DR Cover Review of Digitizing Race by Lisa Nakamura


Overview

Introduction:
Digital Racial Formations

Chapter 1:

"Ramadan is Almoast Here"

Chapter 2:
Alllooksame

Chapter 3:
The Social Optics of Race

Chapter 4:
Avatars and Visual Culture

Chapter 5:
Measuring Race on the Internet

Epilogue:
Racio-Visual Logic

Conclusions on Digitizing Race

Notes

 

The Internet is a visual technology, a protocol for seeing that is interfaced and networked in ways that produce a particular set of racial formations. (Nakamura’s emphasis)(p. 202)

Though it is the shortest segment of the book by far, the Epilogue of Digitizing Race is a beautiful take-away, encapsulating the essential ideas of the book free of the detailed case studies and interpretations. By hitting briefly on her different examples and evidence while returning to the idea of visual cultural studies, Nakamura leaves her readers with a short piece that could be viewed as an essay and used as a guide to deploy her method of critiquing and researching the Internet. It references the key theorists Nakamura uses and summarizes in concise ways her key ideas about the Internet as a visual culture.