Helen Hester, XENOFEMMINISMO, 2018

In an age of technological acceleration and increasing complexity, how can we go back to imagining the potential emancipator of feminism? And how can we reconfigure gender policies in a world transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution? These are the questions from which Helen Hester, one of the founders of Laboria Cuboniks, is born. In this new book, which is both a continuation and an overcoming of the original manifesto, Hester considers a definition of xenofeminism that starts from three key concepts: technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and abolitionism of the genus. Hester uses the cues to put them in relation to current reproductive technologies, questioning the relationship between reproduction and futurity – but he points out to fall into a problematic antinatalism – to finally focus on the possibilities of employing real xenofeminist technologies, including the practices of feminism historical and that can be revisited for the purposes of a future-oriented gender policy and alternative models of reproduction. Electrifying and visionary, Xenofeminism is the essential guide to one of the most stimulating trends of contemporary feminism. Helen Hester teaches media theory and communication at the University of West London. Founder of the Laboria Cuboniks collective, in 2015 she was among the authors of the Xenofeminist Manifesto, already existing in twelve languages.