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Navigating Cybercultures
Critical Issues
Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard
Dr Ken Monteith Dr Daniel Riha
Advisory Board
James Arvanitakis Mira Crouch

Simon Bacon Stephen Morris
Kasia Bronk John Parry
Jo Chipperfield Karl Spracklen
Ann-Marie Cook Peter Twohig
Phil Fitzsimmons S Ram Vemuri
Peter Mario Kreuter Kenneth Wilson
A Critical Issues research and publications project.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/
The Cyber Hub

‘Visions of Humanity in Cyberspace’
2013
Navigating Cybercultures
Edited by
Nicholas van Orden
Inter-Disciplinary Press
Oxford, United Kingdom
© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/
The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network

for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and
encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and
which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary
publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior
permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.
Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland,

Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom.
+44 (0)1993 882087
ISBN: 978-1-84888-163-1
First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2013. First Edition.
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
Navigating Cybercultures: Echoes of Visions7
Nicholas van Orden
Part 1 Virtual Spaces
Virtual Worlds in the Mother Tongue Teachers’ Education 3

Hana Marešová, Milan Klement and Zuzana Pustinová
The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual 13

Spaces
Nicholas van Orden
Interaction Agency on Social Network Profiles: An 21

Approach of Semiotic Niches on Virtual Identities
Patrícia Rossini and João Queiroz
Boom de yada, wheres mah bukkit? The World According 31

to LOLrus, Steve, Matt and the Cats
Petra Rehling
Part 2 Posthuman Aesthetics
Convergence between Architecture and Videogames: The 43

Case of The Netherlands
Mª Aránzazu Pérez Indaverea
‘Redefining Perfect’: Post-Humanist Views of Gender and 57

Beauty
Alberto José Viralhadas Ferreira
What Makes Us Human? Freedom and the Posthuman Age 73

in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Trilogy
Robert Gadowski
Part 3 Cyberpunk Subjectivities
Becoming Constructs in Cyberspace: Version 2.0 of the 83

Afterlife
Christian Johannes Kovacs
‘The theatre in me’: VR and New Models of Gendered Intra- 93
Subjectivity in the Futuristic Cyberpunk Fiction of Pat
Cadigan
Ana Makuc
Snow Crash: An Analysis of Postmodern Identities in 103

Cyberpunk
Carla Tirado Morttiz
Artificial Intelligence and Gender Performativity in William 113

Gibson’s Idoru
Imola Bulgozdi
Part 4 On-Screen Hybrids
Are We Not Men? When the Human-Animal Cyborg Talks 125

Back
Evelyn Tsitas and Lisa Dethridge
Brothers of the Future: Minority Male Cyborgs and the 135

White Imaginary in Modern Science Fiction Films
David E. Isaacs
Pressures and Possibilities of Being Bionic: Intersections of 145

Gender and Humanity in the Bionic Woman Series
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen
Sam Worthington: Hybrid Faces 157

Natacha Guyot
Part 5 Beyond ‘Human’
Rise of the Robot: A Historical Perspective on the Evolution 169

of the Robot Other in Literature
Eric Forcier
The Subversive Plasticity of Posthuman Womanhood in the 181

Cases of Vidal's Myra Breckinridge and Larsson's The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo
Chia-wen Kuo (Veronique Kwak)
‘Repulsive Other’: Defining Scandal in Interspecies 193
Relations, Technological and Information Posthumanism
Jan Stasieńko
Technology and the Self: Toward the Post (Post) Human 205
Shilpa Venkatachalam
Part 6 Cautionary Tales
Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact 215

on Humanity
Vishwam Jindal
Human Vision, Illusion and Disillusion: RA.ONE, A Super 225

Hero in Cyberspace
Pratyush Vatsala and Neelu Raut
Blank Page
Introduction
Navigating Cybercultures: Echoes of Visions7
Nicholas van Orden

This ebook provides an overview of the work presented at the seventh annual
Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace, and Science Fiction conference,
hosted by Inter-Disciplinary.Net at Mansfield College, Oxford, in July 2012. The
conference was overwhelmingly interdisciplinary and international—nineteen
countries were represented by the researchers in attendance, and participants’ areas
of specialization ranged from English, Philosophy, and Cultural Studies to Digital
Media, Law, and Library Sciences. From tenured professors to graduate students,
the conference also brought together scholars in various stages of their academic
careers. Although the conference was conducted entirely in English, speakers of a
dozen native languages were present—from German and Greek to Czech and
Chinese. Everyone who attended the conference also presented; in order to foster
collegiality and intellectual exchange, participation is mandatory at Inter-
Disciplinary.Net conferences.
In editing the chapters presented here, selected by the Visions of Humanity
steering group, I have worked to establish a common style and tone for the
collection while simultaneously maintaining the unique voices of the various
authors. Where tensions arose, I opted for a balance between originality and
clarity, focusing less on what might be considered ‘standard’ or idiomatic English.
Despite the wide range of interests and institutions represented at the conference,
several common themes emerged in the presentations and discussions. These
themes make up the underlying structure of this volume. That scholars from across
the disciplines and around the world discovered a similar set of concerns is further
evidence, if any was needed, that our lives are intricately networked and
connected—across digital, fictional, intellectual, and posthuman spaces. In one
way or another, the chapters collected here all attempt to navigate these spaces.
Part I, Virtual Spaces, begins with ‘Virtual Worlds in the Mother Tongue
Teachers’ Education,’ by Hana Marešová, Milan Klement and Zuzana Pustinová.
In this chapter, the authors explore the possibilities for virtual learning afforded by
MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments) such as Second Life. They explain that
MUVEs contain the potential for communicating and interacting in ways that are
not possible in other e-learning environments. The authors support their claims by
discussing their experiences using Second Life as an educational platform,
including a description of the training and logistical challenges that MUVEs often
bring. In the second chapter, ‘The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in
Virtual Spaces,’ Nicholas van Orden argues for the importance of his theory of
‘telaffective transmission,’ which describes the distribution of affective labour
through virtual worlds. Exploring the relationships that people form in virtual
spaces, he notes that the popularity of many online worlds (from Second Life to
x Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
Facebook) depends upon their effective transmission of affective content—through
systems such as ‘liking,’ ‘favouriting,’ ‘friending’ and virtual marriage. In the third
chapter, ‘Interaction Agency on Social Network Profiles: An Approach of Semiotic
Niches on Virtual Identities,’ Patrícia Rossini and João Queiroz examine the
impact of social network sites’ profile features on users’ interactions. A user’s
profile settings (such as age, gender, date of birth and relationship status) project
personal information that might be transmitted in face-to-face interaction through
tone of voice, gestures or facial expressions. Rossini and Queiroz argue that profile
settings serve as semiotic shortcuts that allow users to anticipate and constrain their
interactions with other users. In the final chapter of Part I, Petra Rehling focuses on
the formation of user communities around Internet sensations such as LOLrus,
Matt Harding and LOLcats. Her chapter, titled ‘Boom de yada, wheres mah
bukkit? The World According to LOLrus, Steve, Matt and the Cats,’ argues that
these popular Internet characters simultaneously attach meaning to profane items
(in what Rehling calls the ‘thingification of culture’) and create alternate
inventories of our physical and aesthetic spaces. Rehling argues that critical
scholarly attention should be paid to the types of communities and realities created
by these sites and characters, especially given their immense popularity.
Rehling’s turn to the aesthetic importance of virtual spaces is taken up
explicitly by the chapters in Part II, Posthuman Aesthetics. In the first chapter,
‘Convergence between Architecture and Videogames: The Case of The
Netherlands,’ Mª Aránzazu Pérez Indaverea argues that the interplay between the
virtual spaces of computer games and the real-world spaces of architectural design
has contributed to the development of a new architectural aesthetic. Focusing on
Dutch firms such as MVRDV, ONL, and the UN Studio, Indaverea argues that
video games can be used as conceptual generators and tools for architects who are
generating new experiences of physical space. Video games, Indaverea argues,
encourage architects and building users to utilize and explore space in innovative
ways. In the second chapter, ‘“Redefining Perfect:” Post-Humanist Views of
Gender and Beauty,’ Alberto José Viralhadas Ferreira presents a brief history of
Western aesthetics and describes the recent increase in gender reassignment
surgeries—and the corresponding development of support communities and media
coverage for transgender topics. Ferreira goes on to argue that current definitions
of beauty, which idealize youth and infancy, have produced a complex diffusion of
sexualities. This diffusion, along with our ‘make-over culture’ and its demand for
perpetual aesthetic enhancement, is further evidence of our current posthumanity.
Robert Gadowski takes up the question of humanity and posthumanity in the next
chapter, ‘What Makes Us Human? Freedom and the Posthuman Age in Scott
Westerfeld’s Uglies Trilogy.’ Gadowski focuses on the surgical procedure that
transforms characters in Westerfeld’s novels from ‘uglies’ into ‘pretties.’ The
surgeries in these dystopian young adult science fiction texts not only create a
society of bodies altered to conform to prescribed standards of beauty, but the
Nicholas van Orden xi
__________________________________________________________________
operations also significantly alter patients’ personalities. Gadowski argues that
Westerfeld’s books highlight the central role of technology in discourses about
posthumanism and emphasize the importance of human agency and freedom in the
development and adoption of new technologies.
Human agency and new technologies are common themes in the novels
explored by the chapters that make up Part III, Cyberpunk Subjectivities. In
‘Becoming Constructs in Cyberspace: Version 2.0 of the Afterlife,’ Christian
Johannes Kovacs identifies echoes of traditional religious texts in posthuman and
transhumanist goals of immortality. Kovacs traces these themes from the Egyptian
Book of the Dead to Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan and William Gibson’s
Sprawl Trilogy. He goes on to argue that transhumanism remains distinctly
anthropocentric; although transhumanists embrace the possibilities of enhancement
and immortality offered by developing technologies, they generally seek to retain
crucial vestiges of the coherent human self (or even the bounded human body). The
possibility of a coherent human self is exploded by the text Ana Makuc examines
in her chapter, ‘“The theatre in me”: VR and New Models of Gendered Intra-
Subjectivity in the Futuristic Cyberpunk Fiction of Pat Cadigan.’ Makuc
undertakes a psychoanalytic reading of Cadigan’s Fools, focusing on the three
personalities—Marceline, Mersine, and Marva—that are successfully contained
within one body in the novel. These three characters are mapped directly onto
Sigmund Freud’s id, ego, super-ego model of the self; however, Makuc also argues
that Cadigan’s three personalities productively co-exist in an arrangement that
closely resembles the theory of postoedipal complimentarity described by Jessica
Benjamin. For Carla Tirado Morttiz, the schizophrenia of Cadigan’s Fools is
symptomatic of our fractured postmodern identities. In her chapter, ‘Snow Crash:
An Analysis of Postmodern Identities in Cyberpunk,’ Morttiz undertakes a close
reading of Neal Stephenson’s novel, focusing on the construction of characters’
identities in the text. She argues that Snow Crash represents a second wave of
cyberpunk science fiction because it embodies many traditional cyberpunk themes
while parodying first wave cyberpunk by commenting critically on the forces of
rapid technological change and global capital. Imola Bulgozdi also takes up what
might be called the second wave of cyberpunk in her chapter, ‘Artificial
Intelligence and Gender Performativity in William Gibson’s Idoru.’ Bulgozdi
applies Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity to the performance of
human identity enacted by Rei Toi, who is a virtual media star in Gibson’s novel.
When Rei Toi and rock mega-star Rez are married, their union signals a coming
together of two powerful data streams, not two traditionally physical bodies.
Bulgozdi argues that Idoru raises important questions about the flexibility and
performativity of gendered and human identities in online spaces. This concern for
post/human identity echoes through many of the chapters collected in this ebook.
The chapters in Part IV, On-Screen Hybrids, contain analyses of hybrid figures
in films and television series. Evelyn Tsitas and Lisa Dethridge examine the
xii Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
importance of language to definitions of humanity in their paper, ‘Are We Not
Men? When the Human-Animal Cyborg Talks Back.’ Focusing on Vincenzo
Natali’s 2009 film Splice, Tsitas and Dethridge chart the development of Dren, the
human/animal hybrid at the film’s centre. Dren’s humanity and sense of self
develop as Dren gradually acquires human language throughout the film. Tsitas
and Dethridge argue that Splice forces viewers to consider the questions of
hybridity, language, and humanity famously raised by Donna Haraway. David E.
Isaacs also turns to Haraway in his chapter, ‘Brothers of the Future: Minority Male
Cyborgs and the White Imaginary in Modern Science Fiction Films.’ Focusing on
cyborg characters portrayed by Will Smith, Vin Diesel and Luis Fernando Peña,
Isaacs argues that Hollywood science fiction cyborgs portrayed by minority actors
rarely fill the roles of traditional heroes and instead serve to reinforce hegemonic
racial views. While independent films can perhaps work to escape mainstream
norms, most cyborgs in Hollywood science fiction fail to embody the subversive
potential that Haraway hopes cyborg narratives will achieve. Aino-Kaisa Koistinen
is slightly more hopeful about the disruptive force of the cyborg in her analysis of
the Bionic Woman series in her chapter ‘Pressures and Possibilities of Being
Bionic: Intersections of Gender and Humanity in the Bionic Woman Series.’
Comparing and contrasting the original 1970s Bionic Woman with the 2007
remake, Koistinen argues that Jaime Sommers, the female cyborg main character,
highlights social binaries such as nature/culture, human/animal, and
human/machine. Sommers is referred to throughout the two series as animal,
weapon, and machine, forcing viewers to consider the tensions that exist between
many of our most basic values, such as nature, culture, femininity, gender,
humanity, agency, and control. Like Jaime Sommers, the two characters examined
by Natacha Guyot in her chapter ‘Sam Worthington: Hybrid Faces’ have become
cyborgs through extensive surgical procedures. These characters, portrayed by
actor Sam Worthington in Terminator: Salvation and Avatar, are hybrid figures
with augmented bodies. For Guyot, such augmented bodies raise questions about
the ethics of technological upgrades to humans and the problematic relationship
between an original body and its engineered version. Both characters struggle with
these questions as they work to rediscover who they are in their new cyborg forms.
The unsettling force of the hybrid is further explored in Part V, Beyond
‘Human.’ In ‘Rise of the Robot: A Historical Perspective on the Evolution of the
Robot Other in Literature,’ Eric Forcier locates evidence of what he calls the ‘robot
other’ in literary texts that long predate Karel Čapek’s use of the word ‘robot’ in
his 1921 play, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). From Edmund Spenser’s
Faerie Queene to Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and onto
the Battlestar Galactica television series, Forcier identifies characters that are
paradoxical combinations artificially and authentically human. These robot others
are simultaneously unsettling and irresistible, alien and familiar. Only by
identifying and embracing our archetypes, Forcier concludes, can we apply their
Nicholas van Orden xiii
__________________________________________________________________
reflective force to our posthuman self-analysis. While Forcier focuses on the
history of transhuman bodies in literature and film, Chia-wen Kuo (Veronique
Kwak) highlights the interplay of plasticity, posthumanism, and the transgendered
body in twenty- and twenty-first century texts by Gore Vidal and Stieg Larsson.
Kuo’s chapter, ‘The Subversive Plasticity of Posthuman Womanhood in the Cases
of Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge and Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,’
variously invokes Laura Mulvey, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Linda
Hutcheon, and Julia Kristeva to raise questions about gender, sexuality,
authenticity, and the development of transgender subjectivities as consumer goods.
The spectacular plasticity of Barbie and Martin Heidegger’s theory of the
Gestell—the necessity of technology to human existence—loom large over Kuo’s
analysis of Vidal and Larsson’s texts. Jan Stasieńko’s chapter, ‘“Repulsive Other”:
Defining Scandal in Interspecies Relations, Technological and Information
Posthumanism,’ focuses on the relationship between the definition of scandal and
posthumanism. Stasieńko argues that scandal is the critique of traditional humanist
ideals, and he outlines two diametrically opposed types of scandal: scandal that
disrupts exclusive and traditional humanist definitions of humanity, and, the
opposite, scandal that disrupts the inclusive definition of humanity proposed by
Giorgio Agamben (a definition that stresses openness and responsibility and grants
subjectivity to non-human beings). Stasieńko examines both sides of this notion of
posthuman scandal by focusing on three case studies: the dispute between PETA
and Hunters Against PETA (HAPETA); the lack of outrage at the various attempts
to disallow Oskar Pistorious from participating in international sporting events; and
the scandal caused by Japanese gamer Sal9000’s marriage to Nintendo DS
character Nene Anegasaki. In the next chapter, ‘Technology and the Self: Toward
the Post (Post) Human,’ Shilpa Venkatachalam argues that posthumanism has
devolved into new versions of the Cartesian mind/body binary—digitized/non-
digitized and embodied/disembodied now restrict the freedom of the posthuman
self. She goes on to formulate a theory of the (post)posthuman, a subject position
capable of simultaneously breaking down and retaining binary distinctions.
Venkatachalam explains that in the (post)posthuman embodiment must be
maintained alongside the disembodiment that is often implied by emerging
technologies. She concludes by arguing that notions of the self that have been
prompted by digital media also demand an urgent rethinking of traditional notions
of time and space.
The nervous tension that underlies Venkatachalam’s chapter, and many of the
other chapters collected here, becomes explicit in Part VI, Cautionary Tales. In
‘Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact on Humanity,’
Vishwam Jindal provides a brief history of the World Wide Web, first charting the
shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. He then describes some of the changes that will
likely take place with the development of Web 3.0—from increased
personalization in online marketing and the development of targeted
xiv Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
‘advertainment,’ to the expansion of three-dimensional user interfaces and
ubiquitous mobile access to cloud computing. Jindal also offers a stern warning
against the uncritical adoption of Web 3.0 technologies and he emphasizes the
importance of legislation that will protect users’ data and privacy. In the final
chapter, ‘Human Vision, Illusion and Disillusion: RA.ONE, A Super Hero in
Cyberspace,’ Pratyush Vatsala and Neelu Raut argue in favour of developing social
codes to govern users’ online interactions. Citing the violent and immoral
behaviour promoted by various popular video games, Vatsala and Raut claim that
traditional texts, such as The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, are the most
effective ways of teaching the key human values that are crucial to promoting safe
online communities. The authors focus on RA.ONE, a Hindi science fiction film in
which the classic battle between good and evil is contested by two of the main
characters—RA.One and G.One.
The chapters collected here, produced by a diverse group of students and
scholars, represent the stimulating presentations and discussions prompted by the
2012 Visions of Humanity conference. But the topics raised here echo beyond the
pages of this ebook and beyond the halls of Mansfield College. Questions of
language, emotion, humanity, and posthumanity; definitions of time, space,
technology, and agency; and concerns about safety, legality, and behaviour all echo
through all of our daily attempts to navigate our rapidly shifting cybercultures.
Part 1
Virtual Spaces
Blank Page
Virtual Worlds in the Mother Tongue Teachers’ Education
Hana Marešová, Milan Klement and Zuzana Pustinová

Abstract
This chapter is focused on virtual worlds and their use in the education of future
mother tongue teachers. Our experiences working in the 3D multiuser virtual
environment Second Life are described and examples of ‘digital training,’ which
has been used in the subject New Media and Cyberculture at the Faculty of
Education and Faculty of Journalism at the Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech
Republic, are analysed. During the seminars, students also work on literary topics
such as a collaborative writing in virtual space or playing a role in a virtual theatre
in Second Life. Also discussed does the impact of this way of teaching in virtual
worlds on changes in students’ understand of literature and on the development of
their key competences, like ICT (Information and Communication Technology)
skills and reading literacy.
Key Words: Virtual worlds, interactive storytelling, digital artistic practices, new
media, cyberculture, key competences.
*****
1. Introduction
Virtual learning is teaching in an educational environment where teacher and
student are separated in time or space (or both) and the teacher provides course
content through control applications, multimedia resources, the Internet, video
conferencing, etc. This method of communication in 3D virtual worlds is still an
innovation in teaching and learning, however, and it still offers many opportunities
which haven’t been fully explored until now. If students spend their free time in a
virtual environment, the use of traditional teaching methods usually becomes less
motivating for them. Using Virtual Worlds can give teachers the opportunity to
gain a greater involvement in students as learners who are not put into the role of
only passive recipients of information transmission—virtual worlds offer many
options for creative collaborative work that could be limited in real world classes,
such as borders or the number of participants who can work at one moment. The
advantages of virtual learning include temporal and spatial flexibility, the ability to
dynamically grow and adapt to the needs of users, the possibility of feedback, and
the ability to work on tasks that are not often possible in the real world due to
constraints of time or space. Virtual worlds allow cooperation which is not limited
by boundaries of physical space; significant strengths include, in the vast majority
of cases, low costs and easily upgradeable teaching materials. The disadvantages
can be categorized mainly into health reasons, as the current generation of students
spends too much time on ICT, which has a negative impact on both the eyes and on
4 Virtual Worlds in the Mother Tongue Teachers’ Education
__________________________________________________________________
the human musculoskeletal system. Frequently repeated arguments are also the
sense of alienation, because human beings do not communicate directly (face to
face) but by machines, which can have an impact on social skills. Virtual
communication is also lacking body language and other personal aspects. Multi-
user virtual environment (Multi-User Virtual Environment, MUVE) is defined by
Brdička 1 as a 2D or 3D virtual environment representing a simulation of real space.
It represents the integration of the previously used forms of online communication
and becomes the medium through which it is possible to create social interaction
and very close communication in real space. According to D. Říha, 2 efficiency of
communication increases when the characteristics of the media are in accordance
with the communication process—that is, immediacy of feedback, variability of
symbols (number of possible ways of communicating), testability (making
adjustments before sending), replicability, and others. MUVEs as collaborative
hypermedia environments meet most of the above aspects—these are object-
oriented systems, where communication takes place in real time, such as through
an audio or video conference or in direct interaction via its 3D graphical
representations (avatars). Unlike previous types of communication (e-mail, text or
video), which are mostly used for isolated communication, communication in all
these types of MUVEs integrates and enhances the effect of online communication.
Users moving in a MUVE can monitor the communications of individual
participants and can move their avatars in relation to other participants’ avatars.
MUVEs facilitate mutual cooperation; they help physically remote users, whose
cooperation would be difficult and expensive in the real world, to work on joint
projects. Unlike online education support, which represents learning management
systems, websites, or blogs, MUVEs allow students to simulate real situations in
which they can learn, for example, to work with objects and they can participate in
activities and processes that would not be available for them in real space (e.g., the
formation of the molecular structures of an airplane, etc.). Virtual worlds can
represent an easier way of learning as well as the possibility of interpersonal
communication for people with special needs.
2. Second Life
The largest and currently the most famous project is the 3D virtual world
Second Life (SL) (http://www.secondlife.com). Currently, there are more than 17
million users registered and users can make money exchangeable for real
currency. 3 Users can also communicate in real time via avatars, they can build their
own environments, they can be educated, entertained, shop (open daily, users will
spend more than 30 million CZK), etc. SL is a ‘new dimension’ of social
interaction. Users create the SL community based on common interests or language
basis. The Czech community in SL has created several Czech locations; the largest
and the most organized is the Czechoslovakian town named Bohemia, which has a
city council, and holds regular events in SL. Czech users are regularly informed
Hana Marešová, Milan Klement and Zuzana Pustinová 5
__________________________________________________________________
about events on the portal http://www.secondlife.cz. Also, some institutions in the
Czech Republic have purchased virtual land in SL, allowing them to present their
activities, make contacts, and start to try innovative ways of doing business.
Education is a very progressive area in SL. Meeting people from all over the
world, of different nationalities and social statuses, allows the creation of an
entirely new type of community in which sharing knowledge and experience is
easier than in real space. Many universities have discovered the ways in which SL
is helpful to them and have created virtual campuses and presentation rooms and
have started to organize some training courses. In SL there are virtual versions of
more than sixty American universities (such as Oakland University, Ohio
University, the University of Plymouth, Coventry University, Montana State
University, the University of Tennessee, Ball State University, Missouri State
University, Bradley University, and Harvard University Law School, 4 etc.). Some
faculties of Czech universities have already presented themselves in the Czech
virtual environment in SL (in the town Bohemia)—the Faculty of Economics and
Public University of Economics in Prague, the Faculty of Education at the
University of West Bohemia, the Faculty of Social Studies at the Masaryk
University in Brno, and the Philosophical Faculty and Faculty of Education at the
Palacky University in Olomouc.
Teaching in MUVEs is practiced in virtual schools which are equipped as
classrooms (some of them are in buildings, some in open spaces or under sea
level). Students in schools can move like in the real world—they can come into
school, browse the classes, go to the library, sit at a table, etc. Teachers can build
special class facilities according to the needs of their subjects. Teachers in the
classes may occur in the form of an avatar and communicate that way with their
students. Communication may take the form of text or audio or video. Students in
these classes can be directly given the educational materials and related links.
Students can practice the material on particular objects and they can cooperate with
each other to create objects according to the instructions of teachers. In the
classroom, there may be available a board, which can work just like a real board (it
is possible to write notes on it and to delete; information can be read by any user,
etc.). During such courses in MUVEs, it is possible to record video of the teaching
—this feature is useful for the preparation of lectures and training. Teacher may
return to these videos later. Students can also create objects (devices, objects of
their own imagination, teaching aids, animals, etc.) and think about their
description. It is possible to pass through virtual environments that simulate
different periods of time, to participate in discussions with authors, and to attend
the concerts of real bands etc. Students can place their own literary works into a
MUVE and respond to the works of others. They have the opportunity to visit
electronic libraries, attend lectures, meet experts (without having to travel
anywhere), and they have the ability to find the desired person, lecture, building, or
area, and it is possible for them to teleport themselves instantly (which makes the
__________________________________________________________________
work of finding information easier in comparison with searching for it in the
environment of traditional portals and search engines). Students can solve their
tasks together with their classmates or work on a project with classmates from a
school which is randomly distant.
The possibilities of virtual connection independent of physical space open up
new opportunities, particularly for language teaching, either in the form of teaching
in the virtual environment of individual schools or in individual commercial and
private courses. Courses can be organized by different institutions in SL and it is
possible to find them by using the Search button with selection of Events. User can
then use the teleporter to join the required course. A number of language courses in
SL are free, but there can be found also projects focused on professional language
teaching, such as the LanguageLab (LL). Teachers of LL are native speakers from
Great Britain and the U.S., certified instructors, who also teach English in real life.
Classes take place in the language lab, where it is necessary to have a fast Internet
connection and high-quality headset for voice communication. Teaching in Second
Life brings the user a positive effect because—unlike a text environment (enriched
with multimedia) of the conventional e-learning environment—it takes place in
areas that are familiar to users from the real world; teaching can take place in
traditional classrooms, with the use of a blackboard, but can also be enriched with
methods of teaching that are not feasible in real life, whether for financial or time
reasons. An example is the coactions of two schools from different countries (Italy
and Netherlands) which cooperated in SL synchronously and asynchronously on
the project Euroland. Virtual worlds can also be used with a virtual learning
environment, as in the case of the Sloodle project, which aims at the
interconnection of Second Life and the Moodle Learning Management System.
3. Our Experiences with Teaching in an MUVE

We have been using the MUVE Second Life since 2008 in the seminar New
Media and Cyberculture, which is realized at the Pedagogical Faculty of the
Palacky University in Olomouc, as an optional subject field in the program
Teaching of the Czech language a literature, and at the Department of Journalism,
Philosophical Faculty, Palacky University in Olomouc. To create a technical
support for teaching in SL, we have implemented several projects, which were
necessary for preparation of this type of education. In 2007, a project aimed at the
building of a computer lab at the Department of Czech Language and Literature
PdF UP was realized. 5 For this lab, fifteen computer stations for students, one
teacher station, and an interactive Smart Board were acquired. This project was
followed by an extension of the existing software, allowing the computer stations
to work in graphics-intensive 3D environment. 6 Subsequently, another project was
implemented to ensure the upgrading of existing study subjects and the creation of
new courses allowing the usage of MUVEs in the classroom. 7 A syllabus for New
Media and Cyberculture was prepared as one of the results of these projects. In the
__________________________________________________________________
last year, we have also tried to study the possibilities of new developments
occurring in educational materials designed for distant learning and e-learning 8 (as
a part of the project ‘The evaluation of educational materials designed for distance
learning and e-learning’ 9). The use of multiuser virtual environment can be one of
the possible focuses in our future research.
Building on our experiences, we decided to create our own learning
environment in SL by building the Faculty of Education and also extending our
teaching in virtual environments in the area of Lifelong Learning courses at the
Department of ICT Education, Centre of the Department of Lifelong Learning PdF
UP. This objective was realized as a part of an ESF project aimed at developing the
ICT skills of teachers, 10 which included also a newly created course in ICT for
teaching media literacy.
Picture 1: Building of Faculty of Education (Department of ICT Education of

Centre for Lifelong Learning). Source: Second Life, H. Marešová, (2012).
Due to the fact that our students are future teachers (mostly of mother tongue),
we usually teach them in SL to be able to know the possible ways it can be used in
the teaching of grammar, communication education, and literary education. At the
beginning of teaching, students are gathered in the initial SL environment, where
they are usually first provided with basic information regarding movement and
communication in a virtual environment. After that, a presentation in the virtual
classroom is usually provided to inform the students about the other possibilities of
teaching in this environment. Then students perform the tasks assigned to focus on
communication in the environment (e.g. to hold each other’s hands together and
create a circle on the field before the classroom, to move in the department, to try
walking, running, flying, or teleporting in cyberspace, or to try text messaging).
__________________________________________________________________
The next tasks are usually focused on the ability to find information in SL (there is
a World Search Map tool for searching for specific virtual buildings and a tool for
reaching specific information). After that we usually focus on a particular topic—
e.g. literature education; during teaching about the literary work of William
Shakespeare, we moved to the virtual building of the Globe theatre to experience
better the contemporary environment. Students were asked to present an excerpt
from his play on the theater stage. It was a deeper experience of the literary work—
different from just reading excerpts from books in the real classroom.
Picture 2: One of the virtual classrooms in the building of Faculty of Education.

Source: Second Life, H. Marešová, (2012).
A similar observation was made by other authors who used SL in teaching

literature—e.g. Spoto et al describes some students’ expressions after the teaching
of Hemingway’s literary work in SL:
As I stood in the café in Second Life, and pensively gazed at

Hemingway sitting there at the table, I felt I was in the room with
him and intruding, yet invited to intrude, in on his thoughts and
life, to participate in the gathering of his emotion to pen his
novel, The Sun Also Rises. Watching him there alone, helped
me to appreciate, the period of the novel’s 1920s Paris in the
book. Every time Jake hailed a taxi to go to the café in the first
half of the book and when he hailed a taxi to go to the café in
Book II, while in Spain, the café in Second Life helped me to
envision the various café scenes throughout the novel.
__________________________________________________________________
Experiencing Second Life version of the 1920s café while
reading The Sun Also Rises, made the story more true to life. 11
4. Conclusion
With further improvement of MUVEs, other options that enable successful use
of these rapidly developing ‘worlds’ for education, or at least that from time to
time enrich the teaching process, will certainly be added. The boundaries of what is
possible for educational use are not in the technology but in the imaginations of the
teachers who decide to take advantage of virtual worlds to train students to be
adequately prepared for life in the information society.
Notes
1
Bořivoj Brdička, ‘Víceuživatelské virtuální prostředí a možnosti jeho využití ve
vzdělávání’, Bobrův pomocník (1999), viewed 5 April 2012,
http://it.pedf.cuni.cz/~bobr/MUVE/.
2
Daniel Říha, ‘Implementace prostředí neimerzivní virtuální reality v rámci
“Kunst am Bau”’ (2006), viewed 5 April 2012,
http://everest.natur.cuni.cz/konference/2006/prispevek/riha.pdf.
3
According to the results of Second Life, 2011, available from ‘Second Life.
Featured News’ last modified 14 March 2012, viewed 5 April 2012,
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/The-Second-Life-Economy-in-
Q2-2011/ba-p/1035321.
4
Hana Marešová, ‘E-learning v multiuživatelském virtuálním prostředí’, Journal
of Technology and Information Education 1 (2009): 39-44, ISSN 1803-537X.
5
Project: Hana Marešová, Jiří, Langer, Kateřina Vitásková, Eva Souralová, and
Miloš Mlčoch, A 1175, Ministry of Education b: Establishment of Computer Lab
at the Department of Czech Language and Literature and Multimedia Classrooms
at Pedagogical Faculty of Palacky University in Olomouc, University Development
Fund, 2007.
6
Project: David Nocar, Hana Marešová and Pavol Hanzel, Development and
Innovation of Computer Classrooms, University Development Fund, 2011.
7
Project: Hana Marešová, Marie Zouharová and Jaroslav Sláma, Course of
Innovation and New Media and Cyberculture, University Development Fund,
2011.
8
Milan Klement, ‘Možnosti hodnocení elektronických studijních opor’, in Smíšený
design v pedagogickém výzkumu: Sborník příspěvků z 19. výroční konference
České asociace pedagogického výzkumu, (2011): 91-97, viewed 17 April 2012,
http://www.ped.muni.cz/capv2011/sbornikprispevku/klement.pdf.
__________________________________________________________________
9
This chapter is supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, Reg. No.
P407/11/1306 (2011-2012), The Evaluation of Educational Materials Designed for
Distance Learning and E-learning, Milan Klement, et al., (2011-2012).
10
Project: Hana Marešová, Courses of ICT in Education for Teachers, ESF project
No. CZ.1.07/1.3.00/14.0011, 2010-2012.
11
Mary Spoto, Michael Dadez and Diane Johnson, ‘The Lost Generation Meets
Second Life: Teaching Literature in a Virtual World’ (March 10, 2011), viewed 5
April 2012,
http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/conference/proceedings/2011/documen
ts/Michael%20Dadez/ENG311--Second_Life_SoTL_presentation.3-7-11.pptx.
Bibliography
Brdička, Bořivoj. ‘Víceuživatelské virtuální prostředí a možnosti jeho využití ve

vzdělávání’. Bobrův pomocník, 1999. Viewed 5 April 2012.
http://it.pedf.cuni.cz/~bobr/MUVE/.
Klement, Milan. ‘Možnosti hodnocení elektronických studijních opor’. Smíšený

design v pedagogickém výzkumu: Sborník příspěvků z 19. výroční konference
České asociace pedagogického výzkumu, 91–97, 2011. Viewed 17 April 2012.
http://www.ped.muni.cz/capv2011/sbornikprispevku/klement.pdf.
Marešová, Hana. ‘E-learning v multiuživatelském virtuálním prostředí’. Journal of

Technology and Information Education 1, 2009, 39-44. ISSN 1803-537X.
Říha, Daniel. ‘Implementace prostředí neimerzivní virtuální reality v rámci “Kunst

am Bau”’, 2006. Viewed 5 April 2012.
http://everest.natur.cuni.cz/konference/2006/prispevek/riha.pdf.
‘Second Life. Featured News’. Last modified 14 March 2012, Viewed 5 April
2012.
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/The-Second-Life-Economy-in-
Q2-2011/ba-p/1035321.
Spoto, Mary, Michael Dadez, and Diane Johnson. ‘The Lost Generation Meets
Second Life: Teaching Literature in a Virtual World’, March 10, 2011. Viewed 5
April 2012.
http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/conference/proceedings/2011/documen
ts/Michael%20Dadez/ENG311--Second_Life_SoTL_presentation.3-7-11.pptx.
__________________________________________________________________
Hana Marešová is a vice-dean for study affairs and Lifelong Learning at the
Faculty of Education, Palacky University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). She is a
head of the Department of ICT Education at the Centre for lifelong education at the
Faculty of Education. She works as an assistant professor at the Department of
Czech Language and Literature. Her current research and writing are devoted to
the problematic of using ICT in education (especially in the mother tongue
teaching) and the new possibilities of methods and strategies in e-learning
education.
Milan Klement is a vice-dean for information and communication technology at

the Faculty of Education, Palacky University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). He
works as an assistant professor at the Department of Technical Education and
Information Technology. His current research and writing are devoted to the
problematic of using ICT in education, especially e-learning systems (evaluation of
educational materials designed for distance learning and e-learning).
Zuzana Pustinová is a student of the postgraduate study programme (Ph.D.) in the

Department of Czech Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Palacky
University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). Her supervisor is Hana Marešová. She
teaches the subject Internet and multimedia in the Czech language education. Her
research and writing are devoted to the problematic of ICT competences of
teachers (with special focus on mother tongue teachers).
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The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual Spaces
Nicholas van Orden

Abstract
Building on the work of prominent affect theorists such as Jackie Orr, Elaine
Scarry and Teresa Brennan, I illustrate a theory of ‘telaffect’—the transmission of
affective signals across real and virtual spaces. The development of this theory of
telaffective transmission identifies the complexity and importance of the affective
labour that is routinely conducted via virtual channels. Affect theories often
implicitly explore connections between affective experiences and technology.
Imagining language as a basic technology, Scarry and Brennan focus on language’s
ability to structure and express affect; similarly, Orr describes the influence of
computational and mathematical models on the development of definitions of
‘normal’ cognitive and affective states. Despite the subtle and compelling
arguments made by affect theorists, few have explored the influences that new
forms of digital technology and communication have had on the expression and
experience of affect. A host of new affective experiences are rapidly developing
thanks to internet-based technologies. I draw on a diverse range of technologies to
show that telaffective transmission is a crucial component of popular virtual
spaces. Platforms such as e-mail, instant messaging, blogs and social-networking
sites have created new opportunities for the transmission of affect. More complex
virtual spaces, such as Second Life, have similarly effected new forms of affective
experience. Most popular-media representations of Second Life implicitly identify
the forces of telaffect that are operating within the virtual world: many reports
focus on virtual sex and marriage. Other technologies, such as the brainwave-
detecting headset produced by NeuroSky and the software VR-WEAR developed
to graft users’ facial expressions onto their avatars in real time, further complicate
traditional affect theories and call for analyses into the expression and experience
of telaffect in virtual spaces.
Key Words: Virtual space, affect, digital technologies, communication,

cyberculture.
*****
One of my central assumptions is that the technologies that surround us

influence not only the way that we think, but also how we conceptualize our
mental activity. This is best exemplified by one of our most basic technologies—
language. In an attempt to answer the question of how we think about our thinking,
most affect theorists make either implicit or explicit connections between language
and the experience and expression of affect. Sara Ahmed explains that speech and
language propel the circulation of feelings through what she calls ‘affective
14 The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual Spaces
__________________________________________________________________
economies,’ 1 and Teresa Brennan suggests that sensory inputs are only
understandable once they are transformed by language; Brennan says, ‘[f]eelings
are sensations that have found a match in words.’ 2 In Panic Diaries, Jackie Orr
focuses on computational and mathematical representations of brain functions. Orr
argues that the cognitive functions usually associated with emotions and affects are
rendered intelligible by constantly shifting mathematical and computational
discourses. 3 Metaphors that compare the brain to a computer are common in
popular culture, literature and neuroscience. Ahmed, Brennan and Orr all suggest
that our vocabularies and technologies define our ability to experience and express
affect. If this is the case, a host of new affective experiences are rapidly developing
thanks to internet-based technologies. Some of the most powerful and popular of
these technologies are virtual worlds, such as Second Life and World of Warcraft,
but many of the effects visible in these complex spaces are also present in simpler
social-networks, like Facebook and Pinterest and on basic web pages. Focusing on
the importance of interpersonal relationships within virtual spaces, both between
people and between people and their avatars and examining the potential for the
development of new affective narratives within these domains, shows that virtual
spaces create new opportunities for affective experience and expression. Affect
transmitted across virtual spaces and physical distances are examples of what I call
‘telaffect.’ The development of a theory of telaffective transmission is necessary as
virtual interactions become more common and as the affective labour conducted
via virtual channels increases.
In Speech Acts in Literature, Hillis Miller notes that the prefix ‘tele-’ is used to
designate a conventional act that has been modified to take place across otherwise
impossible distances. As Miller explains, speaking at a distance is referred to as
‘telephone,’ and ‘“television” means a perhaps even more magical “seeing at a
distance.”’ 4 The transformation of speech and vision that permits this ‘magical’
transmission is effected by specific technologies—in Miller’s examples, the
telephone and television. Miller repeatedly refers to the disembodied ‘telephone
voice,’ 5 suggesting that both speech and the subject are altered when voice is
transmitted via telephone technology. Speaking through the telephone, the speaker
creates a new persona, a telephone subjectivity that might transmit affective
content that is radically divorced from the subject’s everyday non-telephone
subject position (this is especially evident in the case of telephone-sex operators,
telemarketers, or product-support line operators; these jobs all rely on the effective
transmissions of affect). Like the telephone, internet-based communication
platforms, such as e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, mini-blogs (like Twitter) and
social-networking sites, have also created new opportunities for the transmission
of affect. Building on conventions initially established by early message-board
users, the simple text of e-mails and instant messages were quickly modified to
efficiently transmit affective content: ‘lol’ for the hilarity of ‘laughing out loud,’
‘omg’ for the surprise of ‘oh my god,’ and the wide-range of ‘emoticons’ used to
Nicholas van Orden 15
__________________________________________________________________
pictographically express happiness— : ) —sadness— : ( —and winking
cheekiness— ; ) —among many others.
Other technological innovations are establishing new channels for the
transmission of telaffect and creating new ways of expressing and experiencing
affect. Affective signals are often produced through physical gestures and facial
expressions. Nintendo’s Wii entertainment and gaming system instantly translates
physical movements into virtual actions that interact with the movements of other
users and with the narrative of the game being played. Similarly, software
developed by VR-WEAR uses a webcam to capture head movements and facial
expressions which are translated into computer data and grafted, in real-time, onto
the user’s Second Life avatar. These technologies provide a medium for
transmitting bodily affective signals that might not simply be difficult to render in
written or spoken language, but might actually escape linguistic signification
altogether. Like the physical cues VR-WEAR interprets, the brainwave controlled
interfaces being developed by NeuroSky translate mental activity into virtual or
physical movements. Based on a set of ‘algorithms for emotions,’ the data obtained
by NeuroSky’s brainwave-reading headset can be linked to almost any virtual or
mechanical system. 6 NeuroSky’s technology suggests that mental, even pre-
cognitive, activity can be transmitted across virtual and physical spaces. Media
blogger Wagner James Au describes a similar transmission of affect in Second Life.
Au explains, figuratively, that in Second Life ‘emotional intimacy is directly
injected, mind to mind.’ 7 Like telephone, television, Wii, VR-WEAR and
NeuroSky, virtual spaces create new possibilities for telaffective expression and
experience.
People often claim that they enjoy virtual worlds because the worlds allow
them to do things that are impossible, difficult, or restricted in real life. While
activities such as teleportation are certainly possible in spaces like Second Life, the
things that people do in Second Life do not seem to be as important as the
emotional experiences that these activities provide for the real people who are
manipulating the avatars. Most commentary about Second Life reveals or reflects
upon the possibilities offered by transmitting affect and emotion across virtual
spaces and through virtual relationships. Popular media representations of Second
Life often implicitly identify the forces of telaffect that are operating within the
virtual world. Most of these accounts focus on relationships formed within Second
Life, especially virtual sex and marriage, or on relationships between people and
their avatars.
In a 2006 article for the Houston Chronicle, titled ‘In Second Life, the World is
Yours,’ Eyder Peralta argues that residents of Second Life do not refer to the virtual
world as a game because ‘the emotional connections you make are real.’ 8 Peralta
goes on to note that ‘[p]eople spend millions of dollars building their lives [in
Second Life] because emotionally, it’s more than a game.’ 9 A 2008 CNN iReport
titled ‘Virtual World, Real Emotions: Relationships in Second Life,’ makes a
__________________________________________________________________
similar argument. The CNN story recounts the first real-life meeting of Nina Allam
and Sean Barbary, a couple who had established a virtual relationship and were
married in Second Life but had never met in real life. The end of this short iReport
reveals the power of the telaffect transmitted through Second Life: ‘“I’ve never felt
like this before, I love her so much,” Barbary said. “I never knew I could feel like
this.”’ 10 In her 2006 story for The Boston Globe, titled ‘Leading a Double Life,’
reporter Irene Sege interviewed Second Life wedding planner Tuna Oddfellow
(magician and fund-raiser Matthew Fishman’s Second Life avatar). Oddfellow
operates a ‘virtual wedding business, complete with invitations, catered food, disc
jockey and premarital counselling, for avatars he’s convinced are committed to
each other.’ 11 But Sege explains that Oddfellow won’t marry just anyone—couples
must convince him that they have successfully transmitted their emotions across
Second Life’s virtual space: ‘“I can’t marry you in Second Life,” Fishman
[Oddfellow] says in an interview, “unless you realize you have First Life
emotions.”’ 12 For Oddfellow, telaffective expressions and experiences create
powerful connections between people. Just as virtual relationships between avatars
disrupt conventional notions of relationship, the attachment that many residents
have to their avatars disrupts ideas about bounded, self-contained individuality.
In order to participate in Second Life, each resident must create an avatar—a
fully customizable virtual character that the resident will use to navigate through
the world. For many residents, the distinction between real-world self and avatar
‘other-self’ is difficult to explain. Chris Ashby, a young gamer that Peralta
interviewed, says, ‘When it comes to choosing between real life and Second Life, I
don’t know which one I care about most.’ 13 Ares Demoulins makes a similar
claim: ‘It starts out as Second Life is a break from real life, then you get to the
point where real life becomes a break from Second Life.’ 14 Although most
residents don’t experience such a radical fusion with their other-selves, many
express strong affective connections to their avatars. Au, who participates in
Second Life as the avatar Hamlet Au, describes the affective reaction he had when
a friend transformed Hamlet Au into a hamster as part of an experiment.
Appropriately echoing Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Au writes, ‘One morning, Hamlet
Au woke from uneasy dreams to find himself changed into a giant hamster’. 15 Au
experiences a sharp telaffective dislocation from his hamster avatar: ‘I stood there
for awhile, trying to find the words to describe the experience of looking at this
new avatar of mine. I didn’t feel like myself. Looking at my avatar provoked a
sensation of awkward self-consciousness.’ 16 Au is unable to articulate exactly what
feels wrong about being a hamster; he goes on to note, ‘I do feel like myself when
I’m my default Hamlet Au avatar, who mostly resembles me physically.... But this,
well—this felt like something else entirely.’ 17 Many residents feel liberated by the
possibility of endlessly recreating their virtual other-selves. A 2007 poll by the
Global Market Institute found that twenty-three percent of Second Life residents
have an avatar with a different gender than their real-life body, twenty-two percent
__________________________________________________________________
have an avatar with a different skin color and ‘mysteriously, eleven percent
reported having an avatar with a different political orientation.’ 18 Au describes the
plastic subjectivity offered by internet-based media as a process of
‘avatarization.’ 19 Of course, avatarization is not restricted to Second Life.
Like the telephone persona that Hillis Miller describes, many virtual
spaces are largely defined by their users’ on-line personae. Email systems and
social networks require users to create avatars of varying complexity—you can’t
have a Facebook account without creating a Facebook version of yourself. The
correspondence between the real-world user and the virtual avatar is at best
uncertain. As Au notes, social networks are ‘teeming with users who idealize
themselves as sexier and more successful than they really are.’ 20 The potential for
harm or liberation that this process of avatarization might encourage has been
subject to lengthy debate, but the potential for new forms of avatar-mediated
affective experience and expression is less contentious and largely unexplored.
Most social networks are implicitly organized to facilitate the transmission of
telaffective content. Facebook connects so-called ‘friends’ (a term laden with
affective baggage) and the light blue thumbs-up ‘like’ symbol is quickly becoming
a powerful cultural icon. Other social networks follow a similar model: Twitter,
Findery and Pinterest all arrange users according to hierarchical follows/following
structures. All three also echo Facebook’s ‘like’ button: Findery’s red heart signals
a ‘favorite,’ as does Twitter’s golden star icon, while Pinterest uses a red heart to
identify ‘like.’ Although these platforms offer simplified versions of the
telaffective exchanges mediated by Second Life, they all nonetheless encourage
their users to participate in the transmission of affective content. While Facebook’s
‘like’ button is a seemingly simple gesture, it telaffectively communicates
potentially complex emotional material (often with even more complex real world
consequences).
Technological developments and virtual worlds also create space for the
construction of new telaffective narratives—narratives otherwise marginalized by
material constraints or social forces. Nash Baldwin, at UC Davis, constructed the
‘Virtual Hallucinations Lab’ in Second Life. Baldwin’s ‘Lab,’ located in a model of
an insane asylum and based on testimony collected from several people with
schizophrenia, attempts to recreate schizophrenic hallucinations for people without
schizophrenia. The Lab utilizes telaffective forces to offer people who are not
schizophrenic the chance to experience a mild (and sanitized) form of
schizophrenia. As avatars walk through the various rooms of the Lab, voices repeat
disturbing messages, such as, ‘Kill yourself! Do it! Do it now! Dead! Dead! You’re
nothing—you don’t even exist.’ 21 In one room the floor suddenly falls away,
leaving precarious stepping stones over an endless drop. In another room, the
letters on a poster subtly rearrange themselves into profanities and then shift back
into their original benign arrangement. The challenges faced by Baldwin’s patients
are represented in the Lab and it encourages Second Life residents who do not have
__________________________________________________________________
schizophrenia to engage with disruptive schizophrenic experiences. Baldwin’s Lab
creates a medium for telaffective narratives that would otherwise remain
unexplored.
Much less dramatically, platforms such as Facebook establish new narratives
that are largely focused on users’ telaffective exchanges. The Facebook ‘Timeline’
feature creates an alternate life story for its users, providing a catalogue of
friendships, ‘likes,’ comments, relationship status updates and shifts in mood
(represented by updated avatar and cover images). The user’s Timeline starts at
‘Born,’ after which nothing happened until the user joined Facebook. Presumably
there are children for whom these events were concurrent (or who were born on
Facebook first). The catalogue of the Facebook Timeline reveals the user’s explicit
interventions into the Facebook community and implies the user’s popularity and
social standing, often with complex echoes in the real world. These echoes
highlight the importance of a coherent critical analysis of the telaffective forces
that underlie and animate many virtual spaces. Focusing on the interpersonal
relationships within virtual worlds such as Second Life and examining the
development of telaffective narratives in these and other virtual spaces, reveals the
significance of telaffective transmission. Critical theoretical analysis of these new
telaffective experiences and expressions is important because the line between ‘real
life’ and ‘the virtual,’ if it ever existed, continues to dissolve.
Notes
1
Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004),
146.
2
Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2004), 19.
3
Jackie Orr, Panic Diaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 190.
4
Hillis Miller, Speech Acts in Literature (California: Stanford University, 2001),
191.
5
Ibid., 187-195.
6
Allan Wang, ‘Controlling Electronics Using Your Mind: Interview with Allan
Wang’, ABC 7 News, viewed 17 January 2007,
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=4944111.
7
Wagner James Au, The Making of Second Life (New York: Collins, 2008), 96.
8
Eyder Peralta, ‘In Second Life, the World is Yours’, Houston Chronicle, viewed 1
August 2012.
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2006_4125271.
9
Ibid.
10
‘Virtual World, Real Emotions: Relationships in Second Life’, CNN, iReport.
viewed 26 May 2006,
__________________________________________________________________
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/12/second.life.relationship.irpt/index.html.
11
Irene Sege, ‘Leading a Double Life’, The Boston Globe, 25 October 2006.
12
Ibid.
13
Peralta, ‘In Second Life’.
14
Ibid.
15
Au, Making, 76.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., 79-80.
19
Ibid., 83.
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid., 209.
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Au, Wagner James. The Making of Second Life. New York: Collins, 2008.
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2004.
Miller, Hillis. Speech Acts in Literature. California: Stanford University, 2001.
Orr, Jackie. Panic Diaries. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
Peralta, Eyder. ‘In Second Life, the World is Yours.’ Houston Chronicle, 28 May
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http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2006_4125271.
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December 2008. Accessed 1 August 2012.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/12/second.life.relationship.irpt/index.html.
__________________________________________________________________
Wang, Allan. ‘Controlling Electronics Using Your Mind: Interview with Allan
Wang’, ABC 7 News, 17 January 2007. Accessed 1 August 2012.
http://www.abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=4944111.
Nicholas van Orden is a PhD student in the English and Film Studies program at
the University of Alberta. His research focuses on the collision of virtual spaces
and literary forms.
Interaction Agency on Social Network Profiles:
An Approach of Semiotic Niches on Virtual Identities
Patricia Rossini and João Queiroz

Abstract
Social Network Site profiles can be described as semiotic niches, spaces of
mediation built of processes and structures that enable users to control, constrain
and predict future social interactions through the manipulation of a morphological
variety of sign types. We argue that signs that agents perceive when accessing
profiles can be apprehended as shortcuts for epistemic action, providing cues about
one’s social context. This perspective is aligned with the idea that people
manipulate problem-solving spaces to improve social cognition by relying on
external artefacts to scaffold internal computation. It is also in consonance with
recent SNS research that suggests one goal of profile building is to produce
specific perceptions and orient social behaviour. Our aim is to explore the idea that
social networks’ profiles work as semiotic niches. In order to properly develop our
argument, we will begin with a brief introduction that includes a review of
cognitive and semiotic niches, social networks, and virtual profiles research.
Subsequently, we will propose a model for the understanding of Facebook’s
profiles as semiotic niches, including a description of the signs and the epistemic
shortcuts these signs represent for control and anticipation of future relationships
and constraint on the SNS.
Key Words: Social networks, virtual profiles, cognitive semiotics, semiotic niche,
distributed cognition.
*****
1. Introduction
Social Network Sites (SNS) are online spaces designed to enable users to create
and manage social ties in proportions that would be unlikely or impossible to
maintain offline. In these spaces, the users’ actions are mediated by profiles, virtual
spaces designed to act as representations of users’ identities that can be
personalized through the manipulation of a variety of signs. Since interpersonal
communication mediated by computers lacks cues and signals that people can
observe during face-to-face interaction, the personalization of profiles provides
context and enables agents to access information about others with whom they
wish to interact in order to orient future action.
In this paper, we argue that SNS’ profiles are mediating structures 1 or epistemic
mediators 2—spaces built to cognitively aid human activity, filled with artefacts
that transform, enable, or simply modify internal processing; as such, they can be
described as cognitive niches 3 or semiotic niches. 4 We intend to show that signs
22 Interaction Agency on Social Network Profiles
__________________________________________________________________
are mechanisms through which people control interactions; signs provide semiotic
shortcuts that are fundamental for the mediating role of virtual profiles.
In order to properly develop our argument, we will begin with a brief
introduction that includes a review of semiotic niches, social networks, and virtual
profiles research. Subsequently, we will propose a model for the understanding of
Facebook profiles as semiotic niches, including a description of the signs and the
epistemic shortcuts these signs represent for control and anticipation of future
relationships and constraint on the SNS.
2. Semiotic and Cognitive Niches: Environments that Make Us Smart

Many authors have been exploring the idea that human cognition is not
constrained by the limits of the skull and skin but is distributed throughout the
environment. According to this perspective, it is the interaction between the
biological brain and nonbiological artefacts, technologies, and the environment that
structure the cognitive system; without coping with artefacts and aids, humans
would not be able to perform many activities, such as communicating with others
using language, solving complex problems, 5 and so on. Recently, Andy Clark 6
proposed that we are immersed in cognitive niches, in the sense that we manipulate
and structure our problem-solving space to improve internal computation.
Cognitive niche construction leads to new feedback cycles that are related to
lifetime learning for cognitive purposes. 7
Semiotic structures and processes can be considered powerful and remarkable
niches because they reduce the descriptive complexity of the world and have open-
ended expressive power. Language, for instance, is a semiotic niche that enables its
users with novel abilities and competences related to the perception of the world,
inferences, navigation, and communication, among many others. 8
The notion of semiotic niches is closely related to the cognitive niche and
ecological niche theses but it focuses on the semiotic processes 9 between the agent
and his or her environment. Jesper Hoffmeyer’s goal was to develop ‘a term that
would embrace the totality of signs or cues in the surroundings of an organism—
signs that it must be able to meaningfully interpret to ensure its survival and
welfare. The semiotic niche includes all of the traditional ecological niche factors,
but now the semiotic dimension of these factors is also strongly emphasized.’ 10
While the cognitive niche refers to a system structured by cognitive artefacts,
the semiotic niche is a space of epistemic mediation filled by signs or semiotic
artefacts of various kinds. It is a niche that requires the agent to interpret the signs
that he or she is able to perceive, in which the signs represent cues for epistemic
action, physical action to improve reasoning. 11 The effects of the use and
manipulation of these structures on social network sites includes the construction
of niches designed to enable agents to engage in many forms of social activities. If
this approach is correct, socialization activities scaffolded by social network sites
must rely on semiotic structures and processes available in this environment or
Patrícia Rossini and João Queiroz 23
__________________________________________________________________
niche. In this sense, the interpretation of signs in virtual profiles enables people to
engage in activities in these spaces.
3. Social Networks’ Profiles as Semiotic Niches

Within the environment of SNS, profiles are mediating structures for inter-
personal relationships. Profiles are important mechanisms of interaction agency,
structured to represent individuals and their connections on social network sites.
The importance of profile personalization is the focus of many researchers in the
social network field. 12 In the absence of bodily signs that provide cues and
information in face-to-face interaction (i.e. facial expressions, voice tone,
gestures), people rely on signs available on virtual profiles that can be interpreted
as representations of others’ features and characteristics, providing context for
future interaction. 13 According to our approach, profiles are semiotic spaces
structured by signs and acting as cognitive shortcuts or epistemic mediators that
reduce the complexity of the interactional environment in many ways.
On SNS, profiles enable the community to see not only the information
provided by the user, but also her or his connections (usually displayed as a
‘friends list’), her or his status updates and shared links and photographs, and
content published by others (comments, public messages, links, and so on). All
these features provide social context and situate the users in a public space by
making the network visible. Thus, the connections between users are also signs that
represent users’ relationships and function as signals that one’s profile is
trustworthy. 14 As trustworthiness can’t be directly observed on virtual profiles,
people need to rely on cues and signals to orient future action. 15
SNS are structures developed by humans to increase their capacity for online
socialization; they provide a means for enhancing online social relations and make
it possible for users to manage larger networks by lowering the costs of time,
availability, and effort. As these networks include many weak ties—people with
whom the agent does not have intimacy, reciprocity, or proximity 16—–the use of
signs to control interaction is important to organize and manage broader social
relationships, thus avoiding inappropriate interactions. Judith Donath explains that
the reliability of an SNS is closely related to the design of profiles because they
can increase or reduce costs for deception and undesirable behaviour, such as
spamming and fake identities. When costs of personalization are higher (i.e. the
profiles require personal information and display connections and photos), the
reliability increases and people tend to believe that information provided by others
on their profiles is trustworthy. 17
The process of personalizing profiles can be described as a process of designing
semiotic niches in the sense that individuals manipulate their profiles to better
organize their space for interaction in the network. Signs that agents perceive when
accessing others’ profiles can be apprehended as shortcuts for epistemic action,
providing cues about one’s social context that will orient future action. If this
__________________________________________________________________
approach is correct, profiles enable users to constrain, anticipate, and control social
interaction within the network. It is important to note that only signs whose
meanings are defined by cultural and social practices shared between agents can
function as controlling mechanisms. Inappropriate or undesirable behaviours are a
consequence of deception, that is, the meaning understood by a receiver differs
from the meaning intended by the sender.
Table 1: Basic profile signs and interaction agency functions.
Sign Function regarding control, constraint and anticipation of

interactions
Gender Provides context and anticipate future interaction based on an
agent’s gender.
Birthday Users that provide the date of birth on their profiles and opt to
make it visible for friends anticipate future interaction on their
birthday because Facebook’s interface encourages users to
congratulate friends on their birthday.
Sexual Displays users’ interests regarding relationships and enables them
orientation to control or constrain inappropriate interactions in this sense.
Relationshi Provides important clues, especially for future interactions

p status between weak ties, because it indicates whether the agent is
available for relationships or not. The sign provides control
because it inhibits undesirable behaviour regarding romantic
approach according to the social norms.
Language Constrain interaction between speakers of different languages
Religion Contextualizes the individual and his or her beliefs. It acts as a

controlling mechanism by constraining inadequate situations
(according to social conventions) and is also a shortcut that can
induce epistemic action when inter-agents share beliefs.
Political The interpretation of this sign can either encourage or discourage
preference conversation regarding political matters. It is a controlling sign
that acts both for constraint and anticipation.
To support our argument, we describe the signs that are generally available on
Facebook profiles according to their mediating functions, namely, control,
constraint, and anticipation. We chose Facebook’s model of profiles to exemplify
our argument because they enable users to display a variety of signs to represent an
identity and should be reliable, according to Donath’s conditions for
__________________________________________________________________
trustworthiness in SNS, described above. For methodological purposes, we will
only focus on verbal signs (written language).
Signs act as controlling mechanisms of social interactions online because they
provide context for users and their networks, displaying information that needs to
be known before further interaction takes place. Information that people can learn
about others’ identities through signs aids a variety of cognitive processes
regarding interaction, such as deciding how to approach someone with whom the
agent does not have intimacy. Constraint signs are those whose meanings can
inhibit future action and thus avoid undesirable situations, considering that their
meaning is tied to habits or social norms. Signs of relationship status, sexual
orientation, political preference, and religion can be described as constraining signs
because they provide some control over future interactions by anticipating the
users’ intentions and constraining inappropriate behaviour according to the social
rules that are predominant in a society.
Similarly, signs that allow users to anticipate future interaction are those whose
effects provide their interpreters with accurate shortcuts for action. Those shortcuts
are clues that suggest the kind of interaction one expects and contextualize the
profile owner’s preferences. The birthday display is a good example as it can be
interpreted as an intention of the profile’s owner to make sure her or his friends
will be reminded of the user’s birthday because Facebook’s interface displays
special dates and reminds its users to congratulate friends. Therefore, by making
the birthday visible, the profile owner anticipates his or her friends’ attitudes on his
anniversary.
Signs that inform agents on specific matters regarding interests and lifestyle,
such as political preference and religion, contextualize aspects of the individual
and provide control for future interactions in both directions: they can encourage
like-minded agents to act, using common preferences as a topic of conversation,
and discourage others who have different beliefs from engaging in discussions in
which controversial opinions on some topics can affect the relationship. Even
though political preference and religion do not define whether or not people will
interact when they do not share opinions, they are a controlling sign because they
anticipate certain positions of the agents and can inhibit conversation about those
matters between different-minded individuals (mostly to avoid conflict). These are
important signs for context because they enable agents to infer other non-
perceivable characteristics of the individuals that are related to their visible
preferences. 18
Other signs that allow user personalization, such as those that represent
membership or belonging, are also important tools for interaction agency. Work
information, education, city, and pages ‘liked’ complement user-manipulated signs
on Facebook profiles. While work and school information stand for a user’s
connections to institutions, allowing others to find them as they become linked to
these institutions, the ‘liked’ pages represent the interactions between the agent and
__________________________________________________________________
other Facebook pages, divided into many categories. 19
Table 2: Complementary profile signs.
Sign Function regarding control, constraint and

anticipation of interactions
Work Information People tend to add as friends others with whom they share
a workplace. This connection can constrain the behaviour
of the agents because their connection is based on a formal
acquaintance and thus can have consequences at the
workplace.
Education Represents belonging or membership to educational

institutions and makes it easier for others to find the user
through the represented connection. It is also possible to
tag colleagues and classmates, creating associative social
ties.
City (current and Control interactions based on location and provide
hometown) information about the person’s life outside the network.
Pages I Like Represent the user’s interaction with Facebook pages,
such as celebrities, musicians, sport-related content,
books, movies, and so on. Acts as a display of user’s
preferences, providing context
We believe that both basic and complementary profile signs can be described as
semiotic shortcuts because they are integrated into the profiles and perform
different, but complementary, roles as interaction agents. Signs enable users to
make inferences and to extract meanings from the information displayed on virtual
profiles, making it easier to process information and acting as epistemic shortcuts
that orient decision-making regarding social interaction.
4. Conclusion
Profiles, as spaces structured by signs, reduce the complexity of environments
designed to scaffold relationships and therefore enable novel forms of computer
mediated interaction. We argue in this paper that profiles on social network sites
can be described as semiotic niches, in the sense that they are spaces structured by
signs that perform many roles as interaction mediators and agents. Taking
Facebook profiles as an example, we described signs whose significance allows
agents to control interaction by anticipating future action or constraining
inappropriate action (in terms of social norms and conventions). Signs that
integrate virtual profiles behave as epistemic shortcuts that reduce the effort of
__________________________________________________________________
virtual relationships by simplifying mental computation, making participants’
intentions clearer to the network and providing context for interaction. As such,
they are tools for interaction agency. The mediating function of SNS’ profiles
depends on the semiotic processes that agents perform—interpreting and signifying
every sign they interact with in the environment.
Our goal was to demonstrate the ways in which the production and
manipulation of signs on virtual profiles create epistemic spaces structured by
semiotic shortcuts that facilitate decision-making processes regarding the
formation and maintenance of social ties. While our work focused only on verbal
signs, we believe that the other categories of signs that compose virtual profiles
also have an important role as mediators of users’ interaction. Charles Sanders
Peirce’s classification of signs provides useful insights into the relation between
signs and behaviour, and thus will be analysed in our future research.
Notes
1
Ed Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 290-291.
2
Epistemic mediators, in this sense, are external representations that enable people
to perform manipulative abduction. Lorenzo Magnani, ‘Creative Abduction as
Active Shaping of Knowledge. Epistemic and Ethical Mediators’, Proceedings of
the 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci2004 (Chicago,
2004), 880.
3
Andy Clark, ‘Language, Embodiment, and the Cognitive Niche’, Trends in
Cognitive Sciences 10, No. 8 (2006): 370-374, doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2006.06.012.;
Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
4
Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘Semiosis and Living Membranes’, in Advanced Issues on
Cognitive Science and Semiotics, ed. João Queiroz and Priscila Farias (Shaker
Verlag, 2006), 19-36; Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘The Semiotic Niche’, Journal of
Mediterranean Ecology 9 (2008): 5-30.
5
See note 7 below; David Kirsh, ‘Thinking with External Representations’, AI and
Society, 25 (2010): 441-454.
6
Andy Clark, ‘Language, Embodiment’, 371.
7
Andy Clark, ‘Supersizing the Mind’, 62.
8
Andy Clark, ‘Language, Embodiment.’
9
Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic provides a three-fold classification of signs
(icon, index, and symbols), which are defined by the relationship between the sign
and its object, generating interpretants—the meaning of this relation as understood
by the interpreting mind. As this chapter has a limited space and scope, the
discussion of how each category of sign can provide control of the meaning and
create constrains needs to be further developed by the authors in subsequent work.
10
Hoffmeyer, ‘The Semiotic Niche’, 13.
__________________________________________________________________
11
Kirsh and Maglio, ‘On Distinguishing Epistemic’.
12
danah boyd and Judith Donath, ‘Public Displays of Connection’, BT Technology
Journal 22, No. 4 (2004): 73-78; danah boyd and Nicole Ellison, ‘Social Network
Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship’, Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication, 13(1), (2007).
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html; danah boyd, ‘Social
Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications’,
in A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites, ed.
by Zizi Papacharissi (New York: Routledge, 2010): 39-58.
13
boyd and Donath, ‘Public Displays’.
14
See note 17 below.
15
Judith Donath, ‘Signals in Social Supernets’, Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 13(1) (2007), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donath.html.
16
Mark Granovetter, ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology
78-6 (1973): 1360-1380.
17
Judith Donath, ‘Signals in Social Supernets’.
18
In the US, for example, where two parties stand for opposing positions in many
important affairs, declaring preference for the Democrat or the Republican party
has a lot of meaning, because there are many unobservable aspects of the person's
personality that can be inferred when this knowledge is available before interaction
19
The Likes are the pages that the user chooses to interact with. They are divided
into: music, television, activities, sports, athletes, sports teams, games, interests,
and pages, and can be on behalf of artists, bands, teams, companies, brands, and so
on.
Bibliography
boyd, danah. ‘Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics,
and Implications’. In A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social
Network Sites, edited by Zizi Papacharissi, 39-58. New York: Routledge, 2010.
boyd, danah, and Nicolle Ellison. ‘Social Network Sites: Definition, History and
Scholarship’. In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11,
2007. Viewed 3 May 2012.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html.
boyd, danah, and Judith Donath. ‘Public Displays of Connection’. In BT

Technology Journal 22, No 4, October, 2004.
__________________________________________________________________
Clark, Andy. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
–—–. ‘Language, Embodiment, and the Cognitive Niche’. In Trends in Cognitive

Sciences 10, No. 8 (2006): 370–374.
–—–. Natural Born-Cyborg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Donath, Judith. ‘Signals in Social Supernets’. In Journal of Computer-Mediated

Communication No. 13 (2008): 231-251. Viewed 3 May 2012.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donath.html.
Granovetter, Mark. ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’. In American Journal of

Sociology 78 (6) (1973): 1360–1380.
Hoffmeyer, Joseph. ‘Semiosis and Living Membranes’. In Advanced Issues on

Cognitive Science and Semiotics, edited by João Queiroz and Priscila Farias, 19–
36. Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2006.
–—–. ‘The Semiotic Niche.’ In Journal of Mediterranean Ecology 9 (2008): 5–30.
Hutchins, Ed. Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.
–—–. ‘Distributed Cognition’. In The International Encyclopedia of the Social and

Behavioural Sciences, 2068-2072. 2001.
Kirsh, David. ‘Thinking with External Representations’. In AI and Society 25

(2010): 441–454.
–—–. ‘The Intelligent Use of Space.’ In Artificial Intelligence 73, Nos. 1-2 (1995):
31–68.
Kirsh, David, and Paul Maglio. ‘On Distinguishing Epistemic from Pragmatic
Actions.’ In Cognitive Science (1995).
Magnani, Lorenzo. ‘Creative Abduction as Active Shaping of Knowledge.

Epistemic and Ethical Mediators’. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of
the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci2004), 879-884, Chicago, 2004.
Menary, Robert. ‘Writing as Thinking.’ In Language Sciences 29 (2007): 621–632.

__________________________________________________________________
Menary, Robert, ed. The Extended Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2010.
Patricia Rossini is a Masters student in Communications at the Federal University

of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. Her research interest is the effect of technology on many
aspects of people's behaviour, including Political Communication, Social Media,
Cognitive and Semiotic Niches, and technologies. Her current research and writing
is focused on the influence or effect of social network sites in young voters’
political decision and access to information.
João Queiroz is a Professor at the Institute of Arts and Design and at the Graduate
Studies Program in Communication, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brasil. He
is the Editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Signs and Semiotic Systems
(IJSSS). His research interests include: the emergence and evolution of semiotic
complexity, cognitive technologies, complexity studies, Peirce's semiotic, and
pragmatism.
Boom de yada, wheres mah bukkit?
The World According to LOLrus, Steve, Matt and the Cats
Petra Rehling
Abstract
Walrus, better known as LOLrus (icanhascheezburger.com), has uttered a very
common mantra of our times: We are constantly searching for something and
assign meaning to the simplest things, thus underlining the ‘thingification’ of
everyday culture by trying to bestow sense on boring lives and profane identities.
Walrus’s tormented question, the ‘Saga of LOLrus,’ is an epic search that
resembles our own—a search that has become the focus of various sites and
phenomena on the Internet. Consequently, our existence is often ridiculed by
LOLcats, which habitually indulge in invisible objects and—in silent celebration—
make fun of human skills, beliefs, desires, and occupations. They have given a
linguistically-challenged voice to the endearing stupidities and idiosyncrasies of
‘hoomanz.’ At the same time, Matt Harding, a ‘nobody’ who became a global
Internet celebrity by accident, has literally danced around the world for us,
stressing the fact that in times of GPS and geotagging it is truly important to
physically locate ourselves inside this digitized universe. Are Walrus, Matt and
LOLcats just a source for daily laughter, much like cartoon pages in newspapers
used to be, or have they become modern figureheads for our self-definition and
life’s simplicity, much like the late Steve Jobs seems to have become? Are they
leading our bucket quests? While LOLcats hold up a mirror to a flawed humanity,
Matt Harding and Steve Jobs have managed to ‘summarize’ the world for us with
however censored inventories. In an era of intense discomfort, with disasters and
apocalyptic visions all around, ‘iThings,’ Internet memes, and viral videos are
flowing through our lives like hyperlinks in our social networks and have taken on
a central role in our daily pursuit of happiness.
Key Words: LOLcats, Matt Harding, Pursuit of Happiness, Steve Jobs, meme,
viral video.
*****
1. Introduction
There is a reason for the ‘celebratory’ title of this chapter. The two phenomena
discussed here are well-known entertainment sources in recent online culture that
provide their audiences with versions of the world of digital natives in a kind of
self-congratulatory and cheerful manner. The Internet has undeniably become a
major supplier of pre-packaged emotions and destroyer of boredom. 1 From being a
divine gift, ‘being happy’ has slowly evolved into a human obligation and
culminated in today’s semi-tragic, self-indulgent Western culture. 2 This article
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
XX
LE MARTYR
Les deux années où Paul vécut à Rome, prisonnier militaire,

terminent ce qu’on sait nettement sur sa vie. Le livre des Actes ne va
pas plus loin. Il est invraisemblable que l’auteur ait tu à dessein [436]
la condamnation et la mort de l’Apôtre, faits notoires, dont le
retentissement dut être immédiat, immense parmi toutes les
chrétientés. D’autres motifs, qui nous échappent, ont déterminé le
brusque arrêt du récit.
[436] C’est la dernière et sotte réticence que M. Loisy
prête à l’astucieux « rédacteur ».
Au delà, Paul s’enfonce dans un brouillard. Nous retrouvons, par

intervalles, le son de sa voix. Mais nous avons peine à suivre ses
mouvements. L’épître aux Philippiens, sur un ton d’espérance [437] ,
annonçait une visite prochaine en Macédoine. Il croyait à l’heureuse
conclusion de son procès. Les épîtres à Timothée, celle à Tite
seraient inexplicables s’il ne s’était vu, en effet, acquitté, libéré.
[437] I , 26.
La première à Timothée [438] le montre partant pour la

Macédoine ; il veut que son disciple l’attende à Éphèse où il se
propose de le rejoindre. Dans la seconde [439] , il rappelle qu’il a
laissé Trophime malade à Milet. Écrivant à Tite, il nous apprend [440]
qu’il l’a laissé en Crète « pour achever de régler ce qui reste à régler
et, dans chaque ville, établir des presbytres ».
[438] I , 3.
[439] IV , 20.
[440] I , 5.
Ainsi donc, après son acquittement, Paul retourna voir les églises
d’Achaïe, de Macédoine, d’Asie. Il fit une mission en Crète, et
chargea Tite d’y bien asseoir son œuvre.
Quant au voyage en Espagne, si fermement projeté, put-il
l’accomplir, et vers quel temps ? Le témoignage de Clément
Romain [441] , laisse entendre que Paul « atteignit le terme de
l’Occident » ; et ces mots, si vagues qu’ils soient, se rapportent, non
à Rome, mais plutôt à l’Espagne, point extrême où l’Annonciateur
visait, avant de paraître devant son Juge et de lui dire : « Toute la
terre a entendu votre nom. Maintenant, venez, Seigneur. »
Seulement, rien n’indique les circonstances ni l’époque de son
exploration.
[441] Voir p. 10.
Est-ce alors que Paul conçut ou inspira l’épître aux Hébreux ?

Les exégètes se sont épuisés en hypothèses autour de ce texte
mystérieux. Il ne porte aucune salutation initiale, aucune allusion à
l’entourage de Paul, sauf à Timothée, dont il dit sèchement :
« Vous savez du frère Timothée qu’il est remis en liberté. S’il ne
tarde pas à venir, c’est avec lui que j’irai vous voir… Ceux d’Italie
vous saluent. »
Paul en personne n’eût pas ainsi parlé, semble-t-il, de celui qu’il
aimait comme un fils, « son vrai fils dans la foi ».
Le fond de la lettre est paulinien par la doctrine. Nous saluons au
passage des locutions théologiques, des métaphores familières :
« Tout est soumis au Christ… Vous en êtes revenus à avoir
besoin, non pas de nourriture solide, mais de lait [442] … La Loi n’a
rien conduit à la perfection… Mon juste, grâce à la foi, vivra… »
[442] Cette image, peut-être créée par saint Paul, était
entrée dans le domaine commun, comme l’atteste le
passage fameux de saint Pierre, en sa première épître (II ,
2).
Certaines phrases, certains morceaux ont le tour nerveux et

ramassé, propre au langage de l’Apôtre :
« Sans effusion de sang, pas de rémission… Vous n’avez pas
encore résisté jusqu’au sang… Il est horrible de tomber entre les
mains du Dieu vivant… »
Et surtout l’admirable mouvement sur la parole prophétique :
« La parole de Dieu est vivante, efficace. Elle est plus tranchante
que toute épée à deux tranchants. Elle pénètre jusqu’à séparer
l’âme de l’esprit, les jointures et les moelles. »
Mais la majesté pompeuse, surabondante de l’ensemble paraît
étrangère au style de Paul. On dirait une page de Démosthène
amplifiée par Isocrate. Évidemment Paul savait assouplir selon des
auditoires dissemblables ses formes d’expression. Malgré tout, on
sent une main autre que la sienne. Le développement sur la foi (ch.
XI ), avec ses longues énumérations d’exemples bibliques, « cette
nuée de témoins » que l’auteur amasse pour démontrer une vérité
simple, trahit un rhéteur ; l’ouvrage semble avoir été écrit par un
disciple de Paul ou un homme qui avait reçu de près son
influence [443] , Juif d’origine, mais assujetti aux disciplines grecques
de l’éloquence.
[443] La tradition suppose Barnabé (voir Prat, op. cit.,
t. I, p. 497-506).
Il s’adressait à des communautés palestiniennes en proie au

grand trouble qui précéda le soulèvement de la Judée. Jamais la
tentation de resserrer l’Église sous le joug mosaïque n’avait si
fortement agité les chrétiens de Palestine. Autour d’eux, la fureur du
fanatisme s’exaspérait. Ils allaient être mis en demeure de choisir :
ou bien suivre le peuple dans sa révolte contre l’étranger, devenir
des Juifs, en tout, forcenés, ou s’exiler (ce qu’ils firent en se retirant,
pour leur salut, à Pella).
L’auteur de l’épître les exhorte à persévérer dans leur foi. Il leur
propose un parallèle entre le sacerdoce juif, imparfaite et transitoire
figure, et le sacerdoce de Jésus-Christ. Jésus est le médiateur
nécessaire, le prêtre éternel. Une magnificence pontificale anime
ces considérations. Mais leur sérénité laisse percer les sentiments
dont l’attente du martyre devait exalter les chrétiens d’Italie :
« Vous autres, vous n’avez pas encore résisté jusqu’au sang.
Nous, sous-entend-il, nous savons ce qu’il faut savoir endurer pour
le règne de Dieu. »
L’évocation des supplices qu’ont pâti les précurseurs de
l’Évangile, les prophètes du Crucifié, représente autre chose qu’un
lieu commun oratoire :
« Ils ont été lapidés, torturés, sciés. Ils sont morts par le
tranchant du glaive, ils ont erré, couverts de peaux de brebis, de
peaux de chèvres, manquant de tout, persécutés, maltraités (le
monde n’était pas digne d’eux) ; errant dans les solitudes et les
montagnes, dans les cavernes et les trous de la terre [444] … »
[444] XI , 37-39.
Certaines antithèses enfin éclatent comme le cri du sublime

détachement, avec un accent tout paulinien :
« Nous n’avons pas ici de cité qui demeure, mais nous cherchons
celle qui sera [445] . »
[445] XIII , 14.
Nul, mieux que Paul, ne passait en ce monde, comme un

nomade, marchant vers la cité céleste qu’il préparait ici-bas. Quelle
cité humaine aurait alors pu retenir l’espérance du chrétien ?
Jérusalem et le Temple allaient succomber ; Rome, qui se disait
éternelle, venait d’être, aux trois quarts, détruite par l’incendie.
Le 19 juillet 64, des magasins d’huile, au bout du grand Cirque,
ayant pris feu, tout le centre de Rome, autour du Palatin, brûla
pendant six jours ; sur les quatorze régions de la ville, dix furent
anéanties.
Où était Paul quand la nouvelle de ce désastre emplit les routes
de l’Empire ? Sans doute y lut-il un signe, le brasier avant-coureur
de l’incendie du monde qui renouvellerait la terre et les cieux.
En attendant « le grand jour [446] », il continuait à guerroyer
contre l’erreur ; il affermissait dans les églises des dispositions
capables d’en écarter les vaines querelles, le désordre et l’hérésie.
[446] II Timothée I , 18. Voir aussi II Petr. III , 7.
Les deux épîtres à Timothée et celle à Tite le font voir infatigable

dans la lutte, toujours aussi ferme, rude par moments, mais avec la
tranquillité et la mesure d’un esprit déjà proche de la lumière sans
ombre.
Pas une minute il ne désarme vis-à-vis des judaïsants, « ces
bavards qui prétendent être les Docteurs de la Loi et ne savent pas
ce qu’ils disent [447] ». Ces « circoncis », plus que les autres, sont
des « brouillons, des séducteurs… Ils bouleversent des familles
entières, enseignant pour un gain honteux ce qu’il ne faut pas
enseigner… Ils se glissent dans les maisons, asservissent de
pauvres femmes chargées de péchés, et qu’entraînent toutes sortes
de passions… Ils s’attachent à des fables judaïques, à de vaines
querelles au sujet de la Loi [448] ».
[447] I Tim. I , 7.
[448] Tit. I , 10-15.
Certains soutiennent des inepties, comme Hyménée et Philète

qu’il a dû excommunier [449] ; à les entendre, la résurrection dernière
n’aurait pas lieu, parce qu’elle est accomplie moralement dans le
baptême. Certains prohibent le mariage, s’obstinent à distinguer
entre les aliments purs et les immondes ; ils veulent réduire la piété
à une ascèse corporelle. Ou bien ils enseignent l’Évangile autrement
que l’Apôtre ; dès que la vérité passe par leur bouche, elle se
déforme. Et surtout ils visent à s’enrichir. « Or, l’amour de l’argent est
la racine de tous les maux [450] . »
[449] I Tim. I , 20 ; II Tim. II , 17-18.
[450] Id. VI , 10.
Paul a vu les perversions qui pouvaient, dès sa croissance,

affaiblir la plus sainte des sociétés spirituelles. Il en a, plus encore,
prévu les suites ; il sait que les hommes enflés de leur sagesse
« s’enfonceront dans l’impiété [451] ». Pour diminuer les vices
inhérents à tout assemblage humain, il prêche deux remèdes : la
fidélité aux principes évangéliques et un gouvernement stable, très
simple encore dans sa hiérarchie, mais exemplaire.
[451] II Tim. II , 16.
Le chef des églises qu’il a fondées, c’est l’Apôtre lui-même. Il

n’admet pas que l’on conteste son autorité, puisqu’il la tient du
Seigneur lui-même et des premiers apôtres. Il délègue, pour un
temps, ses pouvoirs, à Timothée, à Tite ou à d’autres, quand il les
charge de visiter une église. Il leur prescrit d’établir dans chaque ville
des presbytres ou évêques, hommes d’une vertu éprouvée, attachés
à la saine doctrine. Les presbytres auront l’assistance des diacres et
des veuves. Ainsi, « le dépôt de la foi sera gardé » ; toute église sera
conduite par des chefs qui auront reçu et transmettront le Saint-
Esprit.
Entre la première et la seconde épître à Timothée, la grande
persécution, à Rome, s’était ouverte. Clément Romain, en termes
trop discrets, laisse entrevoir quels ennemis des chrétiens la
fomentèrent :
« C’est par suite de la jalousie que les hommes qui furent les
colonnes de l’Église ont été persécutés et ont combattu jusqu’à la
mort [452] . »
[452] Ép. aux Cor., ch. V .
L’incendie de Rome avait épargné les abords de la porte Capène
et le quartier du Transtévère ; il avait éclaté non loin des ruelles
juives, mais sans les atteindre. La rumeur populaire dut accuser les
Israélites d’avoir voulu, en détruisant Rome, venger leurs frères de
Judée qu’outraient les exactions et les violences des gouverneurs
romains. Elle poussait la foule à des représailles. Pour les prévenir,
et, du même coup, détourner sur les chrétiens qu’ils exécraient la
vindicte publique, les Juifs propagèrent ce bruit : les incendiaires,
c’étaient les disciples du Crucifié. Dans l’entourage de Néron,
Poppée, des comédiens juifs se chargèrent d’aiguiser l’animosité du
prince. Ils lui représentèrent sa maison comme infestée d’esclaves,
de scribes, d’affranchis, d’officiers chrétiens.
Tous ces gens-là, qui semblaient les plus fidèles des
domestiques, préparaient dans l’ombre des forfaits affreux. Ils
avaient failli brûler Rome ; le prince, tôt ou tard, serait leur victime.
Les chrétiens — comment l’ignorait-il ? — « avaient en haine le
genre humain [453] ». Ils réprouvaient les joies que la nature
conseille à l’homme ; des témoins avaient surpris, dans leurs
assemblées secrètes, des turpitudes sans nom. Et, surtout, ils
adoraient un séditieux mis en croix. Ils bravaient les édits
promulgués contre les superstitions étrangères. Ils déniaient aux
divins empereurs le culte qu’exigeait le respect des lois.
[453] Tacite (Ann., XV, 44) enregistre, comme
probant, ce grief mal défini. « La haine du genre
humain », c’est la volonté de détruire la famille, la religion
nationale et l’État. On faisait donc passer les chrétiens
pour des anarchistes sans patrie, des espèces de
nihilistes.
Néron, coupable ou non d’avoir prolongé l’incendie de la vieille

ville — son rêve était de rebâtir une autre Rome — et mal vu à
cause des misères accumulées par le désastre, s’empressa de saisir
cette diversion. Il la fit, à sa mode, théâtrale et atroce. Tertullien [454]
lui attribue un mot qu’il a bien pu prononcer :
[454] Apolog. 5. Ce que Tertullien appelle « institutum
neronianum » doit s’entendre, je crois : un précédent
juridique.
« Christiani non sint. Que les chrétiens soient anéantis. »

Les frappa-t-il par un édit ? A des arrestations en masse
succédèrent des supplices où l’on précipita les accusés sans avoir
instruit leur procès, sur une dénonciation ou parce qu’ils se
confessaient chrétiens. Même si nous réduisons à quelques milliers
de fidèles « la multitude énorme » dont Tacite relate la
condamnation, Néron atteignit d’abord l’effet cherché ; l’événement
fut considérable. La plèbe crut se venger de la récente catastrophe
en applaudissant aux tortures des auteurs présumés. Comme
incendiaires, d’après la loi romaine [455] , les chrétiens devaient être
livrés au bûcher ou exposés aux bêtes. Mais on sait quels
raffinements d’horreur le cabotin sadique se plut à inventer, à voir
mis en œuvre. Des troupeaux de patients, sous des toisons de bêtes
fauves, étaient offerts, dans le cirque, aux morsures de chiens
furieux. Dans les jardins du Vatican, le long des allées, des martyrs,
empalés sur un pieu, portaient collée à leurs membres la tunica
molesta, la robe enduite de poix et de soufre ; la nuit, ils flambaient,
luminaires vivants, tandis que Néron circulait, cocher de son
quadrige, ou chantait, la cithare en main, sur le tréteau d’une scène,
un morceau de tragédie. De jeunes chrétiennes, traînées au milieu
d’un théâtre, y jouaient le rôle des Danaïdes, vouées aux horreurs
du Tartare ; des mimes, avant de les étrangler, les violentaient
publiquement ; ou bien, elles étaient, comme Dircé, liées aux cornes
d’un taureau qui les piétinait, les déchirait, parmi des rocs, les
éventrait [456] .
[455] Voir Mourret, les Origines chrétiennes, t. I, p.
122.
[456] Voir l’épître de saint Clément, loc. cit.
La férocité lente des sévices, au lieu d’assouvir les haines du

peuple, se retourna pourtant contre Néron. Parmi les condamnés il y
avait trop d’innocents manifestes ; des vieillards, des adolescents,
de pauvres femmes, tourmentés au delà des forces humaines,
conservaient, dans leurs agonies interminables, une souriante
patience. Leur victoire étonna des spectateurs curieux, puis les
troubla d’une compassion. Il devint évident que leur supplice avait
une seule fin : amuser les yeux d’un cruel et de ceux qui lui
ressemblaient.
Paul se trouvait, peut-on croire, en Orient, lorsqu’il apprit la
dévastation de l’église romaine et le combat triomphant des frères. Il
avait écrit à Tite :
« Hâte-toi de me rejoindre à Nicopolis (en Macédoine) ; j’ai résolu
d’y passer l’hiver [457] . » Il s’était arrêté à Troas où il avait oublié,
chez Carpos, son manteau, son unique manteau peut-être [458] .
[457] III , 12.
[458] II Tim. IV , 13.
C’est à Corinthe, selon une tradition vraisemblable [459] , qu’il

aurait donné rendez-vous à Pierre ; et les deux Apôtres partirent
ensemble pour l’Italie, afin de soutenir les fidèles, comprenant aussi
qu’ils allaient, à Rome, recevoir « la couronne ».
[459] Eusèbe (l. III, ch. XXIV ) cite Denys de Corinthe
et son affirmation un peu confuse : « (Pierre et Paul),
étant venus à Corinthe, nous instruisirent ; ils partirent
ensemble pour l’Italie, et après vous avoir, Romains,
instruits comme nous-mêmes, ils furent martyrisés, vers
le même temps. »
D’après les Actes apocryphes de Paul — seulement il est difficile

d’y séparer l’histoire et la fiction — l’Apôtre aurait loué, hors de
Rome, une grange [460] ; là il se remit à prêcher. Dénoncé, il fut une
seconde fois jeté en prison. Mais ce n’était plus la custodia militaris.
Il se montre à Timothée, chargé de chaînes « comme un
malfaiteur [461] ». Un certain Onésiphore, venu à Rome, l’a cherché
quelque temps, ne l’a point découvert sans peine. Paul devait donc
être durement détenu ; ses anciens amis n’osaient plus dire qu’ils le
connaissaient ; on ignorait jusqu’au lieu de sa geôle.
[460] Les Actes apocryphes paraissent avoir
emprunté ce détail aux Actes des Apôtres.
[461] II, II , 9.
« Tous ceux d’Asie, dit-il, se sont détournés de moi… Lors de

mon premier plaidoyer (dès ma comparution devant les juges),
personne ne s’est mis avec moi ; tous m’ont abandonné. »
Il n’a pas la certitude encore de sa mort imminente. Une fois déjà
il a été retiré « de la gueule du lion ». Il n’est sûr que d’une chose :
« Le Seigneur le sauvera de toute œuvre méchante ; Il le conduira
sain et sauf « dans son royaume céleste. » Que Timothée se hâte,
avant l’hiver, de se rendre auprès de lui ; qu’il lui apporte le manteau
laissé à Troas.
Cependant il parle comme s’il lui laissait de suprêmes conseils,
et il se voit offrant son sang comme la libation du dernier sacrifice ; le
« temps de lever l’ancre » approche. Du fond de son cachot, Paul
sent venir à lui le vent de la pleine mer ; demain il appareillera pour
les plages du ciel.
« J’ai combattu le beau combat ; j’ai achevé la course ; j’ai gardé
la foi. Maintenant, elle est déposée pour moi la couronne de la
justice que Dieu me donnera en ce jour-là, lui, le juste Juge ; et non
seulement à moi, mais à tous ceux qui ont désiré avec amour sa
manifestation. »
Rien, peut-être, dans les Épîtres, n’est sublime comme ces
paroles du vieil athlète plus fort que jamais dans sa foi, qui n’avoue
aucune lassitude, mais qui s’en ira, parce que la course est gagnée.
En attendant, il évoque d’un mot ce qu’il souffrit « à Antioche, à
Iconium, à Lystres, les persécutions dont le Seigneur l’a toujours
délivré. Et, aujourd’hui, il endure tout « à cause des élus (des
prédestinés) pour qu’ils aient part au salut, eux aussi, et à la gloire
éternelle ».
Il rappelle à son disciple ses volontés constantes ; il lui
recommande la justice, la charité, la mansuétude, même à l’égard
de ceux qu’il faut reprendre et condamner.
Sa voix semble déjà venir d’outre-tombe, d’un monde où la paix
ne peut plus être perdue.
En même temps, il prépare pour d’innombrables martyrs
l’exhortation qui leur convient. Dans les Actes de ceux de Scilli [462] ,
le proconsul Saturninus pose à l’accusé Speratus cette question :
« Que gardez-vous dans vos archives ? » Et Speratus répond : « Nos
livres sacrés et les épîtres de Paul, homme très saint. »
[462] Dont le procès fut jugé à Carthage, en juillet
180. Voir dom Leclerq, op. cit., p. 111.
Avant l’heure des supplices, quel viatique il leur apportait ! On

s’explique l’athlète figuré sur les parois des catacombes ; c’était à lui
qu’ils songeaient, comme au lutteur invincible, victorieux par la
grâce, et qui, par elle, n’avait jamais douté de l’être.
Mais, après cette épître, les derniers jours de l’Apôtre se perdent
comme dans un couloir sombre. Les péripéties de son deuxième
procès, jusqu’à la fin des temps, resteront inconnues. Nous sommes
réduits aux Apocryphes ; et le narrateur invente visiblement ou
transpose des circonstances multiples.
Patrocle, échanson de César, est allé entendre Paul dans la
grange où il enseigne. Cet homme va s’asseoir sur la fenêtre du
grenier ; il en tombe et meurt. Paul le ressuscite. Il le fait asseoir sur
une bête de somme. Patrocle repart en parfaite santé.
L’épisode est une copie maladroite de la résurrection d’Eutychos
à Troas. Mais la suite peut contenir des éléments plus véridiques.
Néron a su la mort de Patrocle. Lorsqu’il le voit revenir vivant, il
s’étonne : « Qui t’a fait vivre ? — Le Christ Jésus, répond Patrocle, le
roi de l’éternité. »
Néron est inquiet, lui qui rêvait d’être roi de Jérusalem [463] parce
qu’il savait confusément les prédictions des devins d’Orient sur
l’empire du Messie :
[463] Voir Suétone, Néron.
« Ce Jésus doit régner sur l’éternité et renverser tous les

royaumes ! »
Patrocle n’hésite pas à répondre :
« Oui, il renversera toutes les royautés, et il sera seul pour
l’éternité. »
Alors, Barsabas Justus aux larges pieds, Urion le Cappadocien
et Festus le Galate, les premiers serviteurs de Néron, s’écrient d’une
même voix :
« Nous aussi, nous sommes au service de ce roi de l’éternité. »
Néron les fait lier de chaînes et torturer terriblement. Il envoie un
centurion appréhender Paul et ceux qui l’écoutent. Quand l’Apôtre
comparaît devant César, Néron, au premier coup d’œil, dit :
« Voilà leur chef », parce que tous ont les yeux sur lui.
L’empereur l’interroge :
« Pourquoi es-tu entré dans l’Empire romain ? Pourquoi enrôles-
tu des soldats soustraits à mon commandement ? »
Paul fait cette réponse :
« César, nous enrôlons des soldats dans toute la terre habitée.
Car il nous a été ordonné de n’exclure aucun homme qui veuille
passer au service de mon Roi. Ce service, s’il te plaît à toi-même de
t’y soumettre, te sauvera. Si tu le pries, tu seras sauvé. Car, en un
seul jour, il doit faire la guerre au monde. »
Que Néron eût, lui-même, interrogé l’Apôtre, le fait n’aurait, en
soi, rien de surprenant. Le prince, par cela seul qu’il exerçait la
puissance d’un chef d’armée, assumait en même temps les pouvoirs
judiciaires. A lui ou à tout autre juge, Paul certainement annonça la
Parousie du Seigneur. En présence de païens orgueilleux,
omnipotents, il ne manquait jamais de proclamer cette vérité
redoutable : au-dessus des empires que le temps renverse, Dieu
manifestera son royaume immuable, le seul qui est.
Mais, au moment où il comparut une seconde fois devant un
tribunal romain, Néron était absent de Rome. Saint Clément affirme
que Paul souffrit le martyre sous les préfets. Rome, d’ordinaire, n’en
avait qu’un seul. Cette année-là — en 67 — Néron décida qu’il y en
aurait deux. Il préparait son fastueux voyage en Achaïe ; au
printemps, il était parti. Or, la tradition maintient que Paul fut exécuté
le 29 juin. Elle fixe au même jour ou à un an d’intervalle le supplice
de Pierre.
Jésus, dans un langage voilé, avait annoncé à Pierre par quelle
mort il le glorifierait :
« Quand tu étais jeune, tu mettais ta ceinture et tu partais où tu
voulais ; mais, quand tu seras vieux, tu étendras tes mains, et un
autre te ceindra et il te mènera où tu ne voudras pas [464] . »
[464] Jean XXI , 18.
Pierre, traité comme un homme de rien, « étendit » en effet « ses

mains » sur la croix où il voulut être cloué, la tête en bas. A Paul,
citoyen romain, on réserva une mort plus honorable : la décollation
par le glaive.
Passa-t-il, ainsi que le veut une tradition, avec Pierre, son dernier
jour, dans l’horrible basse-fosse de la prison Mamertine ? Le cachot
voisin du Forum semble avoir été plutôt destiné à des criminels
politiques — tels les complices de Catilina — ou à des captifs de
guerre, comme Vercingétorix.
Mais le cachot au fond duquel Paul attendit l’aurore de sa
libération ne dut pas être plus agréable : ténèbres, puanteur, contact
de bêtes affreuses, humidité d’égout suintant, et l’immobilité dans
des haillons pleins de vermine, les mains étant raidies par le poids
des chaînes, les pieds bloqués par une barre de fer, dans le créneau
du cep !
Le matin d’été où la porte s’ouvrit, quand il s’en alla au martyre,
fut le plus beau des matins. Quelques heures d’attente, et il serait
enfin avec le Christ, en Lui, non plus seulement par la possession
mystique, mais dans le vis-à-vis sans fin que Job espérait : « Je
verrai face à face mon Rédempteur ; je le verrai, et ce sera moi, non
un autre. » Entre son âme et Dieu il ne sentirait plus la cloison de
chair, le poids du silence. Il trouva douce encore à respirer la lumière
de ce monde. Mais, déjà, il percevait, comme étant ailleurs, tout ce
qui lui venait des choses d’ici-bas.
Les rues, autour de lui, s’éveillaient ; les dures semelles des
soldats sonnaient sur les dalles ; les épées nues brillèrent au soleil
montant. Les passants regardaient avec une curiosité ironique ce
vieil homme déguenillé qu’on emmenait, les bras derrière le dos. Il
entendait peut-être le bourreau qui suivait l’escorte rire avec ses
valets. Il ne pensait point à cette écrasante puissance de Rome
qu’un bas-relief, contre un arc de triomphe, lui eût montrée sous la
figure d’un cavalier indifférent, implacable, dont le cheval appuie son
sabot sur la nuque d’un vaincu.
Il cherchait, même à cette heure, des âmes qu’il pourrait conduire
au Christ. Comme le centurion, marchant près de lui, le regardait
d’un air attristé, il osa l’entretenir du Seigneur ; il lui dit :
— Crois au Dieu vivant ; il me ressuscitera des morts, moi et tous
ceux qui croient en Lui [465] .
[465] Ce trait, comme les suivants, n’a comme garant
que les Apocryphes.
Ils se dirigèrent au sud-ouest de la ville, vers la porte d’Ostie. Là,

une femme de grande mine, droite sur la chaussée, le front couvert
d’un voile, attendait son passage. Dès qu’il approcha, elle tourna
vers lui ses yeux pleins de larmes ; et, joignant ses mains,
suppliante, elle cria :
— Paul, homme de Dieu, souviens-toi de moi devant le Seigneur
Jésus.
Paul reconnut Plautilla, une patricienne qui assistait
intrépidement les chrétiens dans leurs angoisses. D’un ton joyeux il
lui dit :
— Bonjour, Plautilla, fille du salut éternel. Prête-moi le voile dont
tu couvres ta tête. Je m’en lierai les yeux comme d’un suaire et je
laisserai à ta dilection ce gage de mon affection, au nom du Christ.
Ils longèrent, au delà du Tibre, sur la voie d’Ostie, le lieu, à droite
de la route, où Constantin empereur devait ériger, en l’honneur de
l’Apôtre, une première basilique. Une matrone chrétienne, Lucina,
possédait en cet endroit une maison de campagne [466] . Un mille
environ plus loin, ils prirent, à gauche, le chemin qui montait vers le
plateau. Si Paul considéra, un instant, l’horizon, d’étranges
réminiscences vinrent surprendre son cœur : ce grand pays que
fermaient à l’Occident les crêtes des monts Sabins et qui
descendait, au Sud, jusqu’à la mer, cette plaine, bleuâtre et sereine,
où le Tibre tournait entre des buttes vertes, ressemblait à la plaine
de Cilicie appuyée aux rampes du Taurus.
[466] Voir Marucci, loc. cit.
Un autre fleuve glissait là-bas… Les jours de son enfance

surgirent, puis s’effacèrent ; du Saul de jadis au vieux Paul qui allait
mourir il voyait plus de distance que de Tarse à Ostie.
Le soleil se faisait lourd ; la poussière du chemin irritait ses yeux
las. Il avançait d’un pied vaillant. Depuis la route de Damas il avait
tant marché ! Cette étape était la dernière ; il l’achèverait comme un
bon vétéran, du même pas que les jeunes soldats de César ; et, d’un
seul coup, il tomberait, comme sur un champ de bataille.
Le point de la banlieue désigné pour l’exécution était un vallon
désert et secret ; des sources d’eau salubres lui avaient mérité le
nom d’Aquae salviae. Les autorités romaines avaient sans doute
choisi cette solitude, de crainte que le spectacle du martyre n’excitât
parmi les chrétiens une ferveur contagieuse.
L’escorte s’arrêta près d’un pin. Le condamné requit du centurion
la liberté de se recueillir. Il pria debout, les mains étendues, tourné
vers l’Orient, vers la ville sainte de ses pères. On l’entendit parler en
hébreu à Quelqu’un d’invisible. Sans doute, une suprême fois, il revit
ses transgressions lointaines ; il demanda miséricorde, quoique
assuré de l’avoir obtenue. Il pria plus encore pour le salut d’Israël,
pour les églises qu’il avait fondées, pour toutes les autres, et pour
l’Église à venir.
L’arrêt portait qu’il serait, selon la coutume, flagellé avant d’être
décapité. Il offrit encore au baiser des verges ses épaules
décharnées, creusées par des lanières sans nombre. Toutes ses
campagnes, comme sur une stèle, s’y lisaient inscrites en glorieux
stigmates.
Puis on lui banda les yeux avec le voile de Plautilla ; il
s’agenouilla et tendit le cou en silence. Avide, la terre romaine but la
libation du sang libérateur.
Quelques fidèles, de pieuses femmes assistaient, sans doute, du
haut de la colline, au sacrifice ; Lucina était, on peut le croire, parmi
eux. Ils portèrent le corps saint dans sa villa. Il y reposa jusqu’en
258, jusqu’au temps où il fut réuni à celui de saint Pierre, dans la
nécropole de la voie Appienne. On le transféra ensuite, au IV e siècle,
sous l’autel de la basilique dédiée à l’Apôtre, Saint-Paul hors les
murs.
De là au val des trois fontaines, j’ai suivi, un jour d’été, le trajet de
son martyre. J’y suis retourné en automne avec allégresse. La
campagne garde un air d’antique sauvagerie. Les lignes du paysage
n’ont pas dû changer. A droite, entre une pinède sur une butte,
quelques fermes éparses, une tour d’un rouge brun, et l’éperon
d’une butte verte, le Tibre lent, sinueux comme le Cydnus, descend
toujours vers la plaine immense, appelé par la mer. Au bas de la
route, passé deux poteaux de pierre, une allée silencieuse coupe
des bosquets d’eucalyptus et de lauriers-roses.
Trois chapelles sont groupées dans le vallon. Celle qui
commémore les trois fontaines, maintenant murées, n’eût guère plu
à Paul, tel que nous le connaissons : trois cénotaphes, avec des
frontons arrondis de marbre noir, portent un caractère d’inanité
funèbre. Une vaste mosaïque païenne, au milieu du dallage,
représente les quatre saisons. Une grille, dans un coin, enferme le
tronçon d’une colonne légendaire où le bourreau, avant de frapper,
aurait appuyé la tête du martyr.
Mais il est facile de s’abstraire, d’oublier le faux décor. La
chapelle, comme le vallon, demeure pleine de ce recueillement qui
laisse venir en nous les présences éternelles. Je conçois les
Trappistes établissant, tout près, leur monastère ; ils ont mieux fait
que d’assainir un fond marécageux, réceptacle des fièvres ; ils y
rendent plus liturgique l’intimité divine. L’anachorète Paul accepte ce
refuge ; l’homme que nous y retrouvons, c’est le contemplatif, celui
qui modelait sa doctrine et ses actes sur la vision du Dieu caché.
C’est aussi le porte-glaive que la tradition consacre.
Paul, en toutes ses effigies, tient la poignée d’une épée dont la
pointe est dirigée vers la terre. L’épée fut l’instrument de son
supplice ; elle est en même temps l’emblème de sa parole plus
tranchante qu’un glaive à deux tranchants. Seul à seul, je l’ai
longuement prié : quand donc le désir d’être touché par ce glaive
grandira-t-il en moi ? quand ce glaive m’aura-t-il pénétré jusqu’aux
jointures et aux moelles, jusqu’au lien secret « de l’âme et de
l’esprit » ? Car la science unique dont son martyre conclut
l’enseignement, c’est qu’il faut se séparer de soi-même et mourir
avec le Christ pour vivre en Lui.
XXI
LA FIGURE DE SAINT PAUL
L’homme et le saint.
Les péripéties de sa carrière — le peu qui nous en est connu —

se groupent comme des scènes typiques sur les losanges d’un
vitrail.
Saul gardant les manteaux des lapidateurs, Saul renversé sur la
route, Paul frappant de cécité le mage Élymas, Paul avec Barnabé
apostrophant le prêtre qui leur amène des victimes, Paul sur la butte
de l’Aréopage, Paul devant la tour Antonia ou dans la salle du
sanhédrin, Paul secouant la vipère au milieu du brasier, même Paul,
près du pin, agenouillé sous le coutelas du bourreau, ce sont des
images qui ne peuvent se confondre avec rien d’autre. Aucune
légende n’offrirait l’équivalent de leur vérité immédiate et palpable.
Mais, si l’on essaye de fixer au centre du vitrail un portrait où
transparaisse l’essentiel de sa vie profonde, il faut s’avouer,
d’avance, vaincu par la grandeur et l’unité complexe d’une figure
sans égale.
« L’avenir ne verra pas un autre saint Paul », a dit le plus insigne
de ses commentateurs [467] . Tous les hommes admirables qui seront
comme lui Apôtres et Docteurs, un Augustin, un Bernard, un
Dominique paraîtront, auprès de sa personne, les copies
incomplètes d’un trop riche exemplaire.
[467] Saint Jean-Chrysostome, homélie sur la
componction.

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Navigating Cybercultures 1st Edition

Nicholas Van Orden

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A Critical Issues research and publications project.

The Cyber Hub

Nicholas van Orden

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland,

Part 1 Virtual Spaces

Virtual Worlds in the Mother Tongue Teachers’ Education 3

The Experience and Expression of Telaffect in Virtual 13

Interaction Agency on Social Network Profiles: An 21

Boom de yada, wheres mah bukkit? The World According 31

Part 2 Posthuman Aesthetics

Convergence between Architecture and Videogames: The 43

‘Redefining Perfect’: Post-Humanist Views of Gender and 57

What Makes Us Human? Freedom and the Posthuman Age 73

Part 3 Cyberpunk Subjectivities

Becoming Constructs in Cyberspace: Version 2.0 of the 83

Snow Crash: An Analysis of Postmodern Identities in 103

Artificial Intelligence and Gender Performativity in William 113

Part 4 On-Screen Hybrids

Are We Not Men? When the Human-Animal Cyborg Talks 125

Brothers of the Future: Minority Male Cyborgs and the 135

Pressures and Possibilities of Being Bionic: Intersections of 145

Sam Worthington: Hybrid Faces 157

Part 5 Beyond ‘Human’

Rise of the Robot: A Historical Perspective on the Evolution 169

The Subversive Plasticity of Posthuman Womanhood in the 181

Part 6 Cautionary Tales

Changing Dimensions of Cyberspace and Web 3.0’s Impact 215

Human Vision, Illusion and Disillusion: RA.ONE, A Super 225

Nicholas van Orden

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