things in such a way that she can live well and happily again—all by herself and in privacy. The protagonist does not instigate a political revolt of the workforce, it is highly probable that she does not even think about her position in society. All she does is fight for her own survival, and she does it in a radical and unadjusted way. Unruliness is an act of self-empowerment, the‹female,› subordinate kind of resistance against discriminating conditions. It is not a way of working through existing circumstances or politically articulate action: it is individual riot, a radical gesture of survival by a minority, by the female class—a class that is discriminated against, that feels deep down inside that they cannot change unfavorable conditions but have to find ways to live with them and in them without succumbing to them. It is pure flexibility and has nothing to do with opportunism or fatalism. Contrary to (open) resistance, unruliness is pure nihilism coupled with the will to survive, and hence libidinous and destructive.

«Unruly is what does not obey, what cannot be straightened out. A silly strand of hair or an undesired fold that can only be subdued by special means,

technical expenditure or disinterest. Or it takes a sense of humor. Something is unruly. Unruliness has a physical, an erotic dimension. Whether this is desired or not, the term echoes something that for centuries was supposed to mark a feminine quality: lack of knowledge, unawareness—and obstinacy. A childish, almost touching disobedience to what asserts itself as unchangeable and rigid. However, it is also disobedience without a target, thoughtless, unplanned, anarchic, something that cannot be tolerated for long by that which exists. All measures taken against unruliness derive their legitimacy from this. Unruliness is threatened with being broken by violence or disinterest. Even laughter can kill it if it fails to recognize its serious motivation.» This is what the art historian Ute Vorkoeper wrote about the exhibition «Widerspenstige Praktiken im Zeitalter von Bio- und Informationstechnologien» which I curated in the spring and summer of 2000. [3]

These comments about the erotic-feminine-physical dimension of unruliness describe precisely what prompted me to use the word once again in the context of ‹Cyborg Bodies›: it is associated