Digital flesh: a feminist approach to the body in cyberspace

ABSTRACT

Despite the rapid growth of digital learning, the relationship between the body and new information technologies has been underexamined in education research literature. This study presents a feminist conceptual framework in order to situate the body as an issue central to the academic discussion of online education. This paper extends feminist technoscience scholars’ notion of co-constructing gender-technology by critiquing the disembodied approach to emerging education technologies. By integrating the philosophical approaches to the body of Butler and several phenomenologists, the author suggests alternative ways of understanding online learning environments based on a literature review. This new feminist phenomenological concept, digital flesh, prompts a greater awareness of the gendered materiality of cyberspace that challenges the dominant discourse of learning technology, as evidenced by recent artificial intelligence experiments.

KEYWORDS:

• Phenomenology
• gender
• artificial intelligence
• online education
• feminist technoscience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hyungjoo Yoon

Hyungjoo Yoon is a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia. His research interests include online education, feminist and critical theories, and social network analysis. He is currently pursuing two graduate certificates in Women's Studies and in Interdisciplinary Qualitative Studies at UGA.