Glitching the (Post-)Human: Virtual YouTubers’ Self-Representation Between Extended and Divided Self

Abstract

Virtual and Artificial YouTubers (VTubers) show us how the body becomes technologically embedded. They reveal arising complexities within the interface of digital and analog assemblies, bodies, and virtual environments. Thus, VTubers raise questions that are crucial to the core debate about personhood and the human subject in anthropology as well as critical posthumanism. By reading Feminist Anthropology and Critical Posthumanism dos-à-dos, the thesis engages with the three VTubers AI Angelica, CodeMiko, and Miquela Sousa. To answer the questions (1) how personhood unfolds in the VTubers’ self-representation(s), (2) how personhood is negotiated with the recipients, and (3) which aspects of the human subject (e.g., gender, race) are reproduced a methodological framework of Netnography and Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis is applied. The thesis reveals that VTubers’ show a form of personhood in which the reflective self appears and speaks apart from the ‘I.’ This division reflects practices of self-designation in order to navigate between the extended self and the divided self; the content creator and the avatar; between the platform and the VTuber. This way, the self manifests itself simultaneously in the form of overlaps and displacements. Within this form of relationality, the notion of the glitch is reviewed to consider the VTuber’s personhood in respect of the discussion between critical posthumanist and humanist perspectives.