Sarup writes of identity as a mediating concept (1996, p.21) and that postmodern thought argues against the concept of a single homogeneous identity or unchanging core essence viewing it as “necessarily incomplete, unfinished – it is the subject in process” (1996, p.47). Stuart Hall too seems to align himself with the postmodernist paradigm when he concludes that:
Identities are thus points of temporary attachment to the subject positions which discursive practices construct for us. They are the result of a successful articulation or ‘chaining’ of the subject into the flow of discourse (1996, p.6).
Gilles Deleuze writes that “We are habits, nothing but habits – the habit of saying “I.” Perhaps there is no more striking answer to the problem of self." (1989, p.x). Michelle Kendrick comments that, through habit and memory, we “continually reinscribe the fiction of a stable identity” (1996, p.153). Jacques Derrida too considered the question of the self: "who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who?" (1992). Derrida however posited that it was an inherent factor of temporal existence for this for the nature of Selfhood to elude us.
In a thought experiment by Derek Parfit, an individual's body and brain is scanned, destroyed and then perfectly replicated, memories intact. Parfit agrees with the postmodernist conclusions that there is no unified self, rather "there are a long series of different mental states
and events... each series being what we call one life." (Parfit, 1987, p.20 quoted by Tittle, 2005, p.89)
Henri Bergson is arguably one of the earliest writers who it can be claimed laid the foundations for the postmodern thinkers who followed, introducing the concept of Becoming:
Hence there are finally two different selves, one of which is, as it were, the external projection of the other, its spatial and, so to speak, social representation. We reach the former by deep introspection, which leads us to grasp our inner states as living things, constantly becoming, as free states not amenable to measure, which permeate one another and of which the succession in duration has nothing in-common with juxtaposition in homogeneous space (1910, p.231).
Deleuze and Guittari further develop the concept of Becoming, not only as a development through time but through the blurring of the edges of social interaction, giving the following example of the wasp and orchid each affected by the other and becoming symbiotic emergent units:
How could movements of deterritorialization and processes of reterritalization not be relative, always connected, caught up in one another? The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is nevertheless derritorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid's reproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome. It could be said that the orchid imitates the
this is true only on the level of the strata-a parallelism between two strata such that a plant organization on one imitates an animal organization on the other. At the same time, something else entirely is going on: not imitation at all but a capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritable becoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the wasp. Each of these becomings brings about the deterritorialization of one term and the reterritorialization of the other; the two becomings interlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing the deterritorialization ever further (2004, p.11).
Jones discusses the symbiotic relationship of the avatar/Self formed by the "fluidic relation of self and expression of self”:
The avatar/Self grows and changes along with the user through the course of play/interaction. The user develops and refines (or radically changes) the avatar’s appearance over time, and the avatar can grow to manifest aspects of personality very different from those the user exhibits in real life… the user, in the name of their pleasure, allows him/herself to walk in the shoes of the avatar as if it is a representation of their true Self… The avatar can be “I,” but for many I interviewed it might also be “he” or “she” and referred to by name. (2007)
Turkle writes of how Jacques Lacan attempts to “portray the self as a realm of discourse rather than a permanent structure of the mind” (1995, p.178). Lacan (1977) wrote of the illusory nature of a centralised ego and is responsible for the concept of the mirror stage, described by Sarup as the stage at which, when the infant first catches a glimpse of themselves in a mirror, they have the “first conscious recognition of the distinction between his or her own body and the
outside world” (1996). This recognition is however “based on an illusion or misrecognition” of “a point outside the self through which the self is recognised... an ideal self which can never be actualised”. Kilpatrick wrote that the first stages towards the development of Selfhood were when a child "distinguishes himself clearly from others" by the appropriate use of such pronouns as I, me, my, mine and "he recognizes himself as an agent, one who can effect, bring to pass" (1941, pp.2-3); Sarup writes of the need to create “a dialectically mediated distance” towards ones apprehension of one’s own identity" (1996, pp.34-37).
Bob Rehak relates Lacan's mirror stage to virtual worlds: “If the mirror stage initiates a lifelong split between self-as-observer and self-as-observed, in one sense, we already exist in an avatarial relation to ourselves” (2003, p.123). Pete Wardle (2015) discusses the concept of a 'virtual-mirror stage' taking place within virtual worlds at the point at which:
individuals realize that their relationship with their avatar is a relationship with their Self... the point at which one looks at their avatar and realizes that the avatar which looks back is not simply a tool or extension which allows them to interact within virtual worlds, but an aspect of their identity which exists in an autonomous, emergent symbiotic relationship with them (2015, p.96).
Discussing the idea of mediated reality, in the Ben Wright film, Reality of the Virtual (2010), Žižek suggests we interact with others in real life by inventing a real life avatar of the individual with whom we are communicating, i.e. those with whom we interact are mediated and socially created by us and thus become virtual avatars of their physical selves.
mediated existence in the actual world is no less virtual than our experience of 'virtual worlds.' Ennsilin & Muse quote Usman Haque, that “the distinction between real and virtual is becoming as quaint as the 19th century distinction between mind and body” (2011, p.3) and Boellstorff writes that “our real lives have been virtual all along" (2008, p.5) pointing out that “in SL embodiment is highly elastic bringing notions of choice to the fore” and predicts how “virtual worlds change our notion of ourselves as we will now be dynamic or unstable bodies”(2008, pp.135-136). Garry Crawford writes that "In a rapidly changing world, fixed identities become less useful and so identities become ever more fluid. It is our consumer and leisure choices and our ‘elective belongings’, the social groups we choose to be member of… which define who we are…computer-mediated identities do have meaning and importance beyond the online and in- game." (2012, pp. 82-3).
Jack M. Loomis writes that:
The perceptual world created by our senses and nervous system is so functional a representation of the physical world that most people live out their lives without ever suspecting that contact with the physical world is mediated; …the impression of being in a remote or simulated environment experienced by the user of such systems can be so compelling as to force a user to question the assumptions that the physical and perceptual world are one and the same (1992, p.113).
Guest puts forward the view that "Sometimes we forget how much of our experience is virtual already. The radio we listen to in the car, the TV we turn on when we get home, even the print we read in books and newspapers, are all means to simulate company that we don’t have in the flesh” (2008, p.27). Boellstorff quotes Clark (2003):“Since humans are always crafting
themselves through culture, they have always been virtual” (2008, p.237). For Žižek ‘the ultimate lesson of cyberspace’ remains: “not only do we lose our immediate material body, but we learn that there never was such a body- our bodily self-experience was always-already that of an imaginary constituted entity” (2003, p.55). He takes this to a logical conclusion that the Self cannot truly be perceived at all; “when I experience myself directly as a Self, I by definition enact an epistemically illegitimate short circuit, misperceiving a representational phenomena for ‘reality’” (Žižek, 2009, p.214).