Response Assignment #5
Posted by kscott on February 28, 2007
Please consider any one or combination of the following questions, utilizing your readings for this week (as well as any others that we’ve discussed that may also be applicable):
- What challenges do these (and other previously read) scholars pose to the postmodern notion that cyberspace enables flight from all of the physical limits and boundaries of the body?
- After considering your readings, do you believe that it is possible to leave one’s body behind when entering cyberspace? Why or why not? What effective arguments do the authors make to support your conclusion?
- In both readings, the words “identity,” “embodiment,” “subjectivity,” and “gender” are frequently utilized. Discuss your understanding of each of these terms and support your understanding of each term by engaging one or more of our assigned texts.
- Looking over the last several readings, describe your understanding of how the theoretical concept of subjectivity has evolved over the past 100 or so years. Are we potentially entering a new era of both the experience and understanding of subjectivity? Why or why not?
- In what ways is both online and real life identity described as a cyclical movement? How does each impact and/or inform the other in this described cycle?
- According to the authors, how do our genders inform our online identities? How might gender reflect our cyberspace identity role choices?
- At one point, one of the authors describes the body as an “absent signifier.” Explain this concept in your own words and provide a (real or fictional) example.
- In what ways might online experiences of “other” identities translate into real life experiences, according to the authors?
- According to the authors, does the postmodern subject have an essential core (gendered) identity? Why or why not? In what way might the subject (with or without an essential core gendered identity) inform or reflect our internet personae?
- In what ways might our real life bodies and/or subjectivities be complicated by our online bodies and/or subjectivities (or lack thereof)?
NOTE: Be sure to reference one or more of the authors, our discussions, and/or other readings to help support your thoughts and conclusions. While personal experience is certainly useful and can serve as an example, do not rely solely on personal experience to support your point/s.
March 5th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Just a thought before my real post.
Does anyone else feel that the assumption that science fiction narratives, and in particular, cyber-punk, can ‘teach us’ is dangerous for the field of study? I feel like its aiding in the creation of an ‘other’ that doesn’t really exist. People writing about this type of person who exists only for their virtual life and would, if they could, live their permanently. Instead of writing internally, which I feel is really important, they write externally about subjects like ‘jacking in’ and ‘living in a virtual world.’ It gives me an uneasy sense that sometimes (not all the time) we find ourselves (in cultural studies, but I feel it here in cyber-culture more) grabbing for depth in the place where it *might* be in the future but *isn’t* right now.
I don’t know If I’ve made sense or not.
March 5th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
All this talk about meat is making me hungry. I understand that all these books are just novels, science fiction. Therefore they are not real. NOT REAL. This seems obvious. So why is there so much talk about leaving the real, “seeping, moist bodies” behind. They cannot be left behind. It is impossible. In the Lupton reading, she mentions hackers and computer nerds, and their unfortunate fate in the looks department. It is those fellows that created cyberspace, and for as long as we live in a greedy, capitalist driven society, they will continue to be around. She also mentions humans “growing reliance” on computers, and that all of the advancements in technology will soon render humans useless. Bullshit. A computer will never be able to pet a dog or blow its nose when it gets a virus. And we just like having sex too much to ever let the human race fall by the waistside to technology. In the present, we need computers, yes, but they need us just the same. We live in a cyclical social order with them, and will a long time, if not forever.
March 5th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
I really liked Lupton’s essay, the main reason being it seemed more rational than the other two; rational in the sense that she was personable and jargon-free. However, I don’t know if I fully agree with some of the stuff she says when she talks about personifying the computer in order to loosen our anxieties of “computerphobia” I understand that she’s referring mainly to adults who have been introduced to this new age rather than grown up with it, but I also believe there’s something very telling about “computerphobia.” I don’t think its only the actual machine that scares people who are not used to such advanced technology, but I think a lot of it has to do with the presumed loss of human contact that comes with the virtual experience. If anything, the phobia comes from the death of human relationships as we know it. I can’t really relate to, say, my grandma and why she and many others are fearful and completely incompetent when it comes to the internet and computers, but I would like to think that it isn’t just because the machine itself is complicated. My assumption is that they grew up in a completely different paradigm of face to face, flesh and bones interaction, and the concept of a machine doing all the communicating, thinking, and, essentially, living for you is incomprehensible. It simply cannot be fathomed, therefore it is feared. The machine part of it is just something tangible that they could use to articulate something that is beyond not just them, but all of us as well.
March 5th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
That made sense in my head, but now after reading it im not so sure. I hope it does..
March 6th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Worthington’s entire article seems to be summing up and explaining how the body is not really left behind in cyberspace like we think. Instead, the body acts like an “absent signifier,” in that subjectivities and influences from the physical body play out in how someone explores new identities in cyberspace. The author of the article uses two science fiction novels to examine its language and understand more of how participants in the virtual world use their bodies. He finds that the body, even as and absent signifier, always somehow translates some part of its embodiment into “cyberspatial terms.” On page 199 the author writes, “the selves [they] project are inflected by similar relationships to and experiences with their bodies. Their bodies help determine how and what they will project online; their bodies help determine their identities, both online and off.”
An example of how this works is the novel Virtual Love. Sam, a female “flipper baby” goes online to free herself from the limitations of her physical body, and here she plays eloquently with different names and identities and feels happy and free. Then she meets Ian, who can see through her constructed identities and questions, or causes her to question who she really is. They both come to find out that they are both flipper babies, and Ian could recognize such unique qualities about Sam because she would notice things in the virtual world that many other people (who have taken their physically able body in real life for granted) wouldn’t pay much attention to. Because someone like Sam may not be able to run, dance, or strut in her physical body, she may act out and appreciate things differently than most with her able body in cyberspace.
This example goes to show how even though the organic body is not present in cyberspace it still carries “meaning and valence” into how the subject creates her/himself.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
I guess the most important question that comes to mind after reading these texts is “What is the concept of *self*.” The context of cyber-space further complicates the question, because if cyberspace does indeed separate the ’self’ from the body, you’ve just proved that there is something floating around inside our bodies (I guess?) that we call ‘the self.’ I had thought this was(which doesn’t mean it was ever said or written, I may have made this up) brought into question since we’ve gotten away from Humanism and Modernism and the notion that there’s some type of human ‘essence’ that separates us from the rest of the creatures on the planet. To me, this is suspect.
I’ve got a feeling that the ’self’ is more of an idealistic notion we create to make us feel better about our behavior in certain situations. ‘I wasn’t acting like myself, so I guess it’s OK.’ Or the more popular “You know me, that isn’t me!” It’s not a real thing, it’s what we wish was real about ourselves (in many cases), so I guess, since the ‘real’ thing is our actual behavior, and the ‘wished’ thing is our ideal and true ’self.’ If you HAVE to call it the ’self’ then I suppose the ’self’ is exactly what you are, right now, in any given moment, and thus, really can never be separated from the body. It’s part of the body.
For my money, the brain, where we intellectualize our ’self’ to reside, is an organ. It’s part of the body, and for right now, it can’t be separated. Whatever occurs within the brain structurally or chemically to construct ‘consciousness’ is something that requires the often (in cyber-punk) talked down ‘meat.’
Worthington, talking of Hayles, says,
“This, one does not leave one’s body when entering cyberspace; instead cyberspace causes changes in the relationship between subjects whatever this is-Alex) and bodies.”
The subject is always connected to the body, but I imagine the connection to be flexible, allowing the feeling of separation while still being connected. As the connection (link) stretches and twists through cyber-space, the feeling, delay, and depth of effects that one would feel on their body changes.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
This idea of leaving the body behind is absolutely ridiculous to me. No matter how connected you become with the virtual you are always going to remain in the ‘real’ body. This obsession with escapism is going to be the demise of the human race. Until we accept our gender, race and physical attributes we will continue to search for a new way to identify ourselves that will always remain a temporary fix. For example, the protagonist in “Virtual Love” found a temporary relief from her inabilities through the virtual identities she had created. By creating a mask she felt that she could “completely leave behind her real time self and her actual physical body.” Entering into these virtual spaces is only a partial escape of the real. Without the physical body there would never be an avatar or virtual self. What you experience in the real helps to create what you become in the virtual. What you may lack in the real you try to attain in the virtual. I think what many virtual players forget is that these characters exhibit their real personalities. Your virtual body is given opportunities that may not have been offered to you in the real but it doesn’t allow for a whole new you. It allows for you to avoid disturbances, financial burdens, physical ailments, and social restraints. Without the physical body and the real you would never deal with these so called problems. The negative is needed to experience the positive; one would never exist without the other. Yet people continue to try to escape the negatives of the real.
The physical body also becomes weak throughout ongoing connection to the virtual world. The human body needs to be cared for and when we “jack in” to cyberspace we neglect ourselves. In Lupton’s essay she speaks about the hacker’s body. Their bodies are not sharp or defined their unattractive, overweight and pale, a body that exhibits no sense of respect for its well being. Hackers or computer nerd’s were described as addicts. As any addict, the computer addict has a lack of self decency. All addicts are tying to disconnect from existing in the real, and their ‘drug’ allows them the ability to enter a utopian world. One thing that is extremely important to remember is if we let our physical beings deteriorate there will be no world, virtual or real.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
What challenges do these (and other previously read) scholars pose to the postmodern notion that cyberspace enables flight from all of the physical limits and boundaries of the body?
I think (probably because I have the most experience with it) that Mark’s discussion of the fact that conventions and standards of the real world are often carried over into the virtual environment totally undercuts the ‘liberating’ ascription to online interaction.
Being a MU*er (this is the subculture’s abbreviation for the style of gaming, as it incorporates all the various codebases - MUD, MUX, MUSH, MOO), I have experimented with different combinations of gender and sexuality with the various characters I’ve played, and, lemme tell you: none of my PCs has ever gotten the same sort of attention that my ‘good-looking’ female one did. She was bitter and mean and snotty, and I had no shortage of people tripping over themselves to roleplay.
In spite of the attention, she grew very boring to play very quickly. Even with her quirks, there was no real fun to being beautiful.
She wasn’t my first character. My first character was a bald, gay, Danish guy. He was based off of a real-life friend of mine, and it was my first real experience in creating an online persona. I figured, that, given the nature of early ’90s RPG geeks, I’d be safer hiding behind a male character. And I was. However, I didn’t get much actual roleplay, aside from a small clique of people…who all happened to be Queer guys in reality. Only one of them knew I was actually a chick, and that was because he also happened to be someone that I talked to for work - and he lived in Schaumburg while I was out in Hollywood. /digression
Mark also asks “are we too deeply infused with the notions of beauty, power and status that our virtual characters must also represent these conventional ideas…are we not portraying bodies of our virtual characters that we wish our own bodies to resemble?” My response to this is a resounding YES. I have seen far more beautiful characters on games than I have seen ugly, or even average characters. Whole bulletin boards have arisen strictly to rip apart these “prettypretty princes(ses)” that have become endemic to the genre. It has gotten to the point where players go out of their way to stress the idea that their PCs (player characters) are unattractive, due to the sea of porcelain-skinned and flowing, chestnut-maned beauties games are drowning in. In this sense, though, the cliche is sort of inverting itself. If you drift too far into either extreme, you can be subject to ridicule in certain quarters (I’ve done my share, I’ll admit).
It’s also easy to see where real-world cultural cliches translate to games - there is a preponderance of what has been termed the ‘Lesbian Asian Schoolgirl’ (LAS for short) on sites. The epithet is fairly self-explanatory, but there are some twists that get taken with it. Particularly where the game universe that I play in is set, you can rest assured that a LAS will also have green eyes and an Irish accent, totally unrealistic/disproportionate breasts, and carry a katana (’katana!’). It’s gotten to the point where the stereotypes have become a mockery of themselves, and people intentionally create characters with these signs, just to be ironic.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
When people enter cyber space they aren’t actually going anywhere. The users will enter a building, most often a home, or library and sit down in a chair and turn on a machine that is connected to other machines and data bases and so on and so on. The fact that while going on all these social, financial and sexual adventures doesn’t override the fact that they are still in the chair looking at the same screen no matter how many times the window or browser changes. The stomache of the user does empty and its time to fill ‘er up. Even if they can order the meal to thier door they have to answer the door and consume the food. I’m sure they wish they, hell myself too, could plug a wire into my belly botton and return to a womb-like state and never leave the bubble. like Luton says, the users will “have to return to the embodied reality of the empty stomache, stiff neck, aching hands, sore back and gritty eyes caused by house infront of a computer termonal”. It’s the truth. Sorry but no one is going to digest our food for us or keep us incubated in a ’safe place’.
safety is another issue. hackers are one thing i’d like to talk more about in class. The fact that people and thier PCs enter a pact, with someone spilling all thier important information into it and considering it safe can’t be thought of any more. hackers can get a hold of your information and take it to the bank, figureatively and literally. I guess my Papa’s advice of ‘never trusting technology more complicated than a knife and fork’ still holds true, especially when the information and technology is growing at its current rate.
I also agree with alex’s skeptisism about being taught. Bloggers write blogs and hope someone will read them, writers that write for themselves have the most potent and lucid ideas and visions, still leaving room for reader’s interpritation. maybe not though, maybe all writing even through the sub conscience is put down for someone to eventually read. introvert extrovert? chicken egg?
March 6th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
In reading the selections for this week, I can’t help but consider how they relate to what I was trying to articulate with my paper. Worthington’s critique, I believe most accurately addresses the issues surrounding our body when we are in cyberspace, as well as the relationship between our body and the computer (technology) which enables such a conceptualization to exist. She correctly distinguishes between the illusion of an escape from our corporeal bodies that cyberspace offers and the irreconcilable embodiment to which we are destined. But, I’m drawn to her use of the term essential. In my work, I used the term in reference to notions of a human characteristic essential to all humans. Worthington uses her essentialized subject to refer to the abstraction we all make all the time to describe the myriad thoughts/desires/feelings/et cetera that comprise the self. It is built into grammar when we form sentences with “I” as the subject—standing in for the process that informs one’s actions. This difference in our uses, within the same framework of cyberculture studies and the body, points to the limits of language. This, I think, relates to Alex’s suspicion of learning from cyberpunk texts. We often find it difficult to articulate certain things that a fiction author can address outside the realm of academia. I think it’s helpful to look to artists’ representations to find out how things affect us. I think the suspicion is helpful in remembering that they are, in fact, fictions and we can’t see them for what they are not.
March 12th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
I think our real life bodies are certainly complicated by our online bodies. This can be seen from the fact that it seems to be the first time that our physical bodies are in competition with another similar form. By this, I mean that we are defining and coming to terms with our physical bodies in new ways with the emergence of the online body. The existence of a physical and an online body creates a tension that naturally raises questions of the importance of each.
The online body, as Lupton describes it, has the ability to free us from the flesh. It allows us to have a certain amount of control over the body that we can’t always find with the physical body. William Gibson’s Neuromancer describes our physical bodies in a similar way by referring to it as “the meat.” While this may seem like a commonplace notion for those of us who grew up in the last twenty-five years, the discarding of the physical body to many is almost blasphemous. It questions the validity of what people believed we as humans all had in common. Although I don’t think it is evidence enough to solely substantiate a post-humanist viewpoint, it is a step in that direction.
While this certainly complicates the conception of the physical body, there is debate over whether or not we can actually leave it behind when entering cyberspace. Theorists like Thomas Foster trust that although there was an initial push to think that we could leave our subjectivity and physical bodies behind, ultimately we still have not done that. He believes that there is a lot of carry over. I don’t know if we are on our way to that, but as technology progresses the discussion will definitely become more “complicated.”