Chapter “Innovation and Iteration: Queer Machines and the Tension between Manifesto and Manifestor" in Queer Reflections on AI: Uncertain Intelligences

A new publication by Carsten Junker has been released thatdeparts from the observation that there has been a recent increase in manifestos that address the potential of technology and artificial intelligence for queer and feminist theorizing and activism. Using selected manifestos, including Laboria Cuboniks' The Xenofeminist Manifesto: A Politics for Alienation (2018) and Legacy Russell's Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020), the paper discusses the disjuncture between disruptive agendas of these manifestos and the repeated mobilization of genre conventions. In doing so, it elaborates a contradiction that results from the use of genre: While authors use the form to postulate the new and call for disruption - thus updating the manifesto in form and content - the critical potential of the manifesto is at the same time undermined by its iterative and citational use, not least because of its current popularity.