Critical Annotated Webliography Q. 3.

Introduction


In my quest to critically assess the ways in which constructions of identity have been extended and/or altered by information and communication technologies I reviewed the initial course readings, Donna Haraway[1], Markussen,[2] Waldby[3] and Hollinger[4] to background some of the notions inherent in this question. Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto exposes the inherent power of cyborg technologies to interrogate identity markers through the suspension of the boundaries previously ascribed to ‘mapped’ bodies. The cyborg amalgamates the human and the machine, merging the two, thus collapsing naturalised markers of identity constructed through such binary oppositions as nature/technology, human/machine and male/female. I will question the ways in which other technologies also skew these naturalised and erstwhile ubiquitous identity constructions.
I ran a search through Google,[5] using Haraway which revealed many sources from which I chose Futurism by Hari Kunzru.[6] My next search involved the following key words: -
cyber technologies, identity constructions, boundaries of self,
revealing 1,730 possible sites from which I located the following selection: --


Annotations

Hari Kunzru
http://www.harikunzru.com/hari/futurism.htm[7]
This article helped clarify and historically and politically background, Haraway’s ideas in an easily digested way. Further it helped me to formulate a position about the potential fluidity of identity constructions and their possibilities for extension/alteration.

Tomasz Mazur
http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/papers/mazur.txt[8]
Mazur considers theories of Donna Haraway[9] and Homi Bhabha[10] suggesting the possibilities for reconstitution of differences implied by gender, race, and class in the new spaces created in the virtual world of cyberspace. He investigates ‘ ... whether the "virtual" of cyberspace or, specifically, of text-based virtual space, offers a possibility of the "in-between space" of contestation of issues of "identity" and, specifically, the issues of sex and gender.’[11] Mazur sees the ‘“virtual”’ as a space in which the body and its correspondence to a ‘gendered subject’ position is troubled, and seeks to formulate a theory of the body, and the reworking inherent in the processes of this correspondence, in cyberspace.This article provided some useful material around these ideas and helped me to further clarify the ways constructions of identity have colonized bodies as strident demarcation sites, and the ways in which the virtual spaces created by new technologies play with these constructions, disturbing the limits and potentially blurring, perhaps, in some instances, erasing, some of these markings.

Jyanni Steffensen
http://www.va.com.au/parallel/x1/journal/jyanni_steffensen/robot.html [12]
Steffensen offers a discussion of the power of monsters in the processes of ‘...infiltration and re-mapping the possible futures outside the (chromo) phallic patriarchal code.’ Prior to the development of cyborgs, in the pursuit of stable identity, humans eschewed certain monstrous instincts seen as violating the human/monster binary. Fortunately, according to Steffensen, these traits still sufficiently resonate in the human psyche and are therefore being re-established in the pursuit of a healthier, more fluid and inclusive sense of identity.
My discussion of identity construction will include the notions raised herein.

John Frow and Mark Pegrum
http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels/MP1801jf.html [13]
This interview, though lengthy, provides some very meaty points of consideration in relation to the alteration and extension of constructions of identity and new technologies. John Frow raises some important and cautionary issues with regard to fluidity of identities and the potential for negative as well as positive outcomes. This discussion has furnished me with deeper material from which to consider the potential impact on constructions of identity.

Glenda Nalder
ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw96/cultural/nalder/paper.htm [14]
This paper explores some interesting ideas around the concept of subjectivities and identity constructions implied through the domestication of the virtual language scape. Two examples of which are ‘being @home’ and having a ‘home page’. Nalder explores these ideas in the thus created ‘ ... fruitful point of rupture within the “networked relations of power” surrounding informatics, for the in[(ter)]vention of feminist knowledges.’[15]
I think this is an important aspect to consider that such ‘nostalgic’ markers of constructions of identity are operating in new technologies to implicitly reinforce the existing power dynamics notwithstanding the proliferation of theories which promote the role of new technologies to question such dynamics.

Sherry Turkle
http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/constructions.html[16]
Sherry Turkle in this article discusses ‘the extensions of ourselves’ made possible in the text-based environments MUDs. She is optimistic about the ‘reconstructions’, the ‘constructions’ and the ‘explorations’ of identities and communities creating a ‘privileged context’ for re-examining the ‘social,’ ‘cultural’ and ‘ethical’ issues of our worlds. Her outlook is positive and she approaches the potentials of such extensions from the point of view of an academic and theorist who is excited by the prospect of newly created fields of exploration of identity. This will be a useful article to use in juxtaposition with arguments raises in the Mark Pegrum and John Frow interview.

Rosanne Allucquere Stone
http://sandystone.com/violation-and-virtuality[17]
This article provides a further aspect of consideration when looking at constructions of identities. Stone inserts the idea of the ‘location of the self’ in the physically mapped body, more than just ‘ ...the physical map of the body and our experience of inhabiting it... ’, as ‘also socially mediated’. This is a valuable discussion in terms of the potential for violation and the parameters for control on the internet and the resultant impact, or otherwise, on extensions and/or contractions/alterations/ perversions of the constructed identities of self.

Rosanne Allucquere Stone
http://sandystone.com/eyes-of-the-vampire[18]
This article posits three stories in a non-linear chronological order, which demonstrate three separate instantiations of identity obfuscation in ‘virtual’ space and the ensuing chaos that can accompany such blurring of identities. This provides thought provoking illustrations not only of the ways in which constructions of identity in information and communication technologies are possible, but also of the ways in which such smudging can impact on the human psyche of the author as well as the reader of the constructed identity.

Conclusion

Identity and its constructions are seemingly obvious but difficult notions to tie down. However, from my research undertaken for this essay, my main arguments would reflect the following ideas. Historically the body has been a solid marker of the location and limits of biologically implied racial and sexual identity constructions. Further, the relationship of that body to the physically manifested ‘other’ has been integral to its identity construction. The body’s interiority was also previously far less available to external intrusion through invasive scientific and medical scrutiny and surveillance.

Ever since the onset of printed materials, the transmission of ideas and other communications have extended the sense of identity formation through the intellectual processes incumbent in the transmission of ideas from author to reader. This was a linear process functioning from one ‘other’ to many ‘others’[19]. Inclusive to this, (although this requires further discussion), are the other visual media interventions such as Television and Film. However, in the digitalised and cybernetic newly (un)-defined world of the mass information and communication vectors, the internet and mobile phone technologies, transmission with the ‘other’ as an identity marker, has taken on unwieldy proportions. It is now transmissions of exponential parameters involving interactions from the diverse many to the diverse many others. The body and the other’s body are no longer the limits of identity construction. Notions of identity work-shopping; identity shifting; identity colonisation; and identity swapping, etcetera, have altered and extended the concepts of identity that previously misinformed our interactions. In the virtual possible worlds created by new technologies, cyberspace is populated by an assortment of possibilities of selves and otherness albeit we/they are textual, disembodied entities.


[1] Donna Haraway, ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’, The Haraway Reader, New York and London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 7-45.
[2] Randi Markussen, Finn Olesen, and Nina Lykke, “Interview with Donna Haraway.” Chasing Technoscience. Eds. Don Ihde and Evan Selinger. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 47-57.
[3] Catherine Waldby, ‘The Visible Human Project: An Initial History’ in The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 1-18. (and)
“The Instruments of Life: Frankenstein and Cyberculture.” Prefiguring Cybercultures: An Intellectual History. Eds. Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson, and Alessio Cavalaro. Sydney: Power Publications, 2002, pp. 28-37.
[4] Veronica Hollinger, “Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism.” Mosaic 23.2, 1990, pp. 29-44.
[5] Google Search Engine at http://www.google.com.au/.
[6]Hari Kunzru, Futurism: 1995-2001.
http://www.harikunzru.com/hari/futurism.htm (accessed 3 October 2004)
[7] Hari Kunzru. ‘Futurism: cyborgs’ Futurism: 1995-2001, (1997) http://www.harikunzru.com/hari/futurism.htm (accessed 3 October 2004). {This piece was commissioned for Ars Electronica 1997. It appears in Ars Electronica: Facing the Future ed. Timothy Druckrey with Ars Electronica [MIT]}
[8]Tomasz Mazur. Working Out the Cyberbody: Sex and Gender Constructions in Text-Based Virtual Space, (1994) http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/papers/mazur.txt (accessed 4 October 2004).
[9] Donna J.Haraway. (as qtd. in Mazur), "The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others." Cultural Studies. Ed. Grossberg, Nelson and Treichler. New York: Routledge,1992: 295-337.
[10]Homi K.Bhabha. (as qtd. in Mazur), "Discussion." Cultural Studies. Ed. Grossberg, Nelson and Treichler. New York: Routledge, 1992: 165-173.
[11] Mazur.
[12]Jyanni Steffensen. ‘Decoding Perversity: queering cyberspace’, Parallel Gallery and Journal (1995)
http://www.va.com.au/parallel/x1/ journal/jyanni_steffensen/robot.html (accessed 3 October 2004).
[13]John Frow and Mark Pegrum. ‘The State of the Net: Reflections on New York Dogs and Trojan Horses’, An email interview with John Frow by Mark Pegrum, Mots Pluriels No. 18. (2001) http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels/MP1801jf.html (accessed 4 October 2004).
[14]Glenda Nalder, ‘@ Home: Virtual Domesticity’, AusWeb96 The Second Australian WorldWideWeb Conference, (1996) ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw96/cultural/nalder/paper.htm (accessed 3 October 2004).
[15] Ibid.
[16]Sherry Turkle. 'Constructions and reconstructions of self in virtual reality: playing in the MUDs', Mind, Culture & Activity 1 (1994) (Reprinted in Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation, Timothy Druckrey (ed.). Aperture Foundation, 1996 and Culture of the Internet, Sara Kiesler (ed.). Hilldale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997.) http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/constructions.html (accessed 3 October 2004)
[17] Rosanne Allucquere Stone. 'Violation and virtuality: two cases of physical and psychological boundary transgression and their implications '(1993) http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~sandy/violation-and-virtuality http://sandystone.com/violation-and-virtuality (accessed 3 October 2004)
[18] Rosanne Allucquere Stone. 'What vampires know: transsubjection and transgender in cyberspace' (1993) http://sandystone.com/eyes-of-the-vampire (accessed 3 October 2004).
[19]H. Rheingold, (as qtd. in Pegrum and Frow), The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Revised ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, esp. ch. 9 & 10, pp.255-322; these chapters are also available at: http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/9.html (15 May 2001) and http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/10.html (15 May 2001) respectively.