Opening Up Space: A Lovely Technofeminist Opportunity

Social Class

Throughout the creation of this anthology, a common theme that we wanted to be aware of -- within ourselves, as writers, the women that we are working to recover, and in our analyses of these women writers-- was privilege. With this, we have viewed social class to be one of those privileges that we have found within our own individual positionalities along with identifying social class as a privilege that was relevant within our selected pieces of texts and/or the positionalities of the women writers featured within this anthology. Social class is a fairly modern concept that was born out of the reorganization of society which was brought about by the industrial movement in England during the 1800s (Ash). With this global shift to capitalism that was catalyzed by England's industrial movement, social class started to become a determining factor for various outcomes of individuals within societies. Over time, this determining factor starts to become noticeable among the factors of race, class, and gender. As the benefits of having a high social class afforded better treatment in society, this has become a privilege that needs to be acknowledged. 

In thinking about the readings that we discussed throughout the quarter, Francher's text comes to mind in thinking about recognizing and identifying the privilege of different class statuses within our own positionality as writers and within the texts we are analyzing within this anthology. Francher discusses that us, as feminists, need to: 

"Build our own tools, innovate technologies by and for women, and design interfaces that reflect feminist purposes, we may be able to redraw the power dynamics encoded into our technical landscape. We may be able to find more spaces for diverse bodies, communities, labor practices, and feminist practices"


In order to accomplish what Francher is calling all those in feminist studies and rhetoric studies, we need to be able to recognize privileges like social class, specifically within our analysis of the texts that we are trying to recover in order to create this digital (anti)anthology that does not reproduce the same power dynamics that we are trying to be hyper-aware and critical of. 

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