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Sarup discusses how, in contemporary society, the presentation of different self images is possible, even desirable; “Personal identities are far more complex and shifting than is usually thought… people have multiple, apparently contradictory, identities at any one time” (1996, p.122-126.) He reminds us too, with a riddle, of the “diverse, heterogeneous and contradictory” way in which our identities may manifest in our everyday lives: “What do a trade unionist, a tory, a Christian, a wife beater and a consumer have in common? They can all be the same person” (1996, p.57). Levine wrote "Personal and social identities can be understood as second- order reflections on the first-order reflective experiences called self-concepts... social and personal identity constructs “make sense of” or “organize” a variety of self-concepts that “seem”

to belong together" (2005, p.175-185). Žižek offers a different perspective of the multiple facets of identity which individuals may express:

One should turn around the standard notion of ideology as providing the firm identification to its subjects, constraining them to their "social roles": what if, at a different — but no less irrevocable and structurally necessary — level, ideology is effective precisely by way of constructing a space of false disidentification, of false distance towards the actual coordinates of the subject's social existence? Is this logic of disidentification not discernible from the most elementary case of "I am not only an American (husband, worker, democrat, gay…), but, beneath all these roles and masks, a human being, a complex unique personality. (2009, p.203)

Postmodern schools of thought in the 20th century rejected the concept of the unified consciousness. Bergson writes of the concept of unity as simply a manner in which to associate a number of disparate elements and ‘to reduce the self to an aggregate of conscious states: sensations, feelings, and ideas’. However he warns against confusing such individual states with the concept of self:

…if he sees in these various states no more than is expressed in their name, if he retains only their impersonal aspect, he may set them side by side for ever without getting anything but a phantom self, the shadow of the ego projecting itself into space. If, on the contrary, he takes these psychic states with the particular colouring which they assume in the case of a definite person, and which comes to each of them by reflection from all the others, then there is no need to associate a number of conscious states in order to rebuild

the person, for the whole personality is in a single one of them, provided that we know how to choose it. (1910, pp.165-223)

He goes on to discuss the self as the author of its own expression of these states which are moderated by the consciousness’s perception of them:

And the outward manifestation of this inner state will be just what is called a free act, since the self alone will have been the author of it, and since it will express the whole of the self... the mistake made by consciousness arises from the fact that it looks at the self, not directly, but by a kind of refraction through the forms which it has lent to external perception, and which the latter does not give back without having left its mark on them. (1910, pp.165-223).

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari are responsible for introducing the concept of a multiplicity that "ceases to have any relation to the One as subject or object, natural or spiritual reality, image and world. Multiplicities are rhizomatic... There is no unity to serve as a pivot in the object, or to divide in the subject" (2004, p.8).

Deleuze comments further on multiplicity:

Multiplicity remains completely indifferent to the traditional problems of the multiple and the one, and above all to the problem of a subject who would think through this multiplicity, give it conditions, account for its origins, and so on. There is neither one nor multiple, which would at all events entail having recourse to a consciousness that would be regulated by the one and developed by the other" (1986, p.14).

writing on the topic of identity in early internet multi user environments, proposed that our behaviour in virtual worlds challenged ideas about a unitary self:

each of us is a multiplicity of parts, fragments and desiring connections… (The) disjuncture between theory (the unitary self is an illusion) and lived experience (the unitary self is the most basic reality) is one of the main reasons why multiple and decentred theories have been slow to catch on…In computer mediated worlds, the self is multiple, fluid and constituted in interaction with machine connections... the "embodied" life we live on a day-to-day basis has no more reality than the role-playing games on the Internet … players can develop a way of thinking in which life is made up of many windows and RL (Real Life) is only one of them (1995, p.14).

Turkle raised questions about the identities individuals create to interact within virtual environments still relevant and largely unanswered today;

• What relation do these have to what we have traditionally thought of as the whole person?

• Are they experienced as an expanded self or as separate from the self? • Are these virtual personae fragments of a coherent real life personality?

• Can the multiple personae join to comprise what the individual thinks of as his or her authentic self? (1995, p.180)

Meadows writes that “Avatars encourage a fracturing of psyche and personality" and allow us to “strip our different personas into individual threads” (2008, p.96) whilst Winder that “the traditional understanding of identity which says we have a single, overriding core

personality that defines us as an individual is no longer valid…Underneath whatever multiple masks we wear in the virtual world, however many personas we construct, a new collaborative identity is built which ultimately reveals the real us.” (2008, p.223). He compares operators to teenagers experimenting with different identities while Suler writes of deconstructing ourselves online; “Compartmentalizing or dissociating one's various online identities like this can be an efficient, focused way to manage the multiplicities of selfhood” (2002, pp. 455-460). Conversely Kenneth Gergen claims that because technologies saturate us with a multiplicity of personalities, we can never truly know ourselves:

for everything we 'know to be true' about ourselves, other voices within respond with doubt and even derision…the very conception of an 'authentic self' with knowable characteristics recedes from view. The fully saturated self becomes no self at all (1991, p.7).

Artist Jacqueline Ford Morie, who describes herself to have ‘a closet full of avatars to match her multifaceted personality’ (Doyle, 2008, p.12, 2011, p.100), logged on as two avatars simultaneously using two computers to confirm that people would treat the two avatars Chingaling & China Bling, imbued with the back narrative that they were sisters, as two separate operators. Morie suggests that the act of emplacing a body into an immersive environment signifies ‘a shift to a dualistic existence in two simultaneous bodies’ and claims that the lived body has ‘bifurcated and become two’ (Morie, 2007, p.123-137 quoted by Doyle, 2011, p.100), though perhaps Chingaling & China Bling demonstrate that the two may become three, or more.

Yee, & Wadley, (2009) as finding that on average Second Life residents have a total of three different avatars per account. An operator’s original or main avatar is usually termed as the primary avatar whilst other avatars referred to as 'alts' (or alternative avatars).

Messinger et al (2008) question the reasons why people maintain multiple avatars; Are they cultivating multiple virtual selves, just as many people cultivate a “work self” and an “informal self” in real life? In some cases such 'alts' may have practical reasons, to allow the operator anonymity to work undisturbed by the acquaintances of the primary avatar or to test something their primary avatar has built. Others may use the relative anonymity of alts for more destructive purposes such as griefing (the process of taking actions to cause distress to others within your virtual environment). However, for many, alts are a relatively 'safe' method of alternative expressions of identity while allowing a primary avatar to maintain a stable expression of identity and, as noted by Edward Castronova (2006, p.p.32-33), to build stable reputations within the virtual worlds in which they reside. Boellstorff gives an example of a resident who did not want their actual self to be associated with their avatar who made a living as an escort but writes that “Alts were not seen as deceptive because most residents did not reveal their real life identities” (2008, pp.131-134). As an alternative to perceiving alts as different expressions of a single identity, Anne Marie Schleiner cites Stone (1995) as making the case that multiple avatars represent multiple selves that extend outside the flesh body into cyberspace:

Rather than portraying these multiple selves as fictitious characters who mask an individual player's singular core ‘real’ identity, Stone perceives these multiple personas as extensions of the many different roles we play on and offline, part and parcel of the natural condition of schizophrenia that we all inhabit. (2001)

Boellstorff quotes a SL resident as saying of alts “both alts are real, my second alt is very much a part of me, the part I choose not to express here on my main account.” He writes of alts having a ‘fractal or dividual selfhood of a plural self forged through the same practices of techne that sustained the gap between the actual and the virtual” (2008, p.197). Quoting Marilyn Strathern (1998) that alts are “constructed as the plural and composite site of the relationship that produced them” he questions the “clear gap where one alt ends and the next begins” asking “What theory of agency is in play when Frank logs in two alts at once so that Nancy is sitting with Ray" or when “a resident logs in two alts at once to have sex with herself” (2008, p.150).

Warburton discusses the process by which alts evolve:

As our in-world interactions become more elaborate and diverse a moment is reached where we feel a tension between our single avatar and the multiple roles that our virtual self is able to adopt… social norms and modes of behaviour may begin to sit uncomfortably within the embodiment provided within a single avatar... Multiple avatars in effect offer multiple channels for reflecting the range of roles and identities that we take for granted in our everyday existence (2008).

The use of alternative avatars, particularly to experiment or behave in ways which one would not want to be associated with their primary avatar, may be seen to equate to the idea of the shadow, i.e. a manifestation of those aspects of personality which one rejects, or of which one is not conscious. Baudrillard refers to the concept of the shadow in Simulcra and Simulation

take its shadow into account…- the hidden face where the object crumbles, its secret” (1994, p.109). Within Second Life the limitations inherent in the curation of the attributes necessary to develop a coherent avatar mean that this ‘hidden face’ referred to by Baudrillard is not typically expressed by the primary avatar, remaining hidden and secret. In an interesting parallel it may be noted that the limitations of the rendering of environmental lighting settings within Second Life means that avatars do not cast virtual shadows either.

It might be speculated that alternative avatars within Second Life allow operators to access this shadow personality, but separating it from the primary expression of identity. Žižek warns that multiplicity of identity may lead not to integration but to fragmentation or confusion: “(The) much celebrated playing with multiple, shifting personas (freely constructed identities) tends to obfuscate (and thus falsely liberate us from) the constraints of social space in which our existence is caught” (2000, p.103). Žižek further warns of the "'dissemination' of the unique Self into a multiplicity of competing agents, shifting identities, of masks without a 'real' person behind them" (1997, p.134).

Responding to Žižek’s writings Wilson writes;

Could not the possibility to explore a plurality of personalities allow for empowerment and self-realisation beyond the hegemony of ‘real’ life norms and habitual social conventions (expanded agency)? ... according to Žižek there is a price to be paid… measurable in terms of the impact that it has on one’s ‘real’ life, on a sense of agency heightened, weakened or merely different. The selfsplit between the material body and the interpassive object, between the corporeal and the immanent – thus faces either a loss of agency through a lack of integration of the multiplicity of selves, an embellishment of

agency through the integration of these selves and/or a re-definition of agency through alternative presence, perception and mobility (2003, p.4).

Boellstorff discusses how avatars can be used to create fictionalised identities for their operators and quotes a resident as saying that a way of dividing time between your alternate and prime avatars is “to give your alt a persona that is busy in real life” (2008, p.133). He goes on to recall encountering “residents who used images of other people when asked for an actual world photograph of themselves.” Kendall observed that when 'Barbie' presented two conflicting statements of her identity on BlueSky MUD, one which she presented as her offline identity and the other as her online identity, other users "accepted the version that positioned her offline identity as true and her online identity as false” (2002, pp.10-12). In some cases there may be no single operator, but rather multiple individuals operating one avatar. Boellstorff discusses his realisation that “different actual world people might be inhabiting the avatar… what is at issue is a disjuncture between avatar and actual world person” (2008, p.28). Yee, Ellis & Ducheneaut suggest an example of how a multiple operator avatar might function; “one user might focus on the verbal interaction, while another user might focus on emotes and other non-verbal cues, while a third user might be in charge of the private messages” (2009).

One case of multiple operators which is well documented by many writers on Second life is that of Wilde Cunningham, sometimes male avatar, sometimes female, created and operated by a group of nine individuals with disabilities. Guest charts the development of Wilde how s/he was created “by consensus, voting on each element of appearance." Guest describes it as “multiple personality disorder in reverse” (2008, p.34), but if Wilde’s consciousness is torn in

nine directions is may be more accurate to consider this a case of multiple personality disorder affecting the avatar rather than the operator.