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The representation of identities through the technological artifice of cyberspaces is necessarily an act of repetition; the identity exists at
no time other than the performance. The contingency of cyborg communications in virtual communities is ostensibly a source of liberated
concepts of identity, as described by Butler:
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This perpetual displacement constitutes a fluidity of identities that suggests an openness to
resignification and recontextualization; parodic proliferation deprives hegemonic culture and its critics
of the right to claim to naturalized or essentialist gender identities. (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 138.)
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Unfortunately, however, the proliferation of virtual identities seems less bound to parody than to profit. Even in virtual reality, the conceptual interzone of visual, audio, tactile extravaganza of fantasy and imagination does not really transcend the consensus of hegemonic social interaction.
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When Jaron Lanier, media darling of the virtual reality movement, the dreadlocked prodigy who co-founded VPL espouses the possibilities of virtual reality representation--"Why be a human? Why not be...a giant lobster?"--no radical rupture in representation occurs. According to the consensual pact of communication, the persona of virtual reality is understood as precisely that -- a "persona" -- which disguises the other, "real" identity of the operator. The halloween masquerade in the looney tune reality of cyberspace assumes the identity of the operator. An oft-used demonstration of virtual reality consists of a screen which displays the VR representation of a body or body part which situates the user in the environment for both self-reference and audience observation. Frequently, the signifier is one or both hands, the movement of which corresponds to the user's manual manipulations inside the data glove. For instance, in one demonstration, the user "flies" through the environment, arms extended forward, "hands" visible preceding the "body." Every installation I have seen, both on site, and through various media, displays a matched set of masculine, pinky-beige hands with which the typical virtual reality engineer identifies.
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