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The digital age has ushered in new forms of epistemic violence, where algorithmic systems—rooted in colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal logics—perpetuate hierarchies of knowledge, labor, and bodily autonomy. From predictive policing to platform labor, these "algorithmic epistemologies of oppression" (Noble, 2018; Benjamin, 2019) encode and amplify historical inequalities, often under the guise of neutrality or progress. Yet, they also provoke resistance: decolonial, feminist, and queer movements are reclaiming technology as a site of radicalsolidarity, subverting algorithmic control through cyborg-feminist praxis (Haraway, 1985; Wajcman, 2004) and eco-digital pedagogies (Escobar, 2020; TallBear, 2013).
This conefrence explores how decolonial pedagogies and cyborg-feminist resistance intersect to challenge algorithmic oppression and foster solidarity-based digital ecologies. Drawing on case studies - such as Indigenous data sovereignty initiatives, feminist hacker collectives, and anti-extractivist tech movements - it examines:
- Algorithmic Epistemologies of Oppression: How digital platforms and AI systems reproduce colonial and gendered hierarchies, from racialized surveillance to the exploitation of care labor in the gig economy.
- Cyborg-Feminist Resistance: How marginalized communities use technology to reclaim agency, e.g., through counter-algorithms (e.g., feminist AI, decolonial databases) and embodied digital practices (e.g., biohacking, DIY tech).
- Decolonial Pedagogies for Radical Solidarity: How educational and organizing spaces - both online and offline - can cultivate critical digital literacies and collective unlearning of algorithmic domination, centering Indigenous, Black, and queer feminist knowledges.
By bridging technology, ecology, and pedagogy, this paper argues for a decolonial cyborg feminism that not only resists algorithmic oppression but also prefigures alternative digital futures—ones rooted in radical solidarity, anti-hierarchy, and ecological justice. It invites reflection on how we might teach, organize, and hack our way toward liberatory digital ecologies, where technology serves collective flourishing rather than extraction and control.
Bibliography
- Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim Code. Polity.
- Escobar, A. (2020). Pluriversal politics: The real and the possible. Duke University Press.
- Haraway, D. J. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Routledge. (Original work published 1985)
- Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. NYU Press.
- Wajcman, J. (2004). TechnoFeminism. Polity.