In December 2001, OBN - Old Boys\\\' Network - held the 3rd International Cyberfeminist Conference. This time, Hamburg was the venue (after Kassel and Rotterdam) for the ongoing debate about the strategic function and meaning of cyberfeminism as idea, utopian concept, and political practice.

The organizers of the Cyberfeminist International are not interested in the dialectic resolution or reconciliation of contradictory approaches to, and ways of identifying with, this term. Rather, they want to foster a »politics of dissent,« seen as working on the borders of assumed realities which are to be ironically undermined or broken up.

But the difficulty of achieving this aim even within the Cyberfeminist International itself became apparent on the very first morning, when debate on the topic »networking - knot working - not working?« revealed not only the organizers\\\' dissatisfaction with their double role as group and network, but also, and primarily, the deep rifts separating various concepts and strategies of political action. On the one hand, OBN underlines the necessity of a concrete political commitment, an »embodied political practice« that reacts to any detected evils with strategies and techniques of resistance. On the other, it demands a redefinition of political action as a practice that does not so much address a specific opponent, as playfully undermine existing structures using appropriation, irony and humor.

In terms of this conflict, which is also implicitly about the definition, appropriation and assignation of the concepts »reality« and »virtuality,« it was possible to see Susanna Paasonen\\\'s talk »On the Limits of Play« as an attempt at mediation. Paasonen examines the way the internet is generally used and seen. Two myths that still predominate here are a) the discourse about fluid borders and playful freedom with regard to gender identities on the Web and b) the idea of the internet\\\'s being a subversive place. In her work, Paasonen points to the basically neoliberal construction of this rhetoric of freedom and mobility, underlining the fact that every identity is founded in a physical and social reality. When applied to the potential for political action or the evaluation of the real, this means that political identity is not something you can put on and take off like a dress. Even a type of cyberfeminism that declares the strategy of non-definition to be the tool of ironic mutations cannot, in the face of concrete political circumstances, avoid determinating its position in a manner that is at least temporarily valid.

The talks on the third day under the title »The Borders of ›Terror,‹ Media and War Techniques« were therefore looked forward to with great anticipation. This part of the program was added after the events of September 11. Dorothee Schwab introduced it with her talk »No Accomplices.« In it, she addressed the hypocritical condemnation and functionalization of the discrimination against women in Afghanistan as a proof of the West\\\'s moral superiority to Islam and a legitimation for military strikes. Any input from women that goes beyond this functionalization is not wanted: for example, it took a long struggle before representatives of the RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan) were invited to the Afghanistan Conference. Because of the omnipresent media exploitation of the topic »Women in Afghanistan« (in the way criticized by Schwab) that was still going on in December, the invitation of a RAWA representative to the Cyberfeminist conference also caused a long controversy among the organizers. The anonymous appearance of the Afghan activist and her interpreter at the end of the discussions did really give the impression that RAWA is now perfectly fulfilling media expectations. In her presentation - more a choreographed performance than an opportunity for discussion - the representative of this revolutionary organization could not add anything to the already known facts about the situation of women in her native land.

However, her talk made it clear what a variety of tasks, functions and meanings »cyberfeminism« has in widely differing cultural and political contexts. Reduced to the lowest common denominator, this means: cyberfeminism opens up new pathways of communication for women - but they have to go up them themselves!

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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