Re-understanding media : feminist extensions of Marshall McLuhan

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The contributors to Re-Understanding Media advance a feminist version of Marshall McLuhan’s key text, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, repurposing his insight that “the medium is the message” for feminist ends. They argue that while McLuhan’s theory provides a falsely universalizing conception of the technological as a structuring form of power, feminist critics can take it up to show how technologies alter and determine the social experiences of race, gender, class, and sexuality. This volume showcases essays, experimental writings, and interviews from media studies scholars, artists, activists, and those who work with and create technology. Among other topics, the contributors extend McLuhan’s discussion of transportation technology to the attics and cargo boxes that moved Black women through the Underground Railroad, apply McLuhan’s concept of media as extensions of humans to analyze Tupperware as media of containment, and take up 3D printing as a feminist and decolonial practice. The volume demonstrates how power dynamics are built into technological media and how media can be harnessed for radical purposes.

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The contributors to Re-Understanding Media advance a feminist version of Marshall McLuhan’s key text, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, repurposing his insight that “the medium is the message” for feminist ends. They argue that while McLuhan’s theory provides a falsely universalizing conception of the technological as a structuring form of power, feminist critics can take it up to show how technologies alter and determine the social experiences of race, gender, class, and sexuality. This volume showcases essays, experimental writings, and interviews from media studies scholars, artists, activists, and those who work with and create technology. Among other topics, the contributors extend McLuhan’s discussion of transportation technology to the attics and cargo boxes that moved Black women through the Underground Railroad, apply McLuhan’s concept of media as extensions of humans to analyze Tupperware as media of containment, and take up 3D printing as a feminist and decolonial practice. The volume demonstrates how power dynamics are built into technological media and how media can be harnessed for radical purposes.

Content Note

Introduction:A feminist medium is the message / Sarah Sharma -- Transporting Blackness: Black materialist media theory / Armond R. Towns -- Sidewalks of concrete and code / Shannon Mattern -- Hardwired / Nicholas Taylor -- Textile, the uneasy medium / Ganaele Langlois -- Dear incubator / Sara Martel -- Wifesaver: Tupperware and the unfortunate spoils of containment / Brooke Erin Duffy and Jeremy Packer -- "Will Miss File Misfile?" the filing cabinet, automatic memory, and gender / Craig Robertson -- Computers made of paper, genders made of cards / Cait McKinney -- Sky high: platforms and the feminist politics of visibility / Rianka Singh and Sarah Banet-Weiser -- Scanning for Black data: a conversation with Nasma Ahmed and Ladan Siad / Sarah Sharma and Rianka Singh -- 3D printing and digital colonialism: a conversation with Morehshin Allahyari / Sarah Sharma and Rianka Singh -- Toward a media theory of the digital bundle: a conversation with Jennifer Wemigwans / Sarah Sharma -- Afterword: After McLuhan / Wendy Hui Kyong Chun.