Feminism and the Technological Age

Abstract

Feminism advocates for the inclusion of women within the modern economy, but this has implicated feminism in a hyper-capitalist and instrumental mode of organising social life. Feminism has helped to legitimise the ubiquitous reach of this regime into all areas of social life, even parenting. Feminism can learn from Heidegger's proposition that in questioning modern technology we may open up a way of coming into a free relationship with it—to be open to the divinity of living beings and things. Jessica Benjamin's account of the relationship between the mother and her infant in terms of intersubjectivity seems to fit Heidegger's proposition for it highlights a dynamic and receptive exchange between two unique living beings. The question for feminism at this time is: how can it own its complicity with modern technology while opening up its distinctive contribution to finding a way of coming into a free relationship with it?

Notes

1. Zimmerman (2006, 302) allows us to glimpse Heidegger's historical narrative of modern technology: ‘Modern science forces entities to reveal themselves only in accordance with theoretical presuppositions consistent with Western humanity's ever-increasing drive to gain control of everything. While during the industrial age the achievement of such control could be described as a means for the end of improving the human estate, during the technological era—which may be said to have commenced with the horrors of World War I—humanity itself has become a means to an end without purpose: the quest for power for its own sake, which Heidegger described as the sheer Will to Will’.

2. These social movements sought to add what Albert Hirschman (1970) calls ‘voice’ to the conduct of all social relationships, including government policy and programmes. They were a major influence on the administrative reform movement that sought to democratise the twentieth-century ‘administrative state’.

3. Precarious work is also referred to as ‘insecure work’. See the Australian Council and Trade Unions (2012) report of its inquiry into insecure work. There the definition of indicators of insecure work is: (1) unpredictable, fluctuating pay; (2) inferior rights and entitlements, including limited or no access to paid leave; (3) irregular and unpredictable working hours, or working hours that, although regular, are too long or too few and/or non-social or fragmented; (4) lack of security and/or uncertainty over the length of the job; and (5) lack of voice at work on wages, conditions and work organisation (ACTU 2012, 1).

4. I agree with Kruks (2001, 149) here that ‘there are certain stable biological attributes to the female body, and we should not be too hasty in dismissing them as wholly irrelevant’. Kruks continues: ‘Although there are exceptions, in general women menstruate, have a vagina, clitoris, and womb, are capable of being impregnated, have large mammary glands on their chests, are shorter and lighter in weight, and have a larger percentage of body fat than men, and so on’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Yeatman

Anna Yeatman is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Whitlam Institute, University of Western Sydney. Recent publications include: (with Peg Birmingham) eds. The Aporia of Rights: Explorations in Citizenship in the Era of Human Rights, forthcoming Bloomsbury; (with Philip Hansen, Magdalena Zolkos, and Charles Barbour) eds. Action and Appearance: Ethics and the Politics of Writing in Arendt, Continuum, New York, 2011.