Second Life and Performativity

I’m still working through some of the ideas I was trying to articulate in class. Basically, the starting point for me was that the creating of avitars is something that is so inherently performative that I immediately began to think of this in the terms of queer theory.

I’m going to break this down.
Performativity as Judith Butler coined it puts emphasis on gendered and sexualized identities by drawing attention to the construction of these aspects of identity. The stress here is on the action of gender specifically – that is to say that in order for gender to exist it must be constantly reenacted through a variety of signifiers.

Butler talks about how the individual is an effect, not origin of its “performances”; it “comes into being through being called, named, interpellated . . . and this discursive constitution takes place prior to the ‘I’ ” (Butler, 225).

If we are to understand performativity in this way, Second Life can be viewed as a nuanced or extremely heightened version of this. For even within this realm it becomes impossible to completely breakdown notions of gender and sexuality.
Choosing each element of the “self” becomes an act of performativity which is still governed by notions of power and ultimately the subversion of power.

It cannot be as simplistic as saying the same rules apply as they do in the “real” world, but perhaps Second Life forces those who have not thought about the construction of the self and identity to constantly question it.
In this way Second Life  can be seen as an extremely powerful tool in breaking down notions of the ways in which gender and sexuality are constructed but also how to subvert power and authority through the subversion of these acted signifiers.
Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York:
Routledge, 1993.