SFB 1187 ›Medien der Kooperation‹ an der Universität Siegen

We recommend: Hannah Schmedes “–1.153 Characters. Towards A Queerfeminist Infrastructural Critique of Wikipedia”

“–1.153 Characters. Towards A Queerfeminist Infrastructural Critique of Wikipedia”

Hannah Schmedes (Ruhr University Bochum)

 

In June 2024, our SFB member Hannah Schmedes (B09) published an article worth reading in the journal FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur 74 (2024) entitled “-1.153 Characters. Towards A Queerfeminist Infrastructural Critique of Wikipedia”, in which she explores the concealed biases, power dynamics, and inequalities within Wikipedia’s infrastructural framework.

 

 
 
About the Article
This contribution explores the concealed biases, power dynamics, and inequalities within Wikipedia’s infrastructural framework. Building upon the works of queerfeminist scholars such as Susan Leigh Star, Leslie Kern, and Eve Sedgwick, it uncovers how Wikipedia’s infrastructural opacities perpetuate systemic biases. Star’s research on infrastructure is employed to dissect the hidden labor and dependencies sustaining Wikipedia’s knowledge production. This article culminates in a discussion of the episte-mological possibilities that arise with a feminist infrastructural critique of Wikipedia, highlighting the potential of reparative media practices to reshape not only the encyclopedia itself but also broader epistemological narratives and perspectives. It specifically draws on the artistic practices of the queerfeminist collective Feel Tank Chicago, which created an assembly of unfinished definitions, a polyphonic Tool Kit that defies the epistemological boundaries of conventional encyclopedic projects.

 

 

 

About the author

Hannah Schmedes is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Media Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum. She is a researcher in the project “B09 – Bicycle Media. Cooperative Media of Mobility” in the DFG-funded CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation”.

About the Journal

FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur analyzes visual representations and discourses in their social and gender-political significance. FKW thus combines art and cultural theory, image and media studies, gender-specific, political and methodological issues to create a critical cultural history of the visual. Questions about constructions in the field of visual culture, about mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, symptomatic subject designs and unreflected objectifications are at the forefront of the critical interest in representation. From a perspective that understands knowledge and understanding as dynamic processes that are always changing, FKW sees itself as a platform for constructive debate and discussion that aims to provide food for thought and critically accompany ways of rethinking.