Week 10 DMCT

As digital media has expanded into cultural consciousness and popular use over the last three decades, the notions of identity and subjectivity have been increasingly fragmented. People construct different identities across a variety of platforms—from social media to MMORPG's—and engage with these identities in different ways depending on the publicness or anonymity of the platform. However, when engaging on an anonymous platform, how do standard markers of identity come into play? How do race and gender translate across digital media? 

Thomas Foster (1999) argues that digital media implicates a post-human ontology that presents possibilities of liberation from traditional notions of race. His analysis of the 1990's comic Deathlok offers textual examples of how race becomes problematic in the image of the cyborg. When Michael Collins is transformed into a cyborg (Deathlok), his traditional identity as a black man is not longer a primary indicator of his self. Instead, identity becomes a fluid state. Deathlok appears to his son in a video game, and in entering the virtual, becomes man again. Foster (1999) states that "the cyborg and the racial thematics converge around the possibility of intervening in the ways that cultural constraints take the form of limitations imposed on particular types of bodies, with those constraints coming to seem 'built-in' or 'hard-wired' to those bodies" (p. 161). Through the fragmentation of identity provided by the disembodiment through the cyborg, traditional markers of identity like race become maleable and dynamic. They are no longer inherent to our being. Instead, race becomes yet another transmutable identity marker.

However, the digital age doesn't provide an arena for negotiation of identity unproblematically. Everett (2009) sees several problems with representations of race in video games. Specifically, she sees benefits of inhabiting other racial identities, but does not this this is inherently beneficial. Rather, video games often reinforce existing stereotypes and provide little critical context for the gamer. Games like Read to Rumble, Tekken Tag Tournament and Imperialism reinforce existing colonialist and orientalist discourse. She does mention the game series Civilization as a game that may differ with regards to race. In an attempt to control the world, the player chooses a civilization (Roman, Chinese, Zulu) and tries to dominate the rest of the civilizations either through force or diplomacy. The wide variety of races available to play provides the possibility of defying traditional colonialist roles. I also see a variety of new games (The Fallout series,  The Elder Scrolls series) that allow the user to choose their race. They can choose anything from a green-skinned wood elf to a black-skinned female. This affordance of choosing and designing your own identity provides an arena for negotiation of identity.

This is not the case for most games. Many still rely on outmoded stereotypes and colonialist hegemony to create their content. Theorists like Foster see the liberative potential of digital media, while those like Everett seem more skeptical of these possibilities. Marshall McLuhan was particularly utopian with his image of the global village, but as Mark Poster (1998) notes, "McLuhan's position, developed mainly in the early 1960's, was limited by, among other things, its focus on the broadcast media, appearing before the dissemination of computers and their communication networks" (p. 198). Poster sees computer networks as a definitive new development that allows for a global village, but its not necessarily a good thing. Many cultures would prefer to remain separate from such a village. Some like to maintain their racial markers rather than converge and erase these markers through cyborgization or video games. These complex questions are vital for understanding how race functions in the digital realm.

Week 9 - DMCT

Lacan's conception of the mirror stage as the initial point of human identification provides a jumping off point for a variety of theories regarding identity in the contemporary world. These issues have become even more important in the digital era due to issues such as anonymity, switching genders, and association with animals. Virtual worlds like Second Life provide such a forum for the productive negotiation of identity online. Second Life allows users to be flexible in their identity, allowing different genders, animals, robots and vampires to be chosen. This variation of identity mixed with the essential anonymity of the world provides users to experiment with new identities, sexualities and personalities. 

Turkle (1999) argues that the fragmentary identities constructed online stress a "decentered subject." An individual's body is no longer the central focus of identity. Instead, identity is stretched out across various media outlets and media objects. You are not just the identity constructed in your personal body, but also the identity of your Facebook page, Second Life avatar and Reddit account. Your identity is flexible and different depending on the medium in which those meeting your are going through.

Many do not know the other parts of your identity because it is hidden behind the anonymity of the internet. Anonymity provides avenues for free association with identities and sexualities but also provides forums for individuals to "troll" or "grief" other members of the virtual world or community. This is a sort of psychosis that can be evidenced online. Kunkle (1999) argues that the lack of a centered subject provides new avenues for psychosis to exposes themselves. I think this is evidenced by online trolls, who, in "real" life, are pleasant people, but in another, anonymous, identity are assholes. Take a notorious example from Reddit. Forum moderatore "violentacrez" was notorious for hosting multiple pornographic subreddits and being a consistent troll, hosting subs like "r/hitler," "r/creepshots" and "r/picsofdeadbabies." He was specifically famous for running "r/jailbait" which posted clothed pictures of underage girls. Gawker's Adrien Chen went out of his was to expose violentacrez as the  military father and cat lover Michael Brutsch. Brutsch was consequently fired from his job. Although Brutsch was clearly investigating aspects of his identity behind his anonymous screen name, he also was negatively affecting others senses of respectability and experience on Reddit, and the reputation of the site in the real world community. 

The violentacrez story is an example of the paradox of the Internet. Here is a forum available for self expression and identity construction, but it can also be abused. At what point to we stop people like Brutsch from posting indecent pictures of young girls? Can we without infringing on his rights as a digital citizen. He was technically not doing anything illegal, but at the same point it clearly made many uncomfortable. Do we trade decency for identity exploration? What if what we see reflected in the mirror is the worst in us? What if we hate our reflection?

Week 8 DMCT

Judith Butler's work on performativity and embodiment during the 1990's (as well as Foucault) was part of the discursive turn in philosophy and social theory. Butler (1991) argued that homosexuality and heterosexuality were social constructions established ideologically. Homosexuality is not simply a mimicry, parody, or copy of the heterosexual norm. Rather, it is established on its own terms and people identify with the concept naturally. Butler insists that heterosexuality is not the original. I was confused for a while because I kept thinking "wait, before there can be any homosexuality there must be heterosexuality. Before there can be anything there must be heterosexuality because without heterosexuality there can be no humanity." However, I think I was going to far back. Butler is not talking about the beginning of humanity, but the beginning of society. Her vision of a non-mimeographic homosexuality relies not on the start of humanity (which does indeed start with heterosexuality) but with the start of society. But that time heterosexuality and homosexuality are indeed equal. There is no inherent privileging of one version of sexuality over the other.

Many have taken up Butler's queering of spaces, language, ideologies, histories, and normativities through the examination of queer theory. Randal Woodland's discussion of online queer communities focuses on four different versions and examples of online queerness. Woodland determines that defining identity online is strengthened through these communities and queer communities are similar to straight ones. However, virtual communities involve initiation rites and often crystalize around crises. The act of coming out acts as currency within the communities that serve as spatio-temporal metaphors for determining sexuality.

These themes are also taken up by Foster in his discussion of transgendered performance in cyberpunk. His discussion of recent cyberpunk literature indicates the relationship between queer theory and spatial analysis. Online discussion and traditional novels offer potential sites of identification for homosexuals who are "still in the closet." It also offers a potential "new closet" through which a homosexual can communicate with his peers and construct a gay identity, but it might also allow escapism and a failure to come out in real life and construct identity in real life.