Identity in Cyberspace

What is identity?

Identity is:
The answer to the question, who am I? -- can include your gender, your race or ethnicity, family background, class, nationality, religion, political ideology, physical appearance, etc.

The Enlightenment View

Identity is unified, fixed and stable; i.e. we are born into our identities Based on the Cartesian subject (transparent, omnipresent, self-identical, etc.) Essentialist: there is a truth about ones identity, an essence, which can be discovered through science (psychology, genetics) or rigorous introspection (philosophy).

Postmodernist/ Poststructuralist View

Anti-essentialist. Human beings have no essence; they are what they make of themselves and they are constantly in the process of becoming. Self is a project not a thing Much postmodernist work is devoted to debunking stable categories of identity.

Michel Foucault
Insisted that all fixed stable identities are socially constructed Discourse of psychoanalysis and sexology, law and religion invented homosexuality Psychiatry invented madness The prison, the workhouse and modern criminology invented the juvenile delinquent.

Judith Butler
Sees gender as not simply a social construction but as a performance We all act out our gender in various social situations So, in a sense, for Butler we are all cross-dressers Seems to suggest that gender identity is a choice

Identity in the online environment

Bell thinks questions of identity are paramount in the online environment. Why? -- Because it is much easier to control our self-presentation, the performance of our identity, online.

Take the Personal Home Page

Jonathan Sterne Mahir Cagri Wil Wheaton Becki Smith Cindy Johnson

How do personal pages narrate the self?

Bios Links Photos Graphics Blogs/updates These sites can reveal previously hidden aspects of the self; they can also tailor the self to perceived audience (family, friends, potential employers, perfect strangers)

Fluid Identity

Personal pages show fairly clearly that identity online is fluid, malleable and subject to constant revision.

MUDs and MOOs

What is a MUD? What is a MOO? What is it that users do in these communities? What do they actually see when they are participating in these dimensions/communities?

Gender Online

Does gender matter online? How are gender images/categories deployed in cyberspace? How does gender identification work in cyberspace? How does it work in a MUD like LambdaMOO? Turkle notes that there is a lot of virtual crossdressing going on in MUDs. Why do people switch genders online? Does online culture lead to a loosening or traditional gender categories or to a reinforcement of them?

Cybersex?

What does cybersex (in MUDs, for instance) consist of? What is the appeal of cybersex for its participants? In Turkles article, she discusses a number of spouses who express jealousy at the fact that their partners are engaging in cybersex. Do you think they are justified? Is rape possible in cyberspace? Was what Mr. Bungle did in LambdaMOO really rape? What does the case of the rape in cyber space say about the connection between online personae and real-world people?

LambdaMOO

Lets visit telnet://lambda.moo.mud.org:8888/.

Race online
Does race matter online? How are racial images deployed in cyberspace? How does racial identification work in cyberspace?

CyberClass?
Is there any way to tell someones class on line? How do people perform social class in the online environment?