Violence, techno-transcendence and feminism: thinking about agency in the digital age

We live in a different world in the 21st century, and much of that difference is technologically mediated. It is not an overstatement to say that many of our theories and concepts are far from up to speed with what these changes mean. This is the case not only with how to understand and analyse the world and different structures and processes within it but also with inevitably how to critique them, identify negative impacts and overcome them. The Internet and digital transformations that have resulted from it, especially since the arrival of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, have heralded a new spatiality in human affairs yet to be fully comprehended in philosophical, and many other, senses. This new spatiality represents a complex approach to the social that incorporates the Internet and its virtual processes as much as more familiar traditional physical settings and activities. The overall aim in this chapter is to locate violence and women’s agency within this complex spatiality to enhance our thinking about forms of gendered oppression and resistance to them. Use of the Internet has expanded the social sphere and identity and relational processes within it, so it is an integral part of considerations of being and empowerment. This discussion draws on the concept of ‘techno-transcendence’ to capture this expansion and to recognize how the Internet has contributed to reducing temporal and spatial constraints.