● XF seizes alienation
○ Alienation frees us from immediacy
○ Freedom is not a given; nothing is “given”
● “The real emancipatory potential of technology remains unrealized”
● The “different” folk among us must not praise nature due to how it makes them different
● Xenofeminism must be rational
● Xenofeminism is about more than digital self-defence and freedom from patriarchal
networks. We want to cultivate the exercise of positive freedom—freedom-to rather than
simply freedom-from—and urge feminists to equip themselves with the skills to redeploy
existing technologies and invent novel cognitive and material tools in the service of
common ends.
● “XF rejects illusion and melancholy as political inhibitors”
○ melancholy—so endemic to the left—teaches us that emancipation is an extinct
species to be wept over and that blips of negation are the best we can hope for.
At its worst, such an attitude generates nothing but political lassitude, and at its
best, installs an atmosphere of pervasive despair which too often degenerates
into factionalism and petty moralizing.
○ The malady of melancholia only compounds political inertia, and—under the
guise of being realistic—relinquishes all hope of calibrating the world otherwise.
● “While having (perhaps) admirably expanded thresholds of ‘tolerance’, too often we are
told to seek solace in unfreedom, staking claims on being ‘born’ this way, as if offering
an excuse with nature’s blessing. “
○ When comparing fighting for and obtaining better standards or learning to
live happily with lower standards, is one truly better than the other? Do
they truly end up equivalent?
○ ‘Gender abolitionism’: the struggle must continue until currently gendered
characteristics are no more a basis of discrimination than than the color of one’s
eyes.
Wendy Brown - Sacrificial Citizenship
● Neoliberalism - involves economization (turning non-economic things to economic ones)
● Human capital - investing in oneself to improve
○ Example of neoliberalism - turning something standard into an economic matter;
one is an “individual firm”
■ “Modern firms are not Smithian entities (Adam Smith) exchanging in truck
and barter...”
● Truck system = to pay with cash equivalent rather than cash itself
■ “...nor are they Benthamite creatures simply pursuing pleasure and
avoiding pain”
● Jeremy Benthamite = 1700s philosopher influenced by Adam
Smith
