Biography
Jongho Jang is an MA student whose research focuses on a genealogical inquiry into cyberspace in relation to cyberviolence. Drawing on the sovereignty of mothers—highlighted in the work of Gil Anidjar—he proposes that cyberviolence, in some sense, emerges from the loss of this sovereignty in cyberspace. Specifically, he explores how the sovereignty of mothers has been transferred, while nevertheless remaining with mothers, through successive prefigurative cyberspaces to Christianity, individuals, and artifacts. He traces this genealogy through figures in philosophy, social thought, and literature: Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, Philip Rieff, and David Foster Wallace. His broader academic interest lies in decentering Christianity and ultimately inscribing the sovereignty of mothers into cyberspace by configuring mothering as the narrative that sutures analog and digital subjects, with analog subjects understood as mothers and digital subjects as motherees, the recipients of mothering. His long-term goal is to develop a genetic account of the latter to help counter cyberviolence.