Alice: Androsociality and the political economy of gendered NFTs

Abstracts

Drawing from one of the chapters in Miyake’s forthcoming book, Virtual Influencers: Identity and Digitality in the Age of Multiple Realities (Routledge, 2024), this presentation explores the political economy of gendered virtualities, by focusing predominantly on Alice – an intelligent non-fungible token (iNFT), sold at Sotheby’s, for the price of $479K in 2021. What does it mean to mint, sell, buy, own and collect virtualised identities in the form of (i)NFTs? The discussion addresses this question by problematising the patriarchal, heterosexualist and andro-centric mechanisms which facilitate the circulation of virtual capital, which in turn, reinforce dominant ideologies surrounding gender. Here, the relationship between virtuality and the gendered Other is explored through the proposed concept of andro-sociality. Ultimately, the presentation demonstrates how (i)NFTs are part of an online political economy of gender, where virtuality is a technology – sometimes a weapon – for the commodification and further oppression of the gendered Other.

Biography

Dr Esperanza Miyake is a Chancellor’s Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Media and Communication at the University of Strathclyde. Esperanza is also the Chair of the Humanities EDI Committee, and the Humanities Anti-Racism Group. Her research focuses on gender, race and digital media/technologies, especially issues surrounding digital justice and equality in relation to AI and smart technologies, social media, digital culture and society.