Popular Culture's Cyborg can change the representations of Race.

Critical Annotated Webliography

If Popular Culture has taken up the Cyborg as a figure of progress, what happens to the way race is represented?

Using the 5 references below, I have discussed several ways race can be looked at, if society takes up the cyborg as a figure of progress. I argue, that race can either be hidden online or can become even more of a problem in our society as the target market for Internet boggers and users are majority white Americans, which can result in smaller discriminated minority groups.

Andre Brock, 2009 ‘Life On the Wire’, Information, Communication and Society, University of Iowa, USA, vol 12, No 3, pp 344-363 explains how commentators have discussed perceptions of racial identity through the influence of authenticity which is said to be the ‘engine driving the blog posts, the comments and the website itself.’ It also discusses how race and culture especially in American media were represented through the four elements naming environment, culture, Internet and audience which helps people in reality relate to other peoples views on race. Now that popular culture speaks more about this ‘cyborg’ which is known as ‘ a living organism with Biological and machine components,’ it has been noticed that race representations may alter. In Brooks opinion, the Internet is constrained by values of individualism and articulations of colour-blind ideology, which allows us to consider that opinions of race may diminish as technology increases due to a people’s hidden identity.

John A Bargh and Katelyn Y.A. McKenna, 2004, ‘The Internet and Social Life’, Annual Review of Psychology, New York University explores the continuously increasing interaction of humans on a computer. A human can also relate themselves to a cyborg if they spend a lot of their time on a computer, they become one with a machine. So communication over a computer, via msn, facebook or even skype can categorize you as a cyborg. How does this change representations of race? An example in this article discusses that in California, 13 year olds use their computers as an essential. They use it to contact school friends, hand in homework and so on. Does society realise the consequences this may have on relationship development, group participation and race? Computer mediated communication is of coarse not conducted face to face and as McKenna says ‘ with the loss of facial expressions, tone of voice, physical attractiveness, skin, colour, gender and so on, it can affect the outcome of our social interaction. McKenna also uses an example of people meeting and forming relationships online, where studies revealed that people were better able to express their ‘true self’. The progressive cyborg figure in this case being a human connecting to another human through a computer creates a powerful effect on social identity. Race, or skin colour cannot be identified, and therefore racial discourses may fade away. People may choose to get to know someone through speaking to them because of similarities in their online profiles, rather than judging them due to their skin colour. Kang suggests that ‘one potential benefit of internet is to disrupt the reflexive operations of racial stereotypes, as racial anonymity is much easier to maintain online than offline.’

Geert Lovink, 2005 ‘Talking Race and Cyberspace’ an interview with Lisa Nakamura, journal of Woman studies, University of Nebraska Press, vol 26, No 1, is a discussion with an Internet scholar, who strongly believes that race still occurs over the Internet. Lovink discusses with Lisa, the merits of ‘internet research’ relating to racist patterns that emerge out of new media studies. Lisa claims that the ‘net is as racist as the societies that it stems from’ and goes on to say that the internet made some identities ‘unavailable, some unavoidable and otherwise served to police and limit the kinds of ways that people could define themselves.’ In these articles I like to use my example of a cyborg as a human interconnecting with a computer as it is easily relatable. In this case, Nakamura assumes that the target market of Internet is normally a White American, but in later dates this has not really been the case. In a circumstance where it is ‘assumed’ that most internet users are white Americans, we can commonly presume that minority groups forming blogs or chat rooms over the net may feel racially discriminated. So, even though identities are difficult to distinguish online, people tend to have a habit of associating with others of a similar interest, and this may in fact cause even more of a segregation in race. This, as Nakamura describes is known as the ‘Digital divide’.

Lisa Nakamura, 2002, ‘Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity’ Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, New York is a well-known book discussing race on the Internet. “The internet is where race happens.” Nakamura says and she believes it is important to recognise this. I am using this reference to reflect the way race is represented when popular culture takes up the cyborg as a figure of progress, as it identifies what happened to race when we go online, and how our ideas of race, ethnicity and identity continue to be shaped and reshaped every time we log on. It mentions how in 2001, the internet lacked people of colour, but now, the internet is popular among many groups of different backgrounds, cultures and races. It has now been said that ‘cyber culture offers a way to escape gender, race and class as conditions of social interaction. The increased communication through computers will in fact hide opinions of race as people can create their profiles according to their own wants and needs. This allows others to communicate with them even if their online profile differs from that in reality.

Braun, Michele,2010 "Cyborgs and clones : production and reproduction of posthuman figures in contemporary British literature". English Dissertations fits referencing the question regarding cyborgs being taken up as a figure of progress, and how this can change representations of race as it discusses how cyborgs or clones of humans demonstrate and highlight the nature of human identity. In this case it argues the ‘importance of the post human’ and claims it is not portrayed a potential utopian or dystopian future or change for the human, but in fact draws attention back to how we define ourselves as human. After all, today’s world is filled with humans being ‘bettered’ through plastic surgeries, contact lens’s, heart transplants and so on. If all this can better a human, surely race, can be diminished. If our world consisted of cyborgs, which in this book are regarded as ‘bettered humankind’ then I would suggest that it would be possible to see racial tensions disappear. But of coarse it is not as simple as this and from reading all the above articles, there is definitely different ways to look at how race can be represented if our world progressively consisted of more and more cyborgs.