Bodies That Natter: Virtual Translations and Transmissions of the Physical

Abstract

Theorizing about cyberspace1 technology has traditionally centered around two related notions of what computer interaction presages: the postmodern dissolution of the subject and the technologically enabled flight from the physical. Originally, many critics argued that cyberspace offered the means of escaping from or transcending the corporeal body–what Case in William Gibson's originary cyberpunk novel Neuromancer refers to disdainfully as “the meat.” Cyberspace ostensibly provided the possibility of retreating from the physical into a world of pure mind. In a related manner, cyberspace initially seemed to offer users the opportunity to step outside their “true identities” and explore and create new personalities, a feature that was deemed the ultimate fruition of the postmodern dissolution of the subject. This burst of premillennial enthusiasm did not last, however, as theorists like N. Katherine Hayles, Thomas Foster, and Allucquere Rosanne Stone began to question whether it was wise–or even possible–to leave one's body behind when entering cyberspace. Furthermore, instead of the seemingly endless possibilities for the decentered subject to enact new and different personae, cyberspace seemed to encourage only the “banal identities” suggested by Kevin Robins and Lisa Nakamura that resort, ultimately, in racist, sexist, essentialist notions of the embodied self.