TECHNOLOGICAL PRACTICES OF REFUSAL: RADICAL REIMAGINATION IN M EIFLER’S COMPUTATIONAL PROSTHETICS

Abstract

The essay brings together Black feminist theory, critical disability studies, and feminist science and technology studies together through the concept of technological practices of refusal. The concept of technological practices of refusal describes how disabled people engage in everyday, often communal technological practices as means to challenge normative logics and engage in collective world-making practices toward collective liberation and societal transformation. Technological practices of refusal extends Schalk & Kim’s (2020) feminist-of-color disability studies and Campt's (2017) practices of refusal to highlight the interrelations between ableism and white supremacy and the ways in which systems of domination operate to dehumanize individuals based on deviations from white supremacist configurations of race, class, gender and ability. The concept therefore not only underscores how disabled people reimagine and enact new social formations despite the foreclosure of subjectivity and futurity, but maps out new points of affinity for solidarity and collective action.