“I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess”

Abstract

“Grids happen” writes Brian Massumi, at a moment in Parables for the Virtual where one is tempted to be swept away by the endless affirmative becomings of movement, flux, and potential, as opposed to being pinned down by the retroactive positioning of identity. Since the publication of Terrorist Assemblages, in response to anxieties about apparent prescription to leave intersectionality behind (as if one could), this chapter elaborates on the political usages of assemblages and assemblage theory. The theory of intersectionality argues that all identities are lived and experienced as intersectional—in such a way that identity categories themselves are cut through and unstable—and that all subjects are intersectional whether or not they recognize themselves as such. In the succinct words of Arun Saldanha, using Venn diagrams to illustrate his point, “The theory of intersectionality holds that there is no actual body that is a member of only one set”.