Technology and Community: The Changing Face of Identity (original) (raw)
2016, eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics
This article examines notions of self in cyber-communities, through a cross-disciplinary dialectic on digital embodiment. The article is based on conversations between a literary study on cyborg-feminist and science fiction theory and auto-ethnographic research data from the virtual world Entropia Universe. The conversation explores digital embodiment by asking the questions, "Am I cyborg?" and, "Why should I care?" The discussion draws on Haraway's notions of cyborg embodiment and Brey, Idhe, and Merleau-Ponty's works on relational embodiment to provide a theoretical exploration of selfhood in a liminal community of symbionts, cyborgs, and avatars. his article examines notions of self in cyber-communities through a cross-disciplinary dialectic on digital embodiment. The article is based on conversations between a literary study on cyborg-feminist and science fiction theory and ethnographic research data from the virtual world Entropia Universe. The discussion draws on Haraway's (1985/1981; 1995) notions of cyborg embodiment in order to explore how the digital self, in the form of an avatar, contributes to political and social notions of identity and community in virtual space. The article begins by examining definitions of cyborgs, avatars, and virtual worlds, and then it proceeds with a discussion on how science fiction has influenced understandings of cyberspace. This discussion is followed by the formulation of a theory of digital embodiment which draws on both Haraway's (1985/1981) notion of cyborg embodiment and Merleau-Ponty 's (1962) notion of embodied relations. The article concludes by discussing the implications of digital embodiment for notions of gendered identity and understandings of community in virtual space.
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