Mobile technologies are the latest technologies in the realm of communication media. They have the potential to flatten the world by making it a place where gender, age, class, race and nationality can no longer hold us back from being heard and being informed. We have learned that these technologies can help to liberate and empower us, and they can lead to a collective cognition as much as they can distract us from what we need to know about the world we live in. In Greece thousands of years ago, a selected number of Greeks had a public space called the Agora to discuss the issues that concerned the public, meaning each and every citizen. They were the first to be able to create the space and place were the word “democracy” could be brought into language; the very word that was used to start a new war in the era of a communication revolution in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There are still issues that concern the public today such as wars, global warming, homelessness or human rights which are all matters of our collective cognition. However, today in an age of information revolution the public life of people and their collective cognition is being exercised mostly in the virtual spaces of the Internet. Simultaneously, some physical spaces are being abandoned by people. This thesis investigates the possibility of having physical public spaces that are enriched with communication media and not weakened by it. If architects rethink their designs based on a new understanding of the networked society it might be possible to turn this “networked individualism” into a networked collectivism. However, most designed public spaces fail to offer new possibilities that can transform space for the new generation of users. Here, the aim is to understand a new generation of users. Who have they become as a result of new communication media? And how can architects design in a way that responds to this new subject in architecture?

Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / In this dissertation the dominant metaphor for the fusion between the feminine and technology, the cyborg, will be examined through various texts to assess the value the cyborg has for feminism as a tool to exposes the constructedness of boundaries of identity and gender, thereby enabling a reconstruction of a new feminine identity in a subversive and transgressive space. The main themes which will be addressed are those that often feature in feminist science fiction: reproduction, sexuality, the construction of identity and gender through science, culture and ideology, and the power relations between men and women. Other related concepts which will be dealt with are language, self and Other, representation and perspective. Feminist science fiction and theory attempt to destabilise conventional boundaries concerned with gender and identity and the texts which this dissertation deals with are all, to varying degrees, concerned with this destabilisation, each offering a unique perspective on feminine identity and the attempted transformation of current gender categories which will be explored in detailed analysis.

Mobile technologies are the latest technologies in the realm of communication media. They have the potential to flatten the world by making it a place where gender, age, class, race and nationality can no longer hold us back from being heard and being informed. We have learned that these technologies can help to liberate and empower us, and they can lead to a collective cognition as much as they can distract us from what we need to know about the world we live in. In Greece thousands of years ago, a selected number of Greeks had a public space called the Agora to discuss the issues that concerned the public, meaning each and every citizen. They were the first to be able to create the space and place were the word “democracy” could be brought into language; the very word that was used to start a new war in the era of a communication revolution in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There are still issues that concern the public today such as wars, global warming, homelessness or human rights which are all matters of our collective cognition. However, today in an age of information revolution the public life of people and their collective cognition is being exercised mostly in the virtual spaces of the Internet. Simultaneously, some physical spaces are being abandoned by people. This thesis investigates the possibility of having physical public spaces that are enriched with communication media and not weakened by it. If architects rethink their designs based on a new understanding of the networked society it might be possible to turn this “networked individualism” into a networked collectivism. However, most designed public spaces fail to offer new possibilities that can transform space for the new generation of users. Here, the aim is to understand a new generation of users. Who have they become as a result of new communication media? And how can architects design in a way that responds to this new subject in architecture? / Applied Science, Faculty of / Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of / Graduate

Colonial legacies continue to impact representational practices in contemporary society. Social media platforms have provided a patriarchal marketplace in which female bodies become commodifiable products as ‘influencers’ and processes of racialisation and Othering are reproduced. A novel feature is the emergence of computer-generated imagery depicting feminized and racialised figures, or avatars, created by US and UK companies for profit. The objective of this thesis is to examine the problematics of the avatars in their construction, discursive practices and potential social and political impact by examining a range of material spanning from articles to social media images. To this end, a critical discourse analysis is conducted with a theoretical framework comprising feminist postcolonial theory and intersectionality. Building on feminist works on colonial legacy, conceptions of the Other, and Donna Haraway’s cyborg idea, measures of objectification and exotification are investigated. Exemplified by two leading avatars, the thesis explores their potential implications for power dynamics in society. The analysis found that while claiming to enhance representation and diversity the avatars effectively work against these goals. Considering histories of colonialism and the avatars’ profitability for patriarchal and capitalist agendas, they overtly and subtly reinforce systemic inequalities and materialise processes of Othering and racialisation embedded in social discourse. Expanding on existing disparities the avatars produce a novel marketable feature for corporations through social media that influences and shapes social perceptions spanning from fashionable ideals to, ultimately, political beliefs.

In this dissertation, I analyze the 20th century text, A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf (2005), and I engage with Woolf's concept of a woman's need for a room of her own in which she can be free to think for herself, study, write, or pursue other interests away from the oppression of patriarchal societal expectations and demands. Through library-based research, I identify four screens in Woolf's work through which she viewed and critiqued culture, and I use these screens to reconceptualize "a room of one's own" in 21st Century terms. I determine that the new "room" is intimately and intricately technological and textual and it is reformulated in the digital spaces of blogs, social media, and Web sites. Further, I introduce the new concept of the technologized politically embodied cyborg, or TPEC, and examine the ways 21st Century TPECs are shaping U.S. culture in progressive ways.

Ce mémoire pose l'enjeu de la remise en question du corps propre de Donna Haraway à partir de son célèbre exemple du cyborg : un être qui subvertit les identités politiques par sa transgression des frontières qui fondent la naturalité des corps. Métaphore politique, les corps cyborgs sont pour Haraway l'occasion d'enraciner une politique qui allie les humains à la nature pour reconnaître la relation active et transformationnelle qu'ils entretiennent avec le monde. Les trois frontières de son manifeste sont développées : la frontière entre l'humain et l'animal, celle avec la machine et celle entre le monde physique et non-physique. Biologie / social; nature / culture; homme / femme : le cyborg transgresse la dualité avec sa politique émancipatoire hors dialectique. Le cyborg questionne l’origine des corps (ses définitions, ses fondements conceptuels) et déstabilise la notion du corps propre de l'individu pour centrer sur les relations elles-mêmes.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-04-05T11:56:39Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Vívian Maria Corneti de Lima_.pdf: 1759093 bytes, checksum: c0db326aa4c8e2ce89ca479766b0465b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-05T11:56:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vívian Maria Corneti de Lima_.pdf: 1759093 bytes, checksum: c0db326aa4c8e2ce89ca479766b0465b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-15 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O principal objetivo desta pesquisa é investigar as maneiras pelas quais as pessoas com deficiência física, em especial os tetraplégicos e paraplégicos, ao se apropriarem das potencialidades da internet, ampliam sua capacidade comunicativa e tornam-se aquilo que denominamos de ciborgues midiatizados. O método estudo de caso é a principal estratégia metodológica articuladora da problemática, que permite conhecer em maior profundidade as realidades e transformações vividas por pessoas com deficiência física ao fazerem uso dos meios de comunicação on-line. O grupo escolhido para representar a categoria dos deficientes físicos é composto por três pessoas que não possuem condições de movimentar seus corpos e, ainda assim, através de mouses adaptados às suas condições físicas, fazem uso constante e intenso das tecnologias de comunicação digitais. Para abranger a complexidade da problemática, realizamos uma construção que contempla a contextualização sobre o cenário atual da sociedade, abrangendo a importância do processo de midiatização inserido neste espaço. Trabalhamos com conceitos e teorias que privilegiam o estudo das formas de construção das identidades, o exercício da cidadania e a valorização e inclusão das pessoas com deficiência pelos meios de comunicação. A constituição das pessoas com deficiência física enquanto ciborgues midiatizados parte da análise da fecundidade das relações que o grupo observado estabelece com os meios de comunicação digitais, fato que lhes proporciona possibilidades únicas de extensão, interação, sociabilidade e mobilidade. Os resultados da investigação permitiram constatar que aspectos importantes de suas configurações sociais e culturais são características intrínsecas à sua interação com a internet. Constatamos ainda que a participação no universo virtual digital é ferramenta essencial para que as pessoas com deficiência física severa possam desempenhar com mais facilidade suas características de criatividade, autonomia, liberdade e cidadania. / The main purpose of this research is to investigate the ways in which people with disabilities, particularly quadriplegics and paraplegics, can incorporate the potential of the Internet, expand their communication skills and become what we call mediatized cyborgs. The case study method is the main methodological strategy articulating the problem, allowing us to understand in greater depth the reality and transformations experienced by people with physical disabilities to make use of online communication. Three people, who are not able to move their bodies and yet, through mice adapted to their physical conditions, are in constant and intense use of digital communication were chosen to represent the category of disabled people. To address the complexity of the problem, we conducted a construction which includes the context of the current scenario of society, covering the importance of the process of mediatization inserted in this space. We work with concepts and theories that emphasize the forms of construction of identities, the practice of citizenship and the appreciation and inclusion of people with disabilities in the media. The constitution of people with disabilities as part of mediatized cyborgs starts from the analysis of the fecundity relationship that the observed group sets with digital media, a fact which gives them unique extension possibilities, interactions, sociability and mobility. Research results allowed to confirm that important aspects of their social and cultural settings are intrinsic to its interaction with the internet. It was even possible to note that participation in the digital virtual world is an essential tool for people with severe physical disabilities to easily play their characteristics of creativity, autonomy, freedom and citizenship.

Subjects designated by the neologism 'disability' typically experience various forms of marginality, discrimination and inequality. The response by social scientists and professionals engaged in social policy and service delivery has been to combat the 'disability problem' by way of implementing anti-discrimination protections and various other compensatory initiatives. More recently, with the development of biological and techno-sciences such as 'new genetics', nanotechnologies and cyborgs the solution to 'disability' management has been in the form of utilizing technologies of early detection, eradication or at best, technologies of mitigation. Contemporary discourses of disablement displace and disconnect discussion away from the 'heart of the problem', namely, matters ontological. Disability - based marginality is assumed to emerge from a set of pre-existing conditions (i.e. in the case of biomedicalisation, deficiency inheres in the individual, whilst in the Social Model disablement is created by a capitalist superstructure). The Great Divide takes an alternative approach to studying 'the problem of disability' by proposing that the neologism 'disability' is in fact created by and used to generate notions and epistemologies of 'ableism'. Whilst epistemologies of disablement are well researched, there is a paucity of research related to the workings of ableism. The focal concerns of The Great Divide relate to matters of ordering, disorder and constitutional compartmentalization between the normal and pathological and the ways that discourses about wholeness, health, enhancement and perfection produce notions of impairment. A central argument of this dissertation figures the production of disability as part of the tussle over ordering, emerging from a desire to create order from an assumed disorder; resulting in a flimsy but often unconvincing attempt to shore up so-called optimal ontologies and disperse outlaw ontologies. The Great Divide examines ways 'disability' rubs up against, mingles with and provokes other seemingly unrelated concepts such as wellness, ableness, perfection, competency, causation, productivity and use value. The scaffolding of the dissertation directs the reader to selected sites that produce epistemologies of disability and ableism, namely the writing of 'history' and Judeo-Christian renderings of Disability. It explores the nuances of ableism (including a case study of wrongful life torts in law) and the phenomenon of internalized ableism as experienced by many disabled people. The study of liberalism and the government of government are explored in terms of enumeration, the science of 'counting cripples' and the battles over defining 'disability' in law and social policy. Additionally another axis of ableism is explored through the study of a number of perfecting technologies and the way in which these technologies mediate what it means to be 'human' (normalcy), morphs/simulates 'normalcy' and the leakiness of 'disability'. This analysis charts the invention of forearms transplantation (a la Clint Hallam), the Cochlear implant and transhumanism. The Great Divide concludes with an inversion of the ableist gaze(s) by proposing an ethic of affirmation, a desiring ontology of impairment.

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