Sexual violence in the Stack: cloud kings, angry serfs, and the neofeudal covenant

(Wednesday Feb 26^th, 12-1:30 pm, GS5, DMB)

Professor Alison Phipps, Professor of Sociology, Newcastle University

This paper explores online violence against women, a phenomenon usually situated in a cultural ‘backlash’ frame. It contextualises this violence within a political economy of late (or ‘platform’) capitalism that draws on arguments that we are moving into a neo- or techno-feudal age. I engage Siapera’s understanding of digital violence as a strategy of enclosure that excludes women from technological spaces, arguing that it also enacts a fantasised neofeudal masculinity: this requires the humiliation and abjection of women, but ultimately vents a frustrated desire for power. Crucially, this ressentiment is one side of the neofeudal bargain in which some are offered impunity to perpetrate violence on others, as part of interactions between cyborgian serfs that ultimately serve to generate value for the platforms owned by neofeudalism’s petty kings.

Bio: Alison Phipps is Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University. Her most recent book is Me, Not You: the trouble with mainstream feminism (2020) and this paper is drawn from her forthcoming book which is called Personal Business: sexual violence in racial capitalism (both with Manchester University Press).