of the relation between the body and the mind and the challenge to incorporate both. The sexual continuum includes material and conceptual aspects and their entanglement of one another, meaning that something material always includes the conceptual and vice versa. Aspects on the sexual continuum are commonly conceptualised in a classic mind-body dualism where physical variables are studied separate from social or discursive ones. Discussions about “sex and gender” in feminism have often not even addressed sexuality because of this complex interplay of various components (Stone 2007: 86 f.). Traditional realists and biological determinists prioritise matter, and hence the body, as the source for conceptualising sexuality (Stone 2007: 31; Barad 2007: 45), whereas social constructionists prioritise the mind and argues that our knowledge about sexuality and any scientific result is based on discourse and constructs (Stone 2007: 68; Hekman 2010: 17). Consequently, different fields of research have studied and conceptualised sexuality according to these different schools of thought. The tools used to study aspects of the sexual continuum become the key to differences in our results and the conclusions we draw. Conceptualisations about the sexual continuum include a multitude of meanings which are often expressed as binaries. Eventually, discussions about sexual function and dysfunction, or normal and abnormal, are often central to the categorisation of bodies and bodily functions in the medical and psychological field (DeBlock & Adriaens 2013). This ultimately informs social meanings and the conceptualisation of what is right and wrong when it comes to sexual practices.

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3 History of Conceptualisations of the Sexual Continuum Experimental methodology and the use of psychophysiological instruments are an important part of sex research. What started as an exploration of meanings and distinctions in expressions of the sexual continuum, turned soon into a science in medical and psychological fields (De Block & Adriaens 2013). Models of sexuality became a focus in clinical and psychological studies and in 1966, William Masters and Virginia Johnson published their first models of sexual arousal (Masters & Johnson 1966). Their research was concerned with the physiology and experience of the sexual arousal and orgasm for men and women. They argued that the human sexual response develops in four stages: excitement/arousal, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. The sexual response was largely conceptualised as the bodily experience of genital sensations. Further developments of this model by Helen Kaplan (1977) introduced the aspect of desire as an additional stage for the onset of arousal and Rosemary Basson (2000) even constructed a cyclical model for sexual response in order to account for intimacy and emotions as opposed to the linearity in previous models. More recent theories on the sexual response continue to explore the connection of physical and psychological factors. In regard to the influence of cognitive processing on physical sexual arousal, Eric Janssen and John Bancroft (1996, 2007) introduced a dual control model which describes sexual arousal as determined by excitatory and inhibitory control mechanisms of neurophysiological processes. Pedro Nobre and José Pinto-Gouveia (2003) included emotions in the interplay of cognition and sexual response. They found that negative feelings and cognition can lead to ‘poor performance’ and difficulties to engage in pleasurable sex. In opposition to this major focus on genitals in psychophysiological studies and the primary use of quantitative methods, qualitative and social-constructionist research on sexuality has emphasised the importance of sexual meanings in different situations, cultures, and generations. A popular idea is the theory of sexual scripts which was introduced by William Simon and John Gagnon (1986). They theorised that mental scripts guide our behaviour in social situations like an internalised list of things that are accepted to say and do. In regard to sexual behaviour, they proposed three levels of scripts which can be interlinked: acceptable sexuality expressed and performed within a culture (sociocultural script), within an interaction of two or more people (interpersonal script), and within the mind of the individual (intra-psychic script). Yet unresolved incongruencies point to the limits of these approaches, such as a lack of concordance with sexual genital responses measured in female bodies and women and their indicated subjective responses (Laan & Janssen 2007). Further, in regard to each of the three popular models of sexual arousal, people identify to different extents with them and they especially lack to explain dysfunctional experiences of arousal (Giraldi et al. 2015). In regard to the social constructionist approaches, the sexual script theory is admittedly a useful and popular metaphor in highlighting the importance of social relations in sexuality. However, it has the drawback of being too broad and non-refutable and therefore impossible to

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study empirically (Wiederman 2015). It is evident that current theories and methods are limited by their grounding in different schools of thought which makes interdisciplinary research particularly challenging. Understanding the diversity of the sexual continuum, however, requires to overcome these challenges and integrate knowledges and allow a multiplicity of perspectives. The entanglements of physical, cognitive-emotional, and social variables are complex and some aspects of the sexual continuum seem to disagree or be restricted to one form of theory and method in a specific academic field. The categories and especially the binaries that are used to describe sexual experiences in any research field, however, can be a starting point for understanding our own beliefs and assumptions and consequently combining our theories, methods, and results. How do binary concepts such as freedom-restriction, deviance-norm, satisfaction-dissatisfaction, and function-dysfunction inform us about the nature of having sex? This is ultimately a question of ontology and epistemology which grounds my research in current feminist discussions on new materialism. Since exploring the material-discursive relationships in regard to the sexual continuum, my analysis combines the investigation into the essence of the thing and the coming to know of the thing and their relation. This onto-epistemology, how Barad (2003: 829) calls it, is a new turn in philosophical debate about our experience and knowledge of reality.

4 The Philosophy of Scientific Measurements Traditional scientific methods in natural sciences follow a positivist empiricism. What we can measure is what there is and indicative of what we know. But is it really? Scientific results from experimental methods became increasingly popular to explain mental phenomena, neglecting the philosophical underpinnings they necessitate (Cosgrove et al. 2015). The philosophy of empiricism which assumes one underlying truth proven through scientific methodology, is supposed to provide a common ground for argumentation about the “objective” world around us. In science it is expected to rely heavily on the objectivity of numbers and statistics to represent the reality (Cosgrove et al. 2015). This “hegemony of quantification” (Cosgrove et al. 2015: 15) is a pillar of validity in the natural sciences and has then been adopted as a way to do valid research in psychology and other social sciences. Donna Haraway (1988: 581) calls this the “god trick” with which we assume that we can understand the world from one ideal perspective. This godly perspective of the world is considered as objective and separate from our subjective experiences. Sandra Harding (1986) criticised how this dominant idea on what is true and valid, created a power position for results and arguments from the sciences because it undermines any other argumentation that cannot be translated into these objective, quantifiable units of measurement. Moving away from scientific realism as being inconclusive, philosophers have focused on the role of language in constituting our reality (Hekman 2010). Cognition and perception is bound to a mental process that might not be connected to some material reality but linguistic structures instead. These processes

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can be altered and tainted through different experiences, and is biased by the different attitudes and beliefs, such as to whose words we agree to rely on as a society. When women entered academia, the male gaze in science was revealed as such bias (Hekman 2010: 65) which made feminists particularly critical towards the claimed objectivity of science. Questioning the notion of ontology and the meaning of objectivity was essential, but we are limited by our beliefs and our system of language to understand and communicate the things that we know and experience around us. Thus, the linguistic turn initiated a shift from ontology to epistemology and determined that everything we know and can be certain of are linguistic constructions (Hekman 2010). Feminist philosophy has been particularly focused on this idea of construction in order to emphasise how social structures, hierarchies, and power relations are the building blocks of what we know. The heavy reliance on social constructionism and the concept of construction, however, has become another god trick (Barad 2007; Harding 1986). Haraway (1988: 580) states that by highlighting subjectivity in opposition to scientific objectivity, we are restricting ourselves to yet another singular perspective along a binary. She argues for the notion of feminist objectivity in science which takes multiple perspectives into account and emphasises how our own positioning is embedded in space and time, what she calls situatedness. Moreover, Hekman (2010: 30 f.) describes how in reading Wittgenstein (1958) and Foucault (1990 [1978], 1980), who are supposed to be important figures for the linguistic turn, the materiality was never out of the frame. In fact, for them it was a particular challenge to address its connection to discursive practices yet are often interpreted and acknowledged solely for their linguistic analyses. Questions of ontology and epistemology ultimately seem to be related and it becomes increasingly necessary to venture in new perspectives.

5 New Materialism and Feminist Philosophy of Technology New materialism is signifying a new shift in ontological and epistemological inquiries which challenges traditional notions of knowledge production. Elizabeth St. Pierre, Alecia Jackson, and Lisa Mazzei (2016: 101 f.) call it the ontological turn which is initiated by ethical questions and fuelled by curiosity. They argue that the combination of epistemological and ontological questions provide the basis for our methodologies and methods. Thus, by investigating what we seem to know in new ways and inventing new approaches that are based on an ethical endeavour and curiosity, future research can be inspired by this experimental ontology. Hekman (2010: 29) emphasises that new materialism needs and is dependent on feminist work and refers to this philosophical turn as the new feminist settlement which moves away from the representationalist idea of language and social construction. Instead, the aspiration is to explore this linkage between material and discursive aspects to constitute reality. Stirring away from traditional dualist approaches embraces both ontology and epistemology equally

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(Hekman 2010). This so called onto-epistemology “questions every “practice” for its assumptions” and inspires creativity and innovation to get away from normative and human-centred knowledge (St. Pierre et al. 2016: 104). Yet, the methodology and theories in new materialist literature are vast and not specified (Åsberg & Lykke 2010; St. Pierre et al. 2016). This makes studies into implementations and methods for exploring new ways of knowing particularly necessary. New materialism is one of many denotations in the emerging terminology of these recent philosophical explorations1 and argues that things in their becoming are constantly re-constructed as material-discursive phenomena. This notion advances in new layers of thought in regard to scientific practices and experiences of being human (St. Pierre et al. 2016). Especially in regard to the concept of agency which is extended to anything material. Agency is understood as force that resides not exceptionally in human subjectivity and organicism but instead is acknowledged as “generative powers (or agentic capacities) even within inorganic matter” (Coole & Frost 2010: 9). Thus, a new materialist perspective encourages to rethink traditional binary conceptions and attributes liveliness and transformative power to everything within and around us. This is a particular focus in Barad’s agential realism in which she emphasises how agency of everything, regardless of its organic/inorganic status, intra-acts in creating meaning (which I explain in more detail below). As an influential feminist philosopher in the field, Karen Barad is particularly interested in turning back to matter and re-thinking our common understanding of the binary axes nature/ culture, human/nonhuman, and material/discourse co-constitute in knowledge production (Barad 2007). The goal is to not fall into an objectivist nor a relativist account of reality but to understand that these binaries are not oppositional and exclusive. As a physicist, Barad is particularly interested in quantum theory with which she argues for an entanglement of all things. Barad (2007: 49, 58 argues that constructed knowledge has real, material consequences. That is a reason why insisting on social constructionism can only partly explain physical effects on bodies and lived reality of identities in the various planes of our social reality. In fact, St. Pierre, Jackson, and Mazzei (2016) argue that these ethical considerations are one important condition for this settlement because they are concerned with material effects. There is a strong need to explore practical applications for scientific methodology in order to take these material considerations seriously. That matter is not dead and passive but threaded into our relations and conceptions of reality, and thus acts agentially, becomes even more relevant in light of digital advances. Cecilia Åsberg and Nina Lykke (2010) describe that the

1New materialism, immanent naturalism, critical posthumanism, antihumanism, speculative realism, complexity theory, object-oriented metaphyics, a philosophy of becoming (Connolly 2013), new metaphysics, postepistemology, intra-actionism (Hekman 2010), new empiricism (St. Pierre et al. 2016), new material turn, the ontological turn, or postconstructionst turn (Åsberg & Lykke 2010)—these terms encompass different aspects within this philosophy and describe partly overlapping concepts and ideas, yet are also very specific to certain discourses or to one scholar’s theorisation and expressions.

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field of feminist technoscience emerges from these new materialist deliberations. Technoscientific research specifically challenges knowledge production in basic and applied sciences and shifts away from anthropocentrism. Feminist technoscience is an approach towards the sciences and technology in regard to feminist philosophical movements. It emphasises that feminism is no longer only concerned about questions of gender and social relations between humans but instead focuses on how these concepts are intertwined with material spheres such as the body, nature, culture, and technology (Åsberg & Lykke 2010). The study of scientific tools is a way to make ourselves aware of these processes that are so habitually organised in separate understandings of matter and concepts. Technological tools and digital spaces are queering our self-identity (Light 2011: 433) and urge a closer inspection of bodies, technologies, identities, practices, knowledge, and relations (Åsberg & Lykke 2010). Thus, it is going to become important to question ourselves, our tools, and our knowledge and through this process find a more dynamic jauntiness to loosen the constraining rigidities of our binary conceptualisation.

6 Seeing Differences Differently When I first read Barad’s (2003) notion of diffractionality, I was moved by its potential to embrace complexity and allow a sensitive approach towards material effects which is crucial for acknowledging physical measurements in science and their implications for our lived experiences. ‘Dif-fraction’ is literally a way to separate fractional parts of a whole. It is about the process of breaking these fractions asunder and creating something new from it. Diffracting bodily and conceptual aspects on the sexual continuum, therefore, offers a new range of approaches in sex research. The urge with which we embrace binaries to conceptualise sexuality can be useful, yet it results in some sort of rigidity in thinking which is restricting progress and sensitivity to diversity. Even though research prioritises the body, we are aware that arousal is never not only genital, but involves feelings, thoughts, and social factors. These different materialisations of the sexual continuum are all real distinguishable effects yet affecting each other and what we come to know concurrently. But how exactly can we understand this constant entanglement of things? To answer this, I turned to Barad’s “agential realism” which attributes agency to the material and its dynamic with the discursive (Barad 2007: 45). She argues that everything is intra-acting and never fully separable from one another. She uses this term instead of ‘interacting’ since she brings forward that ‘inter’ denominates a fixed division between things that interact, whereas ‘intra’ points to the ongoing process of the becoming of inseparable things (Barad 2003: 815). The notion of intra-action is crucial to the understanding of agential realism. It is animated through the application of the diffraction phenomenon in quantum physics and ultimately describes how we can understand differences differently (Barad 2007, 2014). Objects and language are not only related or represent each other in a unidirectional manner, but discursive practices are manifoldly intertwined with material phenomena. Diffraction is an optical phenomenon in physics which describes patterns of difference. It is unlike the concept of mere reflection not about representation

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and mirroring, but rather about the effects of interference of waves. In order to grasp this concept of diffractionality which serves here as a metaphor for thinking, conceptualising, and sense-making (Barad 2007; Haraway 1997), it is important to know a little bit about the phenomenon in physics that describes how waves behave when they hit obstacles. Waves of light bend and spread out differently when they are interfered or meet. They overlap in a way that the disturbance of each wave is accumulated into a distinctive diffraction pattern. This overlapping is called superposition “which is central to the understanding of diffraction” (Barad 2007: 76). Most importantly, superposition of waves creates various diffraction patterns. Thus, a diffraction pattern is marked by differences of interference. In terms of light waves it would be identifiable through a pattern of alternating light and dark parts because of the way the waves interfere “constructively” in enhancing the waves’ effect, and “destructively” in cancelling the waves’ effect (Barad 2007: 79). In regard to the sexual continuum, can we understand it as constructing when something makes sense and is clearly defined, and as destructing, when it creates paradoxes and tensions in our conceptualisations? Diffraction as a way of re-thinking, embraces multiple perspectives and acknowledge the emergence of differences as a unique pattern that tells us something about the process of becoming. Other feminist scholars have previously addressed the idea of diffraction and the need of a multiplicity of perspectives. Haraway (1997) writes “diffraction is a narrative, graphic, psychological, spiritual, and political technology for making consequential meanings” (as quoted in Barad 2007: 71). It is about how we think about differences and conceptualisations of difference when trying to make sense of the world around us. Moreover, Barad argues that “diffraction phenomena will be an object of investigation and […] will serve as an apparatus of investigation” (Barad 2007: 73) which can make it rather complicated to use this theory as a method. The basis of my investigation is to understand the notion of differences in conceptualisations which are inspired by binaries and categories. “Diffraction makes light’s wavelike behaviour explicit” (Barad 2007: 81), so I argue in the same way that using diffraction as a method makes conceptualisations of difference explicit which can be used for analysing the utility of binaries. Thus, in order to understand how things come to matter, we need to recognise their differences. This involves the construction of binaries through highlighting their relations. Barad (2014: 168) states that “diffraction is not only a lively affair, but one that troubles dichotomies”. She claims that if we disrupt traditional binary thinking we can understand differences differently, which will be the premise of my investigation of the sexual continuum. Meaning, by disentangling binaries such as functional-dysfunctional, good-bad, or normal-abnormal in sexual meanings and practices, we can rethink the relation of these differences. Hence, understanding the conceptualisation of the sexual continuum can be achieved by diffractively examining these differences. The question that Barad asks is “how can we understand this coming together of opposite qualities within, not as a flattening out or erasure of difference, but as a relation of difference within?” (Barad 2014: 175). Since binaries are based on difference, the endeavour is to avoid rigid opposition when thinking about difference. As Trinh Minh-Ha writes: “[d]ifference as understood in many feminist and

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non-Western contexts […] is not opposed to sameness, nor synonymous with separateness. […] There are differences as well as similarities within the concept of difference.” (1988; as quoted in Barad 2014: 169).

7 Questionnaires as Apparatuses of Diffraction Barad states that diffraction is particularly helpful for scientists in refining and tuning their instruments and technologies. With the term apparatus, Barad refers to a certain understanding of the tools that a researcher uses to investigate scientific questions. The apparatus materialises knowledge and constructs the delineation of what is observed and who is observing and how. Barad writes “apparatuses are boundary-drawing (material-discursive) practices” (Barad 2007: 206). To use apparatuses is in that sense a performance which is different from common understandings of “passive observing instruments” (Barad 2007: 199) that are operated by an observer to observe something. With apparatuses we can investigate phenomena which are the result of the boundaries that are created by our research practices. This means that tools and technologies of research are constituents of the phenomena in their becoming. Furthermore, we can find “productive and constraining dimensions of practices embodied in apparatuses” (Barad 2007: 199) and they are creating and strengthening these boundaries and differences of the material and the discursive. Apparatuses are therefore helpful in understanding these differences and the constitution of binaries. Barad describes that apparatuses are fixed in order to understand the position of something. That, however, excludes the momentum of the measurement which is why “physical and conceptual constraints and exclusions are co-constitutive” (Barad 2007: 196). Meaning, in order to measure something physical and conceptual with an instrument, we already need to categorise and hence exclude certain degrees of dynamic and complex relations. It poses the question “what precisely constitutes the limits of the apparatus that gives meaning to certain concepts at the exclusion of others?” (Barad 2007: 199). This question is central to my analysis of the sexual continuum. The notion of the apparatus inspired me to investigate the diffractional analysis of binaries through technologies that we usually use in research. In biology, this would mean to examine any technology that is used to measure a material effect. For social scientists, we can look at psychophysiological measurements or other tests with which knowledge is produced. Questionnaires are a common instrument for social scientists to extracts individuals’ answers based on how they generally think, feel, or behave and assess their general personal experience (Miller 2015: 46). Thus, I am interested in how questionnaires as a technology of knowledge production reveal diffractional patterns and inspire to understand entanglements of material-discursive agencies. In this sense, questionnaires might be a particularly unusual choice as an apparatus because Barad primarily exemplifies the apparatus as technologies used by scientists to measure and experiment about the nature of things. Yet, I argue that any tools of investigation becomes a technology and in a Baradian sense an apparatus. The choice of apparatus then is just defining which

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set of categories or binaries we are adopting in order to explain something at the expense of other influential variables. This leads to a “constructed cut” of the different agencies involved when we investigate a phenomenon (Barad 2007: 197). Consequently, we can only measure parts of a diffracted phenomenon. Therefore, a diffractional analysis is not attempting to understand everything but instead treat our knowledge and perspectives which we gain through apparatuses, as parts of a dynamic entanglement of things. A diffractional analysis reveals individual patterns that are constantly re-constituting what we know and do. Furthermore, we need to understand that the apparatus incorporates social practices. It is about the production and reproduction of boundaries which is why the examination of apparatuses is particularly useful. In fact, I argue it is a necessary step for scientists to understand the meaning-making process in scientific knowledge production with our tools and technologies. “To understand the complex nature of the phenomenon in question, it is necessary to understand the nature of the apparatuses and the processes by which they are produced” (Barad 2007: 203). Apparatuses are created through diffractional and materialising processes and even though they are seen as fixed and objective, we need to understand how they came into being through various practices. Questionnaires as scientific apparatuses of psychological research are embedded in a greater web of intra-actions of norms, mental health, bodily function, politics etc. Their statistical results create material consequences which are not independent from the academic institution but influenced by lived realities and influence lived realities in return. Barad focuses especially on the intra-actions between theory, apparatuses, and the material. Hekman (2010: 77) writes that the notion of the apparatus according to Barad “structure[s] our perception of the real defining reality in a specific way” and discursive practices add layers to it. I interpret the apparatus and in particular my choice of apparatus (i.e. the questionnaire) as the obstacle that creates a diffraction pattern (Barad 2007). Questionnaires are a technology of thinking and structuring concepts and objects. Through the development and application of questionnaires, a researcher constructs a tool of vision (Haraway 1988: 589) through which we can see a new diffraction pattern unfold.

8 A Diffractional Analysis of the QuestionnaireApparatuses Questionnaires are usually constructed based on a theory or model and all individual statements, called “items”, are grouped into “scales” which measure specific concepts. These are commonly used for subsequent analysis and interpretations. I argue that in the relationship between the scales and the items, binaries constitute a large part of what materialises through this questionnaire as an apparatus. Hence the questionnaires in my analysis were treated as texts, similar to a traditional discourse analysis. However, as my discursive understanding follows Barad’s, I understand the discursive as is not distinct but already within the material. The way people relate from their experiences and translate it into words is the crucial

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aspect that is part of the materialisation of things. Barad writes that discourse “is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said” and “define[s] what counts as meaningful statements” (Barad 2003: 819). Since methods based on a diffractional theory are new, I entered an explorative and performative approach towards my material which is inspired by the experimental curiosity of new materialism. Barad (2007: 189 f.) argues that the theory of intra-actional agency is both a theory and methodology at the same time and she exemplifies how matter and discourse affect bodies and our knowledge about foetal development through the sonogram. Yet, concrete applications which pertain to different kinds of technologies and tools are yet to be explored. Scholars like Lisa Mazzei (2014) and Elisabeth de Freitas (2017) describe practical approaches to a diffractional methodology which I used as an inspiration. Mazzei (2014) discusses the use of diffraction of qualitative data in a way of diffractional reading and a “plugging in” of knowledges. De Freitas (2017) emphasises the use of asking questions and opening spaces by queering and disturbing normative assumptions and conclusions. Barad (2007: 91) describes that it is crucial to pay attention to details because the details of the apparatus create unique diffraction patterns. In this diffractional re-pattering the ‘I’ is included in giving meaning and in materialising. My accumulated knowledge reflects the integration of themes and topics to unfold a pattern for rethinking what we know. It is a performance as someone who produces knowledge—a diffractional performance in interdisciplinary methodology which includes a sense of exploration, creativity, innovation. Or as Barad (2014: 181, original emphasis) puts it: “[…] There is no ‘I’ that exists outside of the diffraction pattern, observing it, telling its story. In an important sense, this story in its ongoing (re)pattering is (re)(con)figuring me. ‘I’ am neither outside nor inside; ‘I’ am of the diffraction pattern.” Thus, my method was inspired by a diffractional “cutting together apart” (Barad 2014) which is an idea about a diffractional understanding on differences and thinking differences anew. So, I was literally cutting-apart the questionnaireapparatuses with scissors. Similar to dissembling a machine, I dissembled the questionnaires in their material form of printed black ink on a white paper. While physically working through the material by cutting apart, reorganising, highlighting, taking notes, I created a performative collage of the entangled knowledge processes within me and with the apparatus. I was paying close attention to terminology and definitions, word repetitions, questionnaire coding, and questionnaire set up. What does a questionnaire do to binary conceptualisation when I take it apart and diffract it? Isolating items allowed new interpretations and ways of separating effects and intra-acting tangles. It is not about finding but unfolding a diffraction pattern by dissembling parts of the apparatus. My reorganisation and plugging in of different tangles of information, I spun a web that aims to inspire and re-organise common concepts anew. In taking intra-active agency completely seriously, I challenged the premise of science to predict precisely what is going to happen. Yet at the same time I acknowledge my inseparability from hypotheses and ideas and knowledges that intra-act with the dissemblage of the questionnaire-apparatus.

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9 Diffracting Questionnaires and the Sexual Continuum Each questionnaire was taken apart and diffracted individually so that different details came to my attention which were complemented by the process of plugging in different knowledges and themes that appeared in my diffractive reading. Through my work with a selection of sexuality-related questionnaires2 following pattern of binaries unfolded: positive-negative, submissive-dominant, physicalaffective, normal-abnormal.3 In the following I am going to give a summary of the insights which I deducted through this diffractional analysis about the effect of apparatuses and the binaries of the sexual continuum.4

9.1 The Apparatus The most intriguing thing was the variety in styles of questionnaire construction. For example, when a questionnaire asks to rate an item on a scale from 1 to 5 of satisfying-dissatisfying, but also on a binary scale of valuable-worthless or goodbad, the conceptualisation of a sexual experience cannot only framed as positive or negative. Here the questionnaire-apparatus produces a diffraction pattern of the dimensions between positive and negative. Hence, an a sexual experience can be dissatisfying but overall valuable and not necessarily bad. This points to a simultaneous existence of positive and negative aspects of experiences. Furthermore, introductions and explanations for the questionnaires that explain concepts and ideas to the participant, made it apparent how some ideas need to be defined in order to measure their effects. It is an agential cut that an apparatus makes when we intra-act with it. The questionnaire intra-acts with our ideas and aims and ultimately what we want to know. It is an entanglement of the researcher’s endeavour, the materiality of the apparatus (e.g. the wording within items, the ink and paper or screen, mouse, and keyboard, the coding of the questionnaire, etc.), and the participant’s answers. As I was working with cutting-together-apart the questionnaires, the literal cutting of the paper with scissors became quite a vivid picture of the agential cut within meanings. A concept becomes “real” (i.e. the discursive becomes material) through its notation in an item response. This subsequently initiates a diffractional intra-action of the interpretations and practices which are developed from an answer. Thus, in the end of the statistical analysis of participants’ responses,

2A total of 20 questionnaires were selected from the Handbook of Sexuality-Related Measures (Fisher et al. 2010). 3These binaries are a selection. Additional binary conceptualisations in the in-depth analysis included: I-other, comfort-anxiety, goals-scripts. 4The elaborate textual analysis of the questionnaires was not included in this chapter due to word limitations and relevance for this publication but is available upon inquiry.

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the material becomes discursive differently again. Moreover, in using the scissors and cutting items from one another, I ended up with a stack of paper strips, of which some were turned upside down and some with the content-side up. This seemed to me the perfect metaphor to how entangled and how explorative knowledge production is. Knowledge production is happening when we see some things and cannot see other things which are involved and intertwined with what we see. The process of turning all item strips with the letters up resembles the process of how we come to know about things. Turning something up and revealing its content, reminds me of the discovery of a new meaning. In particular, we have to be willing to put effort into making something visible. Followingly, when reorganising what we know and see, we slowly start to see a pattern and come up with new structures of our previous concepts. The raw block of questionnaire items, a machinery of questions, that we were cutting apart is thought anew. Another interesting insight while cutting, was my fear to cut the paper strips in a wrong way. Similarly, I recognised the feeling while theorising and restructuring knowledge about complex such as sexuality. What if I would draw borders between categories and potentially separate meanings in a wrong way? Further, my interpretations and understandings of some concepts and themes in the questionnaires were accompanied with the thoughts that I am simplifying things and drawing wrong conclusions. However, I began to realise that this uncertainty and discomfort is something that is to be embraced in the diffractional analysis. Essentially, processes like diffraction make us question ourselves and inspire new ways to seek an answer. There should be no desire to find one right way or one final answer. There should not be a static and rigid understanding of binaries and categories. Thereby, the uncertain and ever-changing dynamic between exploring details in the questionnaire-apparatus (concerning the items, rating, or coding) and linkages to different parts like texts, theories, and models can become a new basis for conceptualising the binaries in general and in particular complex concepts like sexuality.

9.2 Positive-Negative Generally, sexuality is expected to be an overall positive experience, so in the questionnaires positivity was expressed in terms of enjoyment, sensitivity, functionality, and enriching a relationship. In contrast, I found that dissatisfaction was associated with feelings of hurry, brutality, monotony. Yet what if hurried sex, or rough sex is exactly what someone likes? Positive experiences can be quite individual in the way we make sense of it and what we deem to be positive. CameronLewis (2016) argues that we cannot simple draw a binary of good and bad sexual practices. She states that particularly in sex education the discourse does not allow any diffractional understanding of the variety of sexual continuum. The current bias towards positivity in the sexual experience upholds a rigid understanding that supports the moral restriction of the binary of positive and negative sexual experiences. Thus, in acknowledging that a positive sexual experience is not necessarily

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constructed in the same way for everyone, a diffractional multiplicity of lived experiences can encourage to explore spaces in between good and bad. Especially stigmatised sexual practices or taboos about sexually transmitted diseases have shown through some of the questionnaires how our assessment of sexual experiences is guided by inner moral judgements. Do we like our own scripted sexual fantasies (i.e. intra-psychic scripts) or do we judge our own thoughts as dirty, intrusive, and unwanted? A highly complex pattern unfolds about the struggle to navigate between social moral standards and our own moral commitments towards the good and the bad. In the end, the positive-negative binary loses its rigidity and we can embrace the multiplicity and flexibility of coexisting truths within.

9.3 Submissive-Dominant This is equally true for notions of submissiveness and dominance which were enfolded through concepts such as control of oneself, control of another, consent, and power. In fact, the analysis showed that it is a prevailing binary since it was a substantial aspect within various apparatuses. The most interesting aspect here were expressions around control which suggested a tendency to perceive “having control” and being dominant as more positively, and “not having control” as negatively. It poses the question: is having control generally preferable? Are there instances where having no control can be pleasurable? However, submissiveness was largely conceptualised as passive, weak, and shallow, which seems to suggest that submissive tendencies cannot include aspects of expressing wishes and positive feelings. The degree of power exertion seems to be related to a deeper idea of identity and self-esteem. Yet common practices in BDSM5 show that control is navigated through consent and the use of safe words (Simula, 2019). Thus, submissiveness is an actively controlled aspect within the sexual experience and in my analysis the questionnaires show the ambiguity surrounding a clear divide of submissiveness and dominance. Then can submitting to power and getting pleasure from experiencing someone in power can be experienced simultaneously as powerful and enhance feelings of well-being? There are evidently more things to unfold within this binary. It also connects back to the relation of cognitive processing and sexual arousal of Janssen & Bancroft’s (1996, 2007) dual control processes of excitation and inhibition. They clarify that they are aware that the sexual response is ultimately more complicated, yet sexual activity, its cognition and behaviours, is conceptualised along this spectrum of getting excited and the lack of excitement. They argue that this goes along with other basic physical control mechanisms such as nervous system control (Janssen & Bancroft 2007). Evident is again the conceptualisation according to oppositional processes of control, and

5BDSM = “A continuum of consensual sexual practices that includes bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism.” (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language 2011b).

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also excitement which is clearly entangled with the bias towards notions of positivity. However, my analysis of some of the questionnaires with multiple scales also clearly revealed how much of the concepts of control and positivity towards usually negative experiences, such as experiences involving pain or restriction, can be positively rated by the participant. Thus, an apparatus allows here a drawing of new boundaries for our usual practices and concepts. Submissiveness and dominance are then ultimately entangled material effects with our discourses around power, control, and consent.

9.4 Physical-Affective The physical-affective binary is particularly crucial in describing the mind-body dualism. Yet it became evident that emotions are hardly just something we only feel inside but instead transgress into the material and inform our discourse and vice versa. Especially in relation to specificities of our materialised bodies we use words such as “getting wet” or “getting hard” about the feeling of increased sexual arousal. Descriptions of genital arousal are inextricably entangled with discursive aspects. Similarly, “getting hot” is a material experience in the body through vasocongestion, (i.e. increased blood flow in specific areas of the body). Yet at the same time it is connected to emotional excitement or the notion of being “turnedon” at a discursive level. In regard to the feeling of anxiety, it was particularly exciting to observe the material-discursive ambiguity. The feeling of nervousness is simultaneously a conceptualisation of one’s state as it is entangled with bodily sensations of muscle tension, increased blood flow, increased heartbeat. However, these are equally physical sensations associated and experienced in sexual arousal. Thus, distinguishing between the same bodily effects is ultimately guided by a discursive practice and the conceptualisation in one’s mind depending on a situational context. Furthermore, the dissemblage of apparatuses crystallised how norms are integrated in what is supposed to be a ‘loving touch’, and highlighted the distinction of male and female bodies. It poses the question whether sex really feels different in different kinds of bodies or whether this is conceptualised through our gendered discourses around them.

9.5 Normal-Abnormal Normative forces and taboos are informing our understanding of what is expected when having sex. In particular, I found this in expressions of social aspects which were connected to sexual morality and also understandings of sexual freedom. Moral judgements were fractions in many different apparatuses, which indicate how strongly sexual expression and practices are determined by our morality. As mentioned above, the strong ethical endeavour of new materialist approaches makes it particularly useful for conceptualisations of the sexual continuum. We

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all have an understanding of what is expected to be correct and normative, functional, socially acceptable and the opposite, wrong, weird, unacceptable, and dysfunctional. Abnormal was differentiated in one apparatus as perverse, threatening, abusive, unhealthy, wrong in contrast to normal sexuality which is erotic, sexy, ethical, consenting. Yet, sexually deviant experiences on the continuum could instead involve erotic perversion and consenting abuse. This makes me ask the question, is abnormal necessarily bad and is it justified to condemn it? Despite all positive development about equality and acceptance around various expressions of sexuality, there are still strong normative forces influencing our conceptualisation of the sexual continuum. In fact, according to Kulick (2005) the promotion of sexual freedom and progressiveness in a society endorses this idea of “good sex” which ultimately subverts any free discourse of controversial topics. This pattern of avoiding ambiguity and focusing on celebrating positivity and freedom as normal, then influences the way we educate about sex in schools and research about sexuality (Cameron-Lewis 2016; Irvine 2018). We easily end up in rigid binary concepts about sex as normal or abnormal. However, through an apparatus and a diffractional perspective these binaries are much more than purely oppositional. Norms, morals, concepts of power, intimacy, and physical reactions are all entangled within these binaries. Through that we can draw the connections and open up spaces for discussions in order to invite a multiplicity in thought and expression. Material and discursive aspects of these tangles are simultaneously separable and still inextricably entangled. This diffractional process allowed me to venture into new perspectives about the sexual continuum and explore the role of the apparatus in creating diffractional patterns that unfold through my engagement with it.

10 Discussion This chapter explored the onto-epistemology of the sexual continuum by investigating the conceptualisation of binaries, primarily, and the role of the technology of the questionnaire-apparatus, secondly. In my diffractional analysis of questionnaires, I aimed to illustrate the becoming of our conceptualisation of binaries and categories. The different tangles in the questionnaires were analysed through the diffractional approach of plugging in and paying attention to uneasy details. It became evident that the materialisation of binaries is never separate from its constant re-configuring of differences (Barad 2007). Hence, the attempt to investigate questionnaires diffractively in order to map the effects of difference, provides a more sensitive understanding. Normality and functionality, notions of control, a tendency for positive feelings, binary conceptualisations of bodies are all threaded into this web of the sexual continuum. Most importantly, the questions which arouse from making cuts of the material-discursive emphasise the role the apparatus in the threading and entangling of meanings and matter. When using tools and technology, they will intra-act with us and what we intend to discover. This diffractional analysis of several apparatuses are a point of divergence which

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emphasises the value of materialised results that can be obtained from an apparatus. Yet, at the same time these diffractions are expressing the ultimate relation of differences and various binary conceptions in a web of interwoven tangles. Nevertheless, as a limitation of this methodology it needs to be said that Barad’s theory and methodology of diffractionality is not intuitive and does not provide any concrete instructions. The performative and artistic part of this present form of a diffractional analysis can improve from a clearer outlook and further investigations to apply it. According to Barad, doing a diffractional analysis can have two different approaches of either investigating the processes and tools through a diffractional reading or analysing the thing that is being diffracted (Barad 2007). In regard to my question then, it seems that my approach has offered the possibility to discuss both, the investigation of apparatuses and the investigation of the thing itself. Respectively, I examined partly the dynamics of the apparatus and the mapping of effect of differences, yet I have focused in my diffractional analysis primarily on investigating the sexual continuum. Ultimately, a complete separation of these two approaches seems impossible according to intra-active agency. Nevertheless, further attempts to discover a distinction in these two approaches in Barad’s methodology can extend our knowledge about diffractive patterns. For future research on the topic of apparatuses or closer investigations of the sexual continuum, there is much opportunity to increase the depth of investigation. Exploration of other questionnaires, closer investigation of one specific binary, or re-configuring my performative method with the same material, are different ideas that could add to understanding conceptualisation processes and the application of a diffractional analysis. According to realist and positivist notions of scientific practice, my method might not fulfil the requirements of validity and reliability, and my results can hardly be repeated. However, since we are moving away from this notion, the emphasis is to bridge and incorporate the knowledge of different academic disciplines in order to inspire a resolution of disagreements between them. New materialist approaches are a chance to develop integrative approaches and develop new research ethics instead of continuing a rigid binarism in our theories and methodologies strictly separated within each field. It is about learning to embrace the insecurity and ambiguity in this interdisciplinary position which makes one vulnerable to various critiques from established fields and their practices. The aim is to understand binaries as dynamic and relational so we are urged to move freely in between the fixed end points—to stay in uncertainty. The ultimate notion of this approach towards understanding the value of binaries is “to put oneself at risk, to risk oneself (which is never one or self), to open oneself up to indeterminacy in moving towards what is to-come” (Barad 2010: 264).

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11 Conclusion In the end, the different conceptualisations mapped out here are expected to create different effects of diffractional understandings within my readers. My diffractional analysis becomes a way to challenge traditional ways of doing research and understanding how we are all involved in the materialisation of new understandings. Thinking anew is a process that happens within and is a re-iterative performance. The sexual continuum in the end stays in a continuous threading and understanding binaries as dynamic give substance to this web. Sexual activity, sexual encounter, sexual pleasure, sexual desire, or sexual fantasy are all components of the same, yet are becoming differently through a variety of material-discursive practices. All of them are entangled and the way to disentangle is sometimes to focus on a binary and sometimes to move away from it. As human beings we usually want to know more about our desires and driving forces which fuel our expressions and experiences of sexuality. In between oppositional conceptualisations we find both differences and similarities, which inform us about our flexibility to re-invent and re-perform within material-discursive dynamics of the sexual continuum. The ambiguity within my material and the uncertainty I have placed myself in by exploring these diffractional patterns nurture my performance as a researcher. Most importantly, explorations of technologies as apparatuses reveal not only the questions we try to answer but our very essence of our human ability to make sense of the world around us. Differentiating and assimilating are in this way the same kind of process (Barad 2014). In this dynamic we will find a way to feel uncomfortable, a practice of ambivalence and uncertainty that makes us grow in order to grasp the complex becoming of the material-discursive entanglements within our conceptualisations, our technologies, and ourselves.

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“There It Is Again”. On Objects, Technologies, Science, and the Times Rick Dolphijn

1 Introduction Materialist feminism, since its start in the late 1980’s (see for instance Haraway 1988), has been occupied with the questions of science and technology. The concepts accepted, the methodologies applied, the representations that (seemingly and unseemingly) dominated its narratives, have been critically examined ever since. Especially today, as the ecological crises are becoming such an important field of study in academia, it is of fundamental importance to ask ourselves th key question ‘how matter comes to matter’ and to rethink, in what way the politics of modernity and its white, male and upper class assumptions of normality, are still at the heart of todays the scientific agenda. Of course, these agendas are blured, complex and do not easily reveal their preferences. Living in 2019, an age in which the blood of Uranus has polluted mother Earth (Gaia) like never before, the furies of materialist thinking demand us to search for modernities conditions for truth and to see in what way we need to change life as a whole. And let us not start with the Subject, as we did this since 1968, but with the Object, the starting point of science.

2 Deranging Times In a book called the Great Derangement, fiction writer Amitav Ghosh looks at climate change and the unthinkable, and starts by saying that taking the current ecological crises seriously, requires us to recognize the changes that the earth is

R. Dolphijn (*)  Utrecht, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Loh and M. Coeckelbergh (eds.), Feminist Philosophy of Technology, Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_15

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undergoing, or, to recognize the processes of change that slowly but gradually reshape our world. He emphasizes the word “recognition” because he feels this is key to what we should aim at. Between ignorance and knowledge, recognition, he claims, asks us to re-member, which means to think and evaluate the “conditions for truth”, as we live and practice them. Only this way, we can open ourselves up to the realities that (all of a sudden!) completely disqualify these truths. Recognizing the processes of change comes with the discovery of the modernist and anthropocentric1 narratives that have absolutely nothing to do with the state of the world today, but that nevertheless persevere in being, since we feed them and keep them intact. To recognize that changes that the earth is undergoing is a difficult, sometimes impossible challenge, but nevertheless, a terribly urgent one, as the title of his book indicates. Ghosh gives us some amazing examples of how sudden and unexpected, this remembering takes place. Analyzing the everyday life in cities like todays New Delhi or Beijing, he stresses that there, it happens that “the air too can come to life with sudden and deadly violence” (2016: 5). This is not overreacting. I myself, was, up until recently not aware of how serious an enemy ‘air’ was. Growing up in the west of Europe, I’ve always lived close to the sea from where the winds usually come. The dirty industries (like agricul­ ture) that dominate the economy here, have had a bad effect on the environment for sure. And these effects are becoming more and more recognized. But the air has, up until now, not been terribly violent. There is serious air pollution, no doubt, but the crises over here are much more at work with other elements such as water (dry periods, wet periods, flooding) and earth (mass extinction of insects for instance, definitely linked to our agricultural industry). Over the past few years I was invited several times to give talks in Beijing, where I quickly found out that whims of temperature and rainfall do not come near to how sudden clouds of air pollution define the wellbeing of the whole city (with its 20 million human inhabitants). Within a matter of hours, the Air Quality Index (AQI) could go from okay to terrible (meaning over 500 μg of pollution per cubic meter). Heavily polluted air has a severe impact on everyone’s health and wellbeing and in a much more persistent way than a heatwave or a heavy storm are able to. Probably because severe air pollution quickly ‘becomes a part of you’, traverses you, is almost impossible to ‘keep out’. It is something I never experienced at home in Europe, and more importantly, I could not even have imagined that the air we breathe on an everyday basis could turn so lethal, so suddenly. (I am not talking about clouds of poison or some sort of accidental situation.) The moment one starts thinking about ‘what air can do’, one realizes that there is no ‘within and without’, that the distinction between user and being used is

1Anthropocentrism

refers to the idea that thinking, in Modern times, started from a very specific and implicit idea of the Human Being. Phallogocentrism, a concept coined by Jacques Derrida, more or less refers to a similar perspective yet stresses that the Modernist view was by definition Male.

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becoming blurry, if not completely senseless, at least when it comes to air. Ghosh is analyzing these kinds of sudden and deadly violence, as they come from directions one could not have imagined, and as they, not gradually but immediately, situate us in a wholly other world. And he concludes that all of these violences “are moments of recognition, in which it dawns on us that the energy that surrounds us, flowing under our feet and through wires in our walls, animating our vehicles and illuminating our rooms, is an all-encompassing presence that may have its own purposes about which we know nothing” (idem: 5). Isn’t it interesting, that it is actually not sameness which is recognized, according to Ghosh? That it is in recognition that difference occurs, that difference intervenes? Difference is a moment in which the purposes of everything that surround us, not so much suddenly reveal themselves or make themselves knowable. Rather, when we recognize, it is difference which gives us an idea of this all-encompassing presence of which we know nothing. What we do understand, in recognition, is the sheer fact that this great derangement can happen any time. Or better; it is already taking place. So. The weather changed. The temperature was not rising; the rain was not increasing. What changed was that all of a sudden, I found myself in an environment where people were discussing the weather according to the AQI. How’s the PM10? How’s the NO2? How’s the O3?

3 The Objects, Its Space and Time In the first Tarner Lectures, delivered in Trinity College, November 1919, Alfred North Whitehead says he will practice a philosophy of science by studying, as Mr Edward Tarner would have wanted it, “how science takes nature as its subjectmatter” (2007: 14). In the seventh lecture, Whitehead offers us two terms which are elementary to his take on how science works. The lecture proposes a theory of objects and he defines them as follows: “Objects are elements in nature which do not pass. The awareness of an object as some factor not sharing in the passage of nature is what I call ‘recognition’.” (Idem: 118) When it comes to the object, Whitehead stresses, what is recognized is a recurrence. Between ignorance and knowledge, something recurs. This is by no means a ‘thing’ in the pseudo-materialist sense of the word. Whatever recurs, whatever is recognized, whatever, in the end, vaguely stands out, he calls an object, or an object of analysis (if we insist on taking the science perspective). I sense an interesting resemblance between how Amitav Ghosh and Alfred North Whitehead talk about recognition. Whitehead introduces the term “object” to identify what is recognized, and stresses that this object does not share the passage of nature. Its ‘outstandingness’ is picked up by our senses. The other term that Whitehead is interested in, in this text, and which he is more famous for, in the end, is “event”. Earlier in the book he relates the event to the object and actually introduces us to a neologism which gives us more to think (also in relation to Ghosh) of what the object is about: “Events are only comparable because they body forth permanences. We are comparing objects in events

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whenever we can say ‘There it is again.’ Objects are the elements in nature which can ‘be again.’” (Idem: 18 f.) As we wake up, the new day could introduce us to what Whitehead calls an event, a chaotic amalgam of happenings in which these objects or permanences, as he calls them, recur. Not so much ‘in themselves’ but in how a series of objects (always more than one), in their togetherness, is again. Recognition now seems to realize a double extension. Or at least, and this is of course a crucial addition, in recognition a double extension occurs to us. Objects, on the one hand, unfold the space of the event (‘There it is again’). Thus they realize nature, since the resonances that bind them, give form to the face of the earth. Yet objects, immediately, offer us a sense of time (‘There it is again’), as in order to body forth, they have to be re-cognized, they have to function with particular memories. They situate this memory in the present, perhaps even propelling them into a possible future (“and this is what may happen now”) and thus also expand through time. The ‘present’ is an interesting concept here, as it combines the three phenomena discussed: space, time, and the object that we are given (and that we were expecting to receive). In the process, the present realizes a fourth, the subject. For some reason, there is still disbelief when it is mentioned that this means that the present is by no means ‘homogeneous’. And for some reason physicist still limit these becomings to the so-called ‘quantum real’ or ‘the quantum world’ (Proietti et al. 2019), which makes little sense. In response to the anthropocene2 or the phallogocene, it is important to open our eyes to the other, nonhuman, realities as they occur. The multiple presence of the real is as real as real can be. The fact that this happens simultaneously, in recognition, does not mean that these phenomena are reducible to one another. The fact that these phenomena happen together, yet separate from one another, can be referred to as the quantum state of the real (in the tradition of John Archibald Wheeler or John von Neumann).3 It is of the greatest importance if we are keen on connecting recognition to responsibility (and not to identity politics4), which is how both Ghosh and Whitehead in the end deal with this concept. For both recognition is not about setting up a sociology, a humanist politics of space and time. When Ghosh talks of air but also when Whitehead talks of the industrialization of the English landscape he loved so much, both see recognition as a starting point of an eco-philosophy, a starting point of a philosophy of nature. Recognition has a lot to do with being open to what Deleuze sometimes called ‘lived abstraction’; the fact that the realities as we live them are composed by us and that they compose us. 2Coined

by the dutch physicist Paul Crutzen in the year 2000, the Anthropocene is supposed to be the era in which the human being is the dominant geological force. 3N. David Mermen stresses that it makes no sense not to include fields like quantum mechanics into an analysis of the study of the everyday. He states: “There has always been talk to the effect that quantum mechanics describes not the physical world but our knowledge of the physical world. This intrusion of human knowledge into physics is distastefully anthropocentric.” (In Barad 2007: 323). 4Identity politics, though often at work in very different ways, tend to stress a particular ‘group identity’, a stigma that demands to be defended at all costs.

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4 Do not Build Your Homes Below This Point! The start of any new day can be considered such in event, a chaotic amalgam in which a series of objects reveal themselves. We wake up, we switch off the alarm, and look at our mobile phones to see what the wind is bringing us today. What’s the AQI now and how will it evolve during rush hour? Should I cover my mouth? Is it okay to stay outside for a longer period of time? Or at least, when situated in Beijing, or New Delhi for that matter, this will be our way of objectifying the situation. It is very different from how, in, for instance, the Netherlands, a day happens. In the Northwest of Europe (contested), I will objectify the energy that surrounds me in a very different way. If this so-called era of “the Anthropocene” is teaching us anything about ourselves, it should be that over the past two centuries, packed with scientific ‘discoveries’, the one more spectacular than the other, we (especially those outside of science by the way) have become so self-confident, so completely in trust of the ‘objective’ data through which we understand the world, that we find it unimaginable or unthinkable that the Earth, might very well, all of a sudden, act very different from how we thought it would. The Modern Age, which would have started in England around 1800 is characterized by a series of processes (industrialization, dependence on fossil fuels) that actually not just occurred in the West, but happened all over the world. Ghosh is right to stress that throughout the populous parts of Asia (the Indian subcontinent, China) there are dozens of examples to be given of places where we find that the characteristics of Modernity have a much longer history. The oil intensive economies of Burma (for instance Yenangyuang, a name even referring to the smell of oil), the coal and gas intensive economies of pre-industrial China, all show that the technologies of modernity were not ‘new’. The calculations of Leibniz were perhaps preceded by the Kerala school of Mathematics and the ideas of Descartes were translated into Persian (by Francois Bernier) within ten years after his death, which, Ghosh claims, also shows that there was nothing exclusive about modern Europe in terms of ideas. Modernity was a global phenomenon which had been explored in many parts of the world, before it started acting as the leading social system in 19th century England. What was different in 19th century England was of course that, there, Modernity functioned as a totality; its technologies and ideas, altogether set up a condition for truth which, headed by the sciences, quickly controlled the whole European continent. It meant that the laws of Galileo turned into the laws for the whole of Europe. Truth belonged to science, and technology gave us the tools to realize these truths and consequently to realize the objects that practiced it. And it is that condition for truth which imperialism happily exported and imposed upon the rest of the world. Ghosh gives us another recent case in which

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this turns out blatantly obvious. This time we find ourselves off the coast around Fukushima, where stone tablets from the middle ages have been warning future generations for possible tsunamis. “Do not build your homes below this point!” these tablets said. We all know what happened next: not only did the 20th century Modernists build their homes there, but exactly where they were told not to build, they situated a nuclear power plant. Yes, this was the power plant that was destroyed by a tsunami and had its meltdown in 2011, around 40 years after it was opened. Isn’t it ridiculous how confident we Modernists are of the scientific data, of the figures, and of the objects we ourselves produced? How come we have such faith in them, that we consider them so trustworthy that we follow them blindly? Even after severe warnings from our ancestors, we build a nuclear power plant on dangerous grounds. How come? We tend to believe that the data, the figures, the objects given to us by science (or scientific research) have always been what convinced people in the modern age. In this case more obviously then elsewhere however, the data, figures, and objects were by no means delivered to us by objective scientific research. On the contrary, Fukushima Daiichi I was the first nuclear power plant to be designed, constructed and run by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) (with some input from General Electric). It’s interesting—in a sad way of course—that the stone tables from the middle ages, gave us messages that in our days were not ‘recognized’ anymore. Or better, these messages from our ancestors did not match with the conditions for truth, that define the real today. Those conditions, that are, by now, given to us by neoliberal firms like TEPCO, made it all so true that not just the policy makers and the greedy managers, but the entire population in the end was okay with the idea of building a power plant on these dangerous coasts. Especially the last example bluntly shows us what it is like to live in an age which is dominated by human shortsightedness and blindness, an age which has put such absolute faith in one system of thought, that denies the moment of recognition and claims to own nature with its facts, figures and objects. I’m not sure whether we should name our era simply after ourselves. An era known for our obliviousness… Should that be called the Anthropocene? Perhaps we need to refer to it as the arrogance-o-scene… or better even, as this includes the object (which is in the end ourselves), the Narcisso-scene…?

5 Science and the Object of Truth Keeping in mind the abovementioned Narcisso-scene (the last time I will use this term…) and especially the Fukushima case, one wonders whether there is something more to say concerning the fact that we today do not ‘recognize’ the world anymore. Ghosh or Whitehead still make perfect sense of course, and have a lot to teach us about how we navigate the world. However, what recent histories like Fukushima seem to suggest, is that our ability to recognize, to unfold a world of objects (and subjects), space and time, is (nowadays) all too often overcoded by

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institutionalized forms of recognition. Perhaps, indeed by an identity politics that somehow creeps in? The Sciences (capitals are used intentionally… Deleuze and Guattari even refer to the State Sciences of Royal Sciences in this aspect, see A Thousand Plateaus: 362), make a very good example of how processes of change that make the contemporary earth, are not simply ‘coded’ into formulas and functions. The Sciences, as they have become so powerful over the past two centuries, installed their own regimes of truth, which is why I use the term ‘overcoding’ to describe their practice, instead of coding. Thus, when I refer to the Sciences, I do not refer to the noble ideals of academia (which are there, of course, and could perhaps be referred to as the sciences, without capitals, or the nomad sciences, from Deleuze’s perspective); I refer to its Royal politics. Its necropolitics (its power to decide upon who gets to stay alive, and who does not). The Sciences, as we see them at work with Fukushima above, actively overcode the changing earth with a regime of truth that is for a large part overtaken by the industry these days (nuclear physics, pharmacy, biochemistry, the life sciences, to name just a few). This is clear in the contracts through which Science operates, and in the countless amount of companies that somehow operate as close as possible to Science, but of course it does not stop there; the deep entanglement of power and (its) capital with the contemporary sciences, has by all means given form to its perspective. Fundamentally, this comes down to concluding that Science today, is only rarely interested in forms of recognitions that lie beyond its institutionalized truths. Deleuze and Guattari conclude that what is proper to Science, to the theorematic and axiomatic powers essential to it, is the desire “to isolate all operations from the conditions of intuition…” (1987: 373), which comes down to the same thing. Pharmacy is in many ways the often-mentioned example in this, as it is not too difficult to see that the concept of health through which it operates, is completely captured by the pharmaceutical industries that have remained at the absolute top of the list for profitability for the past decades. How could these industries not have been given form to our ‘health’, to the juridical, political, social processes that concern health? And in line with that, how could they not have been repressing the many other forms of health, the thoughts and ideas that have been given to us by our ancestors, by other forms of knowledge, by intuition, by any forms of recognition? The definitions of health are guarded by the medical profession of course, but we live in an age in which even naming something ‘healthy’ in many cases can lead to serious juridical repercussions. The truth is that nothing is healthy unless the medical profession has said so and the pharmaceutical industry has obtained a patent allowing them to reproduce the same object over and over again. Literature has given us many fantastic definitions of truth and quite a few of them have a lot to say about Science and capitalist realism (and the both of them together). But the best one, I’d say, especially in relation to the idea of recognition that we have been occupied with up until now, still comes from Lewis Carroll, in his poem The Hunting of Snark, where he starts with the Bellman saying trice “Just the place for a Snark”, adding to that “and what I tell you three times is

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true”. This idea of truth is actually not that far removed from how science works according to logical positivist Karl Popper, which still lies at the basis of what we today consider to be scientific proof or scientific evidence. In Science too, truth is that which is recognized. Yet in Science, the moment of recognition itself is instrumentalized, is turned into the tool between ignorance and knowledge, to paraphrase Ghosh. For (temporal) truth is now a logical pattern in recognition. And it is a pattern that has to be recognized by not just anyone, but by the Scientist only. For only the Scientist can recognize the patterns in our experiences. When it comes to truth, in our days, only the Scientist, like a proper Judge, is allowed to conclude; “there it is again” (the pattern). And only after the pattern (as a whole, according to the final addition) maintains its logic, the Scientist can say; so I call it true. Because of the recognition of the patterns of objects, the patterns in permanence, the Scientist is commissioned to create some order in the chaos. Feminist scientist Isabelle Stengers is one of those sharp minds noticing how, especially since Galileo, the recognition of patters moves us further and further away from nature. The narrative of physics has been dominated by search for Laws, and, with a kind of blindness that comes with this overconfidence. When it comes to the laws of physics for instance, she states: “Physics, today, is haunted by laws, and as long as this is so, as long as it presents itself as the science that discovers that nature obeys laws, it will stand as an obstacle to any ecology of practices” (2010: 87). Obviously Stengers is worried that the data, the figures, the objects, the permanences, as Whitehead calls them, produced by science, block our vision and blind us from the changing world that we live in today. It is important that we keep on stressing: no, there are no laws in physics. We need to keep stressing that indeed there are calculations possible and recognition can lead us to patterns. And surely there are many ways in which these patterns resonate with the world surrounding us. However, forgetting the moment of recognition and consequently supposing a link between data patters and the world that is not only ‘fixed’ but that actually comes down to a ‘law’, is deeply problematic. Consequently, the kind of ‘ownership’ that speaks from the word “law” in this setting, is immensely deceiving (and modernist, and capitalist). Michel Serres (1995: 84) also sees this error (of forgetting the moment of recognition… and what it means to recognize) as symptomatic for the whole project of modern science since Galileo Galilei, who he critiques for being “the first to put a fence around the terrain of nature, take it into his head and say, ‘this belongs to science’, and find people simple enough to believe that this is of no consequence for man-made laws and civil societies, closed in on human relations as they are”. Stengers adds to that: “this staging was without a doubt one of the most successful propaganda operations in human history as it has been repeated and ratified even by the philosophers who Galileo Galilei stripped of their claims to authority (2010: 70 f.). For this ‘ownership’ that comes with the narrative of Science today, the idea that the patterns that we came up with ‘owns’ nature, does not only mean that the consequential claims about nature are supposedly true; the Laws of Nature are

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true undeniably so! Of course, this already comes with the idea of the law, but it is very important to understand that the objects of Science that surround us (the objects recognized, or better maybe, created by Science), as they can hardly be questioned, obscure our vision. Michel Serres therefore concludes (1995: 85): “Nature then becomes global space, empty of men, from which society with draws. There the scientist judges and legitimates, mastering this space where man-made law had more or less left technicians and industrials alone, free to go about innocently applying the laws of science—until the day when the natural stakes began to weigh more and more heavily on man-made debates. Nature lies outside of the collectivity which is why the state of nature remains incomprehensible to the language invented in and by society—or that invents social man.”

Again, let’s look at Fukushima; it is not the case that people did not know that the warnings, carved in stone, from the ancestors, told us not to build in coastal Fukushima. A language very familiar to them (the same characters) with all to obvious warnings, that still was not recognized? The warnings did not matter. For the company responsible for building the nuclear power plant it did not matter, but also for the majority of the population this was, for some reason, not something to be taken into account. Of course, there is much to say about how the Sciences, today, have become so attuned to capitalism (and vice versa). Concerning the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe, Angela Melitopoulos and Maurizio Lazarato reported on this in their installation Assemblages, a Life of Particles. As part of this installation, an interview with the anthropologist Chihiro Minato, in the documentary, ‘Life of Particles’ (2012: 82 min), is perhaps most telling. Minato explains how, after the disaster, measuring points for radiation emittance, were placed very strategically. Also, showing us the different daily mappings in different newspaper, Minato shows how TESCO is extremely refined in making sure insurance payment is limited, thanks to Science. Thus, he sadly concludes: “We cannot resolve the problem of radioactivity with this relationship between nature and culture. In Japan after Fukushima, geography is psychology. The atmosphere does not move geometrically. We adapt not only to our environment but also to our psychosis.” Stengers already mentioned that, “[t]he conservation of energy was a ‘cultural event’ with indeterminate limits, and it is reasonable to assume that the ‘scientific event’ […] cannot be disassociated historically from this cultural event any more than Galileo’s laws can be dissociated from his confrontation with the Catholic church.” (2010: 196) An important remark that stresses how the bodying forth of objects is not, in our case, realized by science ‘alone’ but it is part of a much larger framework, in fact, an all-encompassing history of thought. In their book The Great Acceleration, a title which, like Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, again plays with Karl Polanyi’s economics of modernity, the authors, McNeill and Engelke, conveniently ‘forget’ this ‘cultural event’, which is something I will come back to soon. They do give us a welcome overview of the modern history of energy (and its discontents). Starting by saying that “energy is a vexingly abstract concept” (2014: 7), they show us how the Anthropocene, or

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better, the narcisso-scene (sorry), is first of all marked by the different forms of energy management that dominated the times (and its narratives). And by ‘domination’ I mean primarily the way our ideas of energy, in their economic and ecological realization, gave form to events and objects that give rise to our everyday life, that orient our needs and desires and blind us for the contemporary, everything that happens with the times.

6 Conclusion McNeill and Engelke do point out that the little resistance against all sorts of industrial complexes that revolve around coals and oils, is coming from the ‘tribal’, ‘primitive’ or ‘indigenous’ communities. In Russia, indigenous Siberians organized themselves against oil and gas development. In Ecuador, the Huaorani did the same. In the US, as we all remember, the recent protests at the Dakota pipe line from the Sioux tribal nations. Of course, it is no coincidence that they understand very well that the conservation of energy is by definition not just a scientific event but also a cultural event. Their ancestors demand them to read the data, figures and objects of the present with the greatest care. And let us not make the mistake of considering these tribal voices the voices of the past, outdated, and impossible in our times. It is not only time that we start recognizing their concerns again, if we plan to continue living this earth in the future, we also need to understand that in order to make that happen, it is time we realize that these tribal or nomad voices are perhaps our only future. Of course, it is not an easy task to think our everyday events beyond the objects/permanences as they populate them and to see how the many capitalist, neoliberal, anthropocentric and phallocentric, scientific and cultural technologies give form to our world. And it is even harder to come with proper alternatives as these objects, in their togetherness, have been so good in erasing the earth from our thinking. Even McNeill and Engelke, in their analysis of how energy conservation and management have evolved, give us some terrible misreadings that signal this, when they for instance discuss how fossil fuels ‘improved’ in efficiency, in its first century: “But incremental improvements led to machines that by the 1950s wasted far less energy than did photosynthesis or carnivory. In this sense, culture had improved upon nature” (2014: 9). Of course, the term “improvement” raises more than an eyebrow, in a book that claims to analyze the Anthropocene one would expect a more critical reading of the key concept on this matter and especially the kind of hierarchy that is installed with this claim (as if culture could be concerned ‘better’ than nature) is actually quite absurd in 2019. Even more so: to think energy beyond objects/permanences and beyond the Grand Anthropocentric Narratives that make up the everyday, also means getting rid of mystifying concepts like ‘efficiency’, as it demands us to lose oppositions like ‘nature and culture’, and asks for a very critical analysis on how deeply the neoliberal ideals have nested themselves in our thoughts. From a feminist perspective, it is also crucial to raise the awareness of how powerful these

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objects can be in maintaining the status quo. In that sense, feminism is not at all limited to rewriting critiques of subjectivity. Especially in our days, it asks us to play close attention to the phallocentrism of objects, and how, in doing nothing, these objects organize the phallocentric machinery. Critical analyses of technology, and then preferably the technological machineries that traverse the organic and the inorganic, the natural and the artificial, the bios and the Zoë,5 necessarily recall the lessons that feminism teaches us. Isabelle Stengers is an important voice in this field as she keeps on showing us how the data, figures and objects of Science, installed a kind of permanence that weakened our ability to think otherwise (beyond the phallogocentric). She claims we lost the ability to notice that which really matters, that which is worthy of attention, as she summarizes it (2015: 62): “What we have been ordered to forget is not the capacity to pay attention, but the art of paying attention. If there is an art, and not just a capacity, this is because it is a matter of learning and cultivating, that is to say, making ourselves pay attention. Making in the sense that attention here is not related to that which is defined as a priori worthy of attention, but as something that creates an obligation to imagine, to check, to envisage, consequences that bring into play connections between what we are in the habit of keeping separate. In short, making ourselves pay attention in the sense that attention requires knowing how to resist the temptation to separate what must be taken into account and what may be neglected.”

We have great difficulty these days to recognize the unthinkable, as Ghosh already said. This is what needs to be cultivated again, what needs to free itself again from our thinking. To imagine another world. It is not about knowing the alternative, it is about recognizing that another world is possible! And of course, to be willing, to be bold enough, to open oneself up to the unknown, to the powers that do not appear in the data and the figures we use today. I understand that this is not an easy assignment, but it does seem very necessary, and urgent: Can we just stop saying “there it is again”? Can we at least try not to fall in the traps of the present, not blindly to accept the authority of the State, of Science, not blindly to accept the objects that have been produced to stop time, objects that have been produced to prevent the revolution from happening? To recognize all of those other voices, voices from the deep that we do not know (anymore) but that somehow still have the power to make us change our mind, to make us look differently and to make us realize that so many of the objects we had seen before were actually illusions, wrong, mischievous. Like so many of the stars that populate the skies every evening, the objects that surround us are all too often long gone, ‘alive’ only in the light they still emit, in the ‘information’ that is somehow mirrored back to us.

5For Braidotti, bios is the rational, the organized life whereas zoe is the irrational, the wild (see for instance 2006).

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Stop saying “there it is again” is not an easy task, it is dangerous for sure, as it asks us to think creatively. It does an appeal on the art of paying attention, as Stengers calls it. On the art of seeing otherwise. It is time to recognize the unforeseen.

References Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway. Durham: Duke University Press. Braidotti, R. (2006). Transpositions. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Deleuze, G. & F. Guattari. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ghosh, A. (2016). The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. In Feminist Studies 14(3): 575–599. M. Proietti, A. Pickston, F. Graffitti, P. Barrow, D. Kundys, C. Branciard, M. Ringbauer & A. Fedrizzi. (2019). “Experimental rejection of observer-independence in the quantum world”, arXiv:1902.05080v1 [quant-ph] 13 Feb. McNeill, J.R. & P. Engelke. (2014). The Great Acceleration: an Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945. Cambridge: The Belknap press of Harvard University Press. Melitopoulos, A. & M. Lazarato. (2012). Assemblages, a Life of Particles. Installation. Whitehead, A.N. (2007). The Concept of Nature. Charleston: Bibliobazaar. Serres, M. (1995). The Natural Contract. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Stengers, I. (2010). Cosmopolitics 1. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Stengers, I. (2015). In Catastrophic Times. Ann Arbor: Open University Press.