Scan barcode
A review by badluckbaby
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell
4.0
I deeply appreciated Russell's celebratory writing on digital space as one where fluid identities can take shape, begin to break unjust systems, and gesture toward the expansiveness of what it means to be human. I'm a skeptic of tech, and her positivity cut through my cynicism, which is refreshing. Her ideas can be an interesting lens through which to view mixed-race/multicultural identities, too. And I felt like her notion of the glitch as an in-between body and a rupturing of "reality" has some parallel with my own bookmaking practice and what I want my work to do for the reader.
Glitch Feminism is on the lightweight side while including references to heavier texts, and I was mostly fine with that. Only Chapter 10 really bugged me, where Russell dismisses the dark side of social media as if it were pure fearmongering from the white, cishet, able-bodied POV. It's obvious that the internet is a critical gathering place for people who can't meet in community in non-digital space; it would have been more compelling for Russell to frame such online community-building as a glitching of the social media platforms that are designed, however intentionally, to make us feel less-than, causing addiction, depression, and division. She could have been clearer about how these communities heal the online/AFK loop that is vulnerable to capitalist exploitation, and how glitch feminism centers that act of healing.
Okay, that said, I do love this book and think it's one well worth returning to.
Glitch Feminism is on the lightweight side while including references to heavier texts, and I was mostly fine with that. Only Chapter 10 really bugged me, where Russell dismisses the dark side of social media as if it were pure fearmongering from the white, cishet, able-bodied POV. It's obvious that the internet is a critical gathering place for people who can't meet in community in non-digital space; it would have been more compelling for Russell to frame such online community-building as a glitching of the social media platforms that are designed, however intentionally, to make us feel less-than, causing addiction, depression, and division. She could have been clearer about how these communities heal the online/AFK loop that is vulnerable to capitalist exploitation, and how glitch feminism centers that act of healing.
Okay, that said, I do love this book and think it's one well worth returning to.