Sunday, July 23, 2006

Turkle, "Identity Crisis"

T urkle, Sherry. "Identity Crisis." Vitanza 57-76.

Turkle begins by suggesting that metaphors for pshychoanalysis predominate in every era.  Fluidity and stability contend, increasingly, in the high tides of postmodernism.  Turkle examines the implications of MUDs and other online domains for identity play: "Online switches among personae seem quite natural. Indeed, for [Emily Martin], they are a kind of practice. Martin would call them practicums" (58). Citing Gergen, Tukle invokes his phrase, a "pastiche of personalities" to describe identificatory play and experimentation (^liken to tourism in Nakamura).  Generally, she gets at the tension between unity and inner pluralism or inner multiplicity--differences that are primarily metaphoric (and these metaphors are amplified by material technologies and language).

"I am not limited in the number of links I can create" (61).

"At one extreme, the unitary self maintains its oneness by repressing all that does not fit.  Thus censored, the illegitimate parts of the self are not accessible" (63). Turkle's insight here is fairly balanced, and her perspective magnifies the limitations of both perspectives, while still acknowledging that, good or bad, online technologies make play possible.

"We are encouraged to think of ourselves as fluid, emergent, decentralized, multiplicitous, flexible, and ever in process" (67). Or, on the other hand, as...mannequins?

"Emergent or not, when reduced to our most basic elements, we are made up, mind and body, of information" (69). ^Provocative claim. Turkle goes on to explain why it's complicated, controversial.

"As we stand on the boundary between the real and the virtual, our experience recalls what the anthropologist Victor Turner terms a liminal moment, a moment of passage when new cultural symbols and meanings can emerge. Liminal moments are times of tension, extreme reactions, and great opportunity" (71).

"pastiche of personalities" - Gergen (59), "languages of the self" - Gergen (60), "continuum of dissociation" - Hacking (63), inner diversity (64), "liminal moment" - Turner (71)

Related sources:

Gergen, Kenneth. The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books, 1991.

Dennett, Daniel C. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991.

Hayles, N. Katherine. Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1990.

Posted by dmueller at July 23, 2006 4:13 PM to Article,Writing Technologies