Identity in Cyberspace

1. Identity in Cyberspace What is identity?

2. 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.

3. 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 one’s identity, an essence, which can be discovered through science (psychology, genetics) or rigorous introspection (philosophy).

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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.

8. Take the Personal Home Page • Jonathan Sterne • Mahir Cagri • Wil Wheaton • Becki Smith • Cindy Johnson

9. 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)

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

11. 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?

12. 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?

13. Cybersex? • What does cybersex (in MUDs, for instance) consist of? • What is the appeal of cybersex for its participants? • In Turkle’s 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?

14. LambdaMOO • Let’s visit telnet://lambda.moo.mud.org:8888/. 

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

16. CyberClass? • Is there any way to tell someone’s class on line? • How do people perform social class in the online environment?