Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology; Issue no. 11 (May 2017)

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26355

Issue edited by Radhika Gajjala and Carol Stabile

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    [Issue no. 11 Cover]
    (Fembot Collective, 2017-05) Jeong, Sun Hye
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    The Technopo(e)litics of Rupi Kaur: (de)Colonial AestheTics and Spatial Narrations in the DigiFemme Age
    (Fembot Collective, 2017-05) Kruger, Sasha
    Rupi Kaur, a trending poetess of Instagram, has recently gained critical acclaim online for her newly published poetry collection milk and honey which is a stunning depiction of trauma, survival, love, womanhood, and friendship. Identifying as a first-generation Canadian, Punjabi-Sikh, woman of color, Kaur works visually in her book and on Instagram to portray and subvert how space functions to produce the gendered, diasporic subject as a body that is “unhomed.” Through the complex interplay of illustrated imagery and verse, Kaur contests the violent spatial (and bordering) practices of nationalism by positioning her poems’ personae in new and different ways to occupy, produce, and claim space off and online—performances of celebration, reclamation, resistance, and ultimately, acts of (de)colonial self-love. Kaur’s art and cyberspatial narration adds an important dimension to considering the colonial project of space. Occupying space on Instagram, Kaur supplants the place where women have traditionally been relegated. It is exactly the embodied telling of Kaur’s artwork that she attributes to the importance of its public nature: the Instagram becomes the home—rehomed by her art—whereas the nation becomes the network. Through Kaur’s narratives shared online, Kaur connects to a cyberspatial sisterhood and demonstrates that healing through narrative is necessarily collective.
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    Introduction: Issue 11
    (Fembot Collective, 2017-05) Gajjala, Radhika, 1960-; Stabile, Carol A
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    Naive Meritocracy and the Meanings of Myth
    (Fembot Collective, 2017-05) Reagle, Joseph
    Hackers and other geeks have long described their spaces as meritocratic. Geek feminists challenge this belief as a myth. In short, so-called meritocracies reproduce extant members and favor incidental attributes; they are biased, susceptible to privilege, and unconcerned with inequitable outcomes. I agree that meritocratic claims are often unfounded and elide equitable opportunities and outcomes; such claims deserve scrutiny. Yet, meritocracy is experienced as real by some, and it is a worthwhile ideal. Given that the word myth has multiple meanings (unfounded versus ideal), I offer the term naive meritocracy in its place. I also suggest there are two types of naiveté about meritocracy: ignorant naiveté, which is unaware of these critiques, and subjective naiveté, by which personal experiences trumps all else. The notion of naive meritocracy permits us to be critical of meritocratic claims without sacrificing the ideal of meritocracy as equal opportunity.