Avatar, Identification, Pornography [by John Frow, with responses from Tony Bennett and Stephen Muecke]

Abstract

Fictional character is textually constructed in the play between positions of enunciation and figural constructs in the storyworld, and these positions are cumulatively and complexly filled during the course of a prose narrative or a lyric or a film or gameplay. This article explores that work through a discussion of the role of avatars in digital gaming and of the inscription of the reader or viewer into pornography.