Sarah Kember,
Virtual Anxiety: Photography, New Technologies and Subjectivity.
Manchester University Press, Great Britain, 1998.
ISBN 0 7190 4528 2 (hb)
ISBN 0 7190 4529 0 (pb)
150pp
£45.00 (hb)
£14.99 (pb)

(Review copy supplied by Manchester University Press)
Uploaded 1 March 2000

Kember’s book Virtual Anxiety: Photography, New Technologies and Subjectivity aims to explore the issue of technological change and the stress this change may cause within society. Kember assumes a “socialist and feminist” political attitude, taking the reader through a number of conceptual arenas ranging from the representation of reality through photography and digital imaging, the use of imaging technology in the James Bulger murder case, to the technological anxieties expressed through the image of Frankenstein’s monster and the vampire from Gothic fiction.

Metaphor is often used to describe and explore the new technologies being examined. The metaphors Kember uses connect technology with myth, and then analysis of the technology proceeds through semiotic and psychoanalytical analysis of the myth as a way of revealing the constructed meanings of various new technologies. This approach is conducive to what could be called a “psychoanalysis of society” that seeks to ferret out the nature of the fears and hopes of a society faced with rapid technological change.

Kember’s approach steers clear of the social, political and economic aspects of new technologies as it aims to explore the impacts of the technology as expressed through a psychology of mass society. Consequently, this book does not provide the reader with a structural context for the case studies or the technology it examines, nor does it provide much information about the technologies themselves.

The fifth chapter, for example, uses metaphors of “contagion” and “connectionism” to represent the information society in the 1980s and 1990s respectively. Kember sees the “hacker” (more properly “cracker”) and virus scares of the 1980s as “contagion” wherein information technology is seen as a potential invader, whereas by the 1990s, the prevailing attitude towards information technology was one of connectionism – the realisation of the global village. In this example, Kember is more concerned with an examination of the metaphors than with an examination of cracker culture, so the reader looking for a deeper understanding of the cracker subculture would be better advised to look elsewhere.

At times this book is dense with the language that has become the calling card of cultural studies. As a result, it may be difficult for readers without a background in cultural studies to access much of the information in this work. The chapters each deal with subjects that, once past the language, are individually interesting, but are linked loosely and sometimes dubiously to the overall theme of the book. Of course, this lack of linearity and adherence to a strict narrative structure can itself be seen as a hallmark of post-modern writing.

In summary, Virtual Anxiety adds to the list of books that examine what the myths of the information society reveal about the humanity that creates them, but does not contribute any new insights. It is largely inaccessible to non-cultural studies audiences, and the studies of the emerging technologies are steeped in metaphorical interpretation. This is not necessarily a criticism: for readers looking for a cultural approach to emerging technologies, this book provides some interesting (though not entirely new) insights. However, for those looking for a more conventional discussion of the technologies and their political, social or economic ramifications, Virtual Anxiety is not the ticket.

Sam Hinton