Identity and virtuality on Teaching Digital Humanities

Abstract

The new technologies in the digital era leads the human being to a new way of approaching to the world and to know it. Nowadays, “being” in two places at the same time is something common to any user of the digital world. This possibility of virtual ubiquity leads to a radicalization of a dissociated identity.

This paper explains that in the digital era there is not only the need of searching for new technological tools, but also new epistemological frameworks in the teaching of digital humanities. The question to be answered is this: how can we bring back the integrity of the human being in the era of the dissociation and what is the role of the digital humanities teaching on it?

The paper will explore the implications in the digital era of the Descartes thesis about the human being as res extensa and res cogitans and, on the other hand, the conception of the body according to the Phenomenology.