Illustration by Myra El Mir
Our research addresses genocide as a universal continuum of settler colonialism through its imbrications with technology and gender. We looked at genocide as a common occurrence for Indigenous and colonised peoples, despite what historical erasure tells us – faced with endless colonial expansion and capitalism, we have theorised this recurring reality and condition as “endless genocide”. We looked for ways to “unsilence” it through technology and finding each other across time and space. Yet, our relationship to the digital sphere is akin to our relationship with the world: fraught with gender-based violence because it is fraught with colonial violence, the brunt of which we bear with our bodies and existence in the world – physically as well as digitally.
Ultimately, in the era of AI-automated annihilation, we have had to sit with many new questions: the ways in which technology has brought about different proximities to genocide are complicated by the wound inflicted upon the land (occupation borders, hypersurveillance, hypermilitarisation, checkpoints…). We asked, over and over again, what sabotaging the tools of colonial genocide and occupation, and embracing limitations as anti-colonial praxis, could look like. We struggled to name new forms of colonial separation we did not have the language for, and grappled with how different the practical application of militancy is today – the contours of which still don’t feel enough to address the magnitude of a livestreamed genocide.
This work forms part of the third edition of the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) project, supported by the Women’s Rights Programme of APC.