Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality

by Kate O'Riordan, David J. Phillips

Overview

This collection draws together contemporary research into queer theory and practices, as they intersect with new media and communication technologies. It provides a synthesis of critical debates in these fields followed by empirical analyses of current and historical internet activities. These include, among others, a study of changing leathersex identities as meeting spaces moved from bars to online chat rooms, an investigation of the dynamics of racial identity as social sites moved from text-based to visually-based media and the tensions between community and audience identities inherent in commercial affinity portals.
The chapters investigate the relations between the technical, legal and industrial organization of online media and the queer practices that they facilitate. While scholarly and theoretically rigorous, its rich empirical detail makes Queer Online vital reading for activists and members of queer communities, in the academy and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820486260
Publisher:	Peter Lang Publishing Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2007
Series:	Digital Formations Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

The Editors: Kate O’Riordan is Lecturer in Media and Film Studies at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Her research interests center on the intersections of sexualized and gendered bodies and information and bio technologies.
David J. Phillips is Associate Professor of Information Studies at the University of Toronto. He studies the political economy and social shaping of information and communication technologies, especially technologies of visibility, identification and surveillance.

Table of Contents

Contents: Larry Gross: Foreword – Kate O’Riordan/David J. Phillips: Introduction – Kate O’Riordan: Queer Theories and Cybersubjects: Intersecting Figures – David J. Phillips/Carolyn Cunningham: Queering Surveillance Research – Irmi Karl: On-/Offline: Gender, Sexuality, and the Techno-Politics of Everyday Life – Nathan Rambukkana: Taking the Leather Out of Leathersex: The Internet, Identity, and the Sadomasochistic Public Sphere – Marjo Laukkanen: Young Queers Online: The Limits and Possibilities of Non-Heterosexual Self-Representation in Online Conversations – Adi Kuntsman: Belonging through Violence: Flaming, Erasure, and Performativity in Queer Migrant Community – Shaka McGlotten: Virtual Intimacies: Love, Addiction, and Identity @ The Matrix – Andil Gosine: Brown to Blonde at Gay.Com: Passing White in Queer Cyberspace – Debra Ferreday/Simon Lock: Computer Cross-Dressing: Queering the Virtual Subject – Christy Carlson: Is This because I’m Intertextual? Law and Order, Special Victims Unit and Queer Internet Fan Production – John Edward Campbell: Virtual Citizens or Dream Consumers: Looking for Civic Community on Gay.Com – Sharif Mowlabocus: Life Outside the Latex: HIV, Sex, and the Online Barebacking Community.

Editorial Reviews

«This richly textured, multi-sited collection explores the micropolitics and cultural realities of sex, gender and queer bodies/identities as they are mediated through new information and communications technologies. In articulating the specificities of queer(ing) technopractices on the worldwide web and off, the authors explore the limits and transformative possibilities of cyber/queer theorizing and practice to date. This book will be an invaluable resource for students of queer theory and of cultural and critical technology studies, both separately and in their generative/disruptive intersections.» (Lucy Suchman, Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, United Kingdom)

«This richly textured, multi-sited collection explores the micropolitics and cultural realities of sex, gender and queer bodies/identities as they are mediated through new information and communications technologies. In articulating the specificities of queer(ing) technopractices on the worldwide web and off, the authors explore the limits and transformative possibilities of cyber/queer theorizing and practice to date. This book will be an invaluable resource for students of queer theory and of cultural and critical technology studies, both separately and in their generative/disruptive intersections.» (Lucy Suchman, Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, United Kingdom)

From the Publisher