| In Chapter Four, “Stroking
Keys,” I look at cybersex in terms of masochistic jouissance, or
the desire to merge completely with the other. I argue that cybersex-like
S/M-creates unproductive sexualities that challenge disciplinarity while
also immersing them within a disciplinary system. Cybersex disengages knowledge
of the self and sexuality, but only by shattering the self and dispensing
its shards in a system that is entirely findable and visible. Cybersex,
as a new technology of sex, re-configures sex. It also challenges us to
think again about the relationship between power and resistance, publicity
and privacy, self and other. It re-routes, intensifies, digitizes and obscures
the panoptical gaze: it takes light-that which once secured the gaze-and
uses it to transport data and makes glass something impossible to see through.
In this chapter, I also argue that, in order to best understand transformations
to the self, we must hold on to the term human. To do so is not to insist
on an ahistorical understanding of human. Rather, it is to acknowledge the
history of humanity-to acknowledge the fact that the human has always been
in transition, has always been re-configured to account for changes in reproducibility.
Summary |