Kali Tal
scholar, editor, author
author, artist, activist
Category Archives: Book review
A review of Wendy Harcourt (ed), women@internet: Creating New Cultures in Cyberspace (2001)
Originally published by the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies in March 2001. RCCS archives vanished from the net sometime in the 2010s. Publisher: London: Zed Books, 1999 women@internet is unique among cyberculture texts, offering us a look at the ways in which feminists working within non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are using the Internet to connect Third…
A review of Julian Dibbell’s My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World (1999)
My Tiny Life is mostly about sexual temptation. Early in the book Dibbell announces that his problem with his current real life relationship is that he can’t seem to make a commitment to his lover. His MOO adventures take place in a sort of liminal state — the space between boyhood and manhood, irresponsibility and assumption of duty. His progress (like any pilgrim’s) is interrupted by a series of temptations including the thrill of gender-swapping and netsex.
A Review of Lisa Nakamura’s Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (NY: Routledge) 2002.
The best postmodern explorations are well grounded in theory and in history, even as they attempt to demonstrate the inevitable failure of the metanarrative and to replace it with a succession of reflective surfaces and simulacrae. But Nakamura’s Cybertypes regards theory and method as a set of interchangeable parts that can be put to her purpose without regard to the original context in which they evolved—a strategy that can fairly be regarded as the theoretical equivalent to the “identity tourism” that Nakamura critiques.