Guest Editors: T.L. Cowan, Jas Rault, and Lindsay LeBlanc (University of Toronto)

In their essay "Decolonization is not a metaphor," Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012) write, 

"When metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future. Decolonize (a verb) and decolonization (a noun) cannot easilty be grafter onto pre-existing discourses/frameworks, even if they are critical, even if they are anti-racists, even if they are justice frameworks. The easy absorption, adoption, and transposing of decolonization is yet another form of settler appropriation." (p.3)

The metaphorization of decolonization replaces one thing - "the repatriation of Indigenous land and life" (Tuck and Yand, 2012, p.21) - with another thing - "other civil and human rights-based social justice projects" (Tuck and Yang, p.2). This metaphorization disappears Indigenous priorities and recenters the priorities, well-being, innocence and good intentions of white settlers. Metaphor has the power to materialise and dematerialise. Given the urgency and high stakes of metaphor, this Special Section seeks to bring together scholars thinking aobut what metaphor might kill and what it might create. How, for example, do metaphors of colonization and decolonization get mobilized in and by what Anne Balsamo calles "The technological imagination" (2011), and to what ends? Deboleena Roy (2018) suggests that "metaphors lead to paradigm change" (p.135). We agree and want, furthermore, to suggest that paradigm change also comes through the collective refusal of some metaphors, and through the re-evaluation of metaphors that have shaped our thinking. This special section seeks to foreground the scholarship committed to this endeavor.

In re-thinking her own paradigm-setting choices and uses of metaphor, Donna Haraway notes that metaphors are "descriptive technologies" that embed us "in a kind of science-fictional move of imagining possible worlds" (Penley and Ross, 1990, p.10). Haraway asks: "How do you avoid the cultural imperialism, or the orientalizing move of sidestepping your own descriptive technologies and bringing in somehting to solve your problems?" (Penley and Ross, 1990, p.10). In this special section, we think about how metaphor might solve some of our problems while creating others; and moreover, how our metaphors themselves have their own problems, or are, actually, part of the problem.

Rather than diagnosing the metaphor under examination as either "positive" or "negative," we encourage contributors to consider the multiple histories of the metaphors we study; how they have shaped meaning in the past; and how we inherit or refuse the interitance of these meanings. Authors might consider how metaphors become untethered from their genealogies - from their violent or reparative histories - and how these histories shape the ways we can think about the past, present and future. Contributors might explore the ways that technocultural metaphors reflect changing ideas about the human, and/or what the metaphors we choose say about the histories with which we align ourselves. To study the significance of metaphor in technoculture is not only to occupy ourselves with a conscientiousness about and within language; it is, perhaps, most importantly about understanding that matter has history, and that where things come from matters.

Feminist, critical race, anti-colonial, trans- and queer scholarship has a long history of attention to the work of metaphors: to their concealing work, to their materially constitutional work, and to the generative, paradigm-shifting work of introducing new metaphors. Similarly, feminist STS has long done the work of challenging the binary opposition of "technology" and "culture." In this Special Section, we want to include studies of metaphor that understand "technolgy and culture as a specific unity" (Balsamo 2011, p.5). We hope that "Metaphors as Meaning and Method in Technoculture" will offer feminist scholars of STS, the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, the opportunity to think together through and beyond our disciplines.

This special section of Catalyst will be embedded in the long genealogies of feminist STS, Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities research on metaphors in technoculture to address questions including, but not limited to the following:

- What is metaphor doing, or how is metaphor working in technoculture?

- What (work) can metaphor do in technoculture?

- How are the histories of metaphor made visible or invisible in the ways they get materialized in technoculture? How can we begin to contend with these histories in our individual and shared uses of metaphors?

- How does metaphor (especially particular metaphors) interact with and shape ideas about humaness and relationships between humans, other beings, environments, and machines?

- Where do machine metaphors move across bodies of beings, lands, and knowledge? What is at stake in the radical mobilities of some metaphors?

- Is it possible to regionalize or localize metaphors? Where is metaphor working in non-universal modes?

- Has the "material turn" of recent decades swung toward artifacts, infrastructures, and elements at the expense of semiotic analysis? If artifacts, actors, and "figures" (Haraway), can be understood in STS terms to be material-semiotic, how is metaphor concretized in engineering and design? How does it work differently from other sign processes?

- How do feminist STS scholars engage particularly with metaphor, both as critique and generative of/for new ideas, new ways of thinking together?

- How does metaphor function as method for feminist scientists, in feminist speculative, scifi, dystopian, utopian, Afro-futurist and Indigenous-futurist expressive cultures, in feminist digital and technocultural practices?

- What gets dragged in with our metaphors? What habits of thinking and doing are we trying to change as we change metaphors?

- How and what do metaphors materialize, make possible, make impossible, make disappear/dematerialize?

- Which metaphors shape, for example, programming languages, lab languages, electronics?

- What metaphors go unnoticed? Where are they most entrenched?

- Which feminist scholars/writers/artists/organizers/scientists/designers have shaped your thinking about metaphors?

We welcome original research papers (preferably empirically grounded papers that engage with theoretical and conceptual framework) or mixed media and other creation-based research (visual essays, audio, games, and film accompanied by text) that offer feminist, anti-colonial, trans-, queer, and anti-racist analyses of metaphor(s) in any technocultural phenomena including but not limited to: computation, science fiction and other creative genres, AI, information science, data science, biological sciences, media, digital culture, digital and/or media arts, design, and architecture, engineering, and urban planning. While Catalyst is published in English, we enthusiastically encourage contributions that engage in the ways that metaphors work in technoculture in languages other than English.

We also encourage contributions to other journal sections including Commentaries, Critical Perspectives, Image and Text works, and Lab Meeting.

Please send initial queries to tl.cowan@utoronto.ca and jas.rault@utoronto.ca. We will do our best to be flexible in light of challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, so please do not hesitate to be in touch!

Please send abstracts (400-500 words) and short bios by October 1, 2020 to the editors at drecollab@gmail.com, marked with the subject line: Metaphors.

Invitations to submit full papers and/or projects will be sent by November 30th, 2020. Full papers (max. 8000 words including references) and other contributions should be prepared according to the Catalyst author guidelines and will be due March 15, 2021, to begin the editorial review process. All articles will undergo review by the editors as well as a standard peer review process.

The "Metaphor as Meaning and Method in Technoculture" Special Section is scheduled to be published in the Fall of 2022.

References

Balsamo, A. (2011). Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination At Work. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Haraway, D.J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.

Penley, C. and Ross, A. (1990). "Cyborgs at Large: Interview with Donna Haraway." Social Text, 25-26, 8-23.

Roy, D. (2018). Molecular Feminisms: Biology, Becomings, and Life in the Lab. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press.

Tuck, E., and Yang, K.W. (2012). "Decolonization is not a metaphor." Education and Society, 1(1), 1-40.