User (Guest Lecture)

Question 1

Becoming user

Answer 1

Becoming user is a temporal process; a user comes into what was imagined for them (a gesture of futurity), but that gesture drags with it the condition of what will have become, the condition of a prior user. The user always comes into a position designed for a convention of use, and imagining users is always an act of social reproduction. Becoming user is to come into an imagined position, to realize future horizon, and to reproduce a historical subject, a user that has been before.

Question 2

What happened in the 1990s?

Answer 2

The 1990s showed the start of home desktop computing, the World Wide Web, beginnings of neoliberal discourse in the West, re individual “mobility”, and globalization

Question 3

Why comics?

Answer 3

• Superhero comics are graphic narratives of technological and cultural transformations of the individual body and the body politic
• Superhero comics are formally interested in stories of becoming new kinds of subjects
• Comics themselves are also a form that demands readers become users
• When we read comics, we are also making worlds, as Scott McCloud says of comics, readers must look at parts and imagine a whole.

Question 4

DC’s Barbara Gordon “Oracle”

Answer 4

• explores the intersection of disability, technology, and user identity within a specific socio-political context
• use this example to illustrate how becoming a “user” intertwines with broader social processes and how user imaginaries reflect and shape cultural values
• The case study uses Barbara Gordon, a well-known comic book character who becomes paralyzed and adopts the identity of Oracle, as a lens through which to examine these intersecting themes.
  — Oracle’s reliance on technology, particularly the internet, for communication, information gathering, and crime-fighting activities, positions her as a user whose agency and mobility are directly tied to her technological proficiency.
  — Her portrayal reflects the user imaginaries of the time, where technology was seen as a means to overcome physical limitations and participate in society actively.
  — Oracle’s wealth is acknowledged as a crucial factor in her access to technology, highlighting how material conditions shape user experiences and possibilities.
  — By examining Gordon’s transformation into Oracle, the case study provides insights into the complex ways in which technology, disability, and user identity intersect within a particular historical moment. It underscores the importance of considering the social, cultural, and material factors that shape user experiences and the need for critical engagement with user imaginaries.

Question 5

Having become user

Answer 5

• Userness is a condition for subjectivity under capitalism today, as the production of capital is routed through digital infrastructure.
• The user subject position is often taken up passively, but it is always still experienced.
• Becoming user is not necessarily a bad situation, but it can be, and often is, experienced as an exclusionary process because it is bound up with normative expectations for subjectivity.
• The process of becoming user is always intersecting with the processes of becoming a racialized, gendered and classed subject.
• But becoming user is also a process which can be torqued in its unfolding. The user position can pivot.
• A user can come into position unusually.
• By becoming conscious of the processes by which we become users, we may exercise that subjectivity toward the production of different uses.
• We need to ask critical questions of our userness, care about what we use, and how we use it.