Monday, March 9, 2020

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall

In traditional societies inculcated into neoliberal economies and digital cultures, how do individuals reconstruct their selves in cyberspaces? In entailing new strategies of production, distribution and promotion of the self, how have traditional notions around gender/sexuality vis-à-vis public/private dichotomies changed? The governmentality of performative selves in the digital public leads to the entry of new regulatory regimes that are both intrinsic and extrinsic to the medium. The operations of neoliberal governmentality are however characterized by an ‘omniopticon’, the many surveilling the many. The new and complex relationships forged between state policies, ideological state apparatus, civil society, corporate agendas and individual actors in evolving new forms of surveillance and punishment of offending bodies, and their gendered implications need to be studied. This paper seeks to analyse how the representational politics in digital spaces implicates the gendered gaze as a significant theme.