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Themesicon: navigation pathCyborg Bodiesicon: navigation pathPostsexual Bodies
 
 
 
 
 

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every biography false? False because the narrator does not even know that she/he is ‹inventing,› that she/he ‹invents› her/himself, paints a picture of her/himself in which she/he has found/occupied a wonderful place?

In the case of television or the Internet, this ‹being part of the image› can be understood literally: In the studio, in front of the studio audience, in the spotlight and in the lens of the camera the feeling can actually arise of being involved, of being the center of everyone's attention, of being admired and desired by a symbolic community. A similar experience can be made in the Net in the different chatgroups: an experience of belonging. The daily ritual of logging in, parting with reality in front of the computer, and submersing oneself in an image that does not contain less degrees of reality than ‹real› worlds of metaphors. It is not by chance that the vastness of cyberspace is charged with all of those metaphors that are associated with roaming about, surfing, lightness and carefreeness.

Two interpretations can be offered here: Firstly, ‹being in the picture› as a psychical modality of ‹being in the world› as defined by Jacques Lacan. And

 

secondly, several aspects of the Deleuzian philosophy that precede ‹the nomadic subject.›

Lacan defined ‹being part of the image› as a fundamental requisite for perceiving one's self. In doing so he fell back on the theory developed by Roger Callois after investigating the camouflage behavior of insects. These insects do not adapt their color to their surroundings in order to protect themselves from the enemy, but rather in order to be a patch in their surroundings. [16] Lacan transfers this to the child who mimics her/his surroundings, rehearses being in a picture in order to preserve ‹her/his› image. The boundaries of this (self-)image though are always fragile, emotionally vulnerable, because the subject loves, seeks and desires an other self in the picture—an image behind the image. Transferred to media images this means that the images provide the viewers with the framework for becoming part of an image and thus for vanishing into the image.

In contrast, Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy provides another perspective. Whereas with Lacan the possibility of ‹toppling out› of the picture is filled with fears, with Deleuze and Guattari the crossing over of

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