Draft:Helen Hester

Helen Hester

Helen Hester (born 1983) is a British philosopher, researcher, writer, and feminist activist. She is a member of the feminist group Laboria Cuboniks.

Biography

Hester is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at West London University. Her research interests include technofeminism, sexuality studies, digital technology, social reproduction theory and reproductive politics, and the future of work. She is the author of Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex, co-editor of the collections Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism and Dea ex Machina, and editor of the Ashgate "Sexualities in Society" book series.

'Laboria Cuboniks' Activism

Helen Hester is a member of the international feminist group Laboria Cuboniks, a collective of people from different fields of knowledge: visual arts, programming, philosophy, archaeology, and design. In 2015 she published Xenofeminism: A Politics of Alienation. In this manifesto she defends xenofeminism, reviewing feminist political projects and advocating for the strategic use of existing technologies to completely redesign the world.

The prefix 'xeno' in the term 'xenofeminism' refers to the desire to create a new kind of feminism that embraces sexual diversity, independent of any binary conception, and that must have the capacity to form new alliances and forms of solidarity. From cyberfeminism, posthumanism, trans activism, materialism, and accelerationism. Xenofeminists project a world beyond notions of gender, sex, race, species and class, and constantly confront nature as a crossroads of technology, especially women, who carry the idea of the "natural" with the burden of the work of reproduction.[1][2]

Theoretical contributions

Based on Laboria Cuboniks's Xenofeminist manifesto, Hester wrote the essay "Gender Technologies and Reproductive Politics" in 2018. She emphasized the manifesto's main theoretical foundations: anti-naturalism, technomaterialism, and gender abolitionism. Starting from a transfeminist stance, she interweaves these three concepts to propose that science and technology be considered spaces of conflict, as they are not essentially neutral or beneficial, as they are often considered, but are intrinsically patriarchal, sexist, and racist. They are a territory to be conquered. Nature, therefore, now permeates technology and social spheres, and is flexible, repeatable, and reconstructable. Thus, a large-scale collective social organization is necessary to acquire patriotic ties.[1]

A key theme for the author is the issue of social reproduction and reproductive labor and their relationship to the future of our planet. Hester's goal is to develop representations for a "strange future" that do not impose and condemn biological reproduction and establish non-regulatory models of social reproduction based on bodily autonomy and sexual diversity that are capable of fostering affective and caring bonds beyond blood filiation. [1] With this work, Hester expands on the previous manifesto and articulates it around accelerationism. According to her, current reality is undergoing a rapid process in all areas, especially in science and technology. Other authors have previously seen these areas as a space for feminist emancipation in their various publications: Firestone (1976), Haraway (1995), Plant (1994), Butler (2018, 2017 and 2006) and Preciado (2002, 2008 and 2010). The breaking of the gender binary and the opening of non-heterocentric queer bodies, subjects and identities to other readings are also spaces that can become reality.[2]

In her essay, Hester rejects the equivalence between femininity and environmental activism, advocating an activism adapted to the world of technology. Regarding the feminist mantra "the personal is political," she asserted that it should not remain merely intuitive, but should impact society and, at the same time, be criticized. She proposed forming an alliance with others, with strangers, with the alienated. It would also be based solely on solidarity and individualism, as well as feminism.[1]

After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time

Together with economist Nick Srnicek, she initiated the second wave of post-autonomist Marxism[1] and materialist feminism, publishing "After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time" which addressed the naturalization of reproductive labor and the attempt to create a more effective feminist politics in the age of the end of work (see The End of Work).[2][3] In another line of research, she examined the integrated crisis of wage labor, work in the home and community as we move into the age of the care economy, examining the feminization of both paid and unpaid reproductive and care work.[4]

Hester and Srnicek advocate a post-work feminist politics, in which we must shift our focus from traditional work (offices and factories) to new value work—care work (hospitals and homes). The work crisis, with its precarious jobs, outsourcing, and automation, takes on a new dimension when work is performed through the lens of care, giving labor issues a whole new perspective. There is a work crisis, but also a new reality—longer life expectancy and active, dignified aging—which is why economic austerity measures that have cut social benefits, education, and healthcare should not be tolerated. There would also be fewer people available to perform unpaid housework and childcare, as more women are working. The good news, according to Hester and Srnicek, is that this is a crisis that can and must be addressed. But only if society completely rethinks the way it organizes life and care work, while being open to the automation of work done in the home.[1]

Publications

Helen Hester's Publications

• 2022 - After work: The Fight for Free Time, (with Nick Srnicek), Verso, Londres.
• 2018 - After work: The politics of free time, (with Nick Srnicek), Verso, Londres.
• 2018 - Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation. Caja Negra, 2018, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires.
• 2015 - Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism (with Caroline Walters), Routledge, 2015,
• 2015 - Dea ex machina (with Armen, Braidotti, Rosi, Cuboniks, Laboria, Firestone, Shulamith, Power, Nina, Preciado, Avanessian), Berlin Merve, 2015.
• 2015 - The Xenofeminist Manifesto (colectivo Laboria Cubonikcs).
• 2014 - Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex, SUNY Press, 2014.

Related Publications

• 2013 - Manifiesto por una política aceleracionista, Nick Srnicek y Alex Williamsy.

Véase también

• Aceleracionismo
  • Nick Srnicek
• Trabajo reproductivo
• Reducción del tiempo de trabajo
• Reproducción social
• Empleadas de hogar
• Ciberfeminismo

Enlaces externos

Castellano

• Helen Hester - Xenofeminismo. La tecnología como promesa de emancipación, Pikara Magazine, 2019
• Helen Hester: "Helen Hester: «La biología no determina el destino: se puede modificar tecnológicamente»" Entrevista Toni Navarro, 2019,
• Helen Hester - CCCB
• Helen Hester: “Como feministas tenemos que exigir políticas que garanticen que los beneficios de las tecnologías sean distribuidos equitativamente”, latercera.com, 2020
• Manifiesto por una política aceleracionista, Nick Srnicek y Alex Williamsy, 2013
• Una reseña de Xenofeminismo: tecnologías de género y políticas de reproducción, CTXT, 2018

sobre marxismo postautonomista

• Marx en tiempos de algoritmos, Tiziana Terranova, 2018

English

• Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek 'After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time'
• Xerrada 'At Home In the Future' (vídeo, 2019)