Becoming User: Oracle, Barbara Gordon, and Representations of the User in Popular Culture

IF 0.1 3区艺术学 0 FILM, RADIO, TELEVISION

CAMERA OBSCURA Pub Date : 2023-12-01 DOI:10.1215/02705346-10772617

Zara Dinnen

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This essay considers the figure of the “user” as an emergent subject of late twentieth-century US culture, in relation to the World Wide Web and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. The user is a subject position that is historical in the sense that use relations have always determined social formations within capitalism, but it has been newly energized in contemporary modes of capitalism after digital computing, and newly weighted in contemporary renderings of the nation-state as service provider. This essay turns to a cultural moment in which a privatized user subject was coming into formation, using comic books of this moment to find the user figure and its stories. The DC Comics archive might not seem the most likely place to find answers to these concerns. But superhero origin stories are always about becoming user in late capitalist imaginaries. Superheroes learn to use their histories to reproduce the world they want. The then newly inaugurated DC Comics character Oracle, aka Barbara Gordon (formerly Batgirl), is becoming a wheelchair user and a computer user. Reading Oracle's 1990s user origin stories, this essay attends to scenes of wheelchair and computer use to work out a theory of user history and user time emerging in 1990s US culture. The comics reveal that the process of becoming user is always intersecting with the processes of becoming a racialized, gendered, classed, (dis)abled subject. They also open up the possibility for other affordances: becoming user as a process which can be torqued in its unfolding.

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成为用户：甲骨文、芭芭拉-戈登和大众文化中的用户形象

本文结合万维网和 1990 年《美国残疾人法案》，探讨了 "用户 "作为 20 世纪晚期美国文化新兴主体的形象。从使用关系一直决定着资本主义社会形态的意义上讲，用户是一种历史性的主体地位，但在数字计算之后的当代资本主义模式中，它又被赋予了新的活力，在民族国家作为服务提供者的当代呈现中，它又被赋予了新的分量。本文转向私有化用户主体即将形成的文化时刻，利用这一时刻的漫画书来寻找用户形象及其故事。DC 漫画档案似乎不是最有可能找到这些问题答案的地方。但在晚期资本主义的想象中，超级英雄的起源故事总是与成为用户有关。超级英雄学会利用自己的历史来再现他们想要的世界。当时新上任的DC漫画人物甲骨文，又名芭芭拉-戈登（前蝙蝠女），正在成为一名轮椅使用者和电脑使用者。通过阅读甲骨文在 20 世纪 90 年代的用户起源故事，本文对轮椅和电脑的使用场景进行了分析，从而提出了 20 世纪 90 年代美国文化中出现的用户历史和用户时间理论。这些漫画揭示了成为用户的过程总是与成为种族化、性别化、阶级化、（失）能主体的过程交织在一起。这些漫画还为其他承受能力提供了可能性：成为用户是一个可以在其展开过程中被扭曲的过程。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

CAMERA OBSCURA FILM, RADIO, TELEVISION-

CiteScore

0.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Since its inception, Camera Obscura has devoted itself to providing innovative feminist perspectives on film, television, and visual media. It consistently combines excellence in scholarship with imaginative presentation and a willingness to lead media studies in new directions. The journal has developed a reputation for introducing emerging writers into the field. Its debates, essays, interviews, and summary pieces encompass a spectrum of media practices, including avant-garde, alternative, fringe, international, and mainstream. Camera Obscura continues to redefine its original statement of purpose. While remaining faithful to its feminist focus, the journal also explores feminist work in relation to race studies, postcolonial studies, and queer studies.