Hester, Helen. Xenofeminism. Polity Press, 2018.
In 2015, the Laboria Cuboniks collective proclaimed “If nature is unjust, change nature!” at the end of their much celebrated Xenofeminist Manifesto: A Politics for Alienation. After countless discussions in the years that followed, the second canonical xenofeminist text was written by one of Laboria Cuboniks’ founding members, Helen Hester (Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the University of West London). Hester’s new polemic, Xenofeminism, published by Polity in their Theory Redux series, expands upon the groundbreaking work of the initial manifesto by bringing us a fresh look at xenofeminism from a specific perspective. As Hester notes, “[e]ach of the six members of Laboria Cuboniks […] would likely emphasize different aspects of the manifesto” and thus Xenofeminism is not so much “the book on xenofeminism [..,] but rather a book on xenofeminism.” As such, one ought to read Xenofeminism not as a book explaining an already established set of ideas, but, rather, as a growing nodule on the xenofeminist root: Hester’s nodule.