gendered dimensions of becoming human

This will be a polemic response to the question:

"1. (Polemically) Do we concur with Hardt on these two assertions?:
a. Modernization has come to an end (second Paragraph after “informatisation”)
b. Postmodernisation marks a new mode of becoming human (last paragraph before "sociology of immaterial labor")"

Some of my responses thus far (see my polemic about D-W) have been to point out what I think to be a profoundly disturbing lack of feminist (or other oppositional) theories utilized by most if not all of the authors we have read. There seems to be a strange compensatory feminism in the arguments about immaterial labor and post-Fordism, which means that a reviewer or editor compelled the authors to acknowledge gender, the authors are astute enough to include this dimension on their own, or there is a fundamental gender dimension implicit in the totality of informatisation.

Although I find these readings very stimulating and potentially useful to my own research and understanding of new media production, I still think that there are some underlying assumptions about immaterial labor that bear a distinctive phallocentrism. Perhaps we are not reading the existing feminist critique of these authors, but then I have to ask why feminists should have to be adding a critique to theory in this stage of the game.

With that in mind, here is my feminist critique in response to whether I concur with Hardt & Negri's claims above. Short answer if you want to stop reading: not entirely.

a. "The jobs [of the tertiary sector] for the most part are highly mobile and involve flexible skills. More important, they are characterized in general by the central role played by knowledge, information, affect, and communication" (p. 4).

The latter part of this quote is clearly a signification of immaterial labor as it stands (now in dominance) in opposition to its binary, material labor. Both, however, are conceptualized as masculine forms of labor-in-dominance. I don't mean that women are incapable of either. I would argue quite the contrary. But we cannot combine the terms knowledge-information/affect-communication into a single definition of immaterial labor without noting the gendered genealogy of each of these terms (how convenient, I can put a slash in the middle). Hardt and Negri's articulation of immaterial labor begins with knowledge-information and ends with affect-communication (the later attributed to feminist analyses of women's work).

Only through an explicit acknowledgment of the gendered dimensions acting in concert through the dyad of immaterial labor can I partially accept the assumption that we are entering a new phase of becoming human. I say partially because I do not think that we can say at this point that the four qualities of immaterial labor are equally valorized. Knowledge and information seem to occupy a primary place of importance in comparison to affect and communication. Still, if we accept for a moment that these four qualities manifest themselves in the subjectivity of every worker, regardless of his or her gender, then we are moving into a third space (not an exit!) of consciousness that has the potential to overcome one form of domination.

And seeing as I might have just inadvertently wandered into a sex-role type of argument, I will end this post now.