performativity + social constructs = agency? (141 views)

 If one uses performativity as a theoretical base from which to understand agency and performative acts, ‘the material body marked by gender, race and class not only forms the physical ground for the cyberspace traveler, but is also clearly introduced and reproduced in the new electronic spaces it inhabits’ (Sunden, 2001: 225). One cannot engage in, on or with the medium without one’s body. While the communicative acts literally happen in a ‘placeless place’ with others who are not physically co-present, to overlook the relationships between the material and the virtual or to downplay the role of the material world in the construction, maintenance and use of the virtual is to miss the opportunity to engage in scholarship that recognizes the importance of such interplay:




I argue that performativity requires social construction, if it doesn’t then one is technically not “performing”. As well as reifying, that in and of itself means one has been engendered in some ways through interaction. Since we’ve extended and split every other philosophical hair, do you think social construction exists or is essential on the internet? And if so, how does it play a part in performativity and agency?