Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture [Paperback]

Mary Flanagan (Editor), Austin Booth (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2002

Most writing on cyberculture is dominated by two almost mutually exclusive visions: the heroic image of the male outlaw hacker and the utopian myth of a gender-free cyberworld. Reload offers an alternative picture of cyberspace as a complex and contradictory place where there is oppression as well as liberation. It shows how cyberpunk's revolutionary claims conceal its ultimate conservatism on matters of class, gender, and race. The cyberfeminists writing here view cyberculture as a social experiment with an as-yet-unfulfilled potential to create new identities, relationships, and cultures.The book brings together women's cyberfiction--fiction that explores the relationship between people and virtual technologies--and feminist theoretical and critical investigations of gender and technoculture. From a variety of viewpoints, the writers consider the effects of rapid and profound technological change on culture, in particular both the revolutionary and reactionary effects of cyberculture on women's lives. They also explore the feminist implications of the cyborg, a human-machine hybrid. The writers challenge the conceptual and institutional rifts between high and low culture, which are embedded in the texts and artifacts of cyberculture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bucking the received wisdom of the wired elite, the authors collected in Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture suggest that when we log on, we take our genders with us. Editors Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth balance penetrating critical theory with examples of fiction from authors like Octavia Butler, Amy Thomson, and C.L. Moore. The mix can be thought-provoking, but requires some quick shifting of mental gears to follow the arguments from essay to fiction and back again.

Exposing some cherished cybermyths as groundless or at least unproven (e.g., identity is less ephemeral than the utopians would have us believe), the anthology also makes a compelling argument simply by its uniqueness: if gender doesn't matter, then why do these writings feel so different from men's writing on cyberculture? Those readers impatient with academic jargon will find some of the theory tiresome, but much is refreshingly clear. --Rob Lightner

From Library Journal

Women writers, many of them lesbian feminists, have begun to explore the relationships between humans and machines. Along the way, they are rethinking how race, class, and gender affect technological change, especially given the growing gap between those with access to equipment and those without it. The entries in Reload 11 pieces of fiction and 17 critical essays assess the ways technology has, or will, affect female life. Take, for example, the notion that cyberspace levels the playing field by allowing users to don whatever identity they choose. According to contributor Lisa Nakamura, "when users are free to choose their own race, all were presumed to be white. And many of those who adopted nonwhite personae turned out to be white male users masquerading as exotic samurai and horny geishas." Chilling as this is, cyberspace remains a positive "place" for many users; writer Sharon Cumberland reminds us that women's chat rooms are often valued precisely because of the anonymity offered. Reload is filled with provocative and often contradictory glimpses into cyberculture. Unfortunately, too much of the collection is steeped in technobabble, rendering it of limited use to a general audience. Recommended for academic libraries and specialized collections only. Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 595 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; 1st edition (April 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262561506
• ISBN-13: 978-0262561501
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #839,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Women, Cyborgs, and Cyberculture, December 30, 2002

By 

Alicia M. Hard "Kestrell" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture (Paperback)

Whether you are merely intrigued by how women are represented in cyberculture, or doing serious research on how women are being affected by technology, this book is a great place to start. Not only does it provide a wide-ranging anthology of the best writing on the subject, including an amazing bibliography (I love bibliographies), but it also includes a number of excerpts from science fiction books portraying women and technology. Not only is this book giving me a lot to think about, it has provided a reading list it will take me quite a while to plough through. Well worth the price and a must for anyone writing seriously about cyberculture or cyberfeminism.