The Essence of Virtuality: Exploring the Digital Body
Mark Ortwein
Abstract
This “think piece” explores the definitional possibilities of “body”—that is, what is a body and how should we understand it, especially in light of the recent emergence of virtual bodies. To this end, the author employs an essentialist framework for understanding: Is the body reducible to some fundamental essence or substance, something common to all bodies? To what extent does a definition of body extend to virtual bodies? These questions (and others) are posited, and the author invites readers to consider the manifold issues engendered by such reflection.
Full Text: PDF
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
The full website for the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research can be found at: http://jvwresearch.org