Interpellation Gone wilde

How are the bodies of the members of wilde in Au’s “The Nine Souls of wilde Cunningham” interpellated by the virtual affordances  of the Second Life interface?

At first glance, this question drew my attention to the fact that in the article, the bodies of the members of wilde Cunningham occasionally seem to be defined in opposition to the “freedoms” provided by the Second Life interface. While they highlight the “level playing field” created by the virtual world, this seems to throw the expectations of an ableist society into sharper relief.

However, to take into account only those expectations ignores the aspect of recognition, which plays an important part of the process of interpellation. Indeed, the members of the wilde group appear to recognize themselves in their avatar, wilde, as well as in the world of the game. This is, perhaps, most apparent in the way that their experience seems to push against Horkeimer and Adorno’s argument that people “submit to ideologies that interpellate them as passive, and thus comply with their own domination.” Indeed, Second Life seems to be an opportunity for the members of Wilde and opportunity to subvert ableist society’s attempts to interpellate them. John’s notecard, for example, alludes to this by identifying society’s “misconceptions” about people with cerebral palsey, which we can read as an attempt to hail, and then arguing that those misconceptions are wrong:

that they are not intelligent
that they are happy to be ignored
that they lack humor
that they don’t mind the total dependency
that their common sense, humor, insights don’t surpass yours at times

In very direct terms, John tells his reader that attempts to interpellate his body (and those of others with cerebral palsy) in a specific way are incorrect: this seems to be an instance in which hailing has failed. While Lilone explains to Hamlet that John “can’t speak as such,” Second Life allows him a voice to define (self-interpellate?) himself. In re-framing the terms in which he can be addressed, John nevertheless participates in a form of ideology; I’m not arguing that there is a way to step outside of our nature as “always-already subjects.” Like all instances of interpellation, this example is historically conditioned and, in this case, defined, subtended by the medium, the very virtual affordances that enable it. John’s note card, however, is an example of the ways that ideology is historically contingent and can shift.

The article also highlights how the active nature of the virtual world challenges the notion that media position subjects as passive viewers of entertainment. Indeed, the members of the wilde collective must actively make decisions about their role in the world, not simply consume a predictable and gratifying narrative. Moreover, participation in-world requires the members of wilde to be in constant negotiation with one another and also takes a degree of physical effort:

It takes 15 minutes to set up to play, with all the chairs and such [around the computer]…And then the group play is a more times taking endeavor than playing alone. So we get about 45 minutes of playing time per session. We are full of desires of things to do, but all in good time.

The management of time, space, expectations and desires all indicate that this type of play is anything but passive. Similarly, the subject whom David Gauntlett posits, one who experiences media through “uncritical consumption,” does not appear to apply here, since the Wilde group seems rarely to forget about their own bodies. While, for example, most in the group agree that walking around is nice because “it’s nice to be able to do what others can do,” they also point out the distance that they experience from it, saying “it’s still a little removed from us, as we watch it instead of do it.” While the goal of virtual reality simulations might be to make viewers/players feel a degree of immersion, Second Life is still unable to provide that for the players of wilde Cunningham. This raises a question that I’ve not been able to answer and wish that the writer could have revisited later: if hardware becomes capable of providing more immediacy (bigger screens, better controls, faster internet access), how would the group’s experience change? Would it shift the way they thought about their own bodies? Would it impact the extent to which they felt able to embody certain elements of the game?

2 Thoughts.

  1. First–I love the title of this post!
    You make some really insightful observations about this compelling “story.” I don’t know if you’ve done, or plan to do, module 5 but some of the readings in that module address, though without the specific subject (Wilde, in this case), the concepts present in Wilde’s experience–from interactivity to the T.I.N.A.G of alternate reality games.

    There was something particularly compelling about the limits to Wilde’s ability to truly “believe” their experience caused (right word?) by their constant awareness of the differences in their actual vs. virtual physical abilities.

    Even more compelling, and so effectively conveyed in your post, was Wilde’s refusal to be interpellated by an ableist mindset.

  2. I love everything about this post. Your last paragraph raises some especially interesting ideas about immediacy and hypermediacy and how they affect the process of interpellation for wilde. It’s almost as if there is some “magical” sweet spot in which wilde can emerge. The physical community of their gathering around a single screen, operated by a trusted “hub” personality, where they are all sharing awareness of one another’s disabled bodies as they collaborate on a new self, which is distinct enough from each of them to serve as a form of writing, ie self-expression–this seems more likely back when it was written than today, when I suspect they’ve all had a major upgrade in technology and, given the cheaper cost of good tech, it’s likely they all have their own accounts. I’m just guessing about that, and I’d think that the original wilde is a legacy avatar and a legend still. But what wilde was doing in 2004 was not complete immersion and not really escapism. It seems almost more like a form of textual analysis, where a reader projects themselves into a text to make meaning and the meaning reorganizes the reader’s self in a way (think of Hayles’ autopoesis theories here about how information that blurs the boundaries of a subject and its environment can offer a greater organization within the chaos that this causes–think of the bodies of the wilde members as chaotic in a sense or disordered by ableist standards, and the information that they glean from this outside environment of Second Life allowing them to reorganize themselves as new. This new self is not able in the societal sense, but it is introspective and able to communicate more powerfully.

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