Object-Oriented Identity
I’ve been developing a theory of identity that will accomodate emerging digital identities and the conflicts and dichotomies that often arise from them.
Click here to see the diagram I’m working on right now. It’s a bit complex and somewhat untested so I’ll be podcasting about it a bit later to explain it better.
July 10th, 2006 at 6:51 am
I dig the diagram. I see a certain degree of correspondence with Greg Ulmer’s notion of “popcycle.” His book on “Internet Invention” (highly recommended, btw) uses the “popcycle” term to sorta invent a new idea about how identities get formed: never independent of, and always at the vertex of at least four different domains: Home, Career, Entertainment, Community. Ulmer has your Marriage and Church categories as part of one’s “home” discourse, but you two seem together on the idea of “school” discourse (part of “Community”). Either way, the connection, I think, is interesting.
When we’re talking about online ethoi, what are we talking about, really? Environments — different discursive environments. But what I really think is interesting here (and I guess I’ll have to wait for the podcast to know for sure), is your notion of “instances.” WoW enthusiast that I am, I hear something interesting in the term — isn’t identity always “instanced”? And the equipment we take into every “instance” is provided by Others — other people, other environments, other aspects of the identity.
Good food for thought, as always!