Towards an Ethics of Distance: Representation, Free Production and Virtuality

This article takes it inspiration from a crisis between Deleuzian free production and representation in contemporary virtual and digital culture. The aim is to sketch a different ethics to the ethics of difference between free production and representation as described by Deleuze and Guattari and invoked by Michel Foucault in his preface to Anti-Oedipe. This article outlines the case for an ethical relationality between these two structures which reflects the socio-political and ethical exigencies of our virtual and digital cultures: specifically, an ethics of relationality derived paradoxically from the distance inscribed in ethical philosophy. Drawing on an amalgamation of Ricoeurean ethics and social constructionism in a definition of selfhood, I argue for the need to stand back from the distanciating effects of the virtual revolution – not with a view to approximating the cultural politics of specificity in the logic of representation – but to see in the gap in "distance from" specificity, a space of ethical and philosophical agency wherein lies the value-added of otherness

Violent video games and morality: a meta-ethical approach

This paper considers what it is about violent video games that leads one reasonably minded person to declare "That is immoral" while another denies it. Three interpretations of video game content a re discussed: reductionist, narrow, and broad. It is argued that a broad interpretation is required for a moral objection to be justified. It is further argued that understanding the meaning of moral utterances – like "x is immoral" – is important to an understanding of why there is a lack of moral consensus when it comes to the content of violent video games. Constructive ecumenical expressivism is presented as a means of explaining what it is that we are doing when we make moral pronouncements and why, when it comes to video game content, differing moral attitudes abound. Constructive ecumenical expressivism is also presented as a means of illuminating what would be required for moral consensus to be achieved

A meta-ethical approach to single-player gamespace: introducing constructive ecumenical expressivism as a means of explaining why moral consensus is not forthcoming

The morality of virtual representations and the enactment of prohibited activities within single - player gamespace (e.g., murder, rape, paedophilia) continues to be debated and, to date, a consensus is not forthcoming. Various moral arguments have been presented (e.g., virtue theory and utilitarianism) to support the moral prohibition of virtual enactments, but their applicability to gamespace is questioned. In this paper, I adopt a meta-ethical approach to moral utterances about virtual representations, and ask what it means when one declares that a virtual interaction ‘ is morally wrong ’. In response, I present constructive ecumenical expressivism to (i) explain what moral utterances should be taken to mean , (ii) argue that they mean the same when referring to virtual and non-virtual interactions and ( iii) , given (ii), explain why consensus with regard to virtual murder, rape and paedophilia is not forthcoming even though such consensus is readily found with regard to their non-virtual equivalents

Ethnography, education and on-line research

This paper is an attempt to establish the methodological basis for carrying out ethnographies of online education communities, in particular in the Continuing Professional Development VITAL project co-ordinated by the Faculty of Education and Language Studies at The Open University www.vital.ac.uk/ A much shorter earlier draft version of this paper was given at the Qualitative Research For Web 2.0/3.0: The Next Leap! 25 & 26 March 2010 in Berlin. Organised by Merlien. The arguments and references in this paper are almost all to be found in two books 'one authored and one edited – by Professor Christine Hine of Surrey University, UK (Hine 2000; Hine 2005)

Imagined Hierarchies as Conditionals of Gender in Aesthetics

The attributes of gender in the media are disputable. This can be explained by a conflict generated by culturally acquired alternative imagined hierarchies which are not compatible or may be even contradictory. This article is a philosophical enquiry that examines the representation of gender and the environment in which it is conditioned

The Glass Man Identity Created by Normative Virtuality

Криволап Алексей Дмитриевич – кандидат культурологии, доцентThis paper examines the communication problem with creating online identity and saving private space in the era of data turn when every step and click is recorded and stored in databases. This article aims to present a new concept of human identification – the Glass man identity. The problem arises in the field of virtual communication when users have to be visible for the Other, i.e. a machine, and when everybody can be described in terms of database content and algorithms. The Glass man identity highlights the impact of social norms on the transformation from the cultural vision of self-representation in virtual space to surveillance culture. This concept is presented in the historical perspective on the Russian case of the normative use of language and phenomena of power as abilities to re-establish norms including moral ones. This study attempts to reveal the current trend of the ongoing changes both in human identity and ethics in the era of data turn. Glass man identity means a new type of human, a new type of balance between control and power. Glass man means a person who does not need to hide anything. Nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of – this is a new mode of communication and power. When Big Brother isn’t just a metaphor anymore

Art and Fear : an introduction.

Following the controversial reception of ‘La Procedure Silence’ (2000) Virilio felt the English translation of ‘Art and Fear’ needed an introduction to clarify his views on contemporary art, technology and the body. For Continuum, the success of output 1 made Armitage the obvious choice. Output 2 links CARcentre activities to Holocaust research at Northumbria. In 2007, the School of Arts and Social Sciences appointed Konopka-Klus (curator of the Auschwitz Museum) as Visiting Fellow, following a series of highly successful lectures on the role of art at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was organised as part of an interdisciplinary project that makes Northumbria the only UK University with formal links to Auschwitz, and with a Holocaust Studies module that offers field trips to Auschwitz as part of the syllabus. Whilst working on this output (and an associated study: ‘The Aesthetics of Auschwitz’, HTV 50, Amsterdam [2003]) Armitage helped Rowe develop a theoretical understanding of the politics of suffering, for an AHRC funded practice-led doctorate entitled: Communicating Pain: Can physical pain, especially gynaecological pain and its associated psychological effects, be communicated and understood through art? Armitage’s introduction complements studies such as Nicholas Zurbrugg’s ‘Hyperviolence and Hypersexuality: Paul Virilio’ (Eyeline, 45, autumn/winter 2001). The output led to Armitage being asked to be keynote speaker at ‘Paul Virilio und die Künste’, an international conference at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany, 2006. Armitage presented a paper entitled ‘Virilio Over Hypermodern America: On the Recent Art of Jordan Crandall, Joy Garnett, and Elin O’Hara Slavick’. The paper will shortly be published in an edited book by Peter Weibel, the Director of ZKM. It will also be entitled ‘Paul Virilio und die Künste’, and will be published in German, by ZKM, in collaboration with publishers Merve Verlag, in Berlin, December 2007