Textuality, Performativity and Archive: Examining the Virtual Body in Socially Networked Space

This thesis argues that contemporary theorizations of online identities on social-networking sites (SNS) require more robust accounts of the relationship between \nlanguage, perfomativity, and the tensions of the material/virtual binary. In her analysis of subject formation on multi-user domains, Internet sociologist Jenny Sundén uses \npoststructuralist philosophy to theorize identity as a process of “textual performativity”. Citing Sundén, many contemporary sociologists theorizing subjectivity on SNS use the terms “writing the self” and “performing the self” and overlook the poststructuralist \nphilosophy that informs them. To explore the lack of philosophical analyses within \nsociological accounts of subject formation on SNS, and to rethink “writing” and \n“performing” the self, I draw on the work of J.L. Austin, Judith Butler and Jacques \nDerrida. I argue that creating a self on SNS is a ”sedimentation” process whereby \ndifferent discursive identity performances are reiterated over time, and I investigate the implications of archiving and externalizing the self.