You are here: Home

Search results

RSS Subscribe to an always-updated RSS feed.

12 items matching your search terms.
Filter the results.
Item type



















New items since



Sort by relevance · date (newest first) · alphabetically
Blog Entry We, the Cyborgs: Challenges for the Future of being Human
by Asha Achuthan — published Mar 22, 2012 — last modified Oct 24, 2015 01:42 PM — filed under: , , ,
The Cyborg - a cybernetique organism which is a combination of the biological and the technological – has been at the centre of discourse around digital technologies. Especially with wearable computing and ubiquitous access to the digital world, there has been an increased concern that very ways in which we understand questions of life, human body and the presence and role of technologies in our worlds, are changing. In just the last few years, we have seen extraordinary measures – the successful production of synthetic bacteria, artificial intelligence that can be programmed to simulate human conditions like empathy and temperament, and massive mobilisation of people around the world, to fight against the injustices and inequities of their immediate environments.
Located in RAW / … / Blogs / We, the Cyborgs
File Justice and Difference
by Asha Achuthan — last modified Dec 05, 2008 10:28 AM
This is a version of the paper by Prof. Shefali Moitra that formed the basis for her talk at CIS on November 14, 2008.
Located in Access to Knowledge / Projects / A series of podcasts on Sofware Patents
Alternatives? From situated knowledges to standpoint epistemology
by Asha Achuthan — published Jul 29, 2009 — last modified Aug 03, 2011 09:42 AM — filed under: , , ,
The previous post explored, in detail, responses to science and technology in feminist and gender work in India. The idea was, more than anything else, to present an 'attitude' to technology, whether manifested in dams or obstetric technologies, that sees technology as a handmaiden of development, as instrument - good or evil, and as discrete from 'man'. Feminist and gender work in India has thereafter articulated approximately four responses to technology across state and civil society positions - presence, access, inclusion, resistance. The demand for presence of women as agents of technological change, the demand for improved access for women to the fruits of technology, the demand for inclusion of women as a constituency that must be specially provided for by technological amendments, and a need for recognition of technology’s ills particularly for women, and the consequent need for resistance to technology on the same count. Bearing in mind that women’s lived experiences have served as the vantage point for all four of the responses to technology in the Indian context, I will now suggest the need to revisit the idea of such experience itself, and the ways in which it might be made critical, rather than valorizing it as an official counterpoint to scientific knowledge, and by extension to technology. This post, while not addressing the 'technology question' in any direct sense, is an effort to begin that exploration.
Located in RAW / … / Blogs / Re:Wiring Bodies
Rewiring Bodies: Methodologies of Critique - Responses to technology in feminist and gender work in India
by Asha Achuthan — published Jul 20, 2009 — last modified Aug 03, 2011 09:44 AM — filed under: , , ,
In this post, part of her CIS-RAW 'Rewiring Bodies' project, Asha Achuthan records the arguments within feminism and gender work that critique the use of technology in the Indian context, and attempts to show continuities between these arguments and postcolonial formulations. Overall, the post also records notions of the 'political' that inform the contour of these critiques.
Located in RAW / … / Blogs / Re:Wiring Bodies
Postcolonial Hybridity and the ‘Terrors of Technology’ Argument
by Asha Achuthan — published Apr 15, 2009 — last modified Aug 03, 2011 09:45 AM — filed under: , , ,
In the last couple of posts, Asha Achuthan has been building towards an understanding of how the anti-technology arguments in India have been posed, in the nationalist and Marxist positions. She goes on, in this sixth post documenting her project, to look at the arguments put out by the postcolonial school, their appropriation of Marxist terminology, their stances against Marxism in responding to science and technology in general, and the implications of these arguments for other fields of inquiry.
Located in RAW / … / Blogs / Re:Wiring Bodies
The (Postcolonial) Marxist Shift in Response to Technology
by Asha Achuthan — published Mar 27, 2009 — last modified Aug 03, 2011 09:47 AM — filed under: , , ,
In her previous post, Asha Achuthan discussed, through the Gandhi-Tagore debates, the responses to science and technology that did not follow the dominant Marxist-nationalist positions. Later Marxist-postcolonial approaches to science and responses to technology were conflated in anti-technology arguments, particularly in development. In this post, the fifth in a series on her project, she will briefly trace the 1980s shift in Marxist thinking in India as a way of approaching the shift in the science and technology question. This exercise will reveal the ambivalence in Marxist practice toward continuing associations between the ‘rational-scientific’ on the one hand and the ‘revolutionary’ on the other.
Located in RAW / … / Blogs / Re:Wiring Bodies
Rewiring Bodies: Technology and the Nationalist Moment [2]
by Asha Achuthan — published Feb 25, 2009 — last modified Aug 03, 2011 09:47 AM — filed under: , , ,
This is the third in a series of posts on Asha Achuthan's Rewiring Bodies project. In this post, Asha looks at the Tagore-Gandhi debates on technology to throw some light on the question of whether there was a nationalist alternative to the technology offered by the West.
Located in RAW / … / Blogs / Re:Wiring Bodies
Rewiring Bodies: Technology and the Nationalist Moment [1]
by Asha Achuthan — published Feb 17, 2009 — last modified Aug 03, 2011 09:47 AM — filed under: , , ,
This is the second post in a series by Asha Achuthan on her project, Rewiring Bodies. In this blog entry, Asha looks at the trajectory of responses to technology in India to understand the genesis of the assumption that the subjects of technology are separate from the tool, machine, or instrument.
Located in RAW / … / Blogs / Re:Wiring Bodies
Justice and Difference - the first talk in 'the monster album of feminist stories'
by Asha Achuthan — published Dec 04, 2008 — last modified Aug 03, 2011 09:43 AM — filed under: , ,
CIS and 'the monster album of feminist stories', in relation to the Rewiring Bodies project by Asha Achuthan, hosted the first of a series of talks on cognizing feminism at the CIS premises on Cunningham Road on 14th November, 2008.
Located in RAW / … / Blogs / Re:Wiring Bodies
of doctors and maps - Snippet two
by Asha Achuthan — published Nov 05, 2008 — last modified Aug 03, 2011 09:45 AM — filed under: , , ,
This may seem like a careless swipe at the volumes of critique of technology. And yet ... I need to know ...
Located in RAW / … / Blogs / Re:Wiring Bodies
Next 2 items » 1 2