Racing cyberculture : minoritarian art and cultural politics on the Internet / Christopher L. McGahan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McGahan, Christopher.

Series:

Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art and the Internet.

Cyberspace--Social aspects.

Cyberspace.

Mass media and minorities.

Physical Description:

vii, 217 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, [2008]

Summary:

As the cultures of cyberspace began to emerge in the 1990s, "life on the screen" and virtual identity quickly moved to the fore of critical reflection about the meanings of the various cultural changes underway. Such examination of the changing face of cultural identity in the Internet era seldom produced any sustained or meaningful commentary, however, on the status of racial identity, or the ongoing work of racial formation, in the precincts of cyberspace. Racing Cyberculture: Minoritarian Art and Cultural Politics on the Internet explores new media art that challenges such effectively "race-blind' understandings of cybercultures. The book focuses on addressing key work from some of the most important artists to have responded to concerns related to racialization in cybercultures, including the new media arts collective Mongrel, the performance and installation artists Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes, the digital/conceptual artist and composer Keith Obadike, and the multimedia artist Prema Murthy. The author looks at how projects undertaken by these artists serve to highlight and reframe questions surrounding the contours and conduct of racial identity and racial ascription in the technoculture.

Contents:

Re-searching racial projects in the technoculture: Mongrel's Natural selection, the search engine, and the politics of British culture and national identity in the 1990s

Re-playing "racial knowledge" and cybercultural subjectivity: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes's Temple of confessions, public opinion polling, and the cultural politics of Internet identity play

Re-collecting cyberculture and racial identification in a minoritarian frame of reference: Keith Obadike's Blackness for sale, eBay, and the counter-performance of blackness in cyberspace

Re-posing cyberporn and the racialized subject in cyberculture: Prema Murthy's BindiGirl, cyberfeminism, and the cultural politics of orientalist pornography on the Internet

Conclusion: addressing the post-9/11 crisis of racialization.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-204) and index.

ISBN:

9780415976565

0415976561

OCLC:

82172798