local and global identity games: [re]mediated modelling of transworld “glocal” identities in an...

8/9/2019 Local and Global Identity Games: [Re]mediated modelling of transworld “glocal” identities in an “open” world

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International Cultural

Semiotics Symposium,

Nanjing 2008Patrick J.Coppock

Department of Social,Cognitive and Quantitative Science,

School of Communication and Business,

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia,Italy

[email protected]

http://game.unimore.it

+Semiotics of Culture

!! Thematic Area: Theoretical studies concerning cross-cultural

semiotics

!! My Title: Local and Global Identity Games: [Re]mediated

modelling of transworld “glocal” identities in an “open”

world



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+Here, there and everywhere?

The Beatles (1966)

[…]

I want her everywhere and if she's beside me, I know I need

never care. But to love her is to need her everywhere.

Knowing that love is to share. Each one believing that love

never dies. Watching her eyes and hoping I'm always there.

To be there and everywhere. Here, there and everywhere.

+Managing “Glocal” Identities

!! In our hyperconnected continually globalising world it can

seem possible for us to be “ Here, There and Everywhere” at

one and the same time.

!! But is it actually possible to blend “local” and “global”

identities in mutually acceptable, desirable and, first and

foremost, ethical ways?

!! What criteria might be useful to successfully manage

transmedia, transworld identity games ?

!! Can analytical cultural semiotics play a role in identifying

such criteria?



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+Transmedia remediation



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+Reality: a continuous, autonomous,

creative process

!! C.S. Peirce

!! “[…] we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.”

!! ( How to Make Our Ideas Clear , 1878)

!! “Synechism, even in its less stalwart forms, can never abidedualism, properly so called. […] In particular, the synechist

will not admit that physical and psychical phenomena areentirely distinct, – whether as belonging to differentcategories of substance, or as entirely separate sides of oneshield, – but will insist that all phenomena are of onecharacter , though some are more mental and spontaneous ,others more material and regular . […]”!! ( Immortality in the Light of Synechism, 1893)

+Cognition, Consciousness and

Experience

!! A.N. Whitehead:

!! “Cognition is the emergence, into some measure of individualised reality , of the general substratum of activity ,poising before itself possibility, actuality and purpose.”

!! (Science in the Modern World : 152)

!! “The principle that I am adopting is that consciousness presupposes experience, and not experience consciousness.It is a special element in the subjective forms of some feelings .Thus an actual entity may, or may not be conscious of somepart of its experience.”

!! ( Process and Reality : 53)



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Self(hood): Feeling Subjectivity Other(ness)

World: Reality/ Novelty/ Sat isfaction/ Actuality

Actualisation:

Processual realisation of possibility

Process/ Being/ Cosmos/ Evolution/ Possibility

Relationality of Being, Self(hood),

Other(ness)

+Between Factuality and Fiction

!! Our experienced world is a cultural construct (Eco):

!! The experienced world as a “multitude of world pictures or

stated descriptions […] epistemic worlds that are frequently

mutually exclusive”

!! “Even though the real world is a cultural construct, one mightstill wonder about the ontological status of the described

universe.



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+Possible and actual worlds

!! Semiotics of Fiction

!! (Eco: Lector in Fabula, 1979; I Limiti dell’Interpretazione, 1990)

!! Fictional possible worlds may be characterised as:

!! “Small worlds ”, “furnished” with actors and objects with certain“properties”

!! “… alternative ways things might have been, not descriptions of

these ways.”!! “… states of affairs … described in terms of the same language as

their narrative object

!! “Finite, enclosed”, “handicapped”, “ parasitic on the real world ”,must be “taken on trust ”

!! “Constructed by human minds and hands”.

+The Cultural Role of Fictional

Possible Worlds

!! Fictional characters live in a handicapped world. When we

actually understand their fate, then we start to suspect that

we too, as citizens of the actual world, frequently undergo our

destiny just because we think of our world in the same way as

fictional characters think of their own.

!! Fiction suggests that perhaps our view of the actual world is

as imperfact as that of fictional characters.

!! This is the way that successful fictional characters become

paramount examples of the “real” human condition.



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+ Identity – two complementary

philosophical points of view

!! In philosophy , personal identity refers to the essence of a self-conscious person, that which makes him or her uniquely what they are at any one point in time, and which further persists over time despite superficial modifications, making him or her the same person at different points in time also.

!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_(philosophy)

!! Personal identity deals with questions about ourselves qua people

(or persons). Many of these questions are familiar ones that occur to everyone at some time: What am I? When did I begin? What will happen to me when I die? Discussions of personal identitygo right back to the origins of Western philosophy, and mostmajor figures have had something to say about it.

!! http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/#1

+Personal Unity as a Locus for all

occasions of experience

!! A.N. Whitehead

!! ( Adventures of Ideas : 187):

!! “Personal Unity” – cf Plato’s “receptacle” – “a locus that

persists and provides an emplacement for all the occasions of

experience. That which happens in it is conditioned by itsown past, and by the persuasion of its immanent ideals.”



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+Some aspects of Transworld Glocal

Identity development

!! Taking and sharing responsiblities here, there and everywhere…

!! Social (or cultural) criticism (Michael Waltzer)

!! James Paul Gee:

!! “Situated Learning” (e.g. with computer/ video games): Learningby planning, tryng out, discussing and evaluating outcomes of shared projects together with others.

!! Sherry Turkle:

!! “Information technology is identity technology. Embedding it in aculture that supports democracy, freedom of expression, tolerance,diversity, and complexity of opinion is one of the next decadesgreatest challenges. We cannot afford to fail.”

!! “When I first began studying the computer culture, a small breed of highly trained technologists thought of themselves as ‘computerpeople.’ That is no longer the case. If we take the computer as acarrier of a way of seeing the world and our place in it, we are allcomputer people now.”



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