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Alien Nation: Tracing The Other in Xenofeminism

Fri, August 31, 9:00 to 10:30am, ICC, E5.9

Abstract

How does xenofeminism accommodate the racialised Other/s in the material-semiotic landscape we call "Australia"? When the xenofeminist manifesto predicates itself as a politics of alienation striving for freedom against the tyranny of the "natural" order, it aligns itself with the interstitial subjectivity of the ethnic Other, who is necessarily alienated and whose very existence poses a threat to the settler-colonial constitution of nationhood. Given that the "natural" citizen in this formation of nationhood is Anglo, the ethnic Other is by default an aberration. Thus, we see a discursive alliance between xenofeminism and anti-colonial politics.


But, their parallel objectives betray parallel obstacles. Xeno/cyberfeminism has struggled to articulate a positive account of its identity and agenda, and has offered instead reactionary principles as exemplified in the "100 anti-theses" presented at the first international Cyberfeminist alliance. Similarly, anti-colonial politics is defined by its "anti-" position and although it offers some possibilities for a post-colonial future, it is yet to configure the non-Anglo as anything other than Other. So, in summary, this paper will explore how the gendered Other and the racialised Other can go beyond their Otherness; carry through their alienation and produce an emancipatory politics that embraces artifice because nothing in our social field is "natural".

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