August 23, 2005
Kolko, Beth E., Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman, eds. Race in Cyberspace. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Widely acknowledged as a vanguard text on cyberspace race studies, Race in Cyberspace, in collection of twelve essays, directly challenges Internet utopists’ proclamations of an online racial paradise.
The editors begin with an anecdote illustrating how poorly online discourse on race is received, even in critical and mature academic circles. A post on a listserv about a theory positing race as a social, not biological, construct initiated a “flame war,” as the original poster was attacked and labeled a troublemaker for having the audacity to even mention race. The editors were troubled by the fact that the original poster was not attacked for any perceived theoretical flaws, but simply for the act of introducing racial discourse. Online, there seems to be a culture of ignoring race matters.
Nevertheless, the editors believe that these issues need to be addressed. Race matters, be it online or offline. In the essays that follow the introduction, they illustrate how race does indeed depend on Real Life (RL) materialism, and how we bring prejudices, languages, and conditioning with us when we enter cyberspace.
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1. Race in Cyberspace: An Introduction. Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman.
2. “Where Do You Want to Go Today?” Cybernetic Tourism, the Internet, and Transnationality. Lisa Nakamura.
3. The Appended Subject: Race and Identity as Digital Assemblage. Jennifer Gonzalez.
4. The Revenge of the Yellowfaced Cyborg: The Rape of Digital Geishas and the Colonization of Cyber-Coolies in 3D Realms’ Shadow Warrior. Jeffrey A. Ow.
5. Sexy SIMS, Racy SIMMS. Rajani Sudan.
6. In Medias Race: Filmic Representation, Networked Communication, and Racial Intermediation. David Crane.
7. I’ll Take My Stand in Dixie-Net: White Guys, the South, and Cyberspace. Tara McPherson.
8. Margins in the Wires: Looking for Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Blacksburg Electronic Village. David Silver.
9. Language, Identity, and the Internet. Mark Warschauer.
10. Babel Machines and Electronic Universalism. Joe Lockard.
11. The Computer Race Goes to Class: How Computers in Schools Helped Shape the Racial Topography of the Internet. Jonathan Sterne.
12. Erasing @race: Going White in the (Inter)Face. Beth E. Kolko.