[iDC] Gender, Race, and Ethnicity

["Ana L. Valdés"]

Hi and thanks Trebor for such a harvest of interesting links and research!
I am myself a hybrid between academy and creation, have done studies in 
Social Anthropology and I am a writer with ten or twelve books published.
Since I am born in South America, Uruguay, but live in Sweden since many 
years and speaks Spanish and Swedish, a "mayor" language and a "minor" 
language, I started early to examine the relationship between English 
nativespeaker and we "the Others" in cyberspace and elsewhere.
Language is today as much a gap as gender, race and class. People who 
don't master the intellectual academic lingo are not welcome as 
interlocutors in the virtual salons.
The abscence of common  references alienate researchers, artists and 
activists who don't use the hegemonic language to express themselves, 
the same can also be applied to academics or to writers. The French 
magazine "Herodote" published an issue some years ago dedicated to the 
languages, it was called "Les langues megalomans" (The Megalomaniac 
Languages) and was  dedicated to the studie of the power relation 
between the Imperial languages and the minority languages, French, 
Spanish and English and all the colonized world speaking the language of 
the old colonial metropolis.
Coco Fuscos book "English is Broken here" it's a interesting reflection 
about how English has been transformed to a lingua franca equivalent to 
the Latin in the Middle Ages.
I have a vaste bibliography I can share: "Race in Cyberspace", edited by 
Beth Kolko and Lisa Nakamura, Routledge
"Africans on Stage", studies on Ethnological Show Business, edited by 
Bernth Lindfors, Indiana University Press
"English is Broken here", Coco Fusco, New Press
"Mother Tongues", Sexuality, Trials, Motherhood, Translation, Barbara 
Johnson, Harvard University Press
"With other eyes", Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture, edited 
by Lisa Bloom, University of Minnesotta Press
"Exhibiting Cultures", The poetics and politics of Museum  Display, ed 
by Ivarn Karp and Steven Levine, Smithsonian Institute
"Exotics at Home", Anthropology, Others, American Modernity, Micaela di 
Leonardo,
University of Chicago Press
"The Digital Divide", editor Benjamin Compaine, MIT press

Ana


Trebor Scholz skrev:
> Discussions about race in the university all too often assume inherent
> racialized research interests. African American scholars  are frequently
> expected to have an Afro-centric subject position,  a set of
> fascinations that directly corresponds to Africa. 
>
> In U.S. academia Chinese Americans are all too often thought of as 
> experts on Chinese art. How about a Chinese scholar whose intellectual
> passion is German folk dance? What about an African American who
> finds herself drawn to Japanese music?
>
> At new media events the near absence of minorities is often defended
> with a small number of visible minority artist theorists in the field.
> Such a lazy attitude that simply refuses to look harder, is inexcusable.
> A lack of curatorial effort is many times also reflected in the
> under-representation of women in new media conferences and media art
> exhibitions. Some slow progress needs to be acknowledged (see below).  
>
> Another often stated argument is that of quality. ³We only care about
> quality and competence-- we don¹t concern ourselves with racial
> backgrounds.² In a deeply pluralistic cultural context it would be naive
> to think that our socialization is devoid of racial, ethnic, or
> class-related notions and prejudices.  Equally, we cannot be fully aware
> of this conditioning. Notions of quality and accomplishment are not
> formed in a social vacuum. None of this is surprising or new. None of
> this suggests any moral high ground. However, these questions have to be
> posed over and over again.
>  
> It¹d be great if people on this list could expand on the following
> references. 
>
> Nils Zurawski, excerpt from: Virtual Ethnicity. Studies on Identity,
> Culture and the Internet.
> <http://www.uni-muenster.de/PeaCon/zurawski/veengl.html>
>
> Where am I and who are 'we'?: Self-representation and the intersection
> of gender and ethnicity on the Web by Linda Leung
> <http://www.firstmonday.dk/Issues/issue8_10/leung/index.html>
>
> The writings of Lisa Nakamura including:
> Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet 	
> <http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/syllabi/readings/nakamura.html>
>
> Where are the African Women bloggers?
> <http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks/2005/02/last_weekthere_.html>
>
> Race in Cyberspace Exhibition
> <http://www.annenberg.edu/race/>
>
> Gender, Race and Ethnicity in Media
> Cyberspace
> <http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/resources/GenderMedia/cyber.html>
>
> Provocative discussion starters:
>
> Black People love us
> <http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/>
>
> Racial Profiling on Google
> <http://www.orcmagazine.com/Google_Your_Race/>
>
> Blackness for Sale on ebay
> <http://obadike.tripod.com/ebay.html>
>
> -Trebor
>
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