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Teaching Technoscience Infrastructures of Care

Thu, August 20, 6:00 to 7:40pm CEST (6:00 to 7:40pm CEST), virPrague, VR 21

Abstract

Analyzing imaginaries of both radical change and human futurity implicit in the design of new technologies, this paper asks: how do we work with the world we have, given its historical roots in colonial science, reproductive science, and our limited models for sustainable relations of care, to forward a different model of the human? It centers forward-thinking examples from radical robotics and artificial intelligence engineering to present a critique of how social technologies intended to serve individuals in fact act as infrastructures of social reproduction, and to demonstrate how a technology research and design culture shaped by feminist science and technology studies scholarship can center care as engendering interdependence.

I argue that attending to the problem of social reproduction can inform the design of new social and technological infrastructures that ultimately help “redescribe the human.” Informed by historical critiques of techno-imaginaries and radical models of change that have their roots in women of color feminism. Building on the work of critical race studies and feminist science and technology scholars including Ruja Benjamin, Kim Tallbear, Lisa Nakamura, and Wendy Chun, I present the possibility of a pedagogy that teaches approached to technoscience based in care-centered technology design that can generate affects of social solidarity beyond the possessive individual and nuclear family.

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