Simone de Beauvoir said, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” The glitch announces: One is not born, but rather becomes, a body.

How can glitch, which at its core is refusal, be reworked as something wonderful in our feminist, queer, and anti-racist utopic envisioning and collective mobilizations? a b Lavender, Pandora (15 April 2019). "7 Questions: Legacy Russell". Frieze . Retrieved 2020-06-18. Travis Alabanza quoted in Lola Olufemi, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power(Pluto Press, 2020) p. 49.I see Glitch Feminism as a part of that history, for sure. But I also recognize that so many of the primary contributors that come up in relation to Cyberfeminism are cis-gendered white women. So that’s complicated. How do we break what is broken? This is a question that has obviously come to the surface for so many people in the last few months. I think it’s an important question to interrogate, to think through what models of “success” are in a culture that continues to center supremacy and enact social and physical death unto those who don’t “fit.”

Aspects of the world have been changing so fast that it was hard at points to think about what needed to be pinned down and what needed to be allowed to change as the world changed. To me, the constants were the artists and the artwork that I discuss. They allow for certain types of constant engagement, that can be set against these broader world events. I’ll be completely frank with you: recent events have been staggering. I wouldn’t have wished these events on the world. But I also think it could not be a better time to be talking about some of these questions, given everything that’s going on.In thinking about how this work lives on, my hope is that it can be a strategic tool. The moments that have been most rewarding, in the journey from 2012 to the publication of this book, have been the moments where it has gone out into the world and intersected with people’s lives and living, been made real because it becomes tangible, becoming more than theory for theory’s sake. There are people who have so generously written to me and told me their personal stories about how these texts have been resonant for them, how they’ve opened up new understandings. That, for me, is the most important thing. As a conceptual framework, glitch reconfigures the typically pejorative way we view failure, brokenness, and the refusal to function. Instead, as Russell convincingly invites us to do, glitch should be welcomed — “the error a passageway” to constructing better worlds. [2] This is because, and here Russell situates glitch feminism in queer-of-colour theory by quoting José Esteban Muñoz: “…this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” [3] Russell draws on Shaadi Devereaux’s analysis of social media as a tool for marginalized women to reach each other, build collective support, and engage in conversation where they might usually be excluded in AFK domains. [4] To break, to dismantle, to fail fantastically in the face of a machine that expects us to keep carrying on as if it isn’t stifling and isn’t programmed to reward some and marginalize others. It is to carve fissures in existing, oppressive systems and its limitations on who we might be and what realms we might inhabit. Glitch Feminism continues the legacies of cyberfeminism and cyborg feminism by evoking questions of how the complexities of embodiment, so entwined with experiences of gender, queerness, and racialization, extend into digital realms. How can glitch, which at its core is refusal, be reworked as something wonderful in our feminist, queer, and anti-racist utopic envisioning and collective mobilizations? What does it mean to embody glitch, to embody malfunction?

Absolutely. Glitches are a frustration of the machine, a failure. If you are the user of the machine, they actually will agitate you and cause some discomfort—but that in and of itself is an important place to occupy. a b "Legacy Russell wins 2019 Arts Writing Award in Digital Arts". Contemporary And (in German) . Retrieved 2020-06-17. Gugliotta, Bobette (1971). Nolle Smith: Cowboy, Engineer, Statesman. Dodd, Mead. ISBN 9780396063902. That is important work, especially when we recognize that these are spaces built to share and show what sort of futures we are fighting for. On a daily basis, we are all performing different selves, on and beyond the Internet. It’s important to recognize that this type of exploration can help us center one another; it can help us see ourselves with greater clarity; it can break through very real isolation. Russell, Legacy. "Prayer? Or Practice? Social Shrines and the Ritualized Performance of Reality in Contemporary Art". Academia.edu.

Issue No. 2

I think it’s complicated. I appreciate you asking this question, because I think it’s important to try to navigate. Russell thoughtfully frames every chapter around case studies of artists, writers, and fellow cyborgs who practice refusal and embody glitch — a perfect brew of glitch feminist theory and praxis. The extensive epigraphs at the very start of the book plus the ones that open each chapter take the form of both quotes and images, introducing us to those who’ve engaged with the themes at hand before Russell: Etheridge Knight, Mark Aguhar, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Ocean Vuong, E. Jane, T. Fleischmann, and so on. These spotlights and epigraphs certainly shine in Glitch Feminism, acting as Russell’s odes to fellow feminist, queer, trans, and racialized disruptors who’ve impacted their work. Lil Miquela, courtesy of Brud. Legacy Russell named Executive Director of the Kitchen". Artforum. 8 June 2021 . Retrieved 22 August 2021. You write in the book, “Glitch is anti-body, resisting the body as a coercive social and cultural architecture.” That brought to mind all the discussions since the pandemic about what it means to be an “essential worker,” that it’s actually a privilege to have access to digital work and not have to show up as a body for work. That’s a question that your manifesto opens up for me: How do you balance embracing the liberating possibilities of cyber identity with the realities that some people’s means of survival make those inaccessible?