Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen

by Neda Atanasoski (Editor), Nassim Parvin (Editor)

Overview

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement with smart homes, smart dust, smart desires, and smart forests toward dreams of feminist futures. Contributing authors further illuminate what is otherwise obscured, assumed, or dismissed in characterizations of technology as creepy or creeping. Considering diverse technologies such as border surveillance and China’s credit system to sexcams and home assistants, the volume’s essays and artworks demonstrate that the potentials and pitfalls of artificial intelligence and digital and robotic technologies cannot be assessed through binaries of seeing/being seen, privacy/surveillance, or harmful/useful. Together, their multifaceted and multimodal approach transcends such binaries, accounting for technological relations that exceed sight to include touch, presence, trust, and diverse modes of collectivity. As such, this volume develops creep as a feminist analytic and creative mode on par with technology’s complex entanglement with intimate, local, and global politics.

Contributors. Neda Atanasoski, Katherine Bennett, Iván Chaar López, Sushmita Chatterjee, Hayri Dortdivanlioglu, Sanaz Haghani, Jacob Hagelberg, Jennifer Hamilton, Antonia Hernández, Marjan Khatibi, Tamara Kneese, Erin McElroy, Vernelle A. A. Noel, Jessica Olivares, Nassim Parvin, Beth Semel, Renee Shelby, Tanja Wiehn

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478028031
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	05/16/2025
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Neda Atanasoski is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland.

Nassim Parvin is an Associate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington.

Table of Contents

Prologue  ix
Acknowledgments  xi
Interview with ChatGPT  xv
Introduction / Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin  1
1. Maintenance Play / Antonia Hernández  27
Artist Contribution: “The Embodied Self” / Marjan Khatibi  39
Interlude: Smart Dust / Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin  43
2. Uncivil Technoscience: Anti-immigration and Citizen Science in Boundary Making / Iván Chaar López  51
3. Hesitancy, Solidarity, and Whiteness: The Limits and Possibilities of Rape-Reporting Apps / Renee Shelby  67 
4. Undoing Landlord Technologies: Beyond the Propertied Logics of the Pandemic Past and Present / Erin McElroy  79
Artist Contribution: “Thousand Dreams of Yamur” / Hayri Dortdivanlioglu  95
Interlude: Smart Homes / Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin  99
5. “Reading the Room”: Messy Contradictions in the Datafied Home / Tanja Wiehn  113
6. Surveillance Vigilantes: Property, Porch Pirates, and Paranoia on Nextdoor / Jessica L. Olivares  127
7. Alexa, Disability, and the Politics of Things Not Apprehended / Jennifer A. Hamilton  149
Artist Contribution: “Masks, Mirrors, Light and Shadow” / Vernelle A. A. Noel  161
Interlude: Smart Desires / Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin  163
8. Tracking for Two: Surveillance and Self-Care in Pregnancy Apps / Tamara Kneese  175
9. “So Creepy It Must Be True!”: Techno-Orientalism, Technonationalism, and the Social Credit Imaginary / Jacob Hagelberg  189
10. Resistant Resonances: Vocal Biomarkers, Transductive Labor, and the Politics of Things Not Heard / Beth Semel  207
Artist Contribution: “Streetsmarts” by Katherine Bennett  223
Interlude: Smart Forests / Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin  225
11. Animal-Vegetal-Technology: Creeping Categories / Sushmita Chatterjee  239
Artist Contribution: “Close Your Eyes” by Sanaz Haghani  255
Epilogue: Dreaming Feminist Futures / Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin  257
Bibliography  265
Contributors  283
Index

What People are Saying About This

Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States - Anne Pollock

“This exquisite volume captures the ambivalence of technologies that provoke a sense of creep. Neda Atanasoski, Nassim Parvin, and the contributors eschew easy denunciations without abdicating the political implications. Moving decisively beyond privacy as the fundamental value at stake, they illuminate the profound relational questions that these technologies open up for feminists and other politically engaged scholars in a way that is poised to inform urgent broader public conversations.”

Editorial Reviews

Successfully rethinking the stance that certain technologies go too far into our private lives and bodies, this stellar collection opens up intellectual space for alternative perspectives that will enliven many debates in science and technology studies and beyond. It exposes the exceptional limits of liberal critique of privacy and the human when faced with technologies that threaten the divide between the human and nonhuman, surveillance and privacy, and the intimate and economic. A well-conceptualized, exciting, and much-needed intervention.

Unsettled Borders: The Militarized Science of Surveillance on Sacred Indigenous Land - Felicity Amaya Schaeffer