af Jette Kofoed

At 7th DPR Conference: Power, Discourse and Resistance,  Manchester Metropolitan University, March 16-18, 2008.

Abstract

This paper explores subjectpositioning in virtual and non-virtual contexts of bullying. The aim is on the one hand to overcome the dichotomy of virtual – non virtual, and on the other hand to acknowledge the difference between the two.

The paper sets out from an understanding of bullying as extreme policing practices related to maintenance of existing social hierarchies. Bullying is perceived as forms of sociality-destructions aimed at specific subjects.

In particular this paper explores how bullying is experienced and performed in the transportation and transformation between virtual and non-virtual contexts. Informed by Gilles Deleuze's vitalistic approach and particularly the concept of rhizome and by concepts of minoritizing and majoritizing processes from race and ethnicity studies, the paper attempts at discussing the following questions: 

• In what ways do the use of cell phones and the participation in chatrooms pass in bullying practicies?
• Is the bullier thus enlarged by technologies of media?
• Is the victim minoritized differently when bullying is circulated between physical bodies in the schoolyard and non-physically visible bodies in cyberspace?
• And do the pain and the fear circulate through the passive bystander differently in the transportation between virtuality and non-virtuality?