A Study of Change of the Body View in Cyberculture

抄録

According to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, “art” actualizes the “virtual (possible)” which is latent once the world is organized by a fixed method and that “philosophy” conceptualizes the “virtual (possible).” In other words, art and philosophy are regarded as suitable for grasping new experiences that are different from the ones under the existing socially constructed order.

From this perspective, first of all, this paper shows that although early cyberculture describes a utopia of the near future where escape from the body is realized by technologies (as seen in William Gibson's Neuromancer), expressions of new experiences of bodies in our everyday life have become an important part of cyberculture nowadays. Contemporary cyberculture like some kinds of gameplay or cyborg performances contains the actualization of new experiences of bodies in our society with the spread of the electronic environment.

Secondly, this paper examines new experiences of bodies in our society after the spread of electronic technologies based on some game studies and art commentaries. Recently, some game studies and art commentaries have analyzed new experiences of bodies in contemporary cyberculture. According to those studies and commentaries, new experiences of bodies are not only mental and emotional but also physical as well. Selves that appear in the electronic media are not based on the release from the biological body but the reconstruction of the biological body. The new experiences are crucial in making a re-examination of the framework of the biological body and opening up infinite possibilities for interpretation of bodies. Those possibilities invite rethinking and reconstructing the existing order related to the biological body.