Shoshana Magnet
Biographic Data
| ID | 161202 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shoshana Magnet |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shoshana |
| FAMILY NAME | Magnet |
| SIGNATURE | MAGNET S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Ottawa |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6830-6776 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Feminist Surveillance Studies and the Institutionalization of Interphobia
Though sex, gender, and sexuality have been subject to ongoing forms of state scrutiny and, therefore, concern surveillance studies scholars—one can think of McCarthy and the policing of homosexuality and the current forms of homophobia and cisgenderism structuring bathroom, sport, and “Don’t Say Gay” laws in the US—there is a glaring lack of attention paid to the violent (colonial) state, legal, and medical projects that surveil intersex people’…
Feminist Loneliness Studies: An Introduction
Writing about loneliness has been a struggle in the midst of the pandemic. Characterized by loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and fear, the COVID-19 pandemic is an exceptionally challenging time. At various points while navigating this loneliness project amid a particularly lonely time, we lamented the seeming futility of it all. A main goal of developing a Feminist Loneliness Studies in this introduction is to understand the ways that systems of o…
Emotional Justice as an antidote to loneliness: Children's Books, Listening and Connection
Loneliness is intimately related to the ongoing epidemics of systemic forms of oppression, including white supremacy, capitalism, heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism. The epidemic of loneliness has only intensified and grown during the isolation engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we aim to think about how children's picturebooks wrestle with explaining loneliness and its antidotes (connection, community) and how these pict…
Military buzz: Race, robots and insects
Claiming to “let evolution do the thinking for you,” biologists are teaming up with roboticists and computer engineers in the emerging field of biomimetics to build animal-machines. One of the outcomes of these interdisciplinary collaborations is the development of biomimetic robot-insects: robots inspired by insect life. Biomimetic scientists assert that their technologies will be cleaner, greener, and more holistic, since they imitate Mother Ea…
When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity
From digital fingerprinting to iris and retina recognition, biometric identification systems are a multibillion dollar industry and an integral part of post-9/11 national security strategy. Yet these technologies often fail to work. The scientific literature on their accuracy and reliability documents widespread and frequent technical malfunction. Shoshana Amielle Magnet argues that these systems fail so often because rendering bodies in biometri…
Are You My Mother? Understanding Feminist Therapy with Alison Bechdel
This article considers the ways that people might engage with therapeutic processes on the long road to self-actualization. It is also a call for those who can, to think of this labor as a form of activism. I ask that we reflect on some of the possible routes to achieving what might loosely be termed forms of affective knowledge. As part of this call, I first examine theories around graphic fiction, therapy, and possible connections between these…
Of Trojan Horses and Terrorist Representations: Mom Bombs, Cross-Dressing Terrorists, and Queer Orientalisms
This article employs anti-racist feminist theory to respond to a document published by the Department of Homeland Security United States in 2008. This document communicated the threatening possibility that women would use burqas or pregnancy prosthetics to hide bombs. Focusing on this report, the authors explore how the bodies of Muslim women have become spectacular in the post-9/11 period. Working at the intersections of gender, modernity, and v…
Identity and the new eugenics in the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act
Robots and Insects: Gender, Sexuality, and Engagement in "Mixed Societies" of Cockroaches and Robots
Robots and Insects:Gender, Sexuality, and Engagement in "Mixed Societies" of Cockroaches and Robots Shoshana Magnet (bio) What does it mean to be an insect? What does it mean to be a robot? Is it possible that these two distinct "species" may, in fact, engage in a relationship that offers transformative modes of cultural communication? These are questions at the heart of scientific experiments involving "mixed societies" of insects and robots. "M…
Surveillance Studies and Violence Against Women
Surveillance, privacy and security are of paramount concern to technology users. One of the implications of these new forms of technologized surveillance that has received little attention is their implications for women fleeing violent situations. This article seeks to place questions of surveillance technologies into a theoretical framework that foregrounds the challenges that new surveillance technologies pose to anti-violence movements. Speci…
Stripping for the State: Whole body imaging technologies and the surveillance of othered bodies
This article examines whole body imaging technologies in contemporary airport security contexts. Situating these technologies more broadly within histories of aviation and theories of mobility, we examine how discourses of technological efficiency and freedom of movement work to obscure the ever-expanding surveillance practices of the state. While whole body imaging technologies are marketed as objective and neutral, we investigate how they draw …
Biometric Revisions of the 'Body' in Airports and US Welfare Reform
Agamben defines the state of exception as a ‘threshold of indistinction’ that suspends law by differentiating what is included in the legal order from that which is excluded. The state of exception is, therefore, not a precise or identifiable kind of law (like the law of war), given that it suspends legal order and abolishes executive, legislative and judicial powers (2005: 6-7). Agamben’s (1998) notion of the state of exception combines Carl Sch…
Feminist sexualities, race and the internet: An investigation of suicidegirls.com
This article analyzes representations of feminism and sexuality on Suicide Girls (www.suicidegirls.com), a commercial site which features the online journals, profiles and nude photographs of young, heavily tattooed, punk women. It highlights the ways in which this site attempts to subvert the male gaze by changing contemporary photographic practices. It also interrogates the way in which the feminist potential of this site remains constrained by…
Invisible Cords and Ties That Bind: Queering Female Friendship
This short piece rethinks compulsory heterosexuality through an examination of the invisibility of the erotics of female friendship. The author uses narrative to investigate the privileges of straight relationships and their impact on queer forms of relating. Heterosexism reifies the boundaries between platonic friendships and erotic relationships so that the contested space between the two is erased. What might the landscape of these in-between …
Playing at Colonization: Interpreting Imaginary Landscapes in the Video Game Tropico
This article coins the term gamescape to offer a way of thinking about the implications of the way in which landscape in video games is actively constructed within a particular ideological framework. The author examines the spatial practices used to construct the gamescape in Tropico and their attendant dangers. The author concludes with a discussion of the theming of this gamescape, and the way in which the trope of tropicalization is used to st…
Protesting Privilege: An Autoethnographic Look at Whiteness
In this article, the author uses autoethnographic methods to interrogate her own White privilege. She argues that it is necessary to consider both how people are positioned as dominant as well as how they are positioned as marginalized to deconstruct persisting hierarchies of oppression. Drawing on a series of conversations that took place during the passage of several years, the author interrogates her willingness to hide behind her own minority…
Stripping for the State: Whole body imaging technologies and the surveillance of othered bodies
This article examines whole body imaging technologies in contemporary airport security contexts. Situating these technologies more broadly within histories of aviation and theories of mobility, we examine how discourses of technological efficiency and freedom of movement work to obscure the ever-expanding surveillance practices of the state. While whole body imaging technologies are marketed as objective and neutral, we investigate how they draw …
Surveillance Studies and Violence Against Women
Surveillance, privacy and security are of paramount concern to technology users. One of the implications of these new forms of technologized surveillance that has received little attention is their implications for women fleeing violent situations. This article seeks to place questions of surveillance technologies into a theoretical framework that foregrounds the challenges that new surveillance technologies pose to anti-violence movements. Speci…
Feminist sexualities, race and the internet: An investigation of suicidegirls.com
This article analyzes representations of feminism and sexuality on Suicide Girls (www.suicidegirls.com), a commercial site which features the online journals, profiles and nude photographs of young, heavily tattooed, punk women. It highlights the ways in which this site attempts to subvert the male gaze by changing contemporary photographic practices. It also interrogates the way in which the feminist potential of this site remains constrained by…
Biometric Revisions of the 'Body' in Airports and US Welfare Reform
Agamben defines the state of exception as a ‘threshold of indistinction’ that suspends law by differentiating what is included in the legal order from that which is excluded. The state of exception is, therefore, not a precise or identifiable kind of law (like the law of war), given that it suspends legal order and abolishes executive, legislative and judicial powers (2005: 6-7). Agamben’s (1998) notion of the state of exception combines Carl Sch…
Playing at Colonization: Interpreting Imaginary Landscapes in the Video Game Tropico
This article coins the term gamescape to offer a way of thinking about the implications of the way in which landscape in video games is actively constructed within a particular ideological framework. The author examines the spatial practices used to construct the gamescape in Tropico and their attendant dangers. The author concludes with a discussion of the theming of this gamescape, and the way in which the trope of tropicalization is used to st…
Protesting Privilege: An Autoethnographic Look at Whiteness
In this article, the author uses autoethnographic methods to interrogate her own White privilege. She argues that it is necessary to consider both how people are positioned as dominant as well as how they are positioned as marginalized to deconstruct persisting hierarchies of oppression. Drawing on a series of conversations that took place during the passage of several years, the author interrogates her willingness to hide behind her own minority…
Feminist Loneliness Studies: An Introduction
Writing about loneliness has been a struggle in the midst of the pandemic. Characterized by loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and fear, the COVID-19 pandemic is an exceptionally challenging time. At various points while navigating this loneliness project amid a particularly lonely time, we lamented the seeming futility of it all. A main goal of developing a Feminist Loneliness Studies in this introduction is to understand the ways that systems of o…
Invisible Cords and Ties That Bind: Queering Female Friendship
This short piece rethinks compulsory heterosexuality through an examination of the invisibility of the erotics of female friendship. The author uses narrative to investigate the privileges of straight relationships and their impact on queer forms of relating. Heterosexism reifies the boundaries between platonic friendships and erotic relationships so that the contested space between the two is erased. What might the landscape of these in-between …
Invisible Cords and Ties That Bind: Queering Female Friendship
This short piece rethinks compulsory heterosexuality through an examination of the invisibility of the erotics of female friendship. The author uses narrative to investigate the privileges of straight relationships and their impact on queer forms of relating. Heterosexism reifies the boundaries between platonic friendships and erotic relationships so that the contested space between the two is erased. What might the landscape of these in-between …
Playing at Colonization: Interpreting Imaginary Landscapes in the Video Game Tropico
This article coins the term gamescape to offer a way of thinking about the implications of the way in which landscape in video games is actively constructed within a particular ideological framework. The author examines the spatial practices used to construct the gamescape in Tropico and their attendant dangers. The author concludes with a discussion of the theming of this gamescape, and the way in which the trope of tropicalization is used to st…
Protesting Privilege: An Autoethnographic Look at Whiteness
In this article, the author uses autoethnographic methods to interrogate her own White privilege. She argues that it is necessary to consider both how people are positioned as dominant as well as how they are positioned as marginalized to deconstruct persisting hierarchies of oppression. Drawing on a series of conversations that took place during the passage of several years, the author interrogates her willingness to hide behind her own minority…
Feminist sexualities, race and the internet: An investigation of suicidegirls.com
This article analyzes representations of feminism and sexuality on Suicide Girls (www.suicidegirls.com), a commercial site which features the online journals, profiles and nude photographs of young, heavily tattooed, punk women. It highlights the ways in which this site attempts to subvert the male gaze by changing contemporary photographic practices. It also interrogates the way in which the feminist potential of this site remains constrained by…
Biometric Revisions of the 'Body' in Airports and US Welfare Reform
Agamben defines the state of exception as a ‘threshold of indistinction’ that suspends law by differentiating what is included in the legal order from that which is excluded. The state of exception is, therefore, not a precise or identifiable kind of law (like the law of war), given that it suspends legal order and abolishes executive, legislative and judicial powers (2005: 6-7). Agamben’s (1998) notion of the state of exception combines Carl Sch…
Stripping for the State: Whole body imaging technologies and the surveillance of othered bodies
This article examines whole body imaging technologies in contemporary airport security contexts. Situating these technologies more broadly within histories of aviation and theories of mobility, we examine how discourses of technological efficiency and freedom of movement work to obscure the ever-expanding surveillance practices of the state. While whole body imaging technologies are marketed as objective and neutral, we investigate how they draw …
Surveillance Studies and Violence Against Women
Surveillance, privacy and security are of paramount concern to technology users. One of the implications of these new forms of technologized surveillance that has received little attention is their implications for women fleeing violent situations. This article seeks to place questions of surveillance technologies into a theoretical framework that foregrounds the challenges that new surveillance technologies pose to anti-violence movements. Speci…
Identity and the new eugenics in the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act
Robots and Insects: Gender, Sexuality, and Engagement in "Mixed Societies" of Cockroaches and Robots
Robots and Insects:Gender, Sexuality, and Engagement in "Mixed Societies" of Cockroaches and Robots Shoshana Magnet (bio) What does it mean to be an insect? What does it mean to be a robot? Is it possible that these two distinct "species" may, in fact, engage in a relationship that offers transformative modes of cultural communication? These are questions at the heart of scientific experiments involving "mixed societies" of insects and robots. "M…
Of Trojan Horses and Terrorist Representations: Mom Bombs, Cross-Dressing Terrorists, and Queer Orientalisms
This article employs anti-racist feminist theory to respond to a document published by the Department of Homeland Security United States in 2008. This document communicated the threatening possibility that women would use burqas or pregnancy prosthetics to hide bombs. Focusing on this report, the authors explore how the bodies of Muslim women have become spectacular in the post-9/11 period. Working at the intersections of gender, modernity, and v…
Are You My Mother? Understanding Feminist Therapy with Alison Bechdel
This article considers the ways that people might engage with therapeutic processes on the long road to self-actualization. It is also a call for those who can, to think of this labor as a form of activism. I ask that we reflect on some of the possible routes to achieving what might loosely be termed forms of affective knowledge. As part of this call, I first examine theories around graphic fiction, therapy, and possible connections between these…
When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity
From digital fingerprinting to iris and retina recognition, biometric identification systems are a multibillion dollar industry and an integral part of post-9/11 national security strategy. Yet these technologies often fail to work. The scientific literature on their accuracy and reliability documents widespread and frequent technical malfunction. Shoshana Amielle Magnet argues that these systems fail so often because rendering bodies in biometri…
Military buzz: Race, robots and insects
Claiming to “let evolution do the thinking for you,” biologists are teaming up with roboticists and computer engineers in the emerging field of biomimetics to build animal-machines. One of the outcomes of these interdisciplinary collaborations is the development of biomimetic robot-insects: robots inspired by insect life. Biomimetic scientists assert that their technologies will be cleaner, greener, and more holistic, since they imitate Mother Ea…
Feminist Surveillance Studies and the Institutionalization of Interphobia
Though sex, gender, and sexuality have been subject to ongoing forms of state scrutiny and, therefore, concern surveillance studies scholars—one can think of McCarthy and the policing of homosexuality and the current forms of homophobia and cisgenderism structuring bathroom, sport, and “Don’t Say Gay” laws in the US—there is a glaring lack of attention paid to the violent (colonial) state, legal, and medical projects that surveil intersex people’…
Feminist Loneliness Studies: An Introduction
Writing about loneliness has been a struggle in the midst of the pandemic. Characterized by loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and fear, the COVID-19 pandemic is an exceptionally challenging time. At various points while navigating this loneliness project amid a particularly lonely time, we lamented the seeming futility of it all. A main goal of developing a Feminist Loneliness Studies in this introduction is to understand the ways that systems of o…
Emotional Justice as an antidote to loneliness: Children's Books, Listening and Connection
Loneliness is intimately related to the ongoing epidemics of systemic forms of oppression, including white supremacy, capitalism, heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism. The epidemic of loneliness has only intensified and grown during the isolation engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we aim to think about how children's picturebooks wrestle with explaining loneliness and its antidotes (connection, community) and how these pict…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (12 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works)