Disintegrated Bodies - From Cyborg Microcelebrities to Capital Flow: a Post-phenomenological Investigation of Disembodiment
Many conversations about embodiment and re-embodiment fit within postphenomenological narratives. The materiality and movement of the body within the physical realm expanded towards its disintegration as virtual and robotic re-embodiments are repurposed and reshaped towards what Kirk M. Besmer (2015) mentions as extension thesis. This term is defined as an extension of embodiment as technologies develop ‘human perception, agency and cognition’. Yet, Besmer’s (2015) understanding of extension thesis is quite limiting as he concludes at the end of his essay how one’s canal body cannot be shifted from one’s embodied situation. (Besmer 2015: 55-69). But what about natures of complete disembodiment? The question that is presented revolves around the nature of disembodiment within the internet space and its socio-economic implication.
Besmer (2015) fails to acknowledge cases of actual distancing from one’s physiological body while many efforts of creation of disembodiment are extremely vital in this shift of the internet presentation of the self and the space that is used within it. Technology has allowed to form a social remixing of avatars and different agencies. This allows to re-imagine the self that is presented online which still fits within the domain of re-embodiment. And some avatars have no relation to any physical body. Their presence is becoming more popular within microcelebrities and the fetishizing of ‘influencers’ for the purpose of an attention and experience economy.1 As an example, Lil Miquela (@lilmiquela) was born in 2016 on Instagram, an avatar fabricated by Trevor McFedries and Sara DeCou. Her success and popularity give insights towards technocultural obsessions of manipulation of body images and it refigures notions of material ownerships through immateriality for capital motives.
In order to comprehend those implications, a case study is made through Lil Miquela’s success and her purpose of existence will be related to Donna J. Haraway’s (1991) famous essay ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. In addition, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1974) investigation of the body in ‘Phenomenology of perception’ needs to be identified, to allow a juxtaposition of different shapes and forms of embodiment. This theoretical exploration will result in grasping how human beings exist within an internet framework outside of the embodied self. In addition, it will give a small glimpse towards the future of marginalised performance acts that relate to cyborg avatars whose space is solemnly online and how they relate to capitalism.
This paper was published in the Volume 20-2021 issue of Body, Space & Technology (BST) // http://doi.org/10.16995/bst.372
