This thesis presents an emerging concept called the interactional self to illustrate how, contrary to theories of “cyberspace” and “cyberselves,” there tend not to be sharp socio-phenomenological distinctions between “virtual” and offline sociability within one’s life-world. As such, using aspects of the philosophies of experience of Heidegger, Mead, Schutz, and Husserl as foundations, this thesis argues that social interactions online, for most, are extensions of and not apart from their everyday, situated life-worlds. After briefly introducing the path towards our contemporary “will-to-virtuality” and various utopian and dystopian visions of “cyberspace,” an alternative conceptual picture of the interactional self is gradually revealed using the metaphor of a portrait painted on a “social-world canvas.” In this painting, the ontology of Heidegger’s Dasein supplies the first brushes for outlining the early sketches of the interactional self, showing that online, as in offline settings, we encounter the world and others from the position of beings deeply engaged in practical daily acts and “interpretative understandings.” These brushes are then dipped into Mead’s intertactionist colours and Schutz’s socio-phenomenological textures, eventually filling in the portrait. Illustrated via a case study of blogging practices, Mead’s theory of the “generalized other” highlights the notion that the interactional self does not concretely distinguish between offline and online social settings but instead, as in more traditional “off the network” situations, uses Internet-mediated communication for performative practices that afford self-expression and maintain social cohesion. Schutz’s phenomenology of the life-world gives further perspective to the interactional self, showing that online sociability should not be viewed as being apart from the “intersubjective” intersection of life-worlds rooted in everyday life. With some help from Husserl’s phenomenology, Schutz is subsequently relied on for understanding online textual embodiment, spatial extensions, community, role-playing, and fantasy, adding yet more socio-historical shadings to interactions online. Ultimately, the picture that emerges is framed within the following four concluding hypotheses: 1] The interactional self encounters social acts, online and off, as part of its greater life-world, practicing performative and group-enforcing self-management through 2] varying and interlinked dimensions of sociability and 3] pragmatic yet meaningful uses of the communicational tools at hand in 4] contextually relevant degrees of self-disclosure.
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CHAPTER TWO: Life and "Mind" are Systemic ProcessesCounterpoints
Vol. 56, Acts of alignment: of women in math and science and all of us who search for balance [2000]
, pp. 41-112 [72 pages]
Published By: Peter Lang AG
//www.jstor.org/stable/42976080
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Journal Information
Counterpoints publishes the most compelling and imaginative books being written in education today. Grounded on the theoretical advances in criticalism, feminism and postmodernism in the last two decades of the twentieth century, Counterpoints engages the meaning of these innovations in various forms of educational expression. Committed to the proposition that theoretical literature should be accessible to a variety of audiences, the series insists that its authors avoid esoteric and jargonistic languages that transform educational scholarship into an elite discourse for the initiated. Scholarly work matters only to the degree it affects consciousness and practice at multiple sites. Counterpoints editorial policy is based on these principles and the ability of scholars to break new ground, to open new conversations, to go where educators have never gone before.
Publisher Information
The Peter Lang Publishing Group has over 40 years of experience in academic publishing, specializing in the humanities and social sciences worldwide and publishing more than 1,800 titles every year. The headquarters in Bern, Switzerland are the central hub for executive management, sales, marketing and distribution services, working closely with the editorial companies based in Berlin, Bern, Brussels, Oxford, and New York, and supported by commissioning editors working out of local offices in Vienna, Dublin, Warsaw and Istanbul.
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