In response to the following readings:

•  
  • Garet Branwyn, “Compu-Sex: Erotica for Cybernauts” (CR p. 396).
  • Randall Woodland, “Queer Spaces, Modem Boys and Pagan Statues: Gay Lesbian Identity and the Construction of Cyberspace,” (CR 416)
• Susan Stryker, “Transsexuality: The Postmodern Body And/As Technology,” (CR 588).
• Bonnie Ruberg, “Cyberporn Sells in Virtual World,” Wired, 12.19.05

Consider some of the following questions (though feel to discuss any issue that draws your attention that I do not mention below):

1. How is sexuality embodied and performed in cyberspace?
2. Thinking back to discussions of the body and the cyber/cyborg body, in what ways does the performance of sexuality online either inform or reflect our perceptions around the body?
3. In what ways do people construct and deconstruct identities through the performance of sexuality?
4. In what ways might identities be challenged by performances of online sexuality?
5. What, if any, impact do computer-mediated relationships have on real-life relationships (or one’s ability to have such relationships)? Or is our contemporary culture and the way we interact with one another intimately informing cyberspace?

Hi folks – since you’ve got more than enough on your plate this week with continuing to work on revisions of your essay and three readings, I’m not going to require posting this week. HOWEVER, if you are behind in any way (have missed some postings, for example), I will accept comments to this blog with regards to any one of the readings this week and will count as EXTRA CREDIT.

So this is your opportunity to do a little catch-up if you are behind.

No joke . . .

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):

1. 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?
2. 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?
3. 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.
4. 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?
5. 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?
6. According to the authors, how do our genders inform our online identities? How might gender reflect our cyberspace identity role choices?
7. 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.
8. In what ways might online experiences of “other” identities translate into real life experiences, according to the authors?
9. 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?
10. 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.

Due to the snow storm and canceled class last night, I have moved the first essay paper due date back by one week. Therefore, Essay #1 will now be due on February 27th, instead of next week. I also moved up a reading from the week of the 27th to next week (to make the reading lighter during the week your essay is due). So please make sure that you note the additional reading for next week (Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”). I also took away the previous Turkle article.
For next week, please read the following:

• Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twenthieth Century,” (CR 291)
• Diana Gromala, “Pain and Subjectivity in Virtual Reality,” (CR 598).

Instead of blogging about the readings for next week, please start giving some serious thought to your Essay #1 topic, and post an essay proposal here with the following information:

• What is the question that you want to explore and/or attempt to answer with this essay?
• What sources from our class assigned reading do you expect to utilize in attempting to further explore and answer your question?
• Suggest at least two outside/independent resources that you expect to utilize (scholarly writing that we have NOT read for class) and give a very general summary of what those resources talk about/speak to and HOW you anticipate they might help you answer your question.

Once you have sent in this information to the blog, I will read and make suggestions for each of you, if needed, and then approve your essay proposal.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to email me.

As discussed in class, very often, a good solid question is as valuable as any answer we may provide. Such questions should serve as the foundation for any exploration into any topic; thus, to begin preparing for our first essay assignment, I want you all to come up with one thoughtful, probing question for each of the following readings:

Assigned readings:• Anne Balsamo, “The Virtual Body in Cyberspace” (CR 489)
• Allucquère Rosanne Stone, “Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories About Virtual Cultures,” (CR 504)
• “The Electronic Disturbance: Critical Art Ensemble,” originally published by Autonomedia (part 4 of 7); includes “Case 43” from the Notebooks of Jacques Lacan

Post your questions here and indicate which reading you are asking a question of. Also, if you have any questions or become confused at any point, email me.

* From this point onward, I want you to draw upon any appropriate and relevant previous or current readings to support your thoughts when blogging. You do not have to go into depth, but if you are answering a question in week five (for example) that reminds you of something you learned when we read Baudrillard in week one, then mention it . . . make a reference to it.

** Answer ONE of the following questions, your version thereof, or discuss any other issue that takes your attention within one or both of the readings assigned for this week. Just be sure, as always, to back up your conclusions with textual evidence.

In your assigned reading, “Reality and Virtual Reality,” Steve Jones discusses more of the practical and legal concerns related to “intellectual property” within virtual reality. Jones also points out that perhaps the largest question inherent within such practical and legal discussions, however, is the seemingly endless debate about “What is real?” within virtual reality.

Questions:

1. Do you believe it is necessary to determine “what is real, and what is a copy,” before we are able to answer practical and legal questions around intellectual property within virtual reality? Or, do you believe that our practices within virtual reality will more likely determine our perceptions and beliefs about what is “real”? Explain.

2. In an attempt to answer the question of whether intellectual property can exist within virtual reality (as well as what, if any, intellectual property rights should be included), Jones begins his essay by telling us all the things that virtual reality is NOT:

Unlike its literary and filmic counterparts, the type of virtual reality (VR) discussed in this essay is not a figurative one or a fictitious one, nor is it one constructed from or with the aid of the imagination. [. . . ] It is not a ‘consensual hallucination’. It is not a textual reality produced by the exchange of text messages.

Do you believe that Jones successfully supports (within his overall discussion) his claims that virtual reality (for his analytical purposes) is not any of the above? Why or why not?

3. Does Jones convincingly and effectively explore the practical and legal concerns of intellectual property without discussing the figurative, ficticious, or the role of the imagination? Explain.

4. Jones seems to want to avoid certain approaches when talking about intellectual rights within virtual reality (i.e. philosophical, psychological); do you believe one can avoid such discussions when considering the legal and/or practical questions and consequences of the virtual world? Explain your reasoning.

5. Jones argues that because virtual reality is naturally “immersive . . . VR is, like reality, unframed by anyone or anything but the viewer.” What does Jones mean by this? And do you agree or disagree? Explain.

6. In your reading, “Coming Apart at the Seams: Sex, Text and the Virtual Body,” Shannon McRae argues that erotic interactions in cyberspace create an opportunity to explore different experiences of our bodies and pleasure, but that in doing so, we must also reconceptualize the ways in which we experience our own “embodied subjectivity.” What exactly does she mean by this? What examples does she give?

7. McRae also read Heim’s “Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace,” but disagreed with many of his conclusions. What is McRae’s primary dispute with Heim? Why?

8. Although McRae doesn’t make specific comparisons to any visually-based virtual environment, she argues that text-based virtual environments can often provide emotionally intense and highly meaningful human interactions. Reflecting on McRae’s essay, in what ways might text-based virtual environments provide even more emotional intensity than visually-based virtual environments, and why?

9. According to McRae, in what ways is gender (and our social concept of gender) as a “primary marker of our identity” seriously subverted?

10. Considering Weaver’s explanation of schemas (p. 5), if we are in fact calling upon gender schemas, not reinventing “our social constructions [of gender],” but rather using “our defaults” to help us negotiate ourselves and others, then how are we able to so freely experiment with gender roles and gender perceptions in virtual reality? In other words, do we not carry our gender schemas with us into the virtual world? Or do we?

11. In what ways does McRae connect the erotic pleasures of bodies and minds with the erotic pleasures of narrative and text?

For this assignment, you are to write a blog entry that incorporates at least two of the assigned (three) readings.

• Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations” from Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.166-184
• Kevin Robins, “Cyberspace and the World We Live In” (CR 77)
• Excerpt from “Erontic Ontology of Cyberspace” by Michael Heim

In order to get you started, I have listed a number of questions below. You may choose to answer several, one, or none (but come up with your own question to answer). You may also create your own version of any of the questions below. My primary concern is not that you are able to answer my specific questions, but rather demonstrate a level of understanding and critical inquiry around the primary topics being discussed within the assigned readings.

Feel free to write in “blog form,” but make sure that your writing is intelligible and flows in a way that makes sense.

* Be sure that no matter which one you answer (or whatever you choose to focus on) that you make reference to at least two out of the three assigned readings.

QUESTIONS:

1. William Gibson, who coined the term “cyberspace,” writes in Neuromancer that cyberspace is: “A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators . . .” (my italics, 69). After reading the assigned reading, do you agree with Gibson’s assessment that cyberspace is, in fact, a “consensual hallucination”? Explain why or why not. Utilize either Baudrillard, Heim or Robins to help you support your assessment/s.

2. In “The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace,” Michael Heim suggests that cyberspace is a “tool for examining our very sense of reality.” In what ways does cyberspace challenge our sense of “the real” and/or blur the lines between reality and fantasy (or non-reality)? How would Baudrillard or Robins support or challenge your conclusion/s?

3. Is our sense of “reality” (or what is “real”) changing as a result of cyberspace? Why or why not? In what ways might cyberspace (and our experience of it) inform our sense of reality? In what ways might cyberspace reflect our understanding and/or experience of “the real”? Utilize two of the three authors (Baudrillard, Heim, and Robins) to help support your conclusion/s.

4. Baudrillard suggests that “Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.” What exactly does Baudrillard mean by “hyperreal”? and how does this idea apply to our experiences of cyberspace? In what ways does either Robins or Heim echo or challenge Baudrillard’s concept of “hyperreal”?

5. Baudrillard also argues that “Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible.” What does he mean by this? Explain. Would Heim and Robins agree or disagree? Why or why not?

6. Robins’ article, “Cyberspace and the World We Live In,” discusses issues around the concept of “identity.” In what ways does Robins suggest that cyberspace either informs or reflects one’s identity? How might Baudrillard or Heims agree or disagree?