Class Three: Monday, September 23, 2002: History, Technology and Identity Online

Reading assignments:

History of the Internet pp. 33-38, 40, 46, 51, 57, 60 (covers mainframes to BBS culture)(scanned)

Howard Rheingold chapter 3, online at http://www.well.com/user/hlr/vcbook/vcbook3.html

ITP Professor Marianne Petit, "How I Got Divorced Through Email," online at http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/~mrpetit/writing/breakup.html

Ency. New Media sections on "chat" and "BBS" (scanned)

Glance through and bookmark the History of the Internet web site, online at http://www.historyoftheinternet.com

Links to investigate:

Begin your LiveJournal account by checking out http://stage.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~subcultures/livejournal.html

Join our community at http://www.livejournal.com/users/subcultures

Check out Terri's journal at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tsenft

Start considering final project topics by reading this discussion: http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=tsenft&itemid=91144

Here is another discussion about fave discussion spots on the Net you might want to look at:
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=tsenft&itemid=88453

Look through the LiveJournal Developer's Forum at http://www.livejournal.com/doc/html/forums.html

Check out the links Terri will post on LiveJournal throughout the week.

Talking points:

1. From your reading, you know that contrary to popular mythology, many early proponents of the Arpanet thought of themselves not as conservative "military wonks", but rather as research scientists working for the government. Indeed, members of the Rand Corporation notwithstanding, most early Arpanet developers would have called themselves progressive, or at least neutral with regard to politics. They were, however, still working for what Eisenhower called the "Military Industrial Complex." How is today's "Entertainment Industrial Complex" reflected in things like the mergers between NBC and General Electric, or the connections between Time-Warner and well, everyone? What sorts of 'chilling effects' on speech might come about as a result of these sorts of mergers? How has branding played out in these arenas?

2. Once the military left Arpanet for NASA, the development of the nascent Internet was left largely to self-policing graduate students at participating universities. How did this population compare to your own grad student population with regard to age, gender, race, class and nationality?

3. How much does technological change alter our ideas regarding what counts as politically important? For instance, ten years ago, experiences on the Net were routinely dismissed as being 'not real' compared to the outside world, and a large part of the work of writers like Rheingold had to do with proving the social significance of places like the WELL The ubiquity of the Net (in the U.S. at least) has changed this perception somewhat today. However, as places like the online "pro anorexia" forums demonstrate, the mark between the real and the phantasmatic still remain blurry online. What are we to make of this fact?

4. How did you feel reading Marianne Petit's essay, given the fact that she has been a professor to many of you? How do you think you might feel if you had inadvertantly ran across this essay online, rather than been assigned it to read? How do you think you'd feel if you "stumbled" across Marianne on a BBS talking about the issues she raises here (not that you would...this is a hypothetical!)

5. This was your first week on LiveJournal. How does the dynamic compare to other BBS-type structures we've been reading about, or that you've come across in the past? What do you like (if anything) about it? What don't you like?

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Class Four: Monday, September 30, 2002: From Deviancy to Subculture, Offline and On It.

Reading assignments:

Read the following from The Subcultures Handbook (you must buy this text, but these have been scanned for you:)

Thorton, Sarah, "General Introduction" (pp. 1-10)

Thorton, Sarah, "Introduction to Part One: The Chicago School and the Sociological Tradition." (pp. 11-15)

Cohen, Albert K., "A General Theory of Subcultures." (pp. 44-54)

Irwin, John, "Notes on the Status of Subculture." (pp. 66-70)

Read History of the Internet 63-69, 75, 85, 89 (covers USENET and similar groups) (scanned)

Read Mike Godwin on Jake Baker (scanned)

Read Sandy Stone, "CommuniTree" (scanned)

Read Sandy Stone on "Cross-Dressing Psychiatrist" (scanned)

Read "An Online Hoax is not a Pox" from the NY Times.

Links to investigate:

Check out the Kaycee Nicole FAQ at http://www.rootnode.org/article.php?sid=26

Possible other hoax links TK

Talking Points:

1. What is the difference between a subculture and a community? Should we think of something like LiveJournal as a subculture, or does it make more sense to isolate specific groups on LiveJournal to give this name?

2. At what point in time do we "know" when a subcultural phenomenon has saturated enough that we may call it mainstream? For instance, rock and roll fans considered themselves a subculture in the 1950's, but today the saturation of rock music into everyday life makes that categorization somewhat banal. However, fans of a particular type of rock and roll band (say Grateful Dead fans) might well be considered a subculture today. Why is that? Given the fact that "time moves fast on the Net," how should we evaluate the instantiation of mainstream culture there? For instance, Napster users may have constituted a subculture of a sort two years ago, but should we really speak about Napster in subcultural terms anymore? What about something like LiveJournal?

3. Historically, what was the relationship between the sociological study of "deviance" and the origins of subculture studies? How has this dynamic been replicated in online cyberculture studies, with relation to cases like Jake Baker, CommuniTree and the Cross Dress Psychiatrist? Compare the "Casey" story (see "Online Hoax") to these early deviancy stories of Net life. What has changed with regard to reporting and analysis? What seems to have remained the same?

4. What is the difference between a deviant individual and a subcultural formation? How many deviants (I'm using the word ironically, okay?) does it take to form a subculture? For instance, we understand that Jake Baker himself wouldn't constitute a subculture, but what about the newsgroup alt.sex.stories, where he posted things? Using the Chicago School's idea that a subculture is "an attempt to address a problem," what "problem" might fans of snuff pornography conceive of themselves as engaging?

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Class Five: Monday, October 7, 2002: The Promise and Problems of Online Masquerade.

Reading assignments:

History of the Internet 95-103, 121-135 (covers MUDs, IRC and Habitat) (scanned)

Read David Silver's chapter on Cyberculture Studies in Web Studies.(scanned)

Read "Gender" in Encyclopedia of New Media.

Read "Turkle" in Encyclopedia of New Media

Read Turkle, "Virtuality and Its Discontents: Searching for Community in Cyberspace" at
http://www.prospect.org/print/V7/24/turkle-s.html

Read Dibbell, "A Rape in Cyberspace"at
http://www.levity.com/julian/bungle.html

Read Lisa Nakamura, "Keeping it (Virtually) Real" at http://epsilon3.georgetown.edu/~coventrm/asa2000/panel4/nakamura.html

Read Naomi Klein, "Patriarchy Gets Funky," in No Logo (Buy this book.)

Links to investigate:

Read "Who was Billiam, and why was he Killed on the Net?" at http://www.yil.com/features/feature.asp?Frame=false&Volume=08&Issue=07&Keyword=billiam

See Billiam's LiveJournal at http://www.livejournal.com/users/billiam

See LiveJournal user "NiggerKojak's" explanation of his screen name at http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=niggerkojak&itemid=15739

Talking Points for Monday, October 7:

1. How did Internet ethnography begin, and where has it wound up? In which ways does Internet studies resemble other sorts of media ethnographies (i.e. studies of romance novel readers; observation of television viewing practices) and where does it part company? As the Internet changes from a text-only medium to one employing sound, images and motion, we need to expand our vocabulary to adequately convey what has been called the telepresence of virtual environments. As ITP students, what sorts of things could you do with regard to audio or visual display, physical computing, or live technologies to best present the truths of the communities that interest you online? How could Julian Dibbell's piece, for example, be represented using the technologies at our disposal?

2. Sherry Turkle has done a lot to rescue online identity experimenters from the "deviancy" label given to them in the early 1980's by the popular press. In Life on the Screen, Turkle interviews a number of long-term MUD'ers, arguing that what might appear to outsiders as weird or odd, is actually understandable within the subcultural practice of MUD'ing. Using her formidable knowledge of both psychoanalytic and philosophy, Turkle makes a case that MUD'ers who masquerade with gender, sexuality and/or race in online environments are actually "working through" the fact that in the postmodern moment, identities are fluid OFFLINE, too However, some writers like Lisa Nakamura have argued that the more things "change" online, the more they remain the same off it, and that far from becoming more politically progressive, many Netizens are simply replicating their sexist and racist fantasies about identity in a new arena. The story of the "rape in cyberspace" might be one example of what Nakamura is talking about. Can you think of others?

3. In "Patriarchy Gets Funky", Naomi Klein suggests that perhaps the time for identity politics has passed for many of us, and that important issues of class and equity are now obscured over head-counting to see how many 'minorities' appear or do not appear on network television. Do you think she has a point? If you do, do you think her point is applicable to representational form like the Internet, which is much "younger" than television or film? What does Klein's argument do to Nakamura's? What does Nakamura's argument about the academics of color locked out of cyberspace research do to Klein's assertion that representational politics may be passe?

4. Let's follow up on Lisa Nakamura's claim that academic internet ethnography is woefully behind disciplines like cultural studies, literature studies and television studies when it comes to dealing with race online. How should academia deal with the arrival of a personality like "whigger" Billiam to the Web? Is he an example of what Nakamura is talking about, or does he represent a complication to her theory--or both?

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Class Six: Monday, October 14, 2002: Ethnicity and the Politics of Location on the Web.

Reading Assignments:

Lisa Nakamura, "After/Images of Identity: Gender, Technology, and Identity Politics."

Jeff Rice, "Cultural Studies vs. The Digital: A review of Race in Cyberspace, edited by Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert Rodman." (This is a pretty involved hypertext site. It may help to print out salient pages to look over.)

Gelder, Ken, "Place, Territory, Identity: Introduction to Part 6," in . The Subcultures Reader. Gelder, Ken and Sarah Thornton, eds New York: Routledge, 1997. pp 315-319. (Buy this book.)

Gilroy, Paul, "Diaspora, Utopia and the Critique of Capitalism," in.The Subcultures Reader. Gelder, Ken and Sarah Thornton, eds New York: Routledge, 1997. pp 340-349. (Buy this book. )
Links to View:

Proceedings from the MIT Conference on Race and Digital Space

Talking Points:

1. Nakamura calls the argument that cyberspace is "post-race" an after/effect of technolophilia and Y2Kist thinking. What does she mean by this? Do you agree? If not, how does one explain "black surprise", mentioned in last week's reading? Is there such a phenomenon as "white surprise"? If there is, are the politics of such a surprise equivalent regardless of which way it travels?

2. How do you understand Nakamura's conception of "cybertypes" compared to the more familiar (and older) notion of the stereotype? What is different about cybertypes? What remains the same?

3. In his review of Race in Cyberspace, Jeff Rice argues that there is simply no reason to expect (nor does it surprise him) that cyberspace is rife with the same sort of racism one might encounter in film, literature, or daily life. How does this observation square with your own, based on your time spent online?

4. One of Rice's more compelling claims is that "Africanist" presence is already in cyberspace, in the form of activities borrowed from hip-hop tradition: sampling, cutting, pasting and re-making found objects into ones that better suit specific, targeted communities. He cites "Afro-futurist" cyberpunk literature, and the online art of DJ Spooky and Guiermo Gomez Pena as examples of what he means. His examples beg the question, though: is it the activities themselves, or those who engage in the activities that are "Africanist"? If the former, why specify people of color in all his examples? If the latter, then are the folks he mentions merely tokens, thrown out to appease those who would question the erasure of questions of race in cyberspace?

5. How does Paul Gilroy's claim that Black culture works "syncretically" play into what we are looking at, when we examine the issue of race on the Net? For instance, Gilroy notes that the global adoption of "Black music" in the form of reggae was less a matter of being in Jamaica than it was a complex system of recording, distribution and public listening. He points out that exposure to reggae wound up politically "blackening" a wide variety of listeners with a wide variety of ethnic and national backgrounds. Could the same hold true for viewers exposed to "Black culture" (whatever that might be) on the Net? That said, what are we to make of Gilroy's note about how, just when reggae might have had its greatest political impact, it was co-opted by a band called, of all things, The Police? Shades (so to speak) of Billiam, or no?

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Class Seven: Monday, October 21, 2002: Global diasporas and online subcultures.

Reading assignments

1. Berry, Chris and Fran Martin, "Queer n' Asian on and off the Net: the role of cyberspace in Queer Taiwan and Korea." Web.Studies, Rewiring Media for the Digital Age. David Gauntlett ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.pp. 75-80. (Buy this book.)

Understandably, most of websites discussed are in Chinese or Korean, but there is an interesting English langage history page here for To-Get-Her.org, one of the sites discussed in the article.

2. Mallapragada, Madhavi, "The Indian Diaspora in the USA and Around the Web." Web.Studies, Rewiring Media for the Digital Age. David Gauntlett ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.pp, 179-185. (Buy this book.)

123India.com is a massive portal discussed in this article. There is an active discussion BBS, featuring topics like "Are Arranged marriages more successful than love marriages?"

3. Arnold, Ellen and Darcy C. Plymire, "The Cherokee Indians and the Net." Web.Studies, Rewiring Media for the Digital Age. David Gauntlett ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.pp, 186-193. (Buy this book.)

The site most discussed in this piece is Cherokee-nc.com. Click on "Genealogy info" to learn some stuff.

4. Medaglia, Angela, "The Garinagu in New York." From the Race and Ethnicity in the New Urban NY site. The site discussed in this piece is Garinet.com.

Links to View

• PopandPolitics.com (this is author and CNN commentator Farai Chideya's web site. Note the "daily feed" in the left frame, which links to a diff. organization. Also take a minute to take Farai's quiz about race and media coverage in the U.S.)
  
  
• InvisibleAmerica.com (this is artist Alex Rivera's site. Notice how he writes parody ads that incorporate legitimate news links within. This is one example of the William Burrough's type approach to critical new media we discussed in class. Alex's CyberBraceros site is a must-see!)
  
  
• Pocho.com (this is the "Latino version of the Onion," which actually networks to about six different sites in a social/political version of a branding stategy. Interestingly, they also sponsor a CyberCholo Bulletin Board, where both fun and serious conversations happen. For instance, I found this conversation about Latinos and therapy quite interesting.
  
  
• IndieFilipino.com (see especially the ongoing conversation about songwriting in Filipino v. English.)
  
  

Other Optional Reading:

Nua Reports, "How Many Online?"

Pew Internet Reports: "Who's Not Online?" (If you are pressed for time, read the Summary of Findings)

Chronicle of Higher Education, "Does Digital Divide Rhetoric do more harm than Good?"

Pew Internet Reports: Asian Americans: The Young and the Connected (Summary of Findings is here.)

Pew Internet Reports: Hispanics and the Internet (Summary of Findings is here.)

Pew Internet Reports: African Americans and the Internet (Summary of findings is here.)

Interview with Guiermo Gomez Pena and Roberto Sifuentes

Talking Points:

1. As the Queer and Asian essay points out nicely, ethnicity is one of several factors with which an Internet user may choose to identify. Sexual preference, gender roles, economic background, country of residence, and native language are all mitigating factors that determine what sort of subculture people of color may choose to participate in on the Net. How do these considerations alter the monolithic conception of cyberspace as a "non-space" for people of color? Alternately, what are the Net users in this article getting out of their exchanges on the BBS's cited that they couldn't get from say, PlanetOut.com?

2. Paul Gilroy argues that because of its diasporic nature, it is "impossible to theorize black culture in Britain without developing a new perspective on British culture as a WHOLE." What sort of new perspectives on the Net as a WHOLE might be provided by a the study of say, diasporic Indian communities online, or the 'discovery' of the Garingu in NYC via a web site devoted to their identity?

3. It was recently announced that a plan is underway to transfer hundreds of pre-printing press documents from Tibet to digital form, so as to preserve them for future generations. (Most of these docs were smuggled in by political refugees.) In light of what we read about the "wannabes" surrounding Cherokee culture as it is displayed online, what sorts of problems might we anticipate for Tibetans, once their material is easy accessible over the Net? Should we be concerned when a culture 'skips' over the printing press stage and moves straight to digital distribution?

4. Both Pop and Politics and Invisible America use 'hip hop' strategies of cutting, pasting, sampling, etcÉbut the effects are different.--why is that? Hint: how do parody, camp and irony work here? What are the similarities between Invisible America, Pocho and say, the Onion? What are the differences between them?

5. What is it about a site like Indiefilipino that makes it feel like one has stumbled onto a group of "insiders" speaking to one another? Hint--consider the use of languages, personal referents, the general age of the participants. How do these differ from, say, the way a tourism site is structured? How is it different from a site like Pinoy Exchange (http://www.pinoyexchange.com/)

6. In a time of increasing globalization on the Internet, how do we appropriately assess these politics of location of subcultures online? For instance, we understand that a group of Americans who consider themselves "sex tourists"will experience their transgressions differently than will those who think of themselves as sex workers in places like Cuba, Thailand, etc. But how do we accurately assess the mindset of women who pose on "mail order bride"web sites for international consumption? More to the point, how can we as researchers remain sensitive to different sorts of social and geopolitical constraints of users online, rather than assuming everyone is "just like us"?

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Class Eight: Monday, October 28, 2002: : Electronic Images and the Politics of Style

To Read:

Gelder, 'Introduction to part 2" in Subcultures Reader (buy) pp. 83-90

Gelder, 'Introduction to Part 3" in Subcultures Reader pp.145-148

Dick Hebdige, "Subculture: the Meaning of Style" in Subcultures Reader 130-145

Webcams and videoconferencing in Encyclopedia of New Media

Chapter 1 of "Camgirls" at http://www.echonyc.com/~janedoe/diss/1.pdf

Chapter 2 of "Camgirls" at http://www.echonyc.com/~janedoe/diss/2.pdf

Sharon Kinsella, "Cuties in Japan" at http://www.kinsellaresearch.com/Cuties.html

Ellis, "What is a Cyber Doll?" at http://www.kinokopress.com/inko/cyber.html

Links to view:

Jennicam: http://www.jennicam.org

Anacam: http://www.anacama.com

The Real House http://www.therealhouse.com

Webcam Now http://www.webcamnow.com

Terri's list of webcam sites to visit: http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=tsenft&itemid=58565

Ellis's Site: http://www3.justnet.ne.jp/~elellis_fan2/top.html

Internet Idol Archive: http://village.infoweb.ne.jp/~fwgd5941/frame.html

Discussion Points:

1. Dick Hebdige speaks at length about how certain spectacular subcultures exhibit a "politics of style." What precisely does he mean by this? What does Hebdige suggest are the limits of style as a political stategy? Do you agree with his assessment?

2. In Camgirls, I juxtapose three different styles of visual media consumption: the gaze (of cinema), the glance (of television) and the grab (of the Web.) Following the logic of Hebdige, I suggest that these styles give rise to different subcultural associations and different politics among viewers and participants. So, for instance, folks who want to be a television star aren't necessarily the same people as folks who set up homecams. Do you agree? How do hybrid forms like Reality TV confuse what I am saying?

3. How might a discussion of style help us to better understand the many differentiations in homecamming choices? What sorts of statements might people be (consciously or not) making, for instance, by choosing to participate in a cam community over, say, setting up themselves as a singular camgirl, a la Jennifer Ringely?

4. A growing number of theorists are beginning to see Japanese "kawaii" style as a subcultural strategy, as Sharon Kinsella does. If this is a fair reading, what sorts of politics can we say the Net Idol phenomenon in Japan articulates? How does the American notion of the "girl next door" square with the Japanese ideal of kawaii?

5. How much of Ellis's "cyber doll" manifesto made sense to you? How much did not? What do you make of the fact that Ellis has chosen to display her Manifesto in English as well as Japanese?


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Class Nine: Monday, November 4, 2002: New Girl Subcultures and New Media Stategies

Reading assignments:

Gelder, Ken, "Sounds, Styles and Embodied Politics: Intro to Part 7," .in .The Subcultures Reader. pp373-348.

Hedbdige, Dick, "Posing, Threats, Striking Poses: Youth, Surveillance and Display." in . The Subcultures Reader. pp. 393-405

Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber, "Girls and Subcultures" in . The Subcultures Reader. page 112-120 (skim this)

Article on Le Tigre at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/03/PK149018.DTL

The We Have Brains Blog" at http://www.wickedpersephone.org/wehavebrains/

Chapter 4 of Camgirls http://www.echonyc.com/~janedoe/diss/4.pdf

Chapter 5 of Camgirls at http://www.echonyc.com/~janedoe/diss/5.pdf

Talking Points:

1. Angela McRobbie makes a case in 1975 that because they aren't necessarily threatening or violent, most girl subcultures are often invisible to reporters and academics. How have things like the Riot Grrl movemnent, the development of girl zine cultures and the rise of the Net itself altered what McRobbie sees as the fact of girls subcultural invisibility?

2. Why do I call camgirls the "drag queens of the surveillance age" in Chapter Four? What do I mean when I talk about the counter-public sphere and its relationship to drag, camp and performance? How do these politics change depending on the ethnicitiy, nationality, and class status of the performer in question?

3. Hedbdige makes the point that display and surveillance is part and parcel of all youth subcultural practices, but the truth is, "display" tends to break down into different forms once one looks at things from a gendered perspective. Could it be possible that sex and sexual display is to girl subcultures what the display of violence is to male subcultures? How does that square with the discussion of "cam whores" online in Chapter 5? What sorts of limits does this put on girls as they engage in subcultural political display?

4. I try to make the case in Chapter 5 that the camwhore phenomenon constitutes, for me at least, a "limit case for irony as a political tool." Do you agree or disagree with this assessment?

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Due for class Ten: Monday, November 11, 2002: Fans, Pirates and Culture Jammers.

Readings:

Guy Debord, Part one of Society of the Spectacle at http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/16

Klein, Namoi, "Culture Jamming: Ads Under Attack." In No Logo. New York : Picador USA, 1999.pp. 63-87

Tetzlaff, David, "Yo Ho Ho and a Server of Warez," in World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory. Andrew Herman and Thomas Swiss, eds. New York: Routledge: 2000

Jenkins, Henry, "Television Fans, Poachers and Nomads." In The Subcultures Reader.. pp. 506-522

Taylor, Philip. "The World Wide Web goes to War, Kosovo 1999." In Web.Studies, Rewiring Media for the Digital Age. David Gauntlett ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.pp. 194-201

Links:

Surveillance Camera Players

Electronic Disturbanc Theatre

Optional readings:

Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White, "From Carnival to Trangression," in The Subcultures Reader. Gelder, Ken and Sarah Thornton, eds New York: Routledge, 1997. pp 293-301.

Points for Discussion:

1. What are the pleasures and dangers of culture jamming as a form politics ? For example, while some "hacktivists" claim their activities are politically progressive, critics of the practice argue that acts such as hacking the Chinese government's web site serve only to deliver bad will on behalf of those who are "really"working to affect political change.

2. This semester, we've read how the politics of style are used by subcultures wishing to resist, subvert, or transgress the dictates of mainstream culture. In light of Naomi Klein's comments about AdBusters, how effective do you feel the "culture jamming style" really is as a political strategy toward these aims? When do we need to consider the cooptation of cool in all this?

3. What are the precise differences between resistance, subversion and transgression, anyway? What the work of Tetzlaff and Jenkins have to offe

r us by way of explanation. How do Stallybrass and White set the notion of transgression in historical terms? 4. One of the strange facts of the info war age is that one never knows who will be using technology to deliver which message. How does the narrative of Net use in Kosovo square with this observation?

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Due for class Eleven: Monday, November18, 2002

Class Presentations

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Due for class Twelve: Monday, November 25, 2002

Class Presentations

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Due for class Thirteen: Monday, December 2, 2002

Class Presentations

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Due for class Fourteen: Monday, December 9, 2002

Summary and Conclusions.

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