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110
choice of identity or subjectivity; on the contrary, it represents a highly constrained
and hegemonic process. Angela McRobbie describes this disavowing of voluntarism
as one of the key aspects of Butler’s concept of performativity. She writes:
Butler insists on the absence of an ‘I’ who might ‘do’ or ‘can do’ gender in a
subversive way. Any indicator of an ‘active agent’ is antipathetic to her entire
analysis. She does argue however that the ‘iterability of performativity’ is a
‘theory of agency’ but without, of course, an agent. There is no stable subject
in this sense, nor can there be one…This allows for a very different, much
more theorized, psychoanalytically informed, and also more narrow,
‘entrapped’ and more rigorously delineated possibility for re-signification or
re-articulation.8
In the absence of an agent, there can be no such thing as an “essential” or static
identity, even if such an identity is desired, because identity only exists within
discourse, which is not fixed. Butler describes the idea of an essential identity as a
fantasy and an impossibility. She writes:
“According to the understanding of identification as an enacted fantasy or
incorporation, however, it is clear that coherence is desired, wished for,
idealized, and that this idealization is an effect of a corporeal signification. In
other words, acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core
or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of
signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal the organizing principle of
identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are
performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise
purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through
corporeal signs and other discursive means.9
Although performativity does not refer to a voluntary “trying on” of identities, this is
a practice that happens in media environments such as video games and virtual
worlds. However, Butler’s concept of performativity would account for the range of
possible ways to signify identity offered within a particular space as well as the tacit
and explicit restrictions, requirements and assumptions that structure the subject
Object Description
| Title | Kids as cultural producers: consumption, literacy, and participation |
| Author | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Author email | rherr@usc.edu; bhs@hri.uci.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Communication |
| School | Annenberg School for Communication |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-25 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-17 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Banet-Weiser, Sarah |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Gross, Larry Seiter, Ellen |
| Abstract | This dissertation looks closely at the practice of digital media production within a group of special education students and their teachers. Using ethnographic methods of extended participant observation and semi-structured interviews with students, teachers, and parents, along with textual analysis of students' media projects, this work examines the types of learning that emerge from making media at school and the ways in which that learning relates to media and technology use in everyday life. Over the course of one school year (2005-2006), the students who are the focus of this dissertation undertook eight different multimedia production projects, ranging from designing PowerPoint presentations to digital video production and stop-motion animation. Through media production, the students found opportunities to practice traditional and digital literacy skills as well as to explore issues of identity and self-expression.; This dissertation provides empirical support for recommendations made by several media literacy scholars to include media production as part of critical media literacy curricula and contributes a unique case study -- one situated in special education -- to a growing body of work on digital literacy. Three interdisciplinary themes--consumption, literacy, and participation -- are used to organize the description and analysis of the students' media production activities. These themes connect the specific production that took place in the classroom to larger discourses about youth, media, technology, education, and access, working to complicate existing constructions of young people as either helpless victims of manipulative media or naturally savvy media and technology users. Instead, this research emphasizes that the relationships kids have with media and technology are complex, dynamic, intrinsically linked to their identities as consumers and participants in society. Media literacy is thus theorized as a tool for understanding and controlling consumption, participation, and the construction of young people as both current and future citizens. |
| Keyword | media literacy; media production; special education; middle school; digital media |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Los Angeles |
| Coverage date | 2005/2006 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1674 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Stephenson-2393 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume29/etd-Stephenson-2393.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 115 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 110 choice of identity or subjectivity; on the contrary, it represents a highly constrained and hegemonic process. Angela McRobbie describes this disavowing of voluntarism as one of the key aspects of Butler’s concept of performativity. She writes: Butler insists on the absence of an ‘I’ who might ‘do’ or ‘can do’ gender in a subversive way. Any indicator of an ‘active agent’ is antipathetic to her entire analysis. She does argue however that the ‘iterability of performativity’ is a ‘theory of agency’ but without, of course, an agent. There is no stable subject in this sense, nor can there be one…This allows for a very different, much more theorized, psychoanalytically informed, and also more narrow, ‘entrapped’ and more rigorously delineated possibility for re-signification or re-articulation.8 In the absence of an agent, there can be no such thing as an “essential” or static identity, even if such an identity is desired, because identity only exists within discourse, which is not fixed. Butler describes the idea of an essential identity as a fantasy and an impossibility. She writes: “According to the understanding of identification as an enacted fantasy or incorporation, however, it is clear that coherence is desired, wished for, idealized, and that this idealization is an effect of a corporeal signification. In other words, acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.9 Although performativity does not refer to a voluntary “trying on” of identities, this is a practice that happens in media environments such as video games and virtual worlds. However, Butler’s concept of performativity would account for the range of possible ways to signify identity offered within a particular space as well as the tacit and explicit restrictions, requirements and assumptions that structure the subject |
