response to rajati kannan on ' blogging back'

Rajaati! hit the nail on the head as usual i see! :) i agree.. "the fact that cyberspace allows for the realisation of these hegemonic aspirations could lead to an interesting discussion" - it was exactly what i had attempted in my post... now i wonder if it came across clearly....?
However, am not sure if choosing to not have an avatar is resisting the hegemonic force
i mean.. you can always equate it to the voting process and sya choosing to not vote and voting for "nobody" is an active choice... but am not sure if thats a satisfactory argument for an avatar - an incarnation that depends on visuality....the counter argument would be that the absence would hint at the visuality.. but if all of us choose to not have an avatar? would undifferentiated absence challenge anything?

Blogging back

When I put up the avatars ( I don’t know why I don’t want to call them ‘ my’ avatars) my intention was to hint at exactly what dear rajati kannan wrote about – the fact that one has absolute control over it! But frankly, even after creating two avatars, I don’t think I have succeeded in representing what I had set out to represent. The nagging question is -Why? Not simply because perfect representation is impossible….. but because, though I get to choose from 5 different hairstyles (to borrow Rajati Kannan’s phrase), I didn’t quite like any of them and had to settle down for that which was closest to what I had in mind. Aren’t five hairstyles too limited a number for an option that is supposedly ab/used by people world over? The application I used to create the avatar, called ‘ Zwinky’( first hit on the google search list) gave me just four options for the ‘body’ I wanted. I could choose from “hot girl” “ hot boy” “ cute girl” “cute boy”. The “hot” options showed “ perfect” bodies and the “cute” options were that of little girls and boys! Maybe I should have choosen another application that gives one more options! But the fact that there are only a certain number of body structures you can choose from (this is strictly for lay people like me who depend on first hits of the google search to create avatars) still remains moot, despite which, as Rajati Kannan says “the avatars are everywhere”!

All am trying to say is that the “avatars” capitalise on very stereotypical imaginations of the body, that are very much rooted in the ‘real’ world. I can choose to be whoever/whatever – a ‘hot boy’, ‘hot girl’, ‘cute boy’, ‘cute girl’. But that’s it. I cant be a rickety old man leaning on his cane for support! Maybe i can be...maybe i could have created an avatar with a different body structure, if i had chosen another application ... but it would all depend on what am ' looking for' in the cyberspace... if my priority is finding dates i wouldn't think twice about using the "hot" body!

Notice Manasi’s collage of avatars. Maybe the man in the last row, supporting a frilly frock does challenge the gender constructs of the ‘real’ world. But the fact remains that his/her ‘body’ is the perfect hourglass figure! ofcourse! It could well be a deliberate choice. But that still doesn’t defeat or challenge popular, stereotypical constructs of a desirable body of the ‘real’ world.

Which is why I would not go so far to say that in cyberspace, “new power structures are created". It merely has the potential to, as haraway would put it, make way for ‘effective progressive politics’. The question “how does the cyborg negotiate his* relationship with the digital avatar and the cyberspace” (*emphasis mine), is therefore quite a complicated one. One needs to look beyond the “gender codes”, the replication of the same etc.….. and more at the dynamics that underlie such codes, how they have, if at all, changed or not.…. It’s a question that demands detailed and systematic discussion, that is, I think, quite outside the scope of this blog. But those interested can visit http://identifycrisis.wordpress.com/.... The arguments are stimulating!

And…. “how do we resist hegemonic forces in the cyber-space?” – an important question! ‘knowledge’ – the immediate answer. To hack and access restricted sites is an unimaginable task for a person like me! But am sure its all in a days work for those IT pros!. But how then do we resist the hegemony of knowledge?? To that I have no answer.

In response to my co-blogger's 'avataars'

"There are many versions of the self. It's not a single unit any more, even in physical, tangible terms".


Image downloaded from http://www.gregorylittle.org/avatars/idmenu.jpg

Control~ the public and the private!

“The orbitalization of privacy through the erasure of machinic-organic boundaries, and the forging of an indissoluble connection between simulation and surveillance technologies. The cyborg and the clone as the paradoxical figures of the hyperization of privacy and its fantastic, absurd crash into nothing. The clone and the cyborg are the ultimate Others, inscrutable because they are perfectly known” (Bogard 145).

The above cartoon can be used to finally venture into the question of privacy for a cyborg? when everything that you are, or you claim to be, is on a system, that can be accessed/decoded both legally and illegally, what happens to the notion of privacy? what are the public and private spaces in the cyber-world? how are their forms and structures different from the spaces in the real world? Is faking every little detail about yourself an alternate way to ensure privacy?

Linked to the notion of public and private is the notion of surveillance. Is the cyborg always under scrutiny? We already know the various ways in which the state functions like a 'panopticon' and using the cyberspace is a common method of surveillance now. So how does one fight this and how do we resist hegemonic forces in the cyber-space?

responses and some more questions..

All the anonymous commentators and the non-anonymous ones,
thank you very much for your comments.
Some of the points from your comments that I would like to respond to are:

One of you said that the codes of cyberspace are pre-decided, almost like we have a drop down menu. I agree, but at the same time, I am just wondering if the virtuality of the cyberspace can promise a radical change in these codes before a change in the codes that operate in the real world? For instance are 'gender codes' more flexible for 'digital avataars' than the so called 'real people'?

Romit: I join your argument regarding the pornographic debates. But I think what the cartoon is also trying to communicate is that there maybe a possibility of the human mind getting so affected by the language and technology of the cyberspace that it is no longer the content but the very form of the cyber-world that affects human functioning and imaginations.

Perhaps now the question is, how does a creator/user of the cyberspace negotiate his relation with a)his or her digital avataar and b) with the space itself in which new power structures are created. How does one identify the use and abuse of power in this virtual space especially in its form and not its content?

of cybespace, constructed identities and the body....

Guess who?! :)

responses

Dear anonymous commentators of my last two posts - Thank you!


Anonymous commentator of the post “untitled....”you have hit the nail on the head!! I agree completely that nomenclature becomes redundant if we make sure that virtual space is not derogatory. In the same vein, i would agree with manasi that a demasculisation of the space is necessary, but only that. not a feminisation, because the way i see it, if we can attempt a demasculinisation, we are already attempting to create a de-gendered space.

Anonymous commentator of the cartoon... you have drawn attention to precisely that which i wanted to flag.... the way we negotiate our relationships in the cyberspace are so entirely different! As manasi was pointing out, it offers us soooooooooo many possibilities! we can create new selves and live on! I would call that potential. I would rather not call it threat, because am not able to say exactly what it would threaten. To couch it in the language of threat would be to think about this medium also in the same vein all media, right from the print media, were thought of in their initial years.

It is all about how we negotiate ourselves – our identities and our relationships in the cyberspace... not about how the cyberspace manipulates us.. that is to attribute too little agency to ourselves.

Potential or threat?

mind-boggling blogging about the (cy)borg...

My dear co-blogger, I agree with your discomfort with the idea of a feminine cyborg identity, and I appreciate your futuristic vision and appeal for an identity which is not confined to the real life social demarcations of gender into male or female. However I see that as the ultimate goal for cyberspace, but my concern is that as of now the cyberspace is still very masculine in nature and form, therefore perhaps the next immediate step is to a feminization of this space, after which a complete de-gendering is possible. Your point about the virtual space extending and perhaps imitating the real space is well taken. I agree that progress only in the virtual space is not enough. Now if we were to look more closely, at this virtual space and the question of identity, the debate becomes more complex. Take an Orkut profile for instance, I can choose to be male or female or a bird. I can put any image that may not even be remotely associated with my real self. I can write in a language I do not understand etc. The phenomena of Orkut deaths still fascinates me, additionally can also continue to live in the virtual space even after having no existence in the real space. So, can technology especially the technology of the new media which offer us the possibility of being anonymous or of being in control of our identity/the constitutors of our identity. Can such a technology be looked at as a potential threat or does it have an advantage? Perhaps the simple answer is both. But are we so consciously aware of the negative and positive aspects of such a phenomenon, to use them to our benefit? Has the medium become so powerful that it has become the identity? What happens when the screen persona acquires more importance than the real-life persona? Looking at psychoanalytic literature on cyberspace and the “cyber-identity-games” according to them the cyberspace is not a non-space, ‘on the contrary it is an actualization of a potentiality of life, and in that sense it can the quality of the virtual, as that which is “becoming”. How does one become, someone that one is not? What one is not is perhaps what one can be in the virtual space. Is this a potential or a danger?

Untitled....thoughts and musings.....

I am not sure if I would want a “feminine” version of the cyberspace (which is not to say that am happy with it in its current masculine form). I would rather it was a space that was more egalitarian for not just women and men, but also for LGBTs.

The question however of how to “take away the authorship of cyber-culture from male hands”, is still paramount.

How does one go about the process of “resignification”, ensuring that the existing power structures don’t get duplicated? The question is not just about the extent of power or space new technologies offer us. Considering the difficulty in demarcating the boundaries between the “real” and the “virtual”, how does one make sure that the hangovers of the “real” world, with its existing power structures don’t get translated into the “virtual” as well? And, is an alteration of power relations in the “virtual” world alone enough? Is it even possible to think of such changes without sufficient progress of the same in the “real”?

Haraway’s answer is that science and technology with the “fresh power” they bring with them should move towards creating “effective progressive politics”. She approaches the question from the other end, saying that “Some of the rearrangements of race, sex, and class rooted in high-tech-facilitated social relations can make socialist-feminism more relevant to effective progressive politics.” The question “how…” then is answered…. We need to look more closely at science and technology not as “technological determinism,” but more as a “historical system depending upon structured relations among people”, because, be it communication sciences or modern biologies, it’s all ultimately “The translation of the world into a problem of coding” where there is a constant search for a “common language” that satisfactorily dissolves differences and resistance to “instrumental control".

Considering all this, I think we need to dwell more upon a “feminine cyborg identity”. If a resignification of the entire space is possible so that the hierarchies of gender are disregarded, if it is impossible to “essentialise” the self into one single identity, doesn’t the umbrella term “feminine cyborg identity” become redundant? Don’t we need to think more in the lines of “affinity” that Haraway mentions rather than crystallize identities? If so, how then will we locate a cyborg self?

Calling the attention of all cyborgs... male or female? If others.. please specify..

The following post attempts to look at some of the arguments around cyberspace and gender. But before that, I would like to comment on the question that my co-blogger and I had posed in our introductory post regarding the boundaries of the cyborg and cyberspace. Quoting Donna Haraway in the 'Cyborg Manifesto' , “Late twentieth century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.” The idea that is being put forward here and through her writings about the cyborg ‘myth’ is that the cyborg is the final abstraction with partial identities. Perhaps the cyborg is and can be the next leader of political revolution because it is through the cyborg that the idea that reality cannot be defined has taken shape. ‘We’ cannot dictate the shape of reality for ‘them’.

This takes us to the next set of ideas. I recently read about ‘cyborg feminists’ who say that, ‘'we' do not want any more natural matrix of unity and that no construction is whole. Innocence, and the corollary insistence on victimhood as the only ground for insight, has done enough damage”. Very inspiring! but who are these cyborg feminists? Haraway has written extensively about cyborg and women. Her major argument is that cyborg can be used as a tool to combat the male/female binary and the patriarchal, capitalist structures of society. However while it is important to note the significance of the possibility of creating new forms which challenge traditional notions of both femininity and gender by virtue of the location of the cyborg within a post-gender world. A few questions remain unanswered: how does one take away the authorship of cyber-culture from male hands in order to create a feminine version of the cyberspace and the cyborg identity? Also are women able to control the machines, how do we explain gendering of technology in this context?

links: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
http://cyberartsweb.org/cpace/cyborg/haraway.html

It has begun... dhan ta naa..

We are a part of the cyberspace now.
When were we not a part of it?
So were we always already cyborgs?

In today’s post modernist culture of simulation, where the boundary between the virtual world and the physical world is becoming increasingly blurred, a cyborg is not far too difficult to imagine.

When the primitive biological organism created and began to interact with technology, the scene was set for the birth of a cybernetic- organism or cyborg. The cyborg today resides within the cyberspace (and out of it) and because of the rapid advancement and the increasing complexities of the cyberspace, the definition and understanding of the cyborg also needs to be and perhaps is getting more nuanced.

Interestingly, our discussion of the cyberspace and the cyborg is happening within the ‘cyberspace’. If we were to think about the same ideas outside of this space, would our discussions be any different? What do you think are the boundaries, if any, of the cyberspace?

Post written by Bhargavi and Manasi