Queering Postsocialism in the Struggle Against Technoimperialism

• In Event: (Re)thinking Postsocialism Transnationally: Reflections on Queer Feminist Transnational Solidarities and Epistemic Travels

Abstract

This paper reads Silicon Valley through postsocialist analytics, offering a temporal and geopolitical lens to assess its imperiality. Not only did Silicon Valley gain new grounds following the cessation of the Cold War, but it also accumulated new forms of technoscience that had been brewing beyond the Iron/Silicon Curtain. Cannibalizing these facilitated its expansion, while also instilling new desires of Silicon futurity in formerly socialist space. Today, these desires have coalesced with those of pre-socialist technofascism. Here I read Silicon Valley fantasies as techno-normative, and suggest that queer postsocialism emboldens struggles for technofutures beyond those of fascism and imperialism.

Presenter

• Erin McElroy, University of California, Santa Cruz