I’ve just read Shields and, I have to admit, it’s got me quite excited about reading Haraway (who I’ve been putting off for reasons I’ve explained earlier).

http://altosdecibeis.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/
musica-para-o-prazer-nao-para-a-tortura/

I’m not sure what significantly new line Shields is articulating but it looks like a good introduction to Haraway and a clear explanation of the cyborg as “literary device” for exploring identity, power etc. in ways not dissimilar to the earlier literary antecedents (e.g. the flâneur).

Here’s Shields on this:

The inky cyborg is a hybrid subject of history offered as part of a new political myth. It is an immanent critique of the ‘constructed’ nature of a unitary womens’ identity, which was intended to subvert the foundational myths of socialist feminism, whose homogeneous prescriptions limited the political relevance and analytical purchase of academic feminism. Even though avowedly feminine, Haraway’s cyborg takes us beyond heteronormative notions of gender: she is a hybrid, trans-being without clear origins, fidelities or identity. (Shields 2006: 209)

Just as the flâneur can be seen to be a 19th-century literary device who sought the truth of the flux of public space, so the cyborg is a science fiction literary device that encapsulates truths of genetic space. (Shields 2006: 210)

Tales of the cyborg are less a matter of actual, concrete mechanical or even virtual humans. They are more a matter of stories, political mythologies and a form of writing that is concerned with ‘seizing the tools to mark the world’ and ‘recoding communication and intelligence to subvert command and control’ (1990: 175). The textual preoccupations that bracket the claims concerning the social relations of technologies in the ‘Manifesto’ are notable in that they are a language politics that speaks against colonization, hetero-normative identification and origin myths. ‘A cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity . . . it takes irony for granted’ (1990: 180). (Shields 2006: 211)

In terms of taking Haraway a bit further, I thought Shields was really good on exemplifying some of the trends she identifies. I liked this line in particular which struck me as interesting in the context of recent government legislation on drugs, prostitution and, of course, the continued ‘war on terror’ (I prefer Borat’s “war of terror” as the more accurate description):

Terms such as ‘Empire’ and ‘militarization’ poorly capture the internal focus of the surveillant state on both bodies and biological processes (growing incarceration, extra-legal eavesdropping, regulation of substances). (Shields 2006: 214)

This afternoon, I’m gonna print it off, find a comfy chair in Starbucks (I’m thinking Haraway might disapprove of such chains?) and have a read. Will blog again later …

References

Shields, R. (2006). Flânerie for Cyborgs. Theory Culture Society, 23(7-8): 209-220.

Not sure where I’m going with this post. I’m going to start by copying some text from Hayles in which she defines the posthuman:

First, the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. Third, the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prothesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other protheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. Fourth, and most important, by these and other means, the posthuman view configures human being so that is can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism an biological organism, robot teleology and human goals. (1999: 2-3)

I’m not sure we’re on the same wavelength; I feel I need an example. Hayles unhelpfully mentions the ’six-million-dollar man’, apparently a “paradigmatic citizen of the posthuman regime” (1999: 4) and Robocop (whaaaaat …?).Real-life examples would be nice … .

I don’t feel such a definition – see earlier post – is sufficiently different to earlier critiques of the ‘liberal humanist subject’ or justifies any use of the term posthuman. Posthumanist yes, posthuman, no.

References

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

Perversely, I started my reading with Allison Muri’s ‘Of Shit and the Soul’ (2003). I’m a sucker for a good title; I have a friend who wrote an article on WW1 French and German women’s writing called ‘Beyond the canon’. Brilliant title (don’t remember much of the contents of the paper though).

Anyway, I thought it was fantastic dismantling of discourses around disembodiment or corporeal irrelevance. Muri concludes that “extravagantly metaphorical claims about the disembodied post-human condition are offered as original contributions to academic discourse when in fact they reinforce the familiar old stereotypes of the baseness of the body distinct from, and opposed to, the elevation of mind or spirit (2003: 89-90).

So, such discourses rework centuries old beliefs about our vile bodies; the posthuman does, indeed, always ring twice (have I sort of justified my blog post title ?).

However, skim reading some of the other articles – e.g. Hayles – I think some theorists’ conceptualisation of the posthuman is less about disembodiment and more about a critique of the so-called ‘liberal humanist subject’ and its defining characteristics (e.g. rationality, free will, autonomy, consciousness as the seat of an identity or selfhood which is stable). This looks to me like the familiar poststructuralist and postmodernist critique of the ‘liberal humanist subject’. At the moment I can’t see any clear blue water between posthumanists and  postmodernists.

Anyone any thoughts?

References

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge.

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

Hayles, N.K. (2006). Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere. Theory Culture Society, 23(7).

Muri, A. (2003). Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in Contemporary Culture. Body & Society, 9(3): 73-92

Apologies to all for my neglected lifestream which these last two weeks has been more stagnant pond. I got caught up in tsunami of new projects and deadlines (lots of liquid metaphors here). Anyway, I’m no longer drowning (or indeed Google Waving) but have a hour or so to catch up on some reading and write a post or two.

I must admit I’ve felt a bit hesitant about engaging with this bit of the module as the notion of the ‘posthuman’ (my spellchecker keeps converting to ‘postman’) turns me off a little. Everyday, as I check my junk folder for real mail amongst the spam (dolphins caught in tuna nets?) I delete messages advertising products that cure hair loss, weight gain, wrinkles and sexual dysfunction (the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of Ageing). The digital, then, is constantly reminding me of this oh too solid flesh.

Here’s a picture (every blog post needs a pic) of my youngest son a moment after birth taken on my iPhone. It’s a combination of the ‘clean’ digital (the shinyness of All Things Apple) and the ‘messy’ corporeal (shit, blood, vernix etc.). I love this picture though for the squashed-face placidity of my minute-old, water-born son:

My next post will be about the set readings …

Here’s my longer reply to Silvana’s thoughtful comments.

I think that online communities can and, as Silvana points out, do exist in practice. I agree that the examples  Silvana cites are, indeed, virtual communities.

However, I also think the term is overused. Even Michael Wesch  – gulp, I’m taking on a big name virtual ethnographer here – is guilty of this when he describes those uploading and posting to YouTube as a “community”. Worse, he claims that “what you’ll see on YouTube is [sic] incredibly deep communities” (2009).

I don’t think they are; I think YouTube is an interesting example of distributed user participation in an ‘affinity space’ that displays new cultural practices and new forms of online sociability but I feel it lacks the “social density” that defines a community proper.

Mário Guimarães (2005) has an interesting chapter on defining online communities. Interestingly, he both cites and dismisses Hamman’s definition of community used in Clari’s paper. According to Guimarães:

‘community’ is predominantly a matter of boundary construction through identity and shared systems of meaning. (2005: 146)

I feel that Marko and his fellow bloggers do constitute a community. Here’s why:

1. shared political stance (”Eustonite” Left, pro-military intervention);
2. common perception of being in opposition to another community (”traditional” Left, generally anti-war and anti-American);
3. varied and regular activities – newspaper and magazine articles, letters to editors, reading and writing blog posts, academic publications, conference papers, private emails and Facebook exchanges etc.;
4. clear understanding of purpose of those activities – i.e. promote their vision of “progressive Left politics”, challenge and critique opposing perspectives etc.

References

Guimarães, M. (2005). Doing Anthropology in Cyberspace: Fieldwork Boundaries and Social Environments. In C. Hine, C. (ed.) Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Reseach on the Internet (141-156). Oxford: Berg.

Wesch, M. (2009). The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity. Accessed 9 November 2009, from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09gR6VPVrpw

It’s been a real pain getting this presentation – my micro-ethnography of a virtual community – published. I’ve had problems with BT Broadband, my new Mac, YouTube and Vimeo (and, just in case you wondering, no, no it’s not user error;-)!).

I am currently hating technology with a vengeance and wondering where I can get an application form to join the Amish (yes, I’d like to spend my days building barns and milking cows).

Anyway, here it is – click on the screenshot below to access it (WordPress won’t let me embed):

I didn’t upload the most recent version though which omitted image citations so here they are:

• Slide 4: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Anatomy_Lesson.jpg
• Slide 6: Map of online communities
  http://xkcd.com/256/
• Slide 13: Archaeology pit
  http://www.conservationhalton.on.ca/uploads/images/Archaeology%20Pit%20at%20Crawford%20Lake.jpg

I’ve was up at 6am today (Saturday!) recording the audio for the virtual community presentation. The family sleeps and the house enjoys a rare moment of quiet.

However, it made me think how much easier it is to create a textual artefact. The noise of kids, TVs and radios, Xbox 360s etc, can be sort of filtered out as I type but not really as I record. I made a few slides last night but had to bribe my children with lollies for just a couple of minutes of (relative) quiet.

Anyway, all this to say that multimodal artefact creation in an already noisy multimodal world is quite difficult. I may go all Godard on my next multimodal artefact and include some of the above-mentionned background noises – the traces of the material conditions of the text’s production. Or I may just write text … LOL!

A propos of my study of a virtual community, I’ve just made a Keynote (PowerPoint for Macs) presentation which I’m trying to convert into a Quicktime movie. It seems to do this ok although I keep falling down when I try to upload it to YouTube. I suspect it doesn’t like the option I’ve checked for manually advancing each slide. I may have to rethink this as a Slideshare presentation.

Grrr …

Looking forward to reading other’s ethnographic accounts though.

I’m quite drawn to Cassetteboy’s YouTube remix of Nick Griffin. Both Nick Griffin and Cassetteboy were ‘trending topics’ today (23nd October 2009).

I like the speed of production – caught from television, remixed and uploaded to YouTube within hours, entering the twittersphere and going viral, becoming part of watercooler discussions – physical and virtual – all over the control.

I think Cassetteboy’s a bit of a social media John Heartfield – digital video montage instead of paper and scissors. Same take though: exposing the unsaid in the discourse of racist demogoguery.

I love the pulling bit of language out of context to make him speak the ‘truth’ of what he thinks – a nifty revisioning that mocks Griffin’s own revisionist views.

I think this is exemplary digital culture – although I’m not sure where the ‘community’ is. I’m not absolutely sure it’s found in the comments to the YouTube video

This week, I have mainly been reading and thinking about virtual ethnographic field sites and communities. It’s got me trying to define ‘community’.

At the end of this post is an extract from a book by Clay Shirky. I like his robust defence of bloggers against those  who denigrate them (yes, I’m talking ’bout you Brabazon!). What’s interesting in the context of this week’s discussions is the distinction he makes between audiences and communities. A community, he argues, is defined by what he calls a ’social density’; an audience, on the other hand, has ‘fewer ties’.

Here’s the Shirky extract in full:

… dozens of weblogs have an audience of a million or more, and millions have an audience of a dozen or less.  [...] And it’s easy to deride this sort of thing as self-absorbed publishing – why would anyone put such drivel out in public? It’s simple. They’re not talking to you. [...] We misread these seemingly inane posts because we’re so unused to seeing written material in public that isn’t intended for us. The people posting messages to one another in small groups are doing a different kind of communicating than people posting messages for hundreds or thousands of people to read. More is different, but less is different too. An audience isn’t just a big community; it can be more anonymous, with many fewer ties among users. A community isn’t just a small audience either; it has a social density that audiences lack [emphasis mine]. The bloggers and social network users operating in small groups are part of a community, and they are enjoying something analogous to the privacy of the mall. On any given day you could go to the food court and find a group of teenagers hanging out and talking to one another. They are in public, and you could certainly sit at the next table over and listen in on them if you wanted to. And what would they be saying to one another? They’d be saying, “I can’t believe I missed you last night!!! Trac talked to you and said you were TRASHED off your ASS!” They’d be doing something similar to what they are doing on LiveJournal or Xanga, in other words, but if you were listening in on their conversation at the mall, as opposed to reading their post, it would be clear that you were the weird one. (Shirky 2008: 84-5)

References

Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: The Penguin Press

A year or so back I did the language and culture module with Ruby and we looked at the notion of ‘discourse community’.

1. Discourse community

According to John Swales (1987: 5-7) there are six defining characteristics of a discourse community:

1. a broadly agreed set of common public goals.
2. mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.
3. participatory mechanisms used primarily to provide information and feedback.
4. the use of one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.
5. some specific lexis.
6. a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.

2. Communities of Practice

Another influential definition of  community derives from the work of Lave and Wenger who have articulated the concept of a ‘community of practice’ (CoP) with its:

1. specific community (social fabric)
2. domain (the common ground or topic)
3. practice (the repertoire)

CoPs really influential concept in many professional domains (e.g. academic staff development). I’m not wholly sure why this term has triumphed over other similar concepts (e.g. ‘discourse communities’ and ‘epistemic communities’) though. Perhaps it’s the emphasis on ‘practice’ (doing, making, acting) and the idea of a dynamic movement from periphery to centre. Central to CoPs is the notion of identity transformation: starting to acquire the knowledge practices and particular identities/ways of being needed to enter that CoP and participate fully. I don’t fully sign up to the concept though; it still feels like a description of apprenticeship, observing master craftsmen/women before becoming one yourself.

3. Affinity spaces

An alternative to the CoP is the concept of ‘affinity spaces’. This comes from James Paul Gee (2004) who argues that the more familiar notion of ‘communities of practice‘ doesn’t capture emerging forms of technology-enabled sociability. Affinity spaces are spaces in which people from a variety of backgrounds come together to pursue a common endeavour or goal. One of Gee’s examples of an affinity space is the strategy game Age of Mythology in which the common endeavour of playing and transforming the game takes precedence over questions of racial, class or gender identity.  Gee makes a strong case that educationalists have much to learn from affinity spaces. Here are Gee’s defining characteristics of an affinity space:

• there is a common endeavour (interests, goals or practices);
• the space has content;
• the content is organized;
• individuals can choose to interact with content and/or each other;
• individuals share the same space- even if fulfilling different roles;
• there are many ways (portals) of entering the space;
• new content can be generated;
• many types of knowledge (individual, distributed, dispersed and tacit) are valued;
• group endeavour is valued and encouraged;
• interactivity  is required to sustain the affinity space;
• newbies and masters occupy the same domain – there is no segregation;
• there are many ways of participating and these can change temporally;
• leadership is ‘porous’;
• there are many ways of gaining status;
• the organisation of the space can change through interaction;
• learning is social and enjoyable.

Am I a member of any virtual communities? Several possibly. But because communities are not necessarily formally constituted and don’t always name themselves as such, you don’t always recognise that you’re in one.

On Twitter, for example, could the people I follow – and who follow me – be termed a community? Perhaps, although I think there are multiple interests tweeted about. Perhaps  ‘affinity space’ is a better term here?

I’m a member of the M25 group of learning technologists; we all work at London-based unis in the area of ed tech and meet at workshops, participate in discussion board forums etc.. This feels much more like a community. There are no masters and no apprentices so it’s not really a CoP I guess.

Is this MSc a CoP? Lave and Wenger don’t view CoPs as operating in the context of formal learning as I understand it though. However, there are masters (yes, that’s you Jen and Sian!) and apprentices (sadly, that’s us).

References

Gee, J.P. (2004) Situated Language and Learning: a critique of traditional schooling. London: Routledge

Lave, J.and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.

Swales, J. (1987). Approaching the Concept of Discourse Community. Paper presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication.
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1b/e4/d7.pdf

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.