Art Discussion 61

In your 1st post: BE SURE TO HIT RESPOND TO THIS FIRST NOT REPLY TO ANOTHER

1. After completing the readings for this week and browsing through the slide galleries and links:  
   Post a reading response of a minimum 250 words exploring one of the prompts posted below. Please feel free to incorporate your own opinion and observations in your discussion!  
   When necessary, use an example from the reading, include page number/quote/image

   Pick one of these topics for your response:

   1. How is Glitch a strategy? What binaries does the concept of Glitch breakdown and how does it differ from queerness? 
   2. How does this Judith Butler quote relate to Russell’s ideas on glitch feminism? “A male in his stereotype, is a person who is unable to cope with his own femininity.”
   3. What does Russell mean by the “causality of error” and how is this tied to glitch feminism?
   4. Why does Russell believe that using AFK is necessary to embrace as a feminist concept? How is AFK also a “glitch” in itself?
   5. What are your thoughts on ”Digital Dualism”? Is the virtual world separate from the physical world?
2. After you have done so, you must also POST TWO 100 word minimum response to a classmate’s observations by hitting “reply” to their post. Your response post should elaborate on their comments, you may have a questions, be curious about their viewpoint, agree or disagree. Be respectful and courteous, but don’t be afraid to ask questions! Try to reply to a response that seems lonely. Then join other thread if you are interested. 

POST 1

3. I understand Russell’s use of the phrase “the casualty of error” as a kind of proclamation that signifies glitch feminism’s embrace of the bits and pieces rejected by society that fall into a fluid gray area. Based on the reading, glitch feminism operates outside of the binary, it rejects dichotomies within the domain of sexuality and gender, and the dualistic approach to understanding our on and offline identities as functioning separately from one another. The word glitch itself has etymological origins in the Yiddish/German word(s) for “slippery area”, a fluid transformational space that complicates notions of identities and bodies being this or that, right or wrong (Russell, 2016). Additionally, what mainstream society deems an error and casts away to the margins, glitch feminism seeks to uplift, because what is understood as an error in a society fraught with inequity and oppression, is quite likely not an error in actual truth (Russell, 2016). Subsequently, “embracing the casualty of error” becomes a radical act that speaks to the heart of glitch feminism; recognizing and honoring the bodies and the narratives so often caught in the snares of a society that operates on structural inequalities and dualistic notions with no room for the “slippery area” that is a glitch (Russell, 2016). Furthermore, the word “error” can imply the notion of there being either a right or a wrong answer/way of being, a harmful binary that can foster inequity. To embrace the tossed scraps of this dichotomous error, further underscores glitch feminism’s foundational premises that binaries do not serve all bodies fairly (if at all).

POST 2

4. As someone who plays computer games and uses the term AFK quite frequently, this was a very interesting concept to wrap my head around. However, AFK makes total sense as a mode of understanding the shifting definitions of our lives in the digital and physical world, allowing for overlap and less strict categorization of who we are and where we are in the world. IRL only allows for a sharp dichotomy: the offline and online, two separate entities that exist without each other, similar to the binary gender structure that persists today. However, AFK allows for more blurred distinctions; for the people who do not perfectly fit into the binary realm, the gender identities and sexualities that require a more nuanced perception of the world to become more visible, the cyborgs that Donna Haraway writes of. These are “glitches” of the digital world that Russel discusses and argues for as necessary as a feminist concept that argues for tearing down colonist structures that still dictate people’s lives, both on and offline.

AFK can be seen as a glitch itself by eliminating the strict dichotomy presented by IRL. It wreaks havoc on the orderly, structured digital world that seeks to organize bodies into neat categories that do not intermix. AFK and the meanings surrounding this concept argues for glitches by being a glitch itself in the present system, one that opens up a realm of possibilities in digital identities and finding meaning in the bodies we have vs the bodies assigned to us.