ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the understudied subject of ethnic groups' cultural self-expression on the Internet. It investigates the ways in which this expression, simultaneously taking advantage of and shaped by digital and cyber technologies, helps groups construct their images and identities not only alongside but in tension with, and sometimes even in conspiracy with, the authoritative discourse of ethnic identity. The chapter examines a variety of Internet cultural events in which ethnic minorities assume the role of subjects – subjects perhaps best understood in the Althusserian sense of ideological interpellation. Chinese ethnicity is one of the most dynamic fields in China studies. In the specific sociocultural space of the Internet, Mandarin Chinese has been playing a more important role than ethnic languages, for better or worse, in shaping the cultural scene thus far. The Internet contributes little to promoting thematic or formal experimentations for ethnic online literary and cultural works, in contrast to its flexibility for ethnic groups' Han counterparts.
