Monthly Archives: July 2006

Patchwork Identity

By Steen | July 18, 2006

The situation is quite different in Shelley Jackson’s hypertext Patchwork Girl, which does not partake in the device of the alien but instead casts identity differently. Identity is explicitly regarded as being constructed, hence the invocation of patchwork. Furthermore, the text itself is regarded as a patchwork constructed from a number of texts, all of [...]

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Living the Alien: Afrofuturism

By Steen |

In much the same way, people can use these narratives to understand themselves, particularly in opposition to a dominant culture in which they are not openly acknowledged. An example of this is the cultural movement of afrofuturism, exisiting primarily at the website afrofuturism.net and its corresponding Yahoo listserv, established by Alondra Nelson in 1998 (Nelson, [...]

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Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, TechnoLogics

By Steen | July 17, 2006

A few quotes from Kochar-Lindgren’s excellent book on technologics, cyborgs and the posthuman. The book is challenging, but well-worth the read.

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Constructing the Alien

By Steen | July 13, 2006

Employing the device of the alien has become a favoured tactic of many, but in 1972 it was an unusual move when semi-unknown musician David Bowie did it. Creating a concept album focussing on an alien visitor known as Ziggy Stardust, Bowie also took on the persona of this Ziggy Stardust conflating any sense of [...]

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