By the mid 20th century there were a number of structural theories of human existence. In the study of language, the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) suggested that meaning was to be found within the structure of a whole language rather than in the analysis of individual words. For Marxists, the truth of human existence could be understood by an analysis of economic structures. Psychoanalysts attempted to describe the structure of the psyche in terms of an unconscious.

Post-Structuralism is a late 20th Century movement in philosophy and literary criticism, which is difficult to summarize but which generally defines itself in its opposition to the popular Structuralism movement which preceded it in 1950s and 1960s France. It is closely related to Post-Modernism, although the two concepts are not synonymous.

FOLK-MUSIC is, of course, merely one of the numerous branches of Folk-lore. It is, however, a very large and important one, so important indeed that it has been found convenient to found a special association—The Folk-song Society—for its investigation. It would, however, be a great mistake to overlook the close connection between the two societies, and it would be a thousand pities if they were to remain entirely separate, each pursuing its own work independently of the other.

In this article, the author presents findings based on her research on BlueSky, an online interactive textbased forum. She discusses BlueSky participants' online performances of gendered and raced identities. Participants interpret their own and others' identities within the context of expectations and assumptions derived from offline U.S. culture, as well as from their membership in various computer-related subcultures. Given the predominance of white men on BlueSky, such identity interpretations also rely on expectations concerning masculinity and whiteness. The author explores BlueSky participants' understandings of themselves as “nerds” and considers the implications of this nerd identity for their relationship to hegemonic masculinity, especially to expectations of heterosexuality. Analyzing online identity performances in this way provides information pertaining not just to online interaction but to a better understanding of the social construction of gendered and raced identities more generally.

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