When we create screen names, personal websites or weblogs,
participate in online message boards or virtual communities,
much of what we are doing is marketing ourselves, offering
ourselves up as a commodity. Multiple online identities
are in some ways akin to product lines held by a particular
company. Each separate identity one creates may allow him
or her to cash in on a different market, even though the
medium of exchange may be social rather than monetary.
It seems that we have assimilated the culture of commercialism
so completely that we see our own identities as product.
The manner in which we trade in our identities on the Internet
has evolved within a complex set of cultural developments.
This paper will consider how the current cultural emphasis
on flexibility and access, combined with the position of
the Internet within the larger context of capitalistic modes
of production, has brought us to a place where we have become
increasingly comfortable with the commodification of our
own identities.
In The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett writes of
the cultural dislocation that is a byproduct of a prevailing
emphasis on flexibility in the workplace. According to Sennett,
our notion of flexibility has changed in recent years, losing
its original connotation of stability in the face of external
forces of change. Though the word ‘”flexibility”
originally described the ability of a tree to withstand
wind damage, its yielding to the wind while retaining its
fundamental form (Sennett 46), flexibility has come to mean
a capacity to adapt to perpetual change in our work and
personal lives, one that we are all expected to embrace,
or be left by the economic wayside.
For
Sennett, a key problem with negotiating one's life under
the terms of limitless flexibility is the challenge it poses
to one’s ability to create coherent personal narratives.
One is always in the position of recreating oneself, and
achievements are no longer "cumulative" (16) in
a way that would tend to foster stability, community and
personal character. The emphasis now is on constant permutation
to meet the changing demands of our environment. Sennett
claims that the "most strongly flavored ingredient
in this new productive process is the willingness to let
the shifting demands of the outside world determine the
inside structure of institutions" (52). Though he is
speaking here of the business practice wherein external
market pressures are allowed to determine internal corporate
structures, Sennett's idea also extends to the behavior
of individuals.
He sees members of the new economy as being adrift in change,
unsure of who we really are or what defines us.
Continua
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