introduction:

While critical geographers (particularly those influenced by feminist and queer theories) have destabilized identities and have problematized processes of subject formation, geography has only begun to destabilize the relationship between the human and the technical in situations of geographic information technology use.   In this research area, I discuss how feminist/queer thinking has problematized gendered subject formation and the material, messy body.   'Everyday' life is continually politicized and is interdigitated by extra-bodily technologies.   I use the term 'interdigitate', where 'mediate' might be sufficient, to exaggerate the insistent folding of the technical and the social-political.   This folding is both computationally precise, in the sense that 'interdigitate' also describes the precision of orifices on an inkjet printer, and indistinguishable as the folds interlock into near invisibility - into a complete, yet queer, whole.   Donna Haraway (1991; 1997) describes these interdigitated lives as cyborgs and Judith Halberstam (2005) describes these spaces as technotopias .   Below, I consider these concepts as they might encounter geography, in three themes: cyborgs, gender, and the (geo)coded-world; the body, identity, and performativity; and public/private boundaries.

emphases:

The body is a place of geographic research.   Geographic information technologies code spaces   into databases stored in computers, producing certain cyber-spaces.   However, geographers have only begun to consider the myriad ways that bodies and technologies are interrelated, or what kinds of bodies emerge in cyberspaces.   In this research area I overview three themes which consider these material and bodily processes of subject formation.

Cyborgs, gender, and the (geo)coded-world:   With the exception of Nadine Schuurman (2002; 2004) , few geographers have explicitly drawn upon Haraway's notion of cyborgs in exploring the use of geographic information technologies.   Schuurman calls for "writing the cyborg", arguing for increased use of GIS by women and underrepresented groups (2002: 261) .   Schuurman seeks to challenge the supposedly masculine inception of the technology, by actively re-rendering the technology from a feminist perspective operated for/with female/other bodies, described as "strength in numbers" (2002: 261) .   While Haraway is an advocate for more women in science positions (and certainly attempts to make more visible those women who are scientists), the figure of the cyborg is a genderless or postgendered (posthuman and queer), partial subject.   Schuurman's "writing the cyborg" seems to place more emphasis on the writer (and her gender) and not the new subjectifications (or cyborgifications) formulated by this practice.   Relatedly, geographers have considered 'feminist GIS', to disrupt the patriarchical forces supposedly shaping the technology (Massey 1996; Kwan 2002b, 2002a, 2007; McLafferty 2002; Pavlovskaya 2002; Schuurman and Pratt 2002) .   To insist on the cyborg as a process of subjectification is quite related to the project of feminist geographers arguing for a notion of gendered identity that is fluid and contested across places (McDowell 1992; Domosh 1998; Staeheli and Martin 2000) .   This persistent fluidity is expressed in political-technical practice - such as that of geocoding.

The cyborg subject is always a project of partial subject formation, a hybrid of technology and biology - and, as some argue, a posthuman (Haraway 1991, 1997; Halberstam and Livingston 1995; Gray 1995, 2000; Balsamo 1996; Foster 2005) .   Cyborgs geocode.   The lines of software code and the wires, chips, and plastics of hardware extend/enhance the 'human' senses/sensors.   These extensions or enhancements are always becoming part of 'us', even as we continually redefine what that collectivity means (Latour 2005) .   Geographers have called attention to these new technosciences, including cyberspace and geographic information technologies (including work in critical GIS discussed above, Kitchen 1998; Graham 1998, 2005; Sheppard et al. 1999; Crampton 2003; Pickles 2004; Sui 2004; Rose-Redwood 2006) .   My more specific interests are in the practices of geocoding, what John Pickles (2004) has conceptualized as an activity enabling the "conditions of possibility for the worlds we inhabit and the subjects we become" (5).   By theorizing geocoding from the perspective of the cyborg subject, I intend to recover the very material implications of geographic information technologies, as these technologies (and their clouds of discourse) are inscribed upon bodies and upon worlds.

The body, identity, and performativity:   Feminists have struggled to re-think/perform/do the concept of 'woman' (Alcoff 1988; DiStefano 1990) .   Feminist and queer theorists have insisted on the body as the site or space for this contestation, among other sites/spaces (Grosz 1992; Butler 1993; Shaviro 1995; Fausto-Sterling 2000) .   Feminist geographers have further contributed to understandings of how gender and sexuality are embodied and enacted across scales and spaces, with specific emphasis on the body (McDowell 1995; Johnston 1996; Duncan 1996; Nast and Pile 1998; Butler and Parr 1999; Nelson 1999; Brown 2000; Longhurst 2001; Bondi and Davidson 2003) .   The body is a place for political formation (Rasmussen and Brown 2005) , and is the material on/in which discourse scratches out identities (Shaviro 1995) .   Bodies perform identities as iterations in spaces (Butler 1993; Nelson 1999) .   These performances (their performativities) are both acted and internalized.   This internalization occurs through the relentless power of discourse to both normalize (while abnormalizing) certain bodies (Foucault et al. 2003; Elden 2001; Ruddick 2006) .

My research on the use of geographic information technologies intends to contribute to understandings of identity as performative and, yet, intensely material and bodily.   In some sense, theorizing subjectivity as a process of cyborgification (discussed above) enables this sort of narration - a form of critique which intimately considers the relations between bodies and technologies, as told by/for the cyborgian witnesses (Haraway 1997) .

Public/private boundaries:   Boundaries are an important theme in feminist geographic thought; specifically, the boundaries between spaces marked as public and/or private have framed (as well as enflamed) political action (Brown 1997a, 1997b, 1999) .   Brown (1999) has explored the multi-dimensional spheres (public and private) in which governance takes place.   Relatedly, Staeheli (1996) emphasizes the multiple positionings of political action (public acts in private spaces and private acts in public spaces).   An edited collection by Gill Valentine (2000c) has underlined this multiplicity of public/private actions/spaces for sexualized (and gendered) identities (Elwood 2000; Grant 2000; Lo and Healy 2000; McDowell 1995; Valentine 2000a, 2000b; Wincapaw 2000) .   Struggles over public/private distinctions are political (although not all political situations are necessarily about boundaries), and, therefore, in flux - never to be reified.

The boundaries between spaces/actions marked public/private become fuzzy with technological mediation.   Handheld and pocket computing devices obliterate these boundaries, and yet, certain remnants of public/private struggles remain internalized for specific bodies and places.   In my research about geographic information technologies used to code neighborhood spaces, I intend to consider how these boundaries are transgressed and reinforced as neighborhood spaces are actively geocoded.

ongoing research:

[coming soon]

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