Towards a decolonial feminist politics of reuse

Abstract

In this presentation, I draw on my collective artistic research practice concerned with the micropolitics of publishing and sharing. Through two examples, I discuss the shifts needed when moving away from output-based approaches toward collective processes, exchanges, and relationships that publishing can enable. These shifts raise questions: If knowledge is inherently shared and creative practice relational, how can we develop a politics of sharing and reuse that resists individual authorship as ownership? And if authorship is part of a collective cultural effort, how can we avoid a universalist approach to openness?

Open Access policies often ignore that knowledge practices are shaped by specific social and historical conditions, and that ethical reasons may exist to withhold release or reuse. I argue for a politics of reuse that complicates the binary of open (Free Culture, Open Access) versus closed (IP, copyright), while attending to the power dynamics embedded in reuse practices. This includes acknowledging the situated conditions of production and the context-specific effects of openness and transparency.

Ecologies of Dissemination is an artistic research project in collaboration with Femke Snelting.