Wallnöfer, Doris | Italy

Doris Wallnöfer (Mag. Phil.) was born in 1973 in Schlanders/Silandro, Italy. Academically educated in the fields of Political Science and Gender Studies at the University of Vienna, she graduated in 1999 and is currently working on her dissertation on the concept of war, its connections with politics and its transformation through technology. Since 1999 she has been editor of the journal sinn-haft.

From October 2000 to December 2001 she was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society, Graz.  

Project at IAS-STS: Technowar. The diffusion of war into contemporary culture and politics

The work is intended as an analysis of social and political developments in the context of new war technologies and should be interpreted particularly as a reaction to the increasing mix of military and civilian terrains. What I am interested in is not only the "real war" but also the so-called virtual war, which first made an appearance during the cold war. My analysis therefore starts with the cold war and ranges to current events. I assume not only that the changes in warfare have directly transformed the social and political space, but also that the social must be seen as the product of technical and military developments. Hence I wish to examine military developments with the help of "post-modern" theory and reflect on their meaning for civilians. This requires an assessment of different terms of war, including their new meaning in the light of technology. Does the notion of the disappearance of politics, the disappearance of the modern subject at the turn of the 21st century correlate directly with this transformation of war?

One of the central theses is that warfare has been transformed into terrorist actions. Nowadays terrorism is conducted by the state and therefore terrorism can be redefined as the continuation of war by other means. But one should also consider that the new battlegrounds are "civilian" domains (reproduction technologies, genetic engineering, information technologies), which make bloody fights the exception, or by-product. Therefore the term 'war' must be, if not relinquished all together, then modified at least.

Selected Publications

Arbeit kriegen. Zu einer Strategie der Arbeit, in: sinn-haft, Nr. 4/1998

Techniken des Verschwindens. Von der Raum- zur Zeitordnung, in: sinn-haft, Nr. 5/1999

Militär und Geschlecht. Historische Betrachtungen, in: Politix. Zeitschrift des Instituts für Politikwissenschaft an der Universität Wien, Nr. 8/1999

Krieg und Fotografie. Zur Wahrnehmung des Krieges, in: Context XXI, Nr. 1/2000

Frau im Bild, in: sinn-haft, Nr. 6/2000

Autoprojektionen, in: sinn-haft Nr. 8/2000