Page 213 - Cyberculture and New Media

204 The Différance Engine
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How to square this rather contradictory argument? Here, as
somewhat obliquely alluded to above, we find a common ground between 1.0
constative subjection theory and 2.0 reflexive performative theory. Both are
equally symptomatic of an ideology of ‘the arrival’. In both wrapping up a
constative completion of a subjection to the apparatus (1.0) or conversely a
completion of reflexive-performative absolute self-presence (2.0) both
positions end up equally saying the same thing: “the space and the user are
indivisible”. For as a program-space we cannot be divided apart from it and
as a me-space we equally cannot be divided apart from it (for it gives me
everything I would want whatever this I turns out to be when floating around
itself). To begin to close-up the 2.0 performative stage of our argument: by
being able to choose our avatar and then change their position we would
seem to float-free upon cyberspatial air, destabilising any previously
dominant Cartesian or Euclidean coordination.
So here on the internet and within cyberspace we are within the
presence of very concrete and open wormholes and thus the true death of the
boundary would seem to be imminently or immanently upon us. The private,
carved-off space of the previously dominant ‘cogito-text’ now gives way to a
sort of infinite bleeding-out, as all the connections which previously were
furtively sought out (by merely reading) become open and available as
destinations (of reflexive self-becoming). Within six hyperlinks then we
experience a giddy separation from our original “location”. The olde texts of
1.0 then give-way to a mere resource and thus throw us back upon our own
giddy and now free-roaming self-present identities. This self-present first-
person performative self-movement will need much deconstructive
unpacking.

4. First-Person Multiple: Iterable Performatives

Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation
did not repeat a “coded” or iterable utterance, or in other
words, if the formula I pronounce in order to open a
meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable
as conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then
identifiable in some way as a “citation”?...In such a
typology, the character of intention will not disappear; it
will have its place, but from that place it will no longer be
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able to govern the entire scene or system of the utterance.

The Performative, here reinterpreted by Derrida (and also quoted by
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Butler to underline her own Derridean use of the performative) as quasi-
citation, always-already penetrates into the Constative (which we, and by
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extension 2.0 labelled as 1.0). Austin’s performative would be the self-