In Palfrey and Gasser's "Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives," the discussion of Digital Natives goes in depth about what identity means. Their focus particularly on the female Digital Native coincides with both Banet-Weiser article "Branding the Post-Feminism Self: Girls' Video Production and YouTube" and Haraway's "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Social Feminism in the 1980s." This focus on females and their public identities may be because females are fairly new to the public sphere. And by fairly new, I mean the past 50 years or so if we are thinking in terms of waves on feminism.
These three articles intersect at the discussion of women taking and using something that they previously didn't typically have access to: a public forum for expressing themselves within the context of their current culture. This can be conceived as both a good and bad thing for women. The good part is that women are free to express themselves but the bad may be what they choose to express and how they express it. All of this is relative and it is where feminist issues come in.
I argue that digital identities (Palfrey and Gasser), cyborgs (Haraway) and self-branding online (Banet-Weiser) are all basically the same concept. It's an extension of yourself in an online medium, basically. Adding post-feminism to this creates the aspect of women all authors are discussing.
In Banet-Weiser's article, she discusses girls navigating their online identities through the use of YouTube and how it may be a form of post-feminism and self-branding (who knows what her actual thoughts were since she had no closing thoughts). My question asks: Do these girls and young women know that they are post-feminists and does it matter if they know or not?
According to Wikipedia's definition of post-feminism it is:
"...ill-defined and is used in inconsistent ways. However, it generally connotes the belief that feminism has succeeded in its goal of ameliorating sexism, making it fundamentally opposed to the third-wave intention of broadening feminist struggle."So, are we in an era where women are struggling less? Did the second-wave succeed in liberating women? I don't think so but do the female Digital Natives believe this? Or do they just not care? I think they don't care, personally, because they do not realize the consequences involved with sharing all they do online. I do not think teenagers are socially aware to the extent that they would understand a post-feminist stance.
What are your thoughts? Are they post-feminists or just ignorant?
So you're saying that Haraway's cyborgs are the same as the 13 year olds dancing to Barbie Girl?
ReplyDeleteAs I read your post, you're arguing that the extension of the self is the common factor between these three concepts, thus equating them. I don't know that I'm convinced by that argument (of course I am a post-modern, borderlands, liminal fan boy, so I'm not exactly unbiased).
What I think is interesting in the mix of the three is *intentionality*. Haraway makes clear that "post" feminists need to rewrite the code. I don't know that the 13 year olds are doing that intentionally. I don't know that they're challenging the code at all, actually.
I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of others on this. Maybe finding the commonality among these three things is impossible.
- Andrew
I think if the 13 year old girls could conceptualize what they were actually doing rather than trying to be popular online that they could embrace being a cyborg. Or maybe they are prepping themselves to be cyborgs after they experience the highs and lows of life on and offline.
ReplyDeleteI also would classify my self as a PoMo "fangirl" etc. But I also like being the devil's advocate. >:oD