Nicole Shephard
PhD from LSE | Freelance Researcher & Writer | online/offline research | editing | project management
PhD Gender Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)
MSc International Development, University of Bristol (UK)
BA Social Work and Social Policy, University of Fribourg (CH)
PhD Gender Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)
MSc International Development, University of Bristol (UK)
BA Social Work and Social Policy, University of Fribourg (CH)
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Chapter in Denknetz, Jahrbuch 2017: Technisierte Gesellschaft. Full book with many interesting contributions (in German) available open access here http://www.denknetz.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Jahrbuch_2017.pdf
Association for Progressive Communications (APC).
Surveillance has historically functioned as an oppressive tool to control women's bodies and is closely related to colonial modes of managing populations. Big data, metadata and the technologies used to collect, store and analyse them are by no means neutral, but come with their own exclusions and biases. This paper highlights the gendered and racialised effects of data practices; outlines the overlapping nature of state, commercial and peer surveillance; and maps the challenges and opportunities women and queers encounter on the nexus between data, surveillance, gender and sexuality. Vulnerable communities as well as sexual rights activists are at heightened risk of data-driven modes Dr Nicole Shephard is an independent researcher and writer working on the intersections between gender, sexuality and technology. She holds a PhD in Gender (LSE) and an MSc in International Development (University of Bristol). of surveillance. In addition to exposing and addressing algorithmic discriminations, feminist data practices oppose the non-consensual collection of data, amplify participatory data projects that empower women and sexual minorities, and protect the data, privacy and anonymity of activists and the communities they work with.
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Queere Intersektionalität: Begegnungen mit Transnationalität Der Beitrag nimmt eine konzeptionelle Erkundung des queeren Potenzials vor, das aus einem Dialog zwischen Intersektionalitätsansätzen in der Geschlechterforschung, der Queer Theory mit ihrem Konzept des Queerings und der transnationalen Migrationsforschung hervorgeht. So bietet eine queere Intersektionalitätsperspektive Raum für Denkansätze, die sich über Normativitäten in intersektionalen wie auch transnationalen Forschungsagenden hinwegsetzen. Das Queering richtet sich dabei nicht ausschließlich auf Intersektionalitätstheorien und deren Forschungsgegenstand, sondern ebenso auf deren Status als Forschungsparadigma, das seine eigenen normativen Modi der Wissensproduktion hervorgebracht hat. Verschiedene kritische Interventionen werden hier auf eine Weise mit(durch)einander gelesen, dass sie in einer queer-intersektionalen Lesart dazu beitragen können, heteronormative Annahmen in der Migrationsforschung zu hinterfragen und die Verknüpfung von Intersektionalität mit als „anders” markierten Körpern aufzulösen.
Book Reviews
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/07/14/book-review-of-remixology-ethics-and-aesthetics-after-remix-by-david-j-gunkel/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/01/31/book-review-the-becoming-of-bodies-girls-images-experience-by-rebecca-coleman/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/04/10/book-review-migration-and-new-media-transnational-families-and-polymedia/
Books
Conference Presentations
The paper begins by outlining a number of interrelated ways in which it is possible to think of Big Data as a figuration rather than (or in addition to) the buzzword it has become in popular and scholarly representation. It is, for in stance, a figuration that quite literally consists of figures in their incarnation of signifying numbers, vast quantities thereof, and of quantifying other forms of content on a hitherto unimaginable/unprocessable scale. In a more figura tive sense, Big Data as a figuration then reifies old ideas around objectivity and quantification while substantiating other figurations already circulating in the social and political imaginary. In itself, it figures in particular ways in popular, academic, and media discourse not least in, from a social scientific perspective, rather absurd persuasion of n=all, invoking the impending death of theory as the numbers are taken to speak for themselves (Anderson 2008). In its most sombre appropriations it raises questions around mass surveil lance and bio /necro political regulation, discursively mobilises figures like the “four horsemen of the infocalypse” the terrorist, the paedophile, the money launderer, and the drug dealer while giving rise to yet other conten tious figures like the hacker and the wistleblower.
Simultaneously deploying figures and figurations to think about Big Data, and exploring what doing so might in turn productively do in terms of think ing it differently, the paper considers the potential for reconfiguration that figurations harbour. Thus taking its cue from Braidotti’s contention that cri tique needs to take place trans disciplinarily and in tandem with creative al ternative figurations (2013), this paper suggests that doing justice to figures Big Data as a figuration in itself, the literal figures that constitute it, as well as the subsequent figurations Big Data materialises and legitimates requires re configuring Big Data in different ways beyond utopian celebration and dys topian dismissal. Queer, anti racist, and feminist critique has a crucial part to play in this process of re configuration, and can do so by expanding critique to critical participation in Big Data practices to shift what constitutes the fig uration of Big Data, how it is deployed, and how it materialises other figures.
First, this paper explores trajectories into post-disciplinarity, lays some definitional groundwork and situates it around notions of inter-/trans-/multi-disciplinarity. Drawing on an ongoing project interested in the queering of intersectional theory as an intervention into knowledge production on transnational subjects, this paper then suggests that queering might be more broadly understood as post-disciplinary practice. Post-disciplinarity, in turn, has the potential of queering academic institutions and the disciplinary canon, as well as the ways in which knowledge on research subjects/objects is produced. Akin to Braidotti's nomadic style, post-disciplinarity posits practices of borrowing, adapting and re-purposing of theoretical concepts with little regard for the disciplinary boundaries within which they have been coined. Instead, objects of study take the lead, and research questions are followed through to where their logical conclusion may lie.
Post-disciplinarity seeks to carve out spaces for "object-oriented" theorising instead of disciplinary dogma – spaces for thinking about the ways in which we produce knowledge across disciplines without being disciplined. While queering is on the one hand introduced here as one such example of post-disciplinary knowledge production amongst potentially many, it is also used to suggest post-disciplinary ways of infusing queer theory into mainstreams outside of gender studies beyond the gestural "as queer/feminist scholars have argued…" or the token reference to Judith Butler. Queering, understood as a post-disciplinary practice, thus not only intervenes in the disciplinary knowledges queer critiques habitually address, but equally interrogates the institutionalisation of queer fields of study.
A wide range of conceptual and empirical scholarship on transnational migration and transnational social spaces has focused on defining and delimiting transnationalism as phenomenon and field of study, on the economic and political implications of transnational migration for states, and on the impact of bifocal transnationality on migrants’ practices. Less attention has been paid to how subject formation takes place in transnational social spaces. This paper puts the transnational social space into productive dialogue with poststructuralist theories of subject formation and feminist and queer interventions into transnational migration research. In doing so, I illustrate how the study of transna- tional social spaces can benefit from drawing on intersectional theories in gender studies and the queering of methodologies beyond the study of queer subjects. This move opens up space for taking the complex interplay of historicity, spatiality as well as fluid material and discursive practices that transnational social spaces entail into account.
While feminist work on migration seems to offer a setting for thinking about sexualities and migra- tion, that very same research often re-inscribes heteronormative assumptions by conflating sexuality with gender ‘which in turn is often conflated with women — a triple erasure meaning that only women have sexuality, sexuality is gender, and gender or sexuality is normatively heterosexual’ (Luibhéid 2004:227). Taking an intersectional approach, particularly the sort McCall (2005) defines in terms of anticategorical complexity, allows for an analysis of subject formation that pays close atten- tion to the contextually prevalent multiplicity in terms of transnationality, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class or cultural attachments. While intersectional theory incorporates sexuality as one possible avenue for subject formation, it does not provide the researcher with a conceptual tool to pay attention to the ways in which gender and sexuality normalise social relations. A number of scholars (see Luibhéid 2008; Manalansan IV 2006; Valocchi 2005) suggest that queer methodologies need not be limited to the study of queer subjects, but used as an instrument to explore how heter- onormativity plays a role in producing not only those constructed as queer but also those who be- come normalised by those very same discourses. Heteronormativity not only excludes non- heterosexuals, but is deeply entrenched in the production of all subjects. Pairing an intersectional lens with the queering of methodologies acknowledges heteronormativity as part of the social space within which transnational subjects are formed, and draws attention to the relationship between transnationality, gender and sexualities and the (non-)normative alignments across those and other axes of difference.
Chapter in Denknetz, Jahrbuch 2017: Technisierte Gesellschaft. Full book with many interesting contributions (in German) available open access here http://www.denknetz.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Jahrbuch_2017.pdf
Association for Progressive Communications (APC).
Surveillance has historically functioned as an oppressive tool to control women's bodies and is closely related to colonial modes of managing populations. Big data, metadata and the technologies used to collect, store and analyse them are by no means neutral, but come with their own exclusions and biases. This paper highlights the gendered and racialised effects of data practices; outlines the overlapping nature of state, commercial and peer surveillance; and maps the challenges and opportunities women and queers encounter on the nexus between data, surveillance, gender and sexuality. Vulnerable communities as well as sexual rights activists are at heightened risk of data-driven modes Dr Nicole Shephard is an independent researcher and writer working on the intersections between gender, sexuality and technology. She holds a PhD in Gender (LSE) and an MSc in International Development (University of Bristol). of surveillance. In addition to exposing and addressing algorithmic discriminations, feminist data practices oppose the non-consensual collection of data, amplify participatory data projects that empower women and sexual minorities, and protect the data, privacy and anonymity of activists and the communities they work with.
- - - - -
Queere Intersektionalität: Begegnungen mit Transnationalität Der Beitrag nimmt eine konzeptionelle Erkundung des queeren Potenzials vor, das aus einem Dialog zwischen Intersektionalitätsansätzen in der Geschlechterforschung, der Queer Theory mit ihrem Konzept des Queerings und der transnationalen Migrationsforschung hervorgeht. So bietet eine queere Intersektionalitätsperspektive Raum für Denkansätze, die sich über Normativitäten in intersektionalen wie auch transnationalen Forschungsagenden hinwegsetzen. Das Queering richtet sich dabei nicht ausschließlich auf Intersektionalitätstheorien und deren Forschungsgegenstand, sondern ebenso auf deren Status als Forschungsparadigma, das seine eigenen normativen Modi der Wissensproduktion hervorgebracht hat. Verschiedene kritische Interventionen werden hier auf eine Weise mit(durch)einander gelesen, dass sie in einer queer-intersektionalen Lesart dazu beitragen können, heteronormative Annahmen in der Migrationsforschung zu hinterfragen und die Verknüpfung von Intersektionalität mit als „anders” markierten Körpern aufzulösen.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/07/14/book-review-of-remixology-ethics-and-aesthetics-after-remix-by-david-j-gunkel/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/01/31/book-review-the-becoming-of-bodies-girls-images-experience-by-rebecca-coleman/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/04/10/book-review-migration-and-new-media-transnational-families-and-polymedia/
The paper begins by outlining a number of interrelated ways in which it is possible to think of Big Data as a figuration rather than (or in addition to) the buzzword it has become in popular and scholarly representation. It is, for in stance, a figuration that quite literally consists of figures in their incarnation of signifying numbers, vast quantities thereof, and of quantifying other forms of content on a hitherto unimaginable/unprocessable scale. In a more figura tive sense, Big Data as a figuration then reifies old ideas around objectivity and quantification while substantiating other figurations already circulating in the social and political imaginary. In itself, it figures in particular ways in popular, academic, and media discourse not least in, from a social scientific perspective, rather absurd persuasion of n=all, invoking the impending death of theory as the numbers are taken to speak for themselves (Anderson 2008). In its most sombre appropriations it raises questions around mass surveil lance and bio /necro political regulation, discursively mobilises figures like the “four horsemen of the infocalypse” the terrorist, the paedophile, the money launderer, and the drug dealer while giving rise to yet other conten tious figures like the hacker and the wistleblower.
Simultaneously deploying figures and figurations to think about Big Data, and exploring what doing so might in turn productively do in terms of think ing it differently, the paper considers the potential for reconfiguration that figurations harbour. Thus taking its cue from Braidotti’s contention that cri tique needs to take place trans disciplinarily and in tandem with creative al ternative figurations (2013), this paper suggests that doing justice to figures Big Data as a figuration in itself, the literal figures that constitute it, as well as the subsequent figurations Big Data materialises and legitimates requires re configuring Big Data in different ways beyond utopian celebration and dys topian dismissal. Queer, anti racist, and feminist critique has a crucial part to play in this process of re configuration, and can do so by expanding critique to critical participation in Big Data practices to shift what constitutes the fig uration of Big Data, how it is deployed, and how it materialises other figures.
First, this paper explores trajectories into post-disciplinarity, lays some definitional groundwork and situates it around notions of inter-/trans-/multi-disciplinarity. Drawing on an ongoing project interested in the queering of intersectional theory as an intervention into knowledge production on transnational subjects, this paper then suggests that queering might be more broadly understood as post-disciplinary practice. Post-disciplinarity, in turn, has the potential of queering academic institutions and the disciplinary canon, as well as the ways in which knowledge on research subjects/objects is produced. Akin to Braidotti's nomadic style, post-disciplinarity posits practices of borrowing, adapting and re-purposing of theoretical concepts with little regard for the disciplinary boundaries within which they have been coined. Instead, objects of study take the lead, and research questions are followed through to where their logical conclusion may lie.
Post-disciplinarity seeks to carve out spaces for "object-oriented" theorising instead of disciplinary dogma – spaces for thinking about the ways in which we produce knowledge across disciplines without being disciplined. While queering is on the one hand introduced here as one such example of post-disciplinary knowledge production amongst potentially many, it is also used to suggest post-disciplinary ways of infusing queer theory into mainstreams outside of gender studies beyond the gestural "as queer/feminist scholars have argued…" or the token reference to Judith Butler. Queering, understood as a post-disciplinary practice, thus not only intervenes in the disciplinary knowledges queer critiques habitually address, but equally interrogates the institutionalisation of queer fields of study.
A wide range of conceptual and empirical scholarship on transnational migration and transnational social spaces has focused on defining and delimiting transnationalism as phenomenon and field of study, on the economic and political implications of transnational migration for states, and on the impact of bifocal transnationality on migrants’ practices. Less attention has been paid to how subject formation takes place in transnational social spaces. This paper puts the transnational social space into productive dialogue with poststructuralist theories of subject formation and feminist and queer interventions into transnational migration research. In doing so, I illustrate how the study of transna- tional social spaces can benefit from drawing on intersectional theories in gender studies and the queering of methodologies beyond the study of queer subjects. This move opens up space for taking the complex interplay of historicity, spatiality as well as fluid material and discursive practices that transnational social spaces entail into account.
While feminist work on migration seems to offer a setting for thinking about sexualities and migra- tion, that very same research often re-inscribes heteronormative assumptions by conflating sexuality with gender ‘which in turn is often conflated with women — a triple erasure meaning that only women have sexuality, sexuality is gender, and gender or sexuality is normatively heterosexual’ (Luibhéid 2004:227). Taking an intersectional approach, particularly the sort McCall (2005) defines in terms of anticategorical complexity, allows for an analysis of subject formation that pays close atten- tion to the contextually prevalent multiplicity in terms of transnationality, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class or cultural attachments. While intersectional theory incorporates sexuality as one possible avenue for subject formation, it does not provide the researcher with a conceptual tool to pay attention to the ways in which gender and sexuality normalise social relations. A number of scholars (see Luibhéid 2008; Manalansan IV 2006; Valocchi 2005) suggest that queer methodologies need not be limited to the study of queer subjects, but used as an instrument to explore how heter- onormativity plays a role in producing not only those constructed as queer but also those who be- come normalised by those very same discourses. Heteronormativity not only excludes non- heterosexuals, but is deeply entrenched in the production of all subjects. Pairing an intersectional lens with the queering of methodologies acknowledges heteronormativity as part of the social space within which transnational subjects are formed, and draws attention to the relationship between transnationality, gender and sexualities and the (non-)normative alignments across those and other axes of difference.