2016 — Interview

Alien Contagion
An Interview with Laboria Cuboniks

Interviewer: aCCeSsions

With: Laboria Cuboniks

aCCeSsions, No. 2

Scalability is not the same thing as replicability, and this is an important distinction. For example, let’s say there is an app so parents can arrange to share childcare: who is available when, to take what, how many kids. This might already exist—if it doesn’t, then it should—and it would be useful, but not an answer. As a model, this would be replicable, and could be used by anyone with a cellphone, but this is not what I would call scalable or systemic. What would be systemic is the provision of universal preschool (and I would argue that it should be available from 12 months, in combination with an obligatory parental leave provision from 0-12 months, and I mean pointedly parental and not specifically maternity leave). So I would argue that thinking about legislation as a technology (not legislation oftechnology, to be clear, but the construction of international law and its implementation as a technology) and as a feminist project would be one way for this to go. This is not to say that action in the local or action as or for specific communities isn’t important. It can benefit individual lives immensely; but feminism needs to be thought about systemically as well.