Cybertypes

Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet

By: Lisa Nakamura

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Hardcover | 21 June 2002 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
190 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.59 x 13.97 x 1.27

Hardcover

RRP $326.00

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Cyberspace entices us with the promise of an online utopia--a web of fluid identities and infinite possibilities. When we look for signs of freedom online--anywhere from chat room conversations to cyberpunk fiction--we are almost inevitably urged toward "liberation" from our bodies and their "restrictive" attributes like race, gender, and age. But cyberculture critic Lisa Nakamura insists that the Internet is a place where race matters.
Race itself may not be fixed or finite, but Nakamura argues that racial stereotypes-or "cybertypes"-are hardwired into our online interactions: Identity tourists masquerade in virtual roles like "Asian_Geisha" and "Alatinolover." Web directories sharply narrow racial categories. Anonymous computer users are assumed to be white.
In "Cybertypes," Nakamura looks at what happened to race when it went online, and how our ideas about race continue to be shaped and reshaped every time we log on. Examining all facets of our everyday online experience from Internet advertising to email jokes, Nakamura shows that the postmodern ideal of fluid selves made possible by network technology is not necessarily subversive, progressive, or liberating. The harder race is pushed off-line, the greater the consequences in real life for people of color.
A lively and provocative discussion "Cybertypes" offers a valuable new way of thinking about race and identity in the information age.

Industry Reviews

"Defying a generation of scholars who have argued that there's no place for race in cyberspace, Lisa Nakamura sets out to find and analyze the cultural work that race and ethnicity do online. Traveling through a fascinating web of online nodes and offline narratives--advertisements for Microsoft and MCI, MUDs, and commercially-driven Web sites, and cyberpunk films and novels, to name a few--Nakamura deftly and engagingly shows us that race happens, both online and within popular discourses portraying online culture. A tour-de-force that can and should blow the doors of cyberculture studies wide open, Cybertypes is the book we've been waiting for." -- David Silver, University of Washington
"Nakamura argues that 'race happens' in cyberspace, and in her book a savvy racial analysis is what's on the menu. With attention to presences, absences, identities, subjectivities, ideologies, and practices in Internet and other cyberspatial zones, Cybertypes shows how 'doing virtuality' is never unmarked. What we get from reading difference with Nakamura is a menu for change, not a recipe for more of the same." -- Donna J. Haraway, University of California at Santa Cruz
"Cybertypes is a simply fascinating examination of how racial ideas changed in the online environment." -- TheBookwatch
"Nakamura strikes a productive balance in tone; her writing is thoughtful yet breezy. It is thorough enough to stand up to the demands of academia, while it resists relying too heavily on the labyrinthine and verbose of critical theory or the obtusely specific jargon of computer technology." -- NYFA Quarterly

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