Introduction to the Special Issue on the Death, Afterlife, and….docx

1、Introduction to the Special Issue on the Death, Afterlife, and Immortality of Bodies and DataConnor GrahamTemhusu College and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, SingaporeMartin GibbsDepartment of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Austr

2、aliaLanfranco AcetiFaculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey and DepartmentUnited Kingdomof Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, London,This special issue poses questions concerning death, afterlife and immortality in the age of the Internet. It extends previo

3、us work by examining current and emerging practices of grieving and memorializing supported by new media. It suggests that peoples lives today are extended, prolonged, and ultimately transformed through the new circulations, repetitions, and recontextualizations on the Internet and other platforms.

4、It also shows that publics are being formed and connected with in new ways, and new practices and rituals are emerging, as the traditional notions of the body are being challenged. We argue that these developments have implications for how people will be discovered and conceived of in the future. We

5、 consider possible extensions to the research presented here in terms of people, practices, and data. First, some sections of the population, in particular those who are the dying and populations in developing countries and the Global South, have largely been neglected to date. Second, practices suc

6、h as (online) suicide and sacrilegious or profane behaviors remain largely uninvestigated. Third, the discussion of the management of the digital self after death has only begun. We conclude by posing further questions concerning the prospect of emerging cities of the dead.Keywords (after-)death, th

7、e Internet, hybridization, publics, rituals, historicization Connor Graham, Martin Gibbs, and Lanfranco AcetiAddress correspondence to Connor Graham, Tembusu College, National University of Singapore, 28 College Avenue East, #B1-O1, Singapore 138598. E-mail: onecalledconnornus.edu.sgWhat is death in

8、 an era of ubiquitous and encroaching digital life? What is afterlife in an age of mass digital production and consumption? What is immortality in a time of the digital celebrity and the digital mob? In this special issue, contributing authors engage with such questions, and their analysis suggests

9、that new technologies, specifically the Internet, change the way death and after-death are experienced, performed, and discovered.The existing research has focused heavily on online memorials, in particular on the content of these sites (e.g., de Vries and Rutherford 2004; Jones 2004; Foot et al. 20

10、05) and the grieving processes of their users (e.g., Sofka 1997; Veale 2003). More recently, attention has turned to social network sites with particular focus on the practices and meanings of online memorializing by teenagers (Carroll and Landry 2010; Williams and Merten 2009). In general this rese

11、arch has tended to be connected with a wider literature in the social sciences that examines death, grieving, and memorialization (e.g., Hallam and Hockey 2001; Hockey, Woodthorpe, and Komaromy 2010; Metcalf and Huntington 1991).The articles in this special issue advance work on the concept of (afte

12、r-)death1 through a series of contrasting analyses of current and emerging practices of grieving and memorializing online. They show that, even after death, peoples lives are extended, prolonged, and ultimately changed in the present, future, and in history through new circulations, repetitions, and

13、 recontextualizations to the variously constituted publics (Warner 2002, 66) “that come into being only in relation to texts and their circulation.” These findings are discussed in the following in terms of bodies and hybridization, constituting publics, new practices and rituals, and excavation and

14、 historiciza- tion.BODIES AND HYBRIDIZATIONFrom the beginning, discourse in popular media steered us toward a growing sense of an other self, a notion of a self that is digitally distributed across text messages, Web pages, social networking sites, blog comments, and so on: a digital self. Around th

15、e time that the proposal was conceived, in Time magazine Faure (2009) suggested that the capacity of information and communication technologies (ICTs) raised important questions regarding legacy and curation: “As people spend more time at keyboards, theres less being stored away in dusty attics for

16、family and friends to hang on to” (online). But Faure went further than simply describing concerns about archiving and storage to ask a question that suggested some anxiety and even resentment about a burgeoning and enduring self: “The pieces of our lives that we put online can feel as eternal as th

17、e Internet itself, but what happens to our virtual identity after we die?” (online). Bollmer (2013), in this issue, suggests that this tension between this anticipated decoupling between the body and data is indeed a source of anxiety in our lives.This digital self can be variously termed as virtual

18、 identity, digital effigy, or Internet doppelganger. The term identity suggests a structure that has a particular presence. The term effigy suggests a roughly if intentionally constructed form that can be mass produced, and this form has a ritual associated with it. Doppelganger suggests both someth

19、ing more sinister and with greater resemblance and persistence: a lurking, high-fidelity ghost of the dead.2 These different terms illuminate aspects of composition and substance, fidelity and resemblance, reach and persistence, whether comforting or disquieting. In this special issue, Brubaker, Hay

20、es, and Dourish (2013), Church (2013), and Lingel (2013) all tacitly acknowledge the importance of the form of the dead with their focus on Facebook profiles. The issues of fidelity and resemblance are also a focus for Bollmer (2013), Bainbridge (2013), and Sherlock (2013). For all, the notion of th

21、e digital self is important, as is the extended temporal availability of self that the digital offers.However, such definitions, although analytically useful, suggest a particular ontology that may in fact be faulty because they artificially segregate the physical body and an Internet presence, appe

22、aling to an unnecessary dualism. The call for articles for this issue suggested that the source of this faultiness could be found in the lingering “shards of ourselves” that dwell on and support a larger set of connections beyond the immediate, what was termed as “ecologies of interests and exchange

23、s where rules and customs are still evolving.” Therefore, the reference to a virtual identity, digital effigy, or Internet doppelganger as unified, distinct bodily entity, as a kind of metaphor for the physical body, if it reflects the ontology of the physical realm, presents the readers with the fa

24、llacy of a physical construct retransferred to the digital realm in toto. We wanted to shift focus toward the idea of multiple presences (as well as their connections to the physical body) that are increasingly hybridized or spread across various dwellings, some physical and material, some digital a

25、nd semiotic. This has consequences for how people are consumed, worked with, and viewed after death. It also alters peoples (ideas of) bodily being.This hybridization of the body, as Bollmer (2013) suggests in this issue, is not merely an analytical point. We suggest it also changes how we view ours

26、elves and that it is a process secured through “delegation” across materials and “multiplicity” (Law 2003). We are because of our multiple places of dwelling. Differently put, (after-)death shows us how we now emerge from a complex network of material stuff, stuff that is bought and carried, owned a

27、nd placed, cherished and loved, denigrated and discarded. In this view the digital and material are both distinct and complementary. On the one hand, different presences (both physical and digital) are, of course, subject to a different set of vagaries and forces and vary in their obduracy. For exam

28、ple, the material deteriorates and breaks yet can be preserved and maintained; information can be endlessly reproduced, yet can be easily lost or become unreadable. On the other hand, different presences help to make up and comprise people today. This view of hybridization binds people closely to bo

29、th their material and digital selves.How physical bodies and the material are different is illuminated by Urrys (2000) theory of mobilities, which places movement at the center of modern life. He distinguishes between the movement of bodies“the corporeal travel of people for work, leisure, family li

30、fe, pleasure, migration and escape, organized in terms of contrasting time-space modalities (from daily commuting to once-in- a-lifetime exile)” (Urry 2007, 47)and the movement of objects“the physical movement of objects to producers, consumers and retailers; as well as the sending and receiving of

31、presents and souvenirs” (Urry 2007,47). Although relations (e.g., personal, institutional) and networks (e.g., road, trade) are important for both bodies and objects, his theory makes plain how, for the body, the qualities and experience of time and space in movement are particularly important. This

32、 is in contrast to the more economic and functional treatment of objects. Urrys theory also distinguishes two other forms of mobilitycommunicative travel and virtual travel, suggesting that certain forms of travel involve the physical body more than others. The overall point is that the modem self e

33、merges from movement through and across different places of dwelling and through relationships with various material objects.As Urrys theory and our own appeal to hybridization suggest, the distinction made between the digital and the material (both animate and inanimate) is largely creating a false dichotomy w