The application of the theses about gender and interaction of writers such as Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti and Roseanne Alucquere Stone in the online world of a RPG (role playing game) allows a depper observation of the stereotypes and memes of our society, the ceremonies and uses that define life and it's conditions, the definition of humane and constructed.
What would the philosopher Judith Butler say or write about my avatar
Wordacea? Wordacea is a powerful shaman in a virtual world where
elves, wizards and warriors fight for supremacy. Should anyone care
which sex or gender a person is in a
virtual world where pixels create the illusion of a landscape?
Wordacea is a virtual character in a virtual world and she was chosen
by me because her race and physical characteristics give me some
advantages in virtual fights against virtual monsters and virtual evil
characters. She is a Barbarian and her home is a snow-covered
landscape, quite similar to that of Sweden, the place where I live.
Everquest, made in the US by American engineers and designers, is a
cultural product showing our stereotypes, clichés and flaws. The
cities in the game are frozen in time and remind one of Thomas Moore's
Utopia, where neither class struggle nor mayhem disturb the city's
perfect harmony.
The characters in the virtual reality are devoid of all physical
attributes, the heroes and the villains don't sweat or get dirty.
Neither are they subject to any normal physiological urgencies.
The selection of races and physical attributes was tailored by the
designers to allow the players to accomplish different tasks and
quests. Magical qualities, the ability to heal or physical stamina
are crucial in the initial stages of the game.
With the help of magic objects or weapons the player can enhance
a weak character or try to make up for a bad choice. Professions
such as shamans, bards, warriors and wizards, can be combined to
achieve the ultimate goal, the best
all-round fighter or the wizard who can turn the tide in a struggle.
The players in games such as Everquest are nomads, their quests make them
travel between different landscapes and cities. There are hundreds of
different worlds in Everquest, jungles and snow-covered peaks, urbanized
patches of civilization allow the players to rest, eat
and buy weapons.
They are nomads by choice and in order to understand them it is interesting
to read Judith Butler and Rosi Braidotti, two
of the most innovative thinkers in the field of gender
studies. Braidotti's work with "Nomadic Identities" challenges the
old concept of identity as a monolithic structure, impermeable to
any change or modification.
The nomadic identity assumes that everyone can choose to highlight a
part of one's identity, highlight a quality or cover up a failure or a
minor fault. Our identity is intimately related to our sexual
preferences, to our belonging, to our holding certain religious beliefs or
subscribing to certain political or philosophical ideas.a religion, to
a political or a
philosophical idea.
In the online world games are played and simulations enacted, the
construction of a dramatic persona, a character or avatar, can be
a wonderful case study for the purposes of analyzing the construction
of an individual in a social context.
When I choose my avatar I try to mimic myself, but not my ordinary
self, but the individual I wish I was or dream of being.one of those
multiple layers of my personality.
Judith Butler writes about the pain, about how seeing somebody else's
pain can make us
empathic and cause us to change our perceptions of the "other". The
"otherness" in
virtual simulated reality is hard to portray, some of the foes are black or
brown or are in disguise, (In the 1970s the French-Chilean sociologist
André Mattelart
and the playwright Ariel Dorfman wrote a wonderful book, "To learn how
to read Donald Duck".
The books is about how Disney used the plot in
Donald Ducks adventures to set boundaries for Anti-Americanism.
All the ducks on the opponents (and therefore the enemies of the US)
were Korean, Cubans
or Muslims and were involved in the different kind of geopolitical
struggle where
the US was involved), but it demands a high skill to identify the true
nature of your
virtual opponent.
In "Everquest" bodies are beaten or wounded without pain or
mayhem, death is bloodless and painless, and you can be resurrected by
some fellow player after paying a penalty where you lose some
experience points. The religious experience of the resurrection feels
trivial in a world where life is trivial too, digital heroes have no
parents and no childhood, as Ridley Scott and Philip K. Dicks
"replicates", they are born fully developed, ready to take on the duty or the
task we have designed for them.
