Description
Book SynopsisThe contributors to
Re-Understanding Media advance a feminist version of Marshall McLuhan’s key text,
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, repurposing his insight that “the medium is the message” for feminist ends.
Trade Review“This brilliant collection thrillingly updates and interrogates Marshall McLuhan’s work, with abundant insights from feminist and critical race studies. Starting from the insight that ‘the medium is the message,’
Re-Understanding Media refuses the idea of technology as a mere tool, instead showing how it is a structuring form of power—from incubators to platform heels to facial recognition scanners. A challenging and important book.” -- Rosalind Gill, City, University of London
“Correcting the lack of feminist and critical race considerations in the body of work of media ecologist Marshall McLuhan, [
Re-Understanding Media] explores the gender and racial power dynamics inherent in media technology. . . . The various modes of analyses presented—such as semiotic analysis, autoethnography, and interviews—also demonstrate the breadth of methodologies used in feminist and critical race media studies. Highly recommended.” -- K. Gentles-Peart * Choice *
"
Re-Understanding Media’s rich provocations to the field and its foundations make it a work of clear and compelling interest for media theorists and feminist scholars, artists, and activists in and outside the academy—if not, perhaps, a heartening read for devoted disciples of McLuhan." -- Eden Rea-Hedrick * The Communication Review *
Table of ContentsPreface: The Centre on the Margins / Sarah Sharma vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: A Feminist Medium Is the Message / Sarah Sharma 1
Part I. Retrieving McLuhan's Media
1. Transporting Blackness: Black Materialist Media Theory / Armond R. Towns 23
2. Sidewalks of Concrete and Code / Shannon Mattern 36
3. Hardwired / Nicholas Taylor 51
4. Textile, the Uneasy Medium / Ganaele Langlois 68
Part II. Thinking with McLuhan: An Invitation
5. Dear Incubator / Sara Martel 87
6. Wifesaver: Tupperware and the Unfortunate Spoils of Containment / Brooke Erin Duffy and Jeremy Packer 98
7. “Will Miss File Misfile?” The Filing Cabinet, Automatic Memory, and Gender / Craig Robertson 119
8. Computers Made of Paper, Genders Made of Cards / Cait McKinney 142
9. Sky High: Platforms and the Feminist Politics of Visibility / Rianka Singh and Sarah Banet-Weiser 163
Part III. Media after McLuhan
10. Scanning for Black Data: A Conversation with Nasma Ahmed and Ladan Siad / Sarah Sharma and Rianka Singh 179
11. 3D Printing and Digital Colonialism: A Conversation with Morehshin Allahyari / Sarah Sharma and Rianka Singh 192
12. Toward a Media Theory of the Digital Bundle: A Conversation with Jennifer Wemigwans / Sarah Sharma 208
Afterword: After McLuhan / Wendy Hui Kyong Chun 225
Bibliography 233
Contributors 255
Index 259
