Latin American Identity in Online Cultural Production
This book is an original contribution to an exciting new field and provides a grounding for cybercultural studies in the historical framework of Latin American cultural studies as well as in Anglo-American cybercultural critical discourses.
Scott Weintraub, The University of New Hampshire
Taylor and Pitman, the leading scholars in this subject, have given a new epistemological look at Latin American culture and its lettered citizensincluding USA Latinidadby acknowledging and analyzing the (frequently contestatory) cybernetic turn in the region. No study like this has been attempted before and it is a long overdue approach within Latin American Cultural Studies. Scholars, students, and generalist readers will find extremely engaging each of the chapters covering the interplay between cultural products/practices and the cyber condition of our times. This superbly researched book is the necessary cartographical guide to navigate the reimagined/ remediated identity in Latin America.
Luis Correa-Daz, University of Georgia
This volume provides an innovative and timely approach to a fast growingyet still under-studiedfield in Latin American cultural production: online digital culture. It focuses on the transformations or continuations that cultural products and practices such as hypermedia fictions, net.art and online performance art, as well as blogs, films, databases, and other genre-defying web-based projects, perform with respect to Latin American(ist) discourses, as well as their often contestatory positioning with respect to Western hegemonic discourses as they circulate online. The intellectual rationale for the volume is located at the crossroads of two equally important theoretical strands: theorisations of digital culture, in their majority the product of the anglophone academy; and contemporary debates on Latin American identity and culture.
Claire Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Liverpool, UK.
Thea Pitman is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds, UK.
Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture
1 Cyberpop
Digital Lifestyles and Commodity Culture
Sidney Eve Matrix
2 The Internet in China
Cyberspace and Civil Society
Zixue Tai
3 Racing Cyberculture
Minoritarian Art and Cultural Politics on the Internet
Christopher L. McGahan
4 Decoding Liberation
The Promise of Free and Open Source Software
Samir Chopra and Scott D. Dexter
5 Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific
Edited by Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan
6 Virtual English
Queer Internets and Digital Creolization
Jillana B. Enteen
7 Disability and New Media
Katie Ellis and Mike Kent
8 Creating Second Lives
Community, Identity and Spatiality as Constructions of the Virtual
Edited by Astrid Ensslin and Eben Muse
9 Mobile Technology and Place
Edited by Gerard Goggin and Rowan Wilken
10 Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games
Analyzing Words, Design, and Play
Christopher A. Paul
11 Latin American Identity in Online Cultural Production
Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman
First published 2013
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2013 Taylor & Francis
The right of Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pitman, Thea.
Latin American identity in online cultural production / Thea Pitman,
Claire Taylor.
p. cm. (Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Information technologyLatin America. 2. Digital mediaLatin America. I. Taylor, Claire, 1972 II. Title.
T58.5.P494 2012
303.4833098dc23
2012032777
ISBN: 978-0-415-51744-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-06913-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
We would like to dedicate this volume to Sylvia Taylor, John Taylor, Maureen Pitman and Leonard Pitman
Contents
Plates
1.1 Brian Mackern, netart latino database, opening screen.
1.2 Praba Pilar, Cyberlabia 2 digital print.
1.3 Praba Pilar, Cyberlabia 8 digital print.
2.1 Marina Zerbarini, Tejido de memoria, opening screen.
2.2 Marina Zerbarini, Tejido de memoria, cycle of images.
3.1 Jaime Alejandro Rodrguez, Gabriella infinita, opening screen.
3.2 Jaime Alejandro Rodrguez, Gabriella infinita, Mudanza.
3.3 Beln Gache, WordToys, Southern Heavens.
4.1 Guillermo Gmez-Pea, The Chica-Iranian Project: Orientalism Gone Wrong in Aztln, Kurdish Llorona.
4.2 Guillermo Gmez-Pea, The New Barbarians, En el hall del genocidio.
4.3 Guillermo Gmez-Pea, The New Barbarians, Piedad Post-colonial.
4.4 Martha Patricia Nio, Relational Border Map, opening screen.
5.1 Guillermo Gmez-Pea, Ethno-Techno: A Virtual Museum of Radical Latino Imagery and Fetishized Identities, photograph of El Ethnographic Loco.
5.2 Los Cybrids (Ren Garcia, John Jota Leaos and Praba Pilar) Webopticon: Sistema de vigilancia digital mural.
5.3 Los Cybrids (Ren Garcia, John Jota Leaos and Praba Pilar), Humaquina: Manifest Tech-Destiny digital mural.
5.4 Los Cybrids (Ren Garcia, John Jota Leaos and Praba Pilar), screen from opening sequence of website.
5.5 Alex Rivera, Cybracero Systems, opening screen.
5.6 Alex Rivera, Cybracero Systems, How to Node Up.
6.1 Fran Ilich, possibleworlds.org logo, from opening screen.
Acknowledgments
Throughout the research and planning of this volume we have been fortunate to count on the support and advice of many friends and colleagues who have helped and inspired us along the way. We would like to thank all those who have helped us to access information, given us the benefit of their advice and knowledge of subjects far beyond our own disciplinary and area studies context, read early drafts of this work at various stages, or have inspired us with their comments and feedback on papers given pertaining to this project. These friends and colleagues include Victoria Barr, Debra Castillo, Luis Correa Daz, Stephanie Dennison, Charles Forsdick, David Frier, Chris Harris, Kirsty Hooper, Geoffrey Kantaris, Par Kumaraswami, Hctor Perea, Lisa Shaw, Kim Stringer, Emma Tomalin, Carlos Ux, Youxuan Wang, Frances Weightman, Scott Weintraub, and the anonymous readers at Routledge. We would also like to express our gratitude to the cultural producers whose work we have analysed in this volume, both for their time and patience in answering our queries and allowing us to cite them, and for their generosity in allowing us to reproduce images of their work; to Beln Gache, Ren Garcia, Guillermo Gmez-Pea, the
