Hyperreality: the imagined and virtual Basque diaspora online
“What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you're talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” (Morpheus)
Now, what is “real”? And what is “imagined”? Imagination tends to be equated with “fantasy” and unreality (intangible, artificial nature as it only exits in our minds) while reality is equated with “truth” (tangible nature as it exists exterior to our minds). The debate created around the concepts of objectivity (the nature of things), subjectivity (my understanding), and intersubjectivity (our understanding) becomes a central issue within post-modernists and modernists discourses. For example, Jean Baudrillard proposes the concept of “hyperreality.” That is,the boundary between the image (simulation) and reality (signs or simulacra) “implodes,” creating a world of hyperreality, where the distinction between the real and unreal are blurred. Baudrillard (1983: 148) writes “the unreal is no longer that of a dream or of fantasy, of a beyond or a within, it is that of a hallucinatory resemblance of the real with itself.” However, others stress that reality is more than anything a social construction, while emphasizing the subjective interpretations of the subjects involved with such a reality. Consequently and in relation to the arguments of real and virtual communities defined as imagined, clearly it does not matter if cultures (as social constructions) such as Basque are defined as real, imagined or perceived as such, what matters is that the consequences are real, and should be treated as such. Then, what do happen to all of those concepts and others such as community, identity, diaspora, space etc., when they go online? What about the hyperreality of virtual communities?
An emerging literature on the Internet and online communities has recently began to address the interconnection between the concepts of “imagination” and “virtual reality” (Howard Rheingold) in relation to diasporas and their virtual presence in the Internet. This body of literature focuses on the role that communication media (as one of the basis for social actions and relations) have played in imaging communities throughout modernity, and also through post-modernity: from the “nation-state” and novels and newspapers as a geographically-bounded communication, to virtual communities and the Internet as post-geographically-bounded communication. It shows the relation between “print capitalism” and the creation of the modern “nation-state”, theorized by Benedict Anderson as an “imagined community”, i.e., the role of imagination in the construction of a community; and the impact, since the end of the 1960s, of the so-called “digital capitalism,” “microelectronic transnationalism” or “electronic capitalism” on the production and reproduction of other type of “imagined communities” such as the “virtual or online communities” (social constructions dependent on the imagination). Diasporas have become the paradigmatic community of virtuality and imagination within the technological era of today’s globalization processes (the so-called “Information Age”). The inquiry into on-going imagined notions of community and identity by diaspora Basques, throughout twenty-three countries, is related to the understanding that those imagined notions are not fixed but reconfigured and constructed in a diverse way accordingly to different historical, geographical, generational, cultural, and social contexts.
Do concepts such as “imagined community” or “virtual community” apply to ethno-diasporas such as the Basque within the technological framework of computer-mediated networks of the Internet?Rethinking the Basque diaspora online as:
- Interstitial cyberzone
- Cybernation
- Ethnic folkloric corner
- Hyperreality of an imagined nation
- Hyperpolitics of a psychological/emotional community
Work cited:
Baudrillard, Jean. (1983). Simulation. NY: Semiotext(e).
Oiarzabal, Agustín M. & Oiarzabal, Pedro J. (2005). La Identidad Vasca en el Mundo: Narrativas sobre Identidad más allá de las Fronteras. Bilbao: Erroteta.
Pedro J. Oiarzabal
Center for Basque Studies,
University of Nevada, Reno
January 31, 2006
http://euskalidentity.com
http://euskaldiaspora.com
The script for the movie “The Matrix” (1999) was written by Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1996. Laurence Fishburne plays the character of Morpheus. For a philosophical revision of The Matrix see: Lawrence, Matt. (2004). Like a splinter in your mind: the philosophy behind the Matrix trilogy. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers; and <http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/new_phil_fr_hanley2.html> as of October 30, 2004.