Dorte Marie Søndergaard  

Paper at Discourse, Power, Resistance Conference 7: Cultures in Resistance. Manchester Metropolitan University, 18.-20. March 2008.

How are we to make sense of the kinds of forces and processes which produce the more destructive parts of children's social life – as in bullying practices? Since computer mediated communication, pc-gaming, movies and reality shows make up a crucial part of child living – how does the character of virtual life practices and meaning-making intra-act in children's subjectification processes and social lives?

With inspiration from Karen Barad and agential realisme the paper discusses the intra-action between real and virtual discourse-materiality. Observations from pc-gaming children aged 10-12 form the empirical basis for the papers investigation of movements between 1: real life materiality (real life bodies), subjectivity and discourse, 2: virtual materiality (body, weapon, landscape) and cyborg positioning, and 3: real life bodies and subjectivities connected through the computer – potentially placed in the same room, but occasionally in different parts of the country – while nevertheless interacting in the same landscape in the computer game. The paper challenges the absolute opposition between real and virtual in these processes and argues effects and sedimentations to be circulated in open ended processes and movements across.