Critical Digital Studies: A Reader, Second Edition

by Arthur Kroker (Editor), Marilouise Kroker (Editor)

Overview

Since its initial publication, Critical Digital Studies has proven an indispensable guide to understanding digitally mediated culture. Bringing together the leading scholars in this growing field, internationally renowned scholars Arthur and Marilouise Kroker present an innovative and interdisciplinary survey of the relationship between humanity and technology. The reader offers a study of our digital future, a means of understanding the world with new analytic tools and means of communication that are defining the twenty-first century.

The second edition includes new essays on the impact of social networking technologies and new media. A new section – “New Digital Media” – presents important, new articles on topics including hacktivism in the age of digital power and the relationship between gaming and capitalism. The extraordinary range and depth of the first edition has been maintained in this new edition. Critical Digital Studies will continue to provide the leading edge to readers wanting to understand the complex intersection of digital culture and human knowledge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442666719
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	12/11/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	624
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Arthur Kroker is an emeritus professor and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Victoria. He is the director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (PACTAC).

Marilouise Kroker was a feminist scholar, publisher, editor, writer, theorist, and performance artist.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
ARTHUR AND MARILOUISE KROKER

CODE BREAKERS

1. Traumas of Code
   N. KATHERINE HAYLES
2. A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies
   DONNA J. HARAWAY
3. Reframing the Cathedral: Opening the Sources of Technologies and Cultural Assumptions
   SARA DIAMOND
4. Romancing the Anti-body: Lust and Longing in (Cyber)space
   LYNN HERSHMAN LEESON

NEW DIGITAL MEDIA

1. All Bugs Are Shallow: Digital Biopower, Hacker Resistance, and Technological Error in Open-Source Software
   MATTHEW KELLY
2. Contagion Theory: Beyond the Microbe
   TONY D. SAMPSON
3. A Conversation with Spirits inside the Simulation of a Coast Salish Longhouse
   JACKSON 2BEARS
4. Empire@Play: Virtual Games and Global Capitalism
   NICK DYER-WITHEFORD AND GREIG DE PEUTER
5. Archaeologies of Media Art
   JUSSI PARIKKA IN CONVERSATION WITH GARNET HERTZ

TECHNOLOGY, IDENTITY, AND SURVEILLANCE

1. Precision + Guided + Seeing
   JORDAN CRANDALL
2. Understanding Meta-media
   LEV MANOVICH
3. Black Box, Black Bloc
   ALEXANDER R. GALLOWAY
4. Biophilosophy for the 21st Century
   EUGENE THACKER
5. Algebra of Identity: Skin of Wind, Skin of Streams, Skin of Shadows, Skin of Vapour
   D. FOX HARRELL

POLITICS, GENDER, AND RELIGION

INFORMATION AND POWER

1. Communication and Imperialism
   JAMES TULLY
2. Occupology, Swarmology, Whateverology: The City of (Dis)order versus the People’s Archive
   GREGORY SHOLETTE
3. Tell Us What’s Going to Happen: Information Feeds to the War on Terror
   SAMUEL NUNN
4. Grammar of Terrorism: Captivity, Media, and a Critique of Biopolitics
   MICHAEL DARTNELL
5. Virilio’s Apocalypticism
   MARK FEATHERSTONE

GENDER AND SEXUALITY

1. The Cyborg Mother: A Breached Boundary
   JAIMIE SMITH-WINDSOR
2. Haptics, Mobile Handhelds, and Other ‘Novel’ Devices: The Tactile Unconscious of Reading across Old and New Media
   RACHEL C. LEE
3. Becoming Dragon: A Transversal Technology Study
   MICHA CÁRDENAS

RELIGION AND SOCIETY

1. Circuits, Death, and Sacred fiction: The City of Banaras
   MAHESH DAAS
2. Digital Cosmologies: Religion, Technology, and Ideology
   ARTHUR KROKER
3. Technologies of the Apocalypse: The Left Behind Novels and Flight from the Flesh
   STEPHEN PFOHL

CULTURE, ART, AND COMMUNICATION

PERCEPTION

1. The Aura of the Digital
   MICHAEL BETANCOURT
2. When Taste Politics Meets Terror: The Critical Art Ensemble on Trial
   JOAN HAWKINS
3. Distraction and Digital Culture
   WILLIAM BOGARD

PERFORMANCE

1. Metal Performance: humanizing Robots, Returning to Nature, and Camping About
   STEVE DIXON
2. Prosthetic Head: Intelligence, Awareness, and Agency
   STELARC
3. Simulated Talking Machines: Stelarc’s Prosthetic Head
   JULIE CLARKE
4. Slipstreaming the Cyborg
   FRANCESCA DE NICOLÒ IN CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINA MCPHEE

SOUND

1. Black Secret Technology (The Whitey on the Moon Dub)
   JULIAN JONKER
2. Material Memories: Time and the Cinematic Image
   PAUL D. MILLER (DJ SPOOKY)
3. The Turntable
   CHARLES MUDEDE

Bibliography

Contributors

What People are Saying About This

Ricardo Dominguez

“Critical Digital Studies offers sound and well-supported research at the very edge of critical reflection. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker's anthology keeps up with the speed economies of networks not from within the wave but where the waves crash and even at times outruns them.”

From the Publisher

“Critical Digital Studies offers sound and well-supported research at the very edge of critical reflection. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker's anthology keeps up with the speed economies of networks not from within the wave but where the waves crash and even at times outruns them.”

“Arthur and Marilouise Kroker have done a superb job in bringing together the most up-to-date and original scholarship in the field which, as theorists, they have helped to shape. This new edition should be required reading for anyone engaged in digital media research and/or new forms of creative digital practice.”

“The Krokers are more than experts on questions of digital culture; they are leaders in the field who bring an essential, innovative, and irreplaceable perspective to literature in the area.”

Ted Hiebert

“The Krokers are more than experts on questions of digital culture; they are leaders in the field who bring an essential, innovative, and irreplaceable perspective to literature in the area.”

Janine Marchessault

“Arthur and Marilouise Kroker have done a superb job in bringing together the most up-to-date and original scholarship in the field which, as theorists, they have helped to shape. This new edition should be required reading for anyone engaged in digital media research and/or new forms of creative digital practice.”

Editorial Reviews

Arthur and Marilouise Kroker have done a superb job in bringing together the most up-to-date and original scholarship in the field which, as theorists, they have helped to shape. This new edition should be required reading for anyone engaged in digital media research and/or new forms of creative digital practice.”

—Janine Marchessault, Canada Research Chair in Art, Digital Media and Globalization, York University

“The Krokers are more than experts on questions of digital culture; they are leaders in the field who bring an essential, innovative, and irreplaceable perspective to literature in the area.”

—Ted Hiebert, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, Bothell
"Critical Digital Studies offers sound and well-supported research at the very edge of critical reflection. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker's anthology keeps up with the speed economies of networks not from within the wave but where the waves crash and even at times outruns them."—Ricardo Dominguez, Electronic Disturbance Theater

From the Publisher