“This invaluable research tool will hugely expand, update, and perhaps even revolutionize the feminist discourse. It might even be considered a work of conceptual art in itself."
—Lucy R. Lippard, author of Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972
“This book served as my doorway to cyberfeminism and I now see what an energetic continent awaits me. Anywhere I stepped it burned my hair off, it’s that brilliantly intense."
—Kevin Kelly, founding editor Wired magazine
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“You can use it as a reference, follow a thread, or just access it at random and it delivers wit and wisdom from over three decades of one of the most politically and intellectually challenging movements of our era. What happens between sexed flesh and gendered tech? More than ever we all need to know."
—McKenzie Wark, author of A Hacker Manifesto
“This is an archive perfectly suited to its material: at ease with impermanence, richly appreciative of contradiction, and expansive in scope. Mindy Seu and her cohort of collaborators celebrate the polyrhythmic chorus of voices that have made cyberfeminist thought so delightfully difficult to define—and invite new, kaleidoscopic reinterpretations of our last three decades of life online."
—Claire L. Evans, author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
“The Cyberfeminism Index celebrates, troubles, and critiques the histories and futures of struggle against networked patriarchy—from its first libidinous eruptions to tenacious tactical disruptions and mutations. For theorists and hegemony hackers alike the Index offers an inspirational and educational resource for the urgent work of glitching and decolonizing intersectional internets now."
—Ruth Catlow, founder of Furtherfield
