Imagined Communities and Identities
Identity is not only ascribed to the body, but also the space in which that body occupies. The victim of certain oppressions can easily go from the oppressed to the aggressor or oppressor. In each space any identity that is not the norm can be oppressed and treated with disrespect (sometimes this happens within their own country as well). Can someone exist in two identifying categories? Sengupta it would seem says no, your identity falls on one side of the dichotomy – I don’t know how I feel about this. Although I would agree that identities can be weapons to be used against other identities. I also liked the idea of reversing some dichotomies of oppression so for women to oppress men and Sengupta’s response of “Men do not oppress women because they are men; they do so because one of the forms in which oppression gets articulated happens to be patriarchy, which in turn has relationships with the ways in which forms of control over sexual or reproductive agency are tied to patterns of control over scarce resources (635).”
boyd is suggesting here that digital spaces parallel or reflect physical spaces more so than originally thought. I’m not entirely surprised about the migration from MySpace to Facebook because of underlying ideas of race – albeit some may not know that these migrations are fueled by race. If in physical space we separate ourselves by race, education, and class, why would these not translate into our digital spaces or digital personas? I find it also somewhat unsurprising that Facebook is used (or was used) by a majority of white affluent and well-educated persons. The lack of segregation by race in this article is also interesting – in physical space people will say that they are not segregated however, they will utilize language that suggests otherwise.
The idea of the imagined community can be extended to the realm of digital space just as easily as digital spaces can reflect physical spaces. The imagined community is something that bonds people or a group of people together, even though they may never technically meet. Digital communities are imagined communities in that they share common characteristics and ideas – which is why they belong to the community – but given the mass number of people that belong to the community itself not every body would be able to meet (whatever that body may be e.g., avatar, Facebook persona.).