AIN’T I A FILIPINO (WOMAN)?: An Analysis of Authorship/Authority Through the Construction of “Filipina’’ on the Net Emily Noelle lgnacio Loyola University Chicago In this article, I examine the process by which Filipino women’s identity was articu- lated, reified and renegotiated on soc.culture.filipino, a newsgroup community on the Internet that, as a hub, sustains a flux membership of 20,000 registrants. By observing several online debates, I witnessed the process by which members of the diaspora negotiated the meaning of Filipino women’s identity with people in the Philippines and how they attempted to forge a cultural identity for the community itself. In this article, I show that articulated stereotypes of Filipino and Asian women were inti- mately connected to racial empowerment, anti-colonial, and nationalist projects. In doing Internet research, I was able to document the intersection between postcolo- nial studies and computer mediated communication theories on studying identity in flux and was able to analyze the role of the Internet in decentering identities as well as the possibility of dismantling Grand Narratives. MERGl NC COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMU N ICATION A N D POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES Both computer-mediated communication (CMC) and postcolonial scholars analyze the creation and re-creation of identity. Yet, these discourses have not intersected with each other because their reasons for studying identity transformation differ. Scholars who study CMC are generally concerned with how technology will affect traditional social units such as communities and the self (Jones 1995; Baym 1998; Danet 1998).Thus, they often document either the transcendence andlor erasure of traditional identities, and they express a concern that cultural identities will be homogenized because of the cur- rent U.S.-centric nature of the World Wide Web. These scholars show that the Internet can be an arena in which identity can be radically altered because it is a constantly changing arena that transcends not only time zones but also traditional political bound- aries. Most of the focus has been on gender identities as well as on the link between postmodern subjectivities and the Net (Jones 1995; Poster 1995); however, none have shown how people on-line systematically and radically alter national cultures, race, and/or ethnicity. The CMC study that has come closest to engaging postcolonial studies Direct all correspondence to Emily Noelle Ignacio, Loyola University Chicago, Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, 6525 N. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60626; e-mail: eignaci@luc.edu The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 41, Number 4, pages 551-572. Copyright 0 2000 by The Midwest Sociological Society. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, ZOO0 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. ISSN 0038-0253