Now showing: The Hegemony of the Visual
'The Historiography of Cyberculture' in
2006. Critical Cyberculture Studies, New York: New York University Press, p17-28
The Hegemony of the Visual
Sterne's essay draws attention to the primacy that the visual is given when cyberculture theorists discuss ideas about virtuality. Just as the discipline expresses some solipsism by refering to 'technology' when it means 'digital technology' (thereby conflating and telescoping the whole of human history into the last few decades), they also (forgive the pun) demonstrate a myopia when it comes to thinking about the part that sound has played in creating virtaul worlds. Sterne mentions the invention of the stethoscope as a analogous case which we might usefully refer to when considering how the virtual is represented.
Why is this important? Well Sterne is interested in how cyberculture theorists and historians define their subject. By talking about 'technology' they are lazy and vague; by refering to the Internet, they presuppose that in 20 years time there will still be something we call the Internet (how can we be sure?); and by concentrating on the visual, they similarly place limitations on the discipline itself which proscribe possible avenues of research.
Sterne refers to Bordieu's interest in how social science 'constructs its object' - and when a discipline becomes established, many mediocre academics then unthinkingly colonise the field. It is the approach of the people who break the boundaries of disciplines (the pathfinders like Haraway and Turkle) that we should model - not merely the subject areas they uncover.