It’s Thanksgiving, at least in the US. Originally, I had planned to do a post about feminized digital labor specifically related to “holiday” preparation, but I spent all my time finishing up another project for my own blog–a holiday weekend longread about a new academic book on, among other things, race\/gender\/sexuality and posthumanisms. One of the main things my post tries to do is work through the way the book distinguishes between the kinds of posthumanisms that actually do anti-racist, feminist work, and the kinds of posthumanisms that merely reinforce and strengthen white supremacist patriarchy.<\/p>\n
Because this is Cyborgology, after all, at least some of y’all are probably interested in posthuman theory. So, I thought I’d share with y’all the post I put up on Its Her Factory. It’s definitely about theory, and it’s about an academic book, but, I think it’s accessible enough and grounded enough to be of interest to at least some of the Cyborgology audience. Here’s the introduction to that post, which you can find in full here<\/a>:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHabeas viscus<\/a>\u201d is Alexander Weheliye\u2019s term for the queerly racialized mobilities activated by the erstwhile immobilization of \u201cexceptional\u201d populations (populations that, in his terms, are neither the fully human nor the not-quite-human, but the absolutely non-human). \u201cExceptional\u201d populations are the ones filtered out of a biopolitically healthy society. Seen as individually and collectively incapable of reform or adaptation, of currently or potentially embodying the dynamism and flexibility that are thought to characterize neoliberalism\u2019s healthy, successful subjects, exceptional populations are subjected to various techniques\u2013like surveillance, quarantine (e.g., in the PIC), debt\u2013that\u00a0produce<\/i>\u00a0the material, social immobility they claim to manage.<\/p>\n For example, the editorial choices in the Hollaback! Project\u2019s \u201c10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman<\/a>\u201d video render black and Latino men exceptions to post-feminist MRWaSP society. The video claims to document the extensive but mundane nature of misogynist street harassment that (otherwise privileged white) women face while in public. However,\u00a0as many critics noted<\/a>, the video does not depict any white male perpetrators. It thus presents men of color as solely responsible for (white) women\u2019s street harassment, as embodying a \u201cbackwards\u201d masculinity that is out of synch with post-feminist society. This video contributes to the stereotype that \u201curban\u201d men of color\u2013poor and working-class black and Latino men\u2013are both will not and cannot adapt to keep pace with contemporary social norms and mores\u2026that they drag \u201cus\u201d down and hold \u201cus\u201d back. (\u201cUs\u201d here being the \u201chealthy\u201d and\/or treatable portions of the population.) The mobility of thusly racialized, gendered, sexualized bodies on city streets and the unrestricted transmission of their speech in public space thus appears to be something that prevents society from moving forward. In order to keep society healthy, their excessive mobility must be reigned in. Producing the immobility it claims to manage, the video reinforces the idea that poor and working-class black and Latino men are psychologically and culturally inflexible.<\/p>\n