Monday, February 18, 2008

Week 7 Day 2 (part deux)

Responding to K8

From "Katie's 597"

Initially (after our session) I thought there was no way I’d use IMing, but the more I think about it the more I see how it directly engages with the sort of identity play/contestation I research.

-This is also the primary area of research that I am interested in. Hence I have proponed more play as a means of resisting alienation from labor in terms of self.

I don’t know if it’s just me (since I’m a weirdo AmSt person) but I have kind of a hard time knowing how to integrate my Cultural St/Am St perspectives into not only my pedagogy, but also actual classroom practices.

- I am wrestling with the same concepts, probably due to the fact that I am in the same department. With a mission somewhere in the neighborhood of 'unmasking power', occupying an authority position is ever more challenging. In addition it is difficult to resist privileging information when in fact it is a requirement that an instructor foists upon their students...such as MLA or APA formatting.

IMing lets you play with your identity, or more precisely it lets you PERFORM an identity. And it also shows how these identity performances are discursive articulations. Actually, I could see how someone could use IMing to demonstrate performative theory to students.

- This is one of the uses that I see chat embodying. K8*E is right on the nose with this one. Moreover, if during the exercise we had been asked to take on anonymous screen names this portion would have been more prevalent. In some ways I see this idea as in-line with cybercrossdressing and research on avatars.

At the end of the day K8*E is teh roxxorz

1 comment:

kristin said...

Ahh, our fun day of IMing...it almost made my head explode.

You say, "IMing lets you play with your identity, or more precisely it lets you PERFORM an identity." I'm always cautious of the claim that we can perform identities online, and I think the reason I'm weary of it is that some people take this to mean that our online lives are immaterial and not enmeshed with our physical everyday lives. I'm not saying you're saying this, but it's something to watch out for. If you do think online and offline are separate, then I'd ask you to think about how and why.

In terms of play, I think context has a lot to do with it. I use IM a lot, but I use it to chat with friends from across the country. So, in this space I don't really "play" with my identity, or at least I don't feel like I do. I dunno, maybe I do....hmmm. In any case, I am curious why when I get into a multichat space I tend to play more, in that I really try to assert some sense of who I am. Maybe it's the possible anonymity that does it, I'm not sure. My friends know who I am, so there's no need to express it further. But, in classes, people tend not to really know me or who i am so there are many more conscious choices being made. As a teacher, perhaps it's a means of interrogating these conscious choices so that we can begin to uncover the unconscious choices.