ABSTRACT
This chapter explores two specific elements of digital rhetoric related to embodiment. First, the utopian ideal of egalitarian discourse on the internet, where the desired aim is a Habermasian public sphere in which differences of race, class, gender, and other identifiable markers of identity are, in theory, bracketed out. Second, the malleability of digital identity and the rhetorical and material consequences for the body when it is “outed,” especially those bodies deemed “other.” The chapter concludes with suggestions for how digital rhetoric studies should consider both physical and virtual bodies together.
