Virtual worlds describe an imaginary world of transcendance where corporalities rejoice in generalized ubiquity and interconnectedness, where artificial organs take on a heuristic function, where one is rapt in spirit and tele-present, transported from electronic nirvanas tp simulated stimulations, where, finally, virtual life echoes with promises of immortality. Our avatars, principle operators of the ecstatic transports of this virtual paradise, demand wider refection about the very notion of body, which is diffracted in its relation to the corporeal imaginary. Through these avatars, we reformulate both the project of the living in that of hyperlife, and that of spiritual transcendence in the technical programming of a consensual hallucination which transcends the frontiers of the corporeal.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°3, pp. 631-643.