Live (life) streaming: Virtual Interaction, virtual proximity, and streaming everyday life during the COVID- 19 pandemic
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
; 12(5), 2021.
Article
in English
| Scopus | ID: covidwho-1022310
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes to examine the digital event of live streaming as an entanglement of digital engagement, virtual proximity, and virtual embodiment as a possible posthuman concern, foregrounded by the ongoing COVID- 19 pandemic. The transition witnessed in the medium of communication between humans has significantly deconstructed our understanding of the ‘normal’, consequently introducing a new phase of lost corporeality, digitally. Unforeseen excessive employment of the virtual engagement system of live (life) streaming is a testament to the current human extremity. In the light of this transition, the paper attempts to explore the possibility of witnessing some semblance of reality by altering the praxis of normalcy in the practice of the COVID appropriate ‘new normal’ through the virtual medium of a live stream. Since the ontology of human exceptionalism has come under direct attack due to the current pandemic, a reassessment of the human/ technology interphase and its consequent posthuman predicament is urgent. Drawing on Rosi Braidotti’s concept of life beyond the self and N. Katherine Hayles’s concept of embodied virtuality, this paper analyses the technical feature of live streaming as the ‘digital’ becoming of human beings in the contemporary COVID- 19 world, further complicating the modes of construction of embodiment through live (life) streaming. © AesthetixMS 2020. This Open Access article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (http//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For citation use the DOI. For commercial re-use, please contact editor@rupkatha.com.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
Databases of international organizations
Database:
Scopus
Language:
English
Journal:
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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