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The manipulation of ideology via technology remains one of William Burroughs'
best contributions to the study of media and culture. While Race in Cyberspace
opens up discussion on the lack of ethnic representation online, the argument leaves little
room for any other discussion of what to do now. Is the goal to increase representation?
How does one do that? And what does that solve? Will racism be eliminated? Or is such
a belief a return to the utopian fantasy of cyberspace as liberator that this book critiques
at great length? Or is the goal to learn from the strategies put
forth both by cultural studies (like Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style, a study of the ways
British youth recontextualize cultural signs) and by media studies (Marshall McLuhan's
notion that form is more important than content) so that we can better
understand the relationships between digital culture and the racial, gendered, and class bodies
that create such a culture?
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