BODIES OF TECHNOLOGY: PERFORMATIVE FLESH, PLEASURE AND SUBVERSION IN CYBERSPACE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/1541Keywords:
body, corporeal subversion, cyberspace, dualism, Facebook, gender, performativityAbstract
This article contextualises the body in cyberspace, using the specific examples of the performative body and the social networking site Facebook. Technology is established as a process which continually unfolds and illuminates new understandings of subjectivity, unfurling in parallel with the performative body – and gendered identities – that Judith Butler articulates. Here, the author conducts a close analysis of the technological affordances of Facebook as a site that fosters the construction of a phantasmic, performative subject that Butler describes. This argument relies on an understanding of technology and the body as having their meaning dynamically constituted through mutual interconnection – an understanding of interface that is taken from the theoretical work of Donna Haraway and Vicki Kirby. The purpose of seeking out the performative body in cyberspace is to explore the possibility of technologically-derived, subversive bodies. This is done by examining the emergence of pleasure in human engagement with technology. This pleasure suggests that subjects are enticed by the creative possibilities which technology offers, as it leads to regenerations that, under the right conditions, yield subversive bodies.
References
Althusser, L., 1971/1980. On ideology. Trans. B. Brewster. New York: Verso.
Benjamin, W., 1936/1968. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In: Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, 217–252.
boyd, d. and Ellison, N., 2007. Social network sites: Definition, scholarship and history [online]. Michigan State University. Available from: http://consommacteurs.blogs.com/files/socialnetworksites_boyd-ellision_2007.pdf [Accessed 11 May 2010].
Butler, J., 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge.
Dalsgaard, S., 2008. Facework on Facebook: The presentation of self in Virtual Life and its role in the US elections. Anthropology Today, 24(6), 8–12.
De Beauvoir, S., 1949/1952. The second sex. New York: Knopf.
Derrida, J., 1974. Of grammatology. Trans. G.C. Spivak. Maryland: John Hopkins.
Descartes, R., 1960. Meditations on first philosophy. Trans. L. Lafleur. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Facebook, 2010. Statement of rights and responsibilities [online]. Available from: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php [Accessed 11 May 2010].
Facebook, 2011. Statistics [online]. Available from: http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22 [Accessed 1 April 2012].
Foucault, M., 1979. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Trans. A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.
Gaudin, S., 2009. Facebook caves in to users after revolt over redesign. Computerworld [online]. Available from: http://www.computerworld.com [Accessed 25 March 2010].
Grosz, E., 1995. Space, time and perversion: The politics of bodies. New York: Routledge.
Haraway, D., 1991. A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In: D. Haraway. Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature. London: Free Association, 149–181.
Heidegger, M., 1977. The question concerning technology. In: Martin Heidegger basic writings. New York: Routledge, 328–341.
Kirby, V., 1997. Telling flesh. New York: Routledge.
Kirby, V., 2006. Judith Butler: Live theory. London: Continuum.
Kristeva, J., 1981. Women’s time. Trans. A. Jardine and H. Blake. Signs, 7(1), 13–35.
Marwick, A., 2005. ‘I’m a lot more interesting than a Friendster profile’: Identity presentation, authenticity and power. In: Social Networking Services’ Proceedings of Association of Internet Researchers 6.0: Internet Generations, Chicago, Illinois, October 5–9.
Moses, A., 2010. Facebook linked to rise in syphilis. The Sydney Morning Herald [online]. Available from: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-linked-to-rise-in-syphilis-20100326-r17y.html [Accessed 27 March 2010].
O’Brien, J., 1999. Writing in the body: Gender (re)production in online interaction. In: M. Smith and P. Kollock, eds. Communities in cyberspace. London: Routledge.
Pearlman, L., 2009. I like this. Facebook developers blog [online]. Available from: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=53024537130 [Accessed 11 May 2010].
Smith, C., 2010. Serial sex offender admits using Facebook to rape and murder teen. The Huffington Post [online]. Available from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/peter-chapman-admits-usin_n_489674.html [Accessed 27 May 2010].
Springer, C., 1996. Electronic Eros: Bodies and desire in the postindustrial age. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Springer, C., 1999. The pleasure of the interface. In: J. Wolmark, ed. Cybersexualities: A reader on feminist theory, cyborgs and cyberspace. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 34–54.
Stern, S., 2008. Producing sites, exploring identities: Youth online authorship. In: D. Buckingham, ed. Youth, identity and digital media. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 95–118.
Strathern, M., 1988. The gender of the gift: Problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia. Berkeley, CA: University of California.
Timson, L., 2010. Facebook bows to privacy pressure. The Sydney Morning Herald [online]. Available from: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-bows-to-privacy-pressure-20100527-wgho.html [Accessed 27 May 2010].
Turkle, S., 1995. Life on screen: Identity in the age of Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Weber, S. and Mitchell, C., 2008. Imaging, keyboarding, and posting identities. In: D. Buckingham, ed. Youth, identity and digital media. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 25–48.
Zhao, S., Grasmuck, S. and Martin, J., 2008. Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(5), 1816–1836.
Žižek, S., 2006. Is this digital democracy, or a new tyranny of cyberspace? The Guardian [online]. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/dec/30/comment.media [Accessed 4 April 2010].
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
