• DOI:10.1632/003081202X63492
• Corpus ID: 143873460

Transporting the Subject: Technologies of Mobility and Location in an Era of Globalization

@article{Kaplan2002TransportingTS,
  title={Transporting the Subject: Technologies of Mobility and Location in an Era of Globalization},
  author={Caren Kaplan},
  journal={PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America},
  year={2002},
  volume={117},
  pages={32 - 42}
}

• Caren Kaplan
• Published 1 January 2002
• Art
• PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the rhetoric of cyberspace and information technologies relies heavily on a hyperbole of unlimited power through disembodied mobility. References to boundless space, unfettered mobility, and speedy transfers abound. In this heady environment, new technologies promise ever-increasing powers of transformation and transport—applied to information, business, and self—and the benefits of surveillance and tracking. More and more in this context, the concept of a person or of human beings appears to depend on the attenuated possibilities of cyberspace. If the heavy, even immovable, facts of embodied existence can be ameliorated or discharged through the creation of new identities on the Internet, for example, or through new collective personas or communities, then what or who counts as a person becomes transformed.