Homepage Nationalisms

This chapter interrogates the so-called “problematic of homepage nationalisms” in analyses of online media. It argues that the problematic is produced through normative ideas about online media as “global” (which all too often is synonymous with “American”) technologies and cultural nationalism as a quintessentially immigrant or diasporic concern. It examines the politics underwriting the categorization of the global Web and digital diasporas, and links it to the continued undertheorization of “home” in home pages. Using the example of curry as a metaphor for the presence of Indian immigrants in the American software industry, the chapter demonstrates how reading race in narratives that are ostensibly about transnational migration can illuminate the nuances of belonging or being an outsider in the immigrant experience. An interdisciplinary approach that engages the question of “home” at the intersections of race, class, and gender can therefore help redefine the equation between nation and diaspora in examinations of digital diasporas, and help pose the question of nation more purposefully in discussion of the global Web.