C me Sk8: Discourse, Technology, and "Bodies without Organs"

This chapter explores the relationship between digital technologies and the physical body though the study amateur videos made by urban skateboarders and posted on the Internet. Combining analytical tools from mediated discourse analysis and theoretical insights from Deleuze and Guattari, it examines how skateboarders use digital technologies to enhance their physical experiences, construct personal and collective narratives of identity, and define their relationships with the material spaces and geographies they inhabit. While film and video have always played an important role in skateboarding culture, digital technologies provide radically new opportunities for skaters to represent and "reassemble" their experiences. The example of skateboarding videos leads into a more general discussion of how digital technologies affect the way we engage with our bodies in the physical world, and the implications this has for learning, human potential, and the formation of communities.