Exploring the dematerialization of the body: Gender roles in cyberspace – Imagination as resistance or global extensions of consumer capitalism

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

6 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

05/05/2009

Category :

Political science

Sub category :

Social sciences

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Summary :

Introduction
Coyne: The utopian as it relates to the internet
Scott and the utopian ideas in the 1960's
The idea of playing with identities and transforming ourselves
Fiske's reception theory
Second Life
Internet as a repository of the architecture of infinite possible texts
The Frankfurt School theorists of the early to mid 20th century
Conclusion
Bibliography

Abstract

This is a research paper which will investigate the relationship between architectural space, i.e. the home, the work place, the gendered body, in relation to the cyber-body as utopian space or new mechanism of containment and surveillance and re-inscribing of the dominant capitalist ideology. Through cyberspace the body in transformation, due to the potential of liberation from of constraints of gendered identity, via the architecture of the immaterial, i.e. the internet is often proposed. As Coyne writes, many of Heidegger's pragmatic philosophical views were transformations of "enlightenment notions such as identity, proximity, community, disembodiment....to the phenomenological concepts of Dasein, care, being-with, ...praxis....the not-yet surveyed." (Coyne: 338) In Coyne's estimation IT utopianism is a similar process, the Enlightenment notion of progress mapped onto the "quest for a better world through information." (Coyne: 338) Is this utopian possible? What does it mean to transgress gender roles and identities?