online a lot of the time: ritual, fetish, sign

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Tasmania] On: 27 November 2014, At: 22:06 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccon20 Online a lot of the time: Ritual, fetish, sign David W. Hill a a University of York , E-mail: © 2010, David W. Hill Published online: 26 Mar 2010. To cite this article: David W. Hill (2010) Online a lot of the time: Ritual, fetish, sign, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 24:2, 335-337 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304310903576374 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

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Page 1: Online a lot of the time: Ritual, fetish, sign

This article was downloaded by: [University of Tasmania]On: 27 November 2014, At: 22:06Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Continuum: Journal of Media & CulturalStudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccon20

Online a lot of the time: Ritual, fetish,signDavid W. Hill aa University of York , E-mail: © 2010, David W. HillPublished online: 26 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: David W. Hill (2010) Online a lot of the time: Ritual, fetish, sign, Continuum:Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 24:2, 335-337

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304310903576374

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Online a lot of the time: Ritual, fetish, sign

investigates in California’s prisons, have no choice, and have no choice but to reframe

their sense of self.

On the question of affect, Christopher Cordner neatly aligns waiting, love and the

ethics of encounter by saying that waiting is linked with attention, as in the French,

attendre:

If I am really to attend to what you say, or just to you, I must wait for what will come from you,not pre-empt it by thinking I already know what it will be, assimilating it into expectations orcategories I bring to the occasion. But then I must also wait on it when it comes, be present andopen to it, letting it work upon me. (169)

So, contra Tina Turner, love does have something to do with it, with waiting. Some of

these writers know what love is, while others work on the social, global political and

cosmic dimensions of the concept. It is a capacious and perhaps inexhaustible concept.

If I had been part of the team, I would have done a mini-ethnography with the concept.

I would have done ‘waiting for the click’, an investigation of group posing for

photographs. I thought of this because of a sketch in the final The Chaser’s War on

Everything, a TV social satire show. The team is down at Circular Quay soliciting passers-

by to take their cameras and photograph a group posing in front of the Opera House. It is

quite a large group, with quite a few cameras to record the event. So the exercise is testing

the patience of the victim to see just how many photos they will take before refusing to

take more. One gentleman takes an amazing 40 plus photos before the medium evolves to

a cine camera, and then paints and canvas (‘I can’t paint!’ he protests, but gives it a go

anyway).

So I would be interested, in photos with family and friends, in the precise timing of

‘waiting for the click’ when things are said to urge people to smile, when the smile

becomes frozen, when others break the rules, when the sociality of the group moves from

normal mobility to intimate formation and then back to fluidity, when they project

themselves into a future which will become memory. That is just to illustrate that such an

interesting word, waiting, a progressive verb, you’ll notice, rather than a noun, has become

productive of very fascinating work, and can keep ideas on the move.

Stephen Muecke

University of New South Wales

E-mail: [email protected]

q 2010, Stephen Muecke

Online a lot of the time: Ritual, fetish, sign, by Ken Hillis, Durham and London,

Duke University Press, 2009, 316 pp., US$23.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8223-4448-3

In Online a Lot of the Time Ken Hillis gives an expert account of online relations in

general and the relation of user (or participant, in Hillis’ terms) to avatar in particular.

The book is organized in two parts, the first addressing the subjects of the subtitle – ritual,

fetish, sign – and the second comprising two case studies. Hillis intends for the latter part

to stand alone, such that the reader is welcome to jump ahead and miss out what are rather

difficult theoretical discussions in the former part. This is indeed the case, and readers of a

more empirical bent will find that the two case studies (chapters 4 and 5) make perfect

sense in isolation. However, the preceding three chapters will reward those who can persist

through some rather dense sociological and philosophical exposition and argumentation.

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After a lengthy introductory chapter – one that perfectly sets the scene and, with a

little revision, would stand on its own as an excellent article of Hillis’ thought – the first

chapter addresses issues of ritual. Hillis surveys the work of Emile Durkheim and various

reactions to this influential work, before examining MUVE (Multi-user Virtual

Environment) interactions – such as wedding ceremonies in Second Life – as ritualized

storytelling. He offers an interesting insight on Web rituals, arguing that they are an

expression of the individual’s need for flexible tradition; that is, in an unstable, fluid world

people desire to be rooted in tradition but these very conditions – instability and flux –

necessitate flexibility. Hence rituals retain the hallmarks of tradition but become

‘placeless’, facilitating the tele-involvement of geographically distant individuals.

The second chapter gives a history of the fetish, taking in the key works of Karl Marx,

Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Hillis then gives an account of how the means of

communication have become fetishized, with ‘communicability becom[ing] an end goal, a

telos, a fetish in itself’ (92). Most interesting here is the discussion of how webcamming

homosexual men engage in telefetishism, fetishizing the image of the webcam user – a

subsection that also adds a political urgency to Hillis’ project by exploring these ‘sites’ of

visibility for such often unseen cultures and social groups (93–9).

The final chapter of the first section is perhaps the most intellectually stimulating –

and challenging. Hillis draws on Charles Sanders Peirce’s philosophy of the index to argue

that the avatar is ‘a networked signifier’ that would ‘point back to’ the user/participant,

‘extend[ing] them in virtual space’ (109). As such, and updating Peirce’s terminology to

that of Jacques Derrida, Hillis argues that the avatar bears a trace of the person that ‘stands

behind’ them (so to speak) whilst not bearing a strict relation of identity to that person.

Hillis concludes the book with two case studies in the two final chapters comprising the

second section. The first (chapter 4) examines MUVEs, offering a genealogy of graphical

chat – with Hillis observing that such a genealogy is often deliberately obscured by

developers to promote the newness of Web 2.0 and hence its separateness from Web 1.0

(143) – and an articulation of the avatar as a ‘middle ground’ (161) similar in kind to the

middle voice of literature. The second case study, returning to the focus of homosexual

men, examines personal webcam sites (chapter 5). These case studies give Hillis the

opportunity to test out the theoretical work in the three chapters of the previous section.

Throughout the book, but in particular in the long introductory chapter and again at the

end of the chapter on fetish (27–9 and 99–102), Hillis is at pains to point out that the

Internet is not a space (as in cyberspace). On this point he is certainly correct but I cannot

help but wonder if he is knocking on an open door. He emphasizes applications such as

Myspace that seem to perpetuate the Internet-as-cyberspace misconception – but then we

also have Facebook, which would seem not to. Is the average user – as opposed to the

minority user Hillis concerns himself with, who ‘immerses’ him/herself in online

‘environments’ (such as Second Life) – really guilty of this misconception? Assuming

I am an average user, then an average day involves reading journals online (you, the

reader, may well be reading this review online); checking emails; reading online

newspapers/comics; watching television programmes on demand; and engaging in IM

(Instant Messaging) chat: does any of this everyday use really suggest a conception of the

Internet beyond the surface level of the screen interface? Of course, many theorists did

understand the Internet in spatial terms, following science fictions such as William

Gibson’s excellent Neuromancer; but today this has largely given way to an understanding

of the Internet not as ‘other space’ but as a network that intersects with ‘real’ space – and

so ‘cyberspace’ gives way to terms such as ‘networked city’.

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Page 4: Online a lot of the time: Ritual, fetish, sign

Another concern is derived from Hillis’ account of the identity conditions between

user/participant and their avatar (11–18 and 103–32). Hillis explains well how the user

comes to identify with their avatar, seeing it as an extension of her/himself – a bodily

appendage and/or psychic extension – rather than as a representation. As such the avatar is

understood by the user as linked to but not identical to him/herself – bearing a trace of the

user, or pointing back to the user, but not itself the user. This undoubtedly provides a

useful account of the nature of the avatar but it seems to pose a problem for encounters

between users mediated by avatars. It is far from clear that this operation – seeing a trace

of oneself in one’s avatar – can work in reverse and so be extended to others, that is, it is

questionable whether it is possible to encounter the other through their trace (avatar).

Epistemologically, one would require something like a Turing Test or CAPTCHA

verification (a kind of challenge-response puzzle that computers cannot solve) to ever

know for sure that there is another person ‘behind’ or pointed to by the avatar. Perhaps this

is churlish. Phenomenologically, however, it is unclear whether this trace or pointing

backwards constitutes an encounter with the other – or just with their avatar. This is one of

the clearest accounts of the nature of the avatar I have read but more work needs to be done

on this. As it stands, the other appears to remain hidden and so all sorts of problems emerge

relating to the nature of the ethical encounter or the social bond online.

Such philosophical musing about new media is indicative of the lines of flight that this

rich text makes available. As a trans-disciplinary work it will be a valuable resource for

those working in a wide range of fields, such as media theory, cultural studies, sociology

and philosophy. At all times Hillis avoids the uncritical ‘global villagism’ of the virtual

life televangelists, adopting always a critical and scholarly approach. At times difficult, it

is nonetheless always an interesting, provocative and insightful read. This is a fascinating

account of life online.

A final reflection on what was my first impression: the cover art of the paperback

edition of this book is a series of webcam snapshots of a young woman, presumably at her

desk. I find them utterly bewitching, perhaps only because they are webcam images – a

series of standard photographs would not have the same contextual meaning. But whilst

distracted by the cover I almost lost sight of the fact that this book has as a main case study

and uniting reference point the experience of homosexual men online. The images

perfectly convey Hillis’ notion of the fetishization of the webcam user – but in this case it

seems to me to be the wrong user.

David W. Hill

University of York

E-mail: [email protected]

q 2010, David W. Hill

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