ASPECTOS QUE NECESARIAMENTE DEBEN MODIFICARSE CRITERIO 3: COMPETENCIAS

Queer theory suggests that people do not have a ‘fixed essence’ (Gauntlett, 2004), and that identity is a performance (Butler, 1999; Gauntlett, 2008). As individuals, we each represent a multiplicity of identities (Aslinger, 2010). These identities become important psychological factors, which are shaped by the society and cultures in which we inhabit, affecting both how we project ourselves to others, and how we interpret the social worlds around us. Virtual spaces allow for an extraordinary level of freedom and unparalleled control over the construction of identity (Roberts & Parks, 2001, p.209). Although online bodies are never truly disconnected from dominating discourses of gender and sexuality, nor disconnected from the material specificity of bodies (Bromseth & Sundén, 2011), Gauntlett claims that it is the Internet’s ability to break the connection between outward expression of identity and the physical body that qualifies it as “a space where queer theory’s approach to identity can really come to life” (Gauntlett, 2004). However, when studying gender online, Bromseth and Sundén remind us that we must remain constantly mindful of how the “non-sexual bipolarity of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ [are] most concretely part of the heterosexual matrix” (2011, p.282, italics in original).

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2.6.2.1

Play and playfulness

Play and playfulness are key features in online cultures (Beer & Burrows, 2010; Bromseth & Sundén, 2011; Sundén & Sveningsson, 2012). Indeed, Shelly Turkle’s work, which explores multi-user domains (MUDs) in cyberspace, concludes that virtual domains allow a person to “play a role as close to or as far away from your real self as you choose.” (Turkle, 1995, p.183). Contribution to the emerging field of ‘critical cyberculture studies’, Bromseth and Sundén (2011) claim that, in online contexts, the possibilities of playfulness, passing 66 _{and identity}

experimentation have become the archetypical example of gender and sexuality as situated, flexible performances. Issues of embodiment online (which relate also to plasticity of culture, discussed at 2.6.2.2), therefore “highlight the many connections—and possible disconnections—between the body performing and the body being performed” (Bromseth & Sundén, 2011, p.275). Berman & Bruckman (2001) claim that an individual can adopt a range of online identities to ‘play’ at different subject positions, in order to experiment with and experience (even only if virtually) ‘otherness’. This might also involve the engagement in virtual role-play that challenges one’s own sense of sexuality as fixed, immutable and essential (ibid). Conceptualizing online embodiment through notions of play and performance therefore requires us to think “through the many ways in which the body is created, recreated, and evoked in online worlds through image, text and sound” (Bromseth & Sundén, 2011, p.275).

One of the more dramatic ways in which the unbounded nature of identity construction manifests is the case of gender-swapping in online environments, a situation where women present themselves as men within textual-based online worlds, and men present as women (Senft, 1996; Danet, 1998; Roberts & Parks, 2001; Savicki et al., 2006). In these cases, Roberts and Parks (2001) conclude that this form of identity play is best understood as an experimental behaviour, rather

55 than as an enduring expression of a person’s sexuality or personality, particularly as “online presentations do not create automatic offline consequences” (2001, p.211), as “in most cases online identities remain separate from offline ‘real’ lives” (ibid).

Fictional literature and games constitute forms of entertainment, which Deterding argues, are:

“refined socio-cultural descendants of play as we find it in animals and children; with other practices descending from play (like sports or ritual), they share a pragmatic socio- psychological convention that lends their meaning and performance bounded freedom, renders their consequences void or ‘negotiable’ and their events into ‘make-believe’ events.”

(Deterding, 2009, p.1) As such, the microfiction selection in this thesis represents a form of play by young women using fictional narratives of male same-sex attraction. Although the development of this style of fiction does not necessarily involve female producers and consumers presenting themselves as male, they do project a stylized, eroticized version of male same-sex intimacy as an expression of their own sexual desire and identity. Nor should we forget that, in the online environment, authorship is difficult to ascertain, as all participants have autonomy over the construction of their online identity, and thus females could easily present as male in the online environment, and construct first-person narratives involving homosexual male characters. Therefore, such analysis of the interplay between discourse on sexuality, recreation, and the remediation of identity and desire demonstrates how the study of the newly- expanding genre of BL microfiction makes a vital and timely contribution to media and gender studies.

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2.6.2.2

Plasticity

Linked to the flexibility of identity is the concept of plasticity. The human brain is a plastic entity, moulded by its environment. Such neural plasticity is the reason that people can adapt to different environments, and cultural plasticity is seen as the dominant explanation for geographic variation in human behaviour (Krützen et al., 2011). In turn, elements of popular culture can also be moulded to fit our own interests or requirements. As an example of this phenomenon, Chidester (2015) discusses how the plasticity of American popular culture allows global religious groupings to mould it in the service of their own interests—in the process, negotiating local cultural formations by moulding them in an 'American' style, but not in a way that is controlled by any corporate headquarters in the USA. This process of taking specific cultural elements and using them to negotiate localized cultural formations is apparent in BL literature around the globe, wherein queer stories are used to critique both heterosexual relationships and gender dynamics. It is not the case that only queer authors can articulate queer characters; however, one must appreciate that the information encoded within such representations will be recognizably different depending on the epistemological standpoint of the author. In BL literature, the (primarily) female authors represent a highly stylized version of male homosexuality to discuss intimacy from a perspective outside of the cultural constraints of femininity. This can therefore lead to errors of miscommunication in the encoding/decoding process, as discussed at 2.6.1. For this reason, Hall (1980) believes that, with respect to communication research, a behaviourist approach is often misleading—explaining that, for example, "representations of violence on TV are not violence", but are rather "messages about violence" (Hall, 1980, p.166)67_.

Therefore, intimacy in microfiction represents messages about intimacy, rather than being realistic or factual depictions of queer lives.

67 _{Hall’s research subject here was television, yet his formulations are true for other forms of}

communication, and their continued use in digital culture research is supported by Livingstone (2004, 2008) and Das (with Livingstone, 2013).

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