Abstract
In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist Technopolitics from the Global South by Firuzeh Shokooh Valle is a timely critical contribution to discussions about neoliberal feminist development and information and communication technologies (ICTs). Through in–depth interviews with women and organizations from the global South, including ethnographic accounts of a local development cooperative Sulá Batsú in Costa Rica, Shokooh Valle presents concrete examples to demonstrate what radically reimagined feminist technopolitics looks like, as well as what challenges existing efforts face in operating within a neoliberal status quo.
Shokooh Valle"s critiques of existing feminist development discourse around ICTs center around the construction of “the third world technological woman.” She argues that the majority of existing development literatures—as well as policies embedded within global institutions like the United Nations—rely on an idealized trope of the “third world technological woman.” This woman serves to seamlessly embed herself into existing technological paradigms to simultaneously receive economic benefits while also enriching her family, community, and nation. Shokooh Valle expertly describes how neoliberal development discourse draws on the “feminized ideas of care, reciprocity and collaboration” to construct the ideal market–savvy, tech-savvy woman in the global South.
The third world technological woman"s value lies in her ability to gain technological expertise that allows her to use ICTs to become expertly integrated into markets in such a way that she somehow eradicates structural barriers to achieve individual freedom. Her contribution does not end there, however, as her “self-discipline and individualized responsibility” also successfully free those under her care. After all, the third world woman is responsible for care work at her home and in her community. But she is also modern, business–minded, and ruthlessly skilled at adopting new technologies. ICTs for Development (ICT4D) initiatives are pushed in the global South as self–enhancement tools to this stereotype of third world women.
Drawing on critical–development and post–development frameworks, Shokooh Valle cautions against the violence and the dangers of such constructions of feminine identity. In parts of Chapter Three, Shokooh Valle centers gender violence on the internet—demonstrating concrete ways in which marginalized identities in the global South experience technologies as threats to their embodied selves. One participant astutely notes that existing discourse paints the picture of online victims of sexual harassment as white and western, when in reality the majority of women experiencing such violence online are from the global South. Such “whitewashing” of violence online allows development agents to continue to envision the idealized “third world technological woman” in promoting ICT growth without critical evaluation of harms inherently embedded in ICT4D projects.
Where Shokooh Valle"s work really shines, however, is in her discussion of alternatives through discussions of solidarity in Chapter Two and pleasure in Chapter Three. Shokooh Valle begins Chapter Two by describing how many Indigenous participants in the Sulá Batsú co–op are passionate about “a technology of feelings.” Such a construct is already a radical departure from existing ICT implementation in social media and the attention economy, where feelings are profitable units to be extracted, not celebrated. In this model, negative emotions thrive; however, in the technology of feelings imagined by the participants in her study, the emphasis is on positive emotions of solidarity and collective joy. More critically, there is an emphasis on “technology that feels,” which at first glance may evoke generative AI and large language models. That is not what these activists have in mind here, of course.
The technology that feels here alludes to technology constructed with empathy and social support at the center, rather than growth and profit. For example, “society and technology” is only one of several major areas of focus of the work done by members of Sulá Batsú. Equally central are projects that focus on constructing new economic structures that rely on solidarity rather than exclusion. The organization itself is built as a worker co–operative where all workers share any profits generated by projects and activities. The activists also centrally emphasize knowledge–sharing, art, and culture, invoking technologies that holistically encapsulate the dimensionality of the human experience. Crucially, creating technology ultimately appears as a secondary goal of the co–op, building human relationships coming first. Shokooh Valle often describes fascination with the way activists in the co–op develop bonds with the Indigenous women they work with and take extra care to amass expertise in Indigenous languages and cultural traditions so genuine human relationships based on shared meaning are constructed.
Similar themes of positive affect and shared humanity reverberate in Shokooh Valle"s discussion of pleasure in Chapter Three. Shokooh Valle begins with an argument that pleasure should be central in a politics of care—a natural extension of technologies of care. Pleasure, she argues, is caring for oneself and others; thus, pleasure is a form of praxis. This stunning argument is supported using examples from “feminist internet” initiatives, including “The EROTICS project: An Exploratory Research on Sexuality and the Internet” designed to conduct research activities with the goal of supporting sexual activists—including women and LGBTQI+ individuals—in using the internet for free and safe self–expression.
By centering solidarity and pleasure in these successful examples, Shokooh Valle convincingly argues for design and implementation of feminist ICTs from a post–development framework. Implicit in her messaging is the key idea that neoliberal development is more focused on growing the technology rather than improving it, regardless of the clear harms of existing ICT systems and the clear benefits of radically reimagined alternatives. Shokooh Valle goes above and beyond these limiting constructs. She demonstrates what is possible with both technology and development when we surpass imagined constructs of who global South women are and build systems with the people in the margins.
Shokooh Valle pulls back in the introductory chapter, which is denser and more difficult to parse. The reader has to get into the body chapters, beginning with the Sulá Batsú case study, to really understand how radical her propositions are. It is well worth getting through the introduction to find a precious work of radical new imaginations of what the internet can look like.