Aleman’s main point is that incorporating information technology into their culture for the Waiwai is not really an issue that others make it to be. In fact, Aleman goes further to say that posthuman subjectivity and the immateriality of cyberspace (and the fact that on the internet nobody knows you are a dog) fits very nicely with Waiwai cultural practices. The ability of the internet “to make present those who are physically absent” is not a metaphysical probelm – it fits very nicely with shamanic practices and cosmology: “in their thinking, one is never really sure of the reality of any living being, because every being may in fact be wearing the disguise of another” (Aleman 2012).
Then why does posthuman subjectivity seem to bother us?
“the posthuman subject is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction” (Hayles 1999, quoted in Graffam 2012)
“Reconceptualizing identity as an ongoing process that defies fixed categories and destabilizes traditional ways of identifying self and others provides an opportunity to explore various ways of becoming (in) visible in a variety of socially networked spaces” (Gajjala and McComas 2012).