Pink Slime Caesar Shift: Electropore
The story
Four womxn form a labor circuit, generating electricity for cheap gadgets: Their biopower powers the infinitely disposable. This piece is named for electroporation—a method of genetic engineering in which cells are electroshocked into compliance—and is inspired by Fred Ho and Ann T. Green’s Warrior Sisters: The New Adventures of African and Asian Womyn Warriors (2000). In the original, Fa Mulan, Nana Yaa Asantewaa, and Sieh King King rescue Assata Shakur from jail, using the lightning power of Mulan to travel through time and space. Here, that power has been absorbed into the network grid, a form of entrapment instead of liberation. Non-fiction voiceover texts include a firsthand account of the female carceral data labor complex: prisoners busy at data entry for ADP/UNICOR.