Overview

Figures of Fantasy explores the popularization of the idea of the Internet as a cyberspace and considers the implications this has for discussions of gender and identity. The book analyzes the standard figures used to conceptualize and explain technology and gender, and traces the ways in which these concepts have served to create the figure of the Internet as a cyberspace - a manner of thinking that has come to dominate Internet research internationally, making visible its historicity, limitations, and implications. Figures of Fantasy offers an innovative theoretical approach to Internet research, and provides a highly original, systematic critique of the canonical works in the field.

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9780820476070

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Reviews

Susanna Paasonen has written a very smart book about how figures of cyborgs and cyberspace have been used and misused to advance or obfuscate feminist discourse on technology. Her analyses organize and conceptualize as well as demystify a web of confusion until a discursive map pops into shape. Paasonen is not a weaver of cyberfantasies but rather Ariadne unraveling a thread that guides us through the labyrinth by telling us where we have been. Her critiques bite in a way that is provocative rather than silencing, inviting us to make fresh statements that will guide us where we want to go. (Margaret Morse, Professor of Film and Digital Media, University of California Santa Cruz)

Author Information

The Author: Susanna Paasonen is Assistant Professor of Digital Culture at University of Jyvaeskylae, and Adjunct Professor of Media Culture at University of Tampere, Finland. She received her Ph.D. in media studies from the University of Turku, Finland. She has published on Internet research, popular culture, and feminist theory, and together with Mia Consalvo she is the editor of Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency & Identity (Lang, 2002).

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