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Gender and information technologies : exploring performing bodies

This paper argues that since media or technologies are extensions or abstractions of
ourselves, the technologies that we performatively produce simultaneously function to
(re)produce us. Technologies are highly social spaces which have the performative
power to (re)produce the very 'materiality' of that thing we call 'reality.' The
performative powers of technologies manifest as the powerfully (re)productive meaningmaking
paradigms and regulatory controls in operation in a given culture. After
considering the predominant paradigms performed through typographic and computing
technologies, this paper investigates 'gender' as a performative site of social interface
(re)produced in relation to these predominating technological paradigms. This paper
further argues that in the context of the cyborg, 'gender' is exposed to be a map with no
territory: in a world increasingly exposed as simulation, the material reality of 'gender'
is power's effect. Finally, this paper considers the theatre in relation to typographic and
computing paradigms, arguing that 'play' and the imagination, in world that is all
representation, are crucial sites of social practice. Indeed, 'performativity' provides a
means for understanding the agency, subjectivity, materiality, and politics of construction
(re)produced through this, our simulated world.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/10482
Date05 1900
CreatorsQuenneville, Carmen
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
RelationUBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/]

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