White Capitalist Patriarchy — Informatics of Domination

In Haraway’s original chart, informatics of domination sits adjacent to white capitalist patriarchy. The movement from one to the other, from white capitalist patriarchy on the left to informatics of domination on the right, does not signal a departure or end of one regime and beginning of the next, but is rather a prompt to discuss “white capitalist imperialist patriarchy in its contemporary late versions.” The informatics of domination thus signals the emergence of a new set of circumstances through which to contend with the old challenges of white capitalist patriarchy. But one of the ironies of this rhetorical move is that it begins to undo the vital work of naming that bell hooks so assiduously insisted upon. Without these anchors, the informatics of domination is open to interpretation and is suddenly amenable to the very logics it was intended to critique. Consider AI ethics in this context.