39. Emancipatory Technopolitics: community practices, alternative infrastructures, and emergent solidarities
Ben Gansky, Arizona State University; Lindsay Adams Smith, Arizona State University
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês, Spanish/Español/Espanhol
STS scholars have for generations analyzed the ways in which technological structures and practices reciprocally shape political subjectivity and relationality. While it is without a doubt that technological projects with political intentions have contributed to patterns of social subjugation and political disempowerment, debate over the proposition that they might support emancipatory and solidaristic political programs is ongoing. In this moment, we find our field in a largely pessimistic mood about the potential for technological infrastructuring of political empowerment – and for good reason. And yet: where communities are navigating alternatives to neoliberalism, technological practices and infrastructures in support of these projects are emerging: alternative technopolitics. This open call for papers seeks scholarship that observes and reflects on these emergent emancipatory practices. What kinds of relations and border work are being called into being? Under what conditions are sociotechnical infrastructures and practices being enacted with the intention to condition political subjectivity? What forms of political life are made possible, or perhaps imaginable, by these sociotechnical reconfigurations? This panel aligns with this year’s ESOCITE/4S theme by reflecting on experimental practices and emergent infrastructures for reconfiguring political relations through sociotechnical interventions.
This panel invites papers in both English and Spanish.
