synthia /The Internet Race

Cynthia Payne - DANM 202 – Cultural Theory Cultural Presentation 1 - Hybridities Winter 2006

The Internet Race: A Hybrid?

This week’s readings have explored the idea that the Internet is or should be thought of as a rhizome. It seems to me that this is a problematic characterization. The rhizomatic conditions of the Internet, viewed through the concepts that Deleuze and Guattari write about in Introduction: Rhizome. Is it possible that the shift away from root book towards political multiplicity that the text describes is creating a dynamic that fosters the virtual erasure of individualized racial identity? In other words, are people thinking more in terms of the whole than in the parts? Does the rhizome model allow for people with their roots in diverse locations?

Lisa Nakamura's Cybertypes chapter “Head-Hunting on the Internet” speaks to her research of online chat rooms like MUDs and MOOs that show an almost total lack of even the opportunity to identify oneself by their race. Writers like Henry Jenkins have also written about the so-called color blindness of the Web, which disputes notions of a Utopian Internet where people “don't have to think about race”, as if they were leaving behind an abusive relationship. Jenkins and Nakamura both theorize that most people don't think about race online because they assume that everyone is white. This is easy to believe since an overwhelming number of internet users are indeed white.

For this look at cultural hybridity, I wanted to find online discussions about access to technology for diverse ethnic and racial groups. A Google search: "people talking about racial politics" turns up nothing. “People talking about racial identity” - nothing. It was curious to me that there was so little – almost as if these discussions had been erased or censored somehow. A couple of links were no longer active and I had to go to the cache in order to view them. These consisted mainly of folks spouting off obscenities and letting off steam, all of which has its own validity. There were lots of scholarly writings too, but no real direct discussion of online racial identity or politics.

In one or two cached blogs I found people discussing a Henry Jenkins article. Here is one of them:

Cyberspace and Race ... A Retort - Written By: Patrick Grote Date: January 12, 2003 (Previously published) - Section: Viewpoints http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:GMCmi9Fi2XYJ:www.dotjournal.com/viewpoints/internetrace0104.html+henry+jenkins+%2Brace&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=5&client=firefox-a

The discussion on this link did not seem to make the connection between “not wanting to discuss race” and refusing to acknowledge racial identities – which is directly related to what Nakamura and Jenkins are referring to – people don't want to think about race until they find out that someone isn't white.

What if the Internet is not actually rhizomatic but more like the hub and spoke model? Is this more conducive to allowing for the identification of origins from which people descend? Are people comfortable with the idea of racial hybridity online?

Resources:

Nakamura, Lisa. Cybertypes.

Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, “Introduction: Rhizome,” “Conclusion: Concrete Rules and Abstract Machines,” A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, Capitalism and Schizophrenia vol. 2 (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987) 3-25; 501-516

Jenkins, Henry. Cyberspace and Race, April 2002. The color-blind Web: a techno-utopia, or a fantasy to assuage liberal guilt? http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/02/04/jenkins0402.asp?p=1

Cyberspace and Race ... A Retort Written By: Patrick Grote Date: January 12, 2003 (Previously published) Section: Viewpoints http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:GMCmi9Fi2XYJ:www.dotjournal.com/viewpoints/internetrace0104.html+henry+jenkins+%2Brace&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=5&client=firefox-a

another blog on the Jenkins article: http://adviseconsent.blogspot.com/2005_07_03_adviseconsent_archive.html