Rethinking relationships in cyberspace

ABSTRACT

The ubiquity of the internet, which has been extensively theorised in the social sciences, provides, for some, a radically new context in which we must rethink both the significance and the performance of being human. For others, the internet is an extension rather than revision of our pre-existing practices, meaning that what it is to be human remains largely unchanged. This is a stimulating and pressing context for theological anthropological reflection: theological doctrines do not specifically address cyberspace, but they suggest idea(l)s of being human that are, on the one hand, enduring and yet can also be read as flexible for different contexts. What, then, are the challenges and promises that digital contexts pose for models of theological anthropology, specifically ones that highlight the significance of human relationships? Do digital contexts overstretch idea(l)s of human nature? On what grounds can we assess and reflect on our conduct in cyberspace?

KEYWORDS:

• Theological anthropology
• digital culture
• posthumanism
• relational theory
• internet studies
• online community

Notes on contributors

Scott Midson is Lecturer in Liberal Arts at The University of Manchester, and prior to this, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate based at the Lincoln Theological Institute, where he began researching machines and theological reflection on love as part of a three year project, “Living with and Loving Machines”. The outcomes of this research to date have been published by journals including the Journal for Posthuman Studies and Sophia; as an edited collection (Love, Technology and Theology, published by T&T Clark); and in various other volumes. Scott’s work in the field of theology and posthumanism has also been published by I.B.Tauris (Cyborg Theology: Humans, Technology and God).

Karen O'Donnell is the Director of the Centre for Contemporary Spirituality at Sarum College, Salisbury. She has published research on spiritual formation in digital spaces as well as research into digital pedagogy for theological education. She has also published various articles on theological anthropology and digital technologies. Karen’s work on trauma and theology has been published by SCM Press (Broken Bodies: The Eucharist, Mary and the Body in Trauma Theology and Feminist Trauma Theologies).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. P. A. Media, “Broadband Providers to Lift Data Caps during Covid-19 Lockdown”.

2. Cortez, Theological Anthropology.

3. Gibson, Neuromancer, 59.

4. Heim, The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, 88.

5. Ibid., 88.

6. Davis, TechGnosis.

7. Wertheim, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, 249.

8. Radde-Antweiler, “Authenticity,” 88.

9. Campbell and MacKay, “The Internet as Social-Spiritual Space,” 217.

10. To be sure, it is also possible to critique the eros-based aims of cyberspace that are identified by Heim and others, on the grounds of their claims to transcendence as well as their denigration of the material. This is the approach taken by theologians such as Jay Y. Kim, who argues for the church’s need to enable genuine transcendence in human communities (Analog Church, 12), and Graham Ward, who challenges the inauthentic forms of transcendence that we find in digital culture (Cities of God, 118). Although we do not discuss transcendence explicitly or in detail here, we acknowledge the importance of these discussions for rethinking relationships in cyberspace through a discussion of approaches to relations and communities.

11. Groothuis, “Losing Our Souls in Cyberspace,” 54.

12. Kelsey, “Spiritual Machines, Personal Bodies, and God,” 9.

13. Dupont, “Food, Gender, and Sexuality,” 83. See also Rom 8.13 and Col 3.5.

14. Meconi, “The Dual Functionality of the Imago Dei,” 205.

15. Gandolfo, The Power and Vulnerability of Love, 228.

16. Peter Scott identifies an analogy of the incarnation in how “the human is disclosed in and through its attachments, and human emancipations require specific entanglements with objects rather than freedom from them” (Anti-Human Theology, 88). Scott’s position suggests and pre-empts a relational perspective that we explore further in a later section of this article. In short, cyberspace can never fulfil the eros-based and logocentric dreams that underwrite its roots in sci-fi and popular culture, because any such escapism and denial of ‘fleshly’ entanglements necessitate technological entanglements that are otherwise rendered invisible. We touch on this in relation to the cyborg figure here; for more on this figure, see Midson, Cyborg Theology, 93–106.

17. Wellman, “Studying the Internet Through the Ages,” 17.

18. Ibid.

19. Beer and Burrows, “Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0,” 67.

20. Lyon, Jesus in Disneyland, 13.

21. Ibid., 14.

22. Savage et al., Making Sense of Generation Y, 147.

23. Smart Insights, “Global Social Media Research Summary 2020”.

24. Raubach, “Politics in the Cyber-City,” 83.

25. François Dépelteau, “Relational Thinking in Sociology”, 4.

26. Prandini, “Relational Sociology”, 3.

27. Emirbayer, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology”, 281. Emirbayer was among the first to crystallise and formalise proposals for a sociological relational turn in this well-cited manifesto.

28. Dewey and Bentley, cited in ibid. [Emirbayer, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology”], 287.

29. Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom of God.

30. Shults, Reforming Theological Anthropology, 240.

31. Farris, “A Substantive (Soul) Model of the Imago Dei,” 177.

32. Moritz, “Evolutionary Biology and Theological Anthropology,”45. See also Midson, Cyborg Theology, 27–32, 65–70; Cortez, Theological Anthropology, 14–40.

33. Kirchhoffer, “Turtles All the Way Down?”, 185.

34. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, ix.

35. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 131–41.

36. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, 2.

37. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” 177.

38. Teusner, “New Thoughts on the Status of the Religious Cyborg,” 3.

39. OED Online, “relationship, n.”

40. McLuhan, Understanding Media.

41. Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto,” 154.

42. Ibid., 173. It is also significant to note here the challenges that Haraway’s cyborg poses for some, particularly logocentric, understandings of theological anthropology, which we touch on in this introduction (for more detailed exploration of this, see Midson, Cyborg Theology).

43. Turkle, The Second Self; Turkle, Life on the Screen.

44. Cundy, “Introduction,” xiv.

45. Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto,” 150–51.

46. Cf. Ferrando, Philosophical Posthumanism; Braidotti, The Posthuman.

47. Rawlinson, “Digital Assistants like Siri”.

48. Cooper, “Hear Me Out,”, 469–71.

49. Huq, “Racial Equity in Algorithmic Criminal Justice,” 92; Shane, You Look Like a Thing and I Love You.

50. Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto,” 151.

51. Waters, Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture; Shatzer, Transhumanism and the Image of God.

52. Ofcom, “A Decade of Digital Dependency.”

53. Turkle, Alone Together.

54. Midson, “Introduction: Techne, Agape, and Eros”, pp. 13–14.

55. Bennett, Aquinas on the Web?.

56. Garner, “The Hopeful Cyborg,” 87–100.