Nothing Behind the Mask an Arendtian Approach to Virtual
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Nothing Behind the Mask An Arendtian Approach to Virtual Worlds and the Politics of Online Education Joseph Sannicandro Communication Studies McGill University, Montreal December 2011 This thesis was submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirement of the degree of Master's of Arts. Joseph Sannicandro, 2011 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to extend whole-hearted thanks to all the faculty members at McGill who have aided me on this project in its multiple, evolving forms, especially Jonathan Sterne, Cornelius Borck, and Thom Lamarre. Special thanks to Darin Barney, my supervisor and the Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship, for support and guidance, and for forcing me to do better. Additionally I am very grateful to the McGill University Arts Graduate Travel Grant and Media@McGill for funding conferences in which parts of this project were tested. I am also grateful for helpful feedback from Dr. Morris Kaplan, who inducted me into the life of the mind and demonstrated that Arendt could be read against common reception, and Dr. Steven Gold, who helped me focus, in so far as that is possible. Much of the initial drafting of this thesis took place in the small Italian village of Pisciotta, due in no small part to the continued generosity of the Marcoccia family. Of course I thank my family for supporting me over the years even when they didn‘t understand what I was up to. And to Pia, for her loving support throughout a long writing process that left me more distracted than I would have liked. Lastly, I must express my unpayable debt to my primary intellectual interlocutor Samuel R. Galloway for his insightful responses to my work during the course of this project. 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgments ……… 1 Contents ……… 2 Abstract- Résumé ……… 3 Introduction ……… 5 Nietzsche‘s Body, Arendt‘s Mask ……… 19 The Corporate University and the Virtual Classroom ……… 42 New Masks, New Stages? ……… 77 Work Cited & Consulted ……… 104 2 ABSTRACT Proceeding from an analysis of contemporary practices of online education courses taught in virtual environments, I seek to recuperate a notion of social identity in Hannah Arendt‘s vision of a political stage; social identity as a mask that actors wear when acting politically. I avoid the language of mediation, instead seeing the ‗Mask‘ as ever present. I offer this mode of inscription as being central to our understanding of medium specificity, and apply it in particular to my analysis of the use of Second Life (SL) in online learning environments. I take the use of SL in university courses as an example to think through what happens when education- which I understand as being essential to citizenship, a practice that depends on appearing in public- shifts to a space of virtual publicity. I examine the history of the modern university and the role that technologies have played in the growing corporate reorganization of the university. I defend the university as, ideally, an autonomous site from which, in Nietzsche‘s words, the ―untimely‖ can emerge. I look to the political thought of Hannah Arendt as a theoretical ground for understanding avatars and virtual community, following Norma Claire Moruzzi in reading the mask of social identity as a site of political engagement. I explore the appositeness of Hannah Arendt‘s articulation of public, political personae or masks in On Revolution, as well as her critique of Plato‘s metaphysical bifurcation of Being and appearance, and her understanding of (Jewish) identity as non-territorial- and therefore virtual- to contemporary debates concerning cybersociality and online community. I read her against common reception to argue that the conception of political actors animating her texts is best illuminated when read heuristically through contemporary discourses of technology. In so doing I develop an Arendtian view of politics and social identity that is amenable to and invests itself in modes of resistance enabled by cybersociality. From the perspective of critical pedagogy, I aim to think through ways of utilizing technologies as potentially repoliticizing, and I identify the properties online learning must demonstrate in order to create new sites of resistance. 3 RÉSUMÉ Partant d'une analyse des pratiques contemporaines de cours de formation en ligne a enseigné dans les environnements virtuels, je cherche à récupérer une notion d'identité sociale dans la vision de Hannah Arendt sur une scène politique, l'identité sociale comme un masque que les acteurs portent quand il agit politiquement. J'évite le langage de la médiation, au lieu de voir le "Mask" plus que jamais présent. J'offre ce mode d'inscription comme étant cruciales pour notre compréhension de la spécificité moyenne, et il s'applique en particulier à mon analyse de l'utilisation de Second Life (SL) dans des environnements d'apprentissage en ligne. Je prends l'utilisation de SL dans les cours universitaires comme un exemple de penser à ce qui arrive quand l'éducation-ce que je comprends comme étant essentiels à la citoyenneté, une pratique qui dépend apparaître en public-se déplace vers un espace de publicité virtuelle. J'examine l'histoire de l'université moderne et le rôle que les technologies ont joué dans la réorganisation des entreprises de croissance de l'université. Je défends l'université, idéalement, un site retiré par d'autres institutions, un site à partir de laquelle, dans les mots de Nietzsche, le «prématurée» peut émerger. Je me tourne vers la pensée politique de Hannah Arendt, comme un motif théorique pour comprendre et avatars communauté virtuelle, après Norma Claire Moruzzi en lisant le masque de l'identité sociale comme un site d'engagement politique. J'explore l'apposition de l'articulation de Hannah Arendt de public, personae politique ou des masques dans Essai sur la révolution, ainsi que sa critique de bifurcation métaphysique de Platon de l'Etre et l'apparence, et sa compréhension de (juif) identité en tant que non-territoriales-et donc virtuelle aux débats actuels concernant cybersociality et de la communauté en ligne. Je lui ai lu contre la réception commune pour faire valoir que la conception des acteurs politiques animant ses textes est la meilleure lumineux lorsqu'il est lu à travers les discours contemporains heuristique de la technologie. Ce faisant je développe un point de vue d'Arendt de la politique et l'identité sociale qui est susceptible d'être et s'investit dans des modes de résistance possibles par cybersociality. Du point de vue de la pédagogie critique, je vise à réfléchir aux moyens d'utiliser les technologies comme potentiellement repolitiser, et je identifier les propriétés d'apprentissage en ligne doivent démontrer de manière à créer de nouveaux sites de résistance. 4 INTRODUCTION To become what one is, one must not have the faintest idea what one is. -Nietzsche1 When we interact with computers, when we project ourselves into the worlds they offer, the machines provoke reflection on self, life, and mind. In this sense, life on the screen brings philosophy into everyday life. -Sherry Turkle2 In many ways, this work is a work about failure. The failure of the university to live up to its ideals, and the failure of professors and students to defend them. The failure of online education to live up to its promises, and our own failure at recognizing these promises as a smoke-screen for neo-liberal reform, academic automation, and the increased corporate restructuring of the university. And of course my own failure in designing a research methodology suited to the present conditions. Still, failure can be a productive point of departure. Understanding what is at the root of these failures is necessary to understanding how we can hope to do better. In this work, my goal is to attend to various forces at work and better consider our responses to them. Online education is taken as an illustrative case of the political significance of constructed identities in virtual worlds, both because the practice of education has explicit political consequences itself in its ties to the practice of citizenship, as well as because I contend that all virtual spaces that serve as public fora must be afforded the same political freedoms as physical public spaces. Hannah Arendt‘s unfailing attention to the question of the political is as useful a tool for understanding these issues as any we have, and she also reminds us of what we stand to lose if these spaces are not defended. 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, ―Why I am So Clever,‖ from Ecce Homo, in On the Genealogy of Moral and Ecce Homo. Walter Kaufmann, trans. (New York: Vintage Books, 1989) 254. 2 Sherry Turkle, ―Our Split Screens,‖ in Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice. Andrew Feenberg and Darin Barney, eds. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, Inc, 2004) 101. 5 Since first emerging in the 1980s, and coming to prominence during the 1990s, e-learning has taken many forms- from emulating pre-digital distance education models, to augmenting face-to-face-discussion, to mobile delivery of mini-courses- and has largely left many promises unfulfilled. The spread of reliable broadband Internet connections over the course of the last decade has enabled types of online learning and collaboration that were not feasible prior to this development.3 The impact that this new infrastructure will have on higher education remains to be seen, but it stands to reason that as the cost of university education rises ever higher, online courses will become a more attractive method of learning for institutions and students alike. Cost alone is not the only factor driving online education; availability for adult learners and the ability to expand education beyond what has traditionally been offered have also played a role. In order to avoid a ―technologization‖ of learning, that is to say overemphasizing the necessity for particular hard- and software, it is crucial that discussions and implementation of e-learning focus on pedagogies that suit the nature of these spaces, and expand upon critical pedagogies that have already been developed and that may be well-suited to new methods of communication.