Abstract
The essay aims to map Xenofeminism (as defined by the Laboria Cuboniks collective) within two overlapping semiotic grids: the first is that of the canon of feminist critique and politics, and the second is that of discursive analysis focused on XF as platform for rewiring the cultural syntagm. The syntagm is here understood as commensurate with the imposition of Lacan's Symbolic register.
The description of "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I" will be mined as a useful metaphor for illustrating the dynamics underpinning a certain strand of feminist theory and praxis. Reading the post-structuralist feminism of Irigaray and Cixous through the function of the Mirror stage will be used as a point of departure for analyzing Xenofeminism as a project of open praxis, one which elides the fixation on essence and identity politics of much contemporary mainstream feminism through abducting the cultural syntagm.
The Mirror stage will in this essay provide a primal scene for the meeting of feminist drive towards emancipation, the imposition of the Lacanian Symbolic, and the syntagm of code. Laboring at the intersection of politics and digital design, XF is no longer driven so much by Cixous' gesture of flight from patriarchal syntax, but is rather predicated on cunning tactics, and on the cultivation of alternative codes which queer the patriarchal syntagm.