Avatarhood and Selfhood

In this philosophical essay, Rune Klevjer sketches out the main principles of avatar-mediated selfhood in video games and other digital environments. The idea that avatars mediate for the user and player a sense of a re-embodied self is common in the literature, whether understood as virtual body, as digital persona, or as game piece. Drawing on Gallagher and Zahavi's notions of experiential selfhood and world-embeddedness, Klevjer suggests that being an avatar in this way is not merely a matter of extended agency or self-presentation, but that it is essentially about re-embedded subjectivity and selfhood. In avatarhood, alien environments become our environment, our habitat.