The triumph of profiling: the self in digital culture

Abstract

monopolized and skewed infrastructures of control. Supplementing the depth of these situated case studies is the book’s menagerie of interconnections. Theoretically, Kumar draws from a poststructuralist tradition situated between Deleuze and Foucault, contemporary internet studies scholarship, and a postcolonial canon including Said, Spivak and Bhabha, weaving these together seamlessly. Contemporary scholarship that is critical of the possibility of a truly equal internet, however, is the one underexplored terrain of the book. One of the implicit assumptions gestured to in the conclusion is that, all critiques aside, the world benefits from a universal network such as the internet. Kumar argues against internet balkanization, suggesting that ‘the way forward is to more fully embrace the global plurality rather than erase it through making participation mandatory on conditions that are cultural, social and political’ (p. 211). The book would benefit from a more thorough engagement with this idea of a balkanized internet, even if it were to come to the same conclusion. Without this perspective, a certain cyberoptimism, one that endorses ‘visions of a plural, more globally representative web’ (p. 211) feels like too easy a solution. For the interested reader, the best use of this book is to use it as a thorough and intricately woven postcolonial critique of disparate yet ultimately Americanist strands of internet studies scholarship. Kumar’s deft and creative linkages carve out a space for postcolonial critique in the field of internet studies, introducing a productive faultline that future scholars of the digitalscape must contend with.