4s 2026 Open Panel CfP "Prefiguring Technological Futures: The Roles of Resistance, Refusal, and Friction"

[Reka Gal]

Dear colleagues,

We warmly invite you to submit an abstract to our Open Panel at this year's annual 4S conference in Toronto, October 7-10:

Prefiguring Technological Futures: The Roles of Resistance, Refusal, and Friction

Contemporary hegemonic imaginaries of technoscientific futures present the progressive mechanization of social and environmental processes as inevitable and even desirable. These imaginaries treat socioenvironmental relations as replaceable with technosocial ones: AI becomes our secretary and therapist, robots our romantic partners and caretakers. These futures explicitly prey on desires for convenience and comfort in a world that demands speed and productive efficiency – they promise frictionless connection (Jezer-Morton 2026), and care without the obligation to reciprocate (Sharma 2017). With this, the dependence on technical systems is framed as preferable to the discomfort, obligations, and responsibilities that come with maintaining social and ecological relations. Yet, the infrastructures underlying the creation and functioning of these new “techno-kin” demand the consumption, pollution, or regulation of existing social and environmental lifeways. For example, the data center infrastructure required for the functioning of generative AI consumes massive amounts of energy and water, relies on extractive supply chains, and funnels environmental pollution into already vulnerable communities. While the futures themselves are speculative, these technologies are increasingly embedded in everyday practice, and their material realities are already assembled in ways that foreclose the continuance of alternative collective and interdependent relations.

Against the hegemonic narratives that equate technical mediation with liberation, this panel considers the politics of inconvenience (Berlant 2022), friction, and sacrifice in resisting the lure of technological dependence. We encourage empirical and theoretical engagements that consider how prefigured relationships (Walia 2013) might create resistance, refusal, or friction for these futures, even as we navigate living-with technical alterlives. How might we orient our relations and our work toward reducing harm and investing in desire-based (Tuck 2009) futures? What does it look like to stay with the trouble of technological alterlife (Murphy 2017, 2018) while still holding open the necessity of resistance and refusal?

Submissions can be made here: https://www.xcdsystem.com/4sonline/abstract/abstract.cfm

Convenors:
Sal Suri, Harvard University (salin...@fas.harvard.edu)
Lindsay LeBlanc, University of Toronto (reka...@tum.de)
Réka Patrícia Gál, Technical University of Munich (lm.le...@mail.utoronto.ca)

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions!

We look forward to being in conversation with you.

All our best,
Sal, Lindsay, and Réka

Dr. Réka Patrícia Gál
(she/they)
Postdoctoral Researcher 
Chair of Anthropology of Science and Technology
Department of Science, Technology and Society
Technische Universität München
https://www.sts.sot.tum.de/

rekapatriciagal.ca

Gál, Réka Patrícia, and Eleanor S. Armstrong. 2023. "Feminist Approaches to Outer Space," in Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space edited by Juan Francisco Salazar and Alice Gorman, 158-172. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.

“Fixing Skylab: An Alternative History of Spaceflight through Breakdown and Repair”. In Cosmic Fragments: Dislocation and Discontent in the Global Space Age, edited by Asif A. Siddiqi (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025)

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