가상현실과 여성의 몸 = The Virtual Reality and Women's Body

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Virtual Reality is not a newly developed reality, but an advanced computer simulation technology. We need to correctly understand this point, and to examine this technology in relation to reality we live in and its impact on the transformation of the reality.
In this paper, I examine the impact of virtual reality on man-governed reality through 'the myth of disembodiment' and 'the sexual politics of representation'. The conclusion is summarized that technology itself cannot guarantee freedom and liberation of wo/man. In this point, what we really pay atention to is arguments of careless technological freedom and liberation. For us who live in 'the age of science and thechnology', it is very important not to fall in a pitfall of technological determinism. We have to very carefully handle it in respect that today it replaces the problem of wo/man and wo/man by the problem of wo/man and the machine.
Donna Haraway's cyborg theory is one of the most famous feminist argument in respect of virtual reality. She seems to negate a mystification of woman as a natural being, and to emphasize that we have to reshape and reappropriate science and technology from the viewpoint of woman. She has turned over a traditional image of cyborg which was identical with 'superman'. But, though we rid it of the image, can it be a new model to go over the gender? At the point where cyborg go over the gender, don't we confront a vicious opposition of wo/man and machine again? And don't the opposition reshape the gender?
In respect that it pursues reshaping of the body, virtual reality project can be identical with cyborg project. And at this point, the former has the very similar problem the latter has. When we just see a cyborg as a machine, it can be seen as a being which go over the gender. But it is not just a machine, but a social construction. So it is more important strategic task not to reshape the body but to change the society.
Today's science and technology is grand social arena. In all directions of it, we can find out very diverse traces of social difference and discrimination. The impact of virtual reality to women's body have to be estimated from this viewpoint. Here we have not to underestimate the significance of reappropriating the possibility of virtual reality as a new medium from women's viewpoint. But we have not to forget either that this reappropriation in itself does not mean the change of the reality. As all the theoretical practices do, this reappropriation is just the starting point to change the reality we live in.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1.가사현실?
• 2.탈육화의 신화
• 3.재현의 성정치
• 4.문제는 현실이다
• 참고문헌
• Abstract