Virtual fashion play as embodied identity re/assembling

second life fashion bloggers and their avatar bodies

Christine Liao

pp. 101-127

in: Anna Peachey, Mark Childs (eds), Reinventing ourselves, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

Second Life^TM fashion bloggers use the virtual environment as a place to re/construct different assemblages of self, thereby creating new potential for and experiences of subjectivity. Drawing on theories of embodiment and Deleuze and Guattari's (A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (B. Massumi, Tran.). University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987) theories of the Body without Organs, assemblage, and becoming, I propose virtual fashion play as a process through which people continually construct and deconstruct identity. The inquiry centres on two questions: What is the relationship between bloggers and their avatars? How do bloggers construct identities through fashion? The fashion bloggers referenced do not see themselves as constructing identities that are separate from the identities of their physical lives. However, their avatars do have an impact on their physical selves. Their physical and virtual bodies are integrated as they re/assemble identities, and virtual fashion offers a technology of self that expresses practices of identity.

Cited authors

Deleuze Gilles