not strictly related to the ratava project, but possibly useful for the research essay I'd like to do on textual representation of visual and other qualia: a thesis
she dies, but she doesn't: she believes (erroneously) that she's somehow going into the world where she has control over her avatar. but of course she doesn't even have that. all the avatars are related.
more from Cruikshank: one of the wills to online existence is (supposed to be) the desire to escape the body; she describes it as essentially a religious will to transcendence.
hikkomori: japanese boys who lock themselves away. she carries out a version of this, ultimately disappearing into the computer, in a sense (though in another sense she just dies)
a line from Cruikshank: the desire for virtual embodiment comes from a need to either restore a body that is felt to be absent, or to escape from the "meat". although incompatible, I can imagine one person feeling both these things.
Avatar dreams: An ethnography of desire for the virtual body by Cruikshank, Lauren Ruth, MA QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY AT KINGSTON (CANADA), 2001, 102 pages MQ59370
- need to go through the library website to get to this.
not to mention all the xanga ana sites; they could go on and on and on.
the idea is that I'll use this blog to think, but inevitably some of my thoughts will end up in my hard-copy notebook as well - maybe those that result from paper reading will be there, and those that link into the datasphere will be here.
this is my thesis proposal: English Honours thesis proposal: Jenny Sinclair
In my honours thesis, I would like to explore the way in which individuals are constituted in texts.
Having examined the nature of online identity in my earlier studies, I would like to extend this by writing a creative piece in which an individual explores/challenges different facets of her personality via a number of online avatars.
In an essay in the Cybersocities subject during my undergraduate studies, I put forward the idea of the “ratava” – the real world base for one or several internet-based identities, which could be seen as analogous to the Cartesian “I” who does the thinking.
By writing about the way a person with numerous online identities experiences their online and offline lives, I hope to resolve some issues and questions such identities raise: is there a distinction to be drawn between what’s become known as “RL” (real life) and what happens in the textual or game-based space of the computer? How can an individual manage and resolve numerous such manifestations within their single physical body?
While many online game-players and chat room users negotiate these issues without thought, I believe they would provide rich material for creative fiction that could give a deeper understanding both of the nature of the individual and the nature of textuality and fiction.
The character would be shown through the medium of her own writing on various forums, including a university course discussion list, allowing the issues addressed to be explicitly introduced.
Her relationship with her body would be further complicated by her membership of a “pro-ana” Web forum, where her attempts to understand her own corporeality could be explored.
By using her own words, the piece would also examine how language creates meaning; a character whose (multiple) personality exists entirely in and through the written word creates an opportunity to test the idea of language as the basis of identity to its limits.
Because the character’s different identities exist in different forums, multiple “languages” (eg email-ese, bulletin board symbols, text message shorthand) would be employed; the interplay between the protaganist’s different personae would create an internal polyphony.
The piece would be grounded in the theories of identity and modes of existence as put forward by Descartes, Heidegger and Lacan.
My own online experience would also contribute to the piece. I would plan to document the progress of the work at a weblog I established to examine these issues in 2001 (currently in hiatus).
draft first par: It was all a dream. We might as well get that bit over with, so I’m not accused of drawing you in under false pretences. None of it happened; not in real life. But in the world where I lived, real life was the least of our concerns. We … (description of events, places, community)
