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Negotiating dichotomies, transcending boundaries: Investigating embodied knowing in the interplay of corporeality and digitality
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Type
Thesis
Abstract
Arising from postmodern influences, notions of knowledge as absolute and foundational get increasingly challenged (Collins & Halverson, 2009; Gee & Shaffer, 2010; Dimmock & Walker, 2000). Instead, there now exists a concerted effort on the exploration of situatedness and contextuality of knowledge within which subjectivities are inscribed (Schon, 1987; Shaffer, 2010; Halpern, 2010). Parallel to this, the notion of corporeality takes on renewed significance in epistemological debates. Rather than thinking of knowledge as transcending the body, embodiment of knowledge has become a key factor in understanding the nature of knowledge and what it means to know (Dohn, 2002; Gallagher, 2005; Johnson, 2007; Gregersen & Grodal, 2009). Occupying the
agendas of cultural and cyber theories of the last five decades, the concept of ‘body’ gets even more elusive with the permeation of technologies. The ‘disappearance’ of the body under conditions of digitality effectuate the presumption that contemporary media brings about a state of dematerialisation and disembodiment. It appears that modern technologies may have consequentially undermined the centrality of the body in cultural, social, and educational interactions. Yet, current conceptions of knowledge and learning are predicated on an embodied merging of mind and body. An epistemological reorienting toward the body coupled with a technological turn away from the body thus presents a dichotomy.
Against this backdrop, this study seeks to clarify the notion of embodiment within a seemingly dichotomous interplay of corporeality and digitality. I ask three key questions: (i) How do informants conceive of body in the interplay of corporeality and digitality? (ii) What are the embodied knowing enactments arising from informants’ interplay of corporeality and digitality? and (iii) How do activities and structures within the interplay of corporeality and digitality bear upon informants’ embodied knowing and, by extension, identity becoming? Turning to the extremely popular immersive multiplayer game space, World of Warcraft (WoW) as an expedient and au courant context for corporeal and digital interplay, I investigated how modes of existing in WoW, of being-in-world, provide the phenomenological ground for youths’ embodied knowing as they construct identity, negotiate meaning, and make sense of their social experiences online. In understanding how body is conceived by informants, the emergent themes were: (i) instantiation of a phenomenal body in play, (ii) bodily repertoire from pre-reflective consciousness to organization of the corporeal schema, and iii) interplay of corporeal-perception and digital-action as enabling new ways of being-in-world. To unpack informants’ bodily enactments, three thematic categories of: i) domain practices, ii) discursive practices, and iii) disquisitional practices against self, social, and structural relations were observed. Finally, in analyzing the constructs underpinning embodied knowing and identity becoming, four thematic categories were reported: i) performative enactments, ii) bodily attunements, iii) affordance management, and iv) affectivity and inclinatory constructs.
Drawing on these findings, I characterize a form of rhizomatic embodiment within current media sophistications which I argue to be a conceptual provision that can be used to reduce the analytical elusiveness of embodiment and overcome the gap in current understandings of how digital experiences account for new ways of meaning making and how one comes to know and hence to be within contemporary interactional spaces. I make an argument for a shift of attention from youth’s game play as an interpretive and manipulative activity of arbitrary representations and simulations to recognizing it as rhizomatically embodied material-digital possibilities that is accomplished through the mobilization of multiple modalities. To this end, this thesis is intended as a theoretical and substantive contribution to the study of body in relation to learning and becoming in present times, as it addresses the ontological and epistemological dissonances that confront this area, while seeking to derive possible implications for the institutionalized schooling milieu.
agendas of cultural and cyber theories of the last five decades, the concept of ‘body’ gets even more elusive with the permeation of technologies. The ‘disappearance’ of the body under conditions of digitality effectuate the presumption that contemporary media brings about a state of dematerialisation and disembodiment. It appears that modern technologies may have consequentially undermined the centrality of the body in cultural, social, and educational interactions. Yet, current conceptions of knowledge and learning are predicated on an embodied merging of mind and body. An epistemological reorienting toward the body coupled with a technological turn away from the body thus presents a dichotomy.
Against this backdrop, this study seeks to clarify the notion of embodiment within a seemingly dichotomous interplay of corporeality and digitality. I ask three key questions: (i) How do informants conceive of body in the interplay of corporeality and digitality? (ii) What are the embodied knowing enactments arising from informants’ interplay of corporeality and digitality? and (iii) How do activities and structures within the interplay of corporeality and digitality bear upon informants’ embodied knowing and, by extension, identity becoming? Turning to the extremely popular immersive multiplayer game space, World of Warcraft (WoW) as an expedient and au courant context for corporeal and digital interplay, I investigated how modes of existing in WoW, of being-in-world, provide the phenomenological ground for youths’ embodied knowing as they construct identity, negotiate meaning, and make sense of their social experiences online. In understanding how body is conceived by informants, the emergent themes were: (i) instantiation of a phenomenal body in play, (ii) bodily repertoire from pre-reflective consciousness to organization of the corporeal schema, and iii) interplay of corporeal-perception and digital-action as enabling new ways of being-in-world. To unpack informants’ bodily enactments, three thematic categories of: i) domain practices, ii) discursive practices, and iii) disquisitional practices against self, social, and structural relations were observed. Finally, in analyzing the constructs underpinning embodied knowing and identity becoming, four thematic categories were reported: i) performative enactments, ii) bodily attunements, iii) affordance management, and iv) affectivity and inclinatory constructs.
Drawing on these findings, I characterize a form of rhizomatic embodiment within current media sophistications which I argue to be a conceptual provision that can be used to reduce the analytical elusiveness of embodiment and overcome the gap in current understandings of how digital experiences account for new ways of meaning making and how one comes to know and hence to be within contemporary interactional spaces. I make an argument for a shift of attention from youth’s game play as an interpretive and manipulative activity of arbitrary representations and simulations to recognizing it as rhizomatically embodied material-digital possibilities that is accomplished through the mobilization of multiple modalities. To this end, this thesis is intended as a theoretical and substantive contribution to the study of body in relation to learning and becoming in present times, as it addresses the ontological and epistemological dissonances that confront this area, while seeking to derive possible implications for the institutionalized schooling milieu.
Date Issued
2016
Call Number
BD175 Azi
Date Submitted
2016