Roundtable – Gender And/As Technology

Human life is enmeshed with technology. Yet we know that our relationship to and use of technology is highly gendered. At the same time, gender itself can also be conceived as a technology, in different ways. For example, in her influential book Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (1987), Teresa de Lauretis introduces the term “technologies of gender” to describe the mechanisms—such as media, literature, film, psychoanalysis, and institutional practices—that continuously create and regulate gender identities. With the advent of posthumanism, where, according to Donna Haraway’s essay “The Cyborg Manifesto, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate human from both animals and from machines, the very duality between humans, on the one hand, and advanced technology, on the other, is undermined, further problematizing what gender is, and may, be. In his study Testo Junkie, trans theorist Paul Preciado, argues that we currently live under the regime of pharmacopornographic capitalism where desires, images and bodies are co-created by the pornographic and the pharmaceutical and medical industry alike. In this regime, he argues, there is no “man” or “woman” beyond the technologies that produce them. 

In this panel we try to think with the concept of gender both as a relationship to and as a product of technology, to interrogate what kind of gender configurations emerge from this conundrum and what are the possibilities of change, equity and justice within it. 

Kari Jegerstedt is the Director of the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK) at the University of Bergen. She holds a PhD in literary studies and gender theory, with a dissertation on Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve (2008). Her research interests include psychoanalysis, postmodern fiction, postcolonial studies, queer theory, and South African literature, with a particular focus on Black protest literature.

Jegerstedt is an experienced lecturer and teaches widely in gender studies, while also having taught courses in psychoanalysis. She is an active literary scholar and a familiar contributor to Bergen’s House of Literature, where she leads reading circles, gives lectures, and participates in public debates and literary festivals.

Her research is characterized by a global perspective, combining literary analysis with critical theory. She has held research fellowships in Cape Town and co-edited Exploring the Black Venus Figure in Aesthetic Practices (2019). From 2011 to 2014, she was co-editor of the Journal of Gender Research.

Dr. Rowan Maddox wrote their PhD thesis on trans and autism, utilizing a feminist and posthumanist perspective. They have also worked as a DJ. 

Gilda Seddighi is a Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE). She earned her PhD in Gender and Media Studies from the University of Bergen in 2017. Gilda has extensive research experience in digital technology, AI development, gender, and diversity. Her work primarily addresses the challenges of digital vulnerability and inequality across various domains, including education and working life. Currently, she leads the NRC-funded research project DIGcapabilities, which investigates socio-digital inequalities experienced by youth with migrant backgrounds who are in not-in-education, employment, or training (NEET) situations.

Julie Silset is a DJ, producer, and artist based in Bergen. She is one of the driving forces behind Ideophone Records, where she and the collective release music and produce concerts and club events with a focus on innovative electronic music and inclusive practices.

Alongside her artistic work, Silset works as an therapist and training manager at Stendi, responsible for safety, security, and competence development in institution-based youth care.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Gender Studies from the University of Bergen, with an academic background in Middle Eastern history and sociology, and brings this understanding of gender, culture, and power into her artistic and organizational work.