The virtual politics of gender rethinking female identity in select cyberculture discourses

Abstract

The thesis, The Virtual Politics of Gender: Rethinking Female Identity in Select newlineCyberculture Discourses, emerges from an increasing awareness that the hegemony, newlineoppression and exploitation which women experience in everyday life are reproduced, newlinereinforced, communicated and legitimised in the practices of the discursive world. The newlinethesis explores the operation of gender politics in the cyberspace, how the female newlineidentity is negotiated in cyberculture discourses. The thesis examines how far the newlinecyberspace enables women to redefine the female identity. The cyberspace has newlinebecome a site of new dreams, ideologies and aspirations for women. By the first half newlineof 1990s, a group of feminists, called cyberfeminists, came out with the proposition newlinethat women s liberation can be sustained and vitalised by proliferating software newlinetechnologies. Cyberfeminisms consider the Internet an idealised public sphere, a space newlinethat can challenge the existing notions of subjectivity. The thesis examines the newlinepolitical correctness of the cyberfeminist arguments. newlineKeywords :- Cyberspace, Cyberfeminisms, patriarchy, capitalism, heterotopia. newline