Edited by Anna Poletti and Julie Rak
Publisher: The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison
Year: 2014
Review by: Supriya Prasanta
Digital culture and digital publishing have affected the art of printing, writing, and reading in various ways. Social networking sites and the world wide web offers a space which is easily accessible to all. The growing number of users on social networking sites, blogs and personal websites has led to a radical change the way people used to communicate with each other and construct their identities. The scope of this virtual space is immense, and users are manipulating it for various purposes.
Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online explores the manners in which identity is constructed on the digital media. Philippe Lejeune’s ‘Autobiography and New Communication Tools’ (translated by Katherine Durnin) examines how new digital communication tools have changed the form and content of autobiography and how we perceive our identity. The author shows printing was the technological development that helped in the growth of autobiography as a distinct genre. He describes the two key features of the new digital communication tools: fusion that refers to the combination of writing with sound and images, and speed that changes how we perceive time and space. The essay also explores the impact of the new digital communication tools on personal diaries, correspondence, and autobiography.
In ‘Virtually Me: A Toolbox about Online Self-Presentation’, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson propose a framework for future research on online identities. They offer a toolkit that includes fifteen concepts listed in an alphabetical order. These concepts are: (1) Archive and Database, (2) Audiences, (3) Authenticity, (4) Automediality, (5) Avatars, (6) Branding, (7) Confession Online, (8) Ethics, (9) Global Circuits, (10) Identity Online, (11) Memory, (12) Paratexts and Parasites, (13) Self: Computational or Quantified, (14) User-Authored and/ or Protocol-Driven Sites, (15) Temporality.
Cyberrace, another chapter by Lisa Nakamura, focuses on the early days of Internet user-communities and discusses the concept of identity tourism and its implications. The author argues that Identity tourism gives users an illusion of cultural understanding that is based on an episodic and technologically mediated experience. She illustrates the point with the example of a Reality TV show in Vietnam and shows how online identities are characterised by the same racial stereotypes that characterize off line identities. In an insightful chapter titled, ‘Beyond Anonymity or Future Directions for Internet Identity Research’, Helen Kennedy maps the field of internet identity research and examines the concept of anonymity.
Now a major concern for social scientists as well as scholars of humanities is how technology is changing the dynamics of relationship between spouses. Melissa Gregg in a though-provoking essay, ‘Adulterie Technologies’ writes about the anxieties some Apps exploit and places them into their historical and cultural context. She argues that their development reflects the evolving structure of the workplace and relationships in contemporary society. In the similar vein, ‘Facebook and Coaxed Affordances’, Aime´e Morrison examines the evolution of the Facebook status update function. She points out that although autobiography studies have focused primarily on Facebook’s financial interest in coaxing the status update function over time, it is equally important to explore the value of authoring and reading content for Facebook users. The author argues that users’ practices and authored content are shaped not only by what they are reading on Facebook but also by Facebook’s changing interface design.
In a fascinating essay, ‘Life Bytes: Six-Word Memoir and the Exigencies of Auto/tweetographies, Laurie McNeill describes the online community Six-Word Memoir that allows users to produce and consume lives online. On the website, users respond to the invitation “One life. Six words, What’s yours?” The author argues that the success of this online community is due to a sense of obligation, felt by its members to share thoughts, ideas, events, interests, and experiences with each other.
Olivia Banner’s ‘Treat Us Right! Digital Publics, Emerging Biosocialities, and the Female Complaint,’ explores how female members of the patient networking website, PatientsLikeMe.com record their symptoms, treatments, and affective states. Users of the website are encouraged to share their experiences to help medical research. The site also functions as a support group. The author argues that patient-networking websites operate with the assumptions that users’ identity is reported truthfully and that the users themselves contribute to the advancement of medical research and improvement of patients’ lives.
In ‘Cyber-Self: In Search of a Lost Identity?’, Alessandra Micalizzi discusses the findings of her study on virtual communities for perinatal death mourning in Italy. She describes how members join the group in a time of grief and share their stories, interact with other participants, and later offer words of solace to newcomers before exiting the group when they have come to terms with the loss and pain. The author illustrates how these communities help participants to redefine their identities in a time of crisis in life. The essay ‘Homeless Nation: Producing Legal Subjectivities through New Media’, by Suzanne Bouclin, explores Homeless Nation, a website that has been designed ‘for and by the street community.” Since 2003, this website offers email, blogging, and training in new media technologies such as digital cameras, sound equipment and editing software, to its members. The community is to provide a forum for its users to share their stories and have their voices heard.
In ‘The Blog as an Experimental Setting’, the editors interview social theorist Lauren Berlant. The interview focuses on Berlant’s research blog—Supervalent Thought. It includes questions on her motivation to start the blog, readers’ comments, the relationship between blogs and autobiography, and what ‘counts’ as identity activity.
Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online offers different perspectives on how people construct their identities in the digital space. It is a valuable reference for scholars in the fields of communication, auto/biography, and cultural studies. The interdisciplinary perspective offered in the essays will certainly contribute to our perception of digital space and digital culture.
***