Ahmed Helmy –
Do you agree with Lugones that we create different narrative selves when we “world-travel”? Are there parts of the self a narrative approach overlooks or cannot account for?
(This essay was written for the module Knowledge and Reality 2)
Maria Lugones introduces her concept of “world”-travelling, where individuals curate themselves to adapt to new worlds, either through necessity or playfulness. Although her framework is compelling and logically sound, her narrative model in particular overlooks the affective and existential conditions necessary for self-construction, pertinent in the modern mental health crisis and digital age. The thought experiment of Joe and Lucien will help illustrate the psychological necessity of world-travelling, and why Lugones’ model should be adapted for the digital age, and constructed around psychological and existential disruptions, not only sociological marginalisation, as world-travelling extends to mental-health survival as well.
Imagine Joe, a 29-year-old, white, heterosexual corporate lawyer in the heart of London. Growing up, Joe dreamt of being a classic troubadour, spending his days writing poetry, exploring countries, and dedicating his life to art. Having been educated at a private school and then Cambridge, it follows that Joe is by no means marginalised in any sociological sense. However, upon his resignation to the corporate lifestyle, after the realisation the life he dreamt of is not financially viable in the current era, Joe enters a depression. Up until he discovers an MMO roleplaying game set in a fantasy universe, infinite people to meet, continents to explore, beasts to slay; a whole new life to lead. Joe creates his brand-new character “Lucien.” Joe on the one hand is described as conformist, conscientious, and a little dry, while Lucien is renowned for being adventurous, flirtatious, and romantic. These contradicting personalities provoke a critical question: Are Joe and Lucien merely different “masks” or have two simultaneously genuine, distinct selves emerged?
The world of towering skyscrapers is distinctly different from the rolling hills and magical quests awaiting Lucien and Joe’s computer. This raises the question: are these selves simultaneously separate and equally authentic? I believe so because, as Lugones argues, the self is not fixed but emerges in response to the world it inhabits (Lugones, 1987). Lugones’ self-plurality can be understood as a narrative model: the self emerges as individuals construct genuine identities across different worlds. Joe and Lucien demonstrate this plurality, each self is context-dependent, moulded by the demands and affordances of their respective “worlds.” Joe is disciplined, and calculated as the corporate world requires it; Lucien is adventurous because the MMO calls forth those virtues. While Lugones presents plurality as fluid and adaptive, I would argue her narrative framework overlooks the psychological tensions involved when selves are constructed under trauma or existential crisis, as will be explored later. This intuitively suggests that selves are not merely “masks” or “Personas,” but genuine expressions of identity shaped by the realities of each world.
Lugones defines the self as transient, proposing the concept of a plurality of selves and rejecting the notion that the self is a fixed entity. She argues that several identities can coexist simultaneously, shaped by the worlds we inhabit (Lugones, 1987, pp. 11-13). Joe’s Fragmented Selves illustrate this plurality vividly, but the digital age has exponentially multiplied the potential “worlds” we can inhabit. Lugones defines three types of worlds: dominant worlds, reflecting hegemonic social structures; non-dominant worlds, formed through marginalised perspectives; and idiosyncratic worlds, which are intimately constructed by individuals or small groups (Lugones, 1987, p. 10). Online spaces mirror this typology:
– MMOs like Lucien’s may seem unconventional, yet they reproduce strict hierarchies, rules, and political structures, resembling dominant, hegemonic societies.
– Niche servers and forums, where Lucien engages in edgy humour, are idiosyncratic worlds, constructed informally by participants themselves.
As a result, Joe adapts into at least three distinct selves:
- Corporate Joe: conscientious, reserved, disciplined; suited to the dominant corporate world.
- MMO Lucien: adventurous, bard-like, sociable, yet rule-abiding; shaped by the ordered yet fantastical digital world.
- Server Lucien: uncensored, steeped in online “edgy” humour, participating in behaviour Joe would publicly denounce; shaped by the norms of a casual, idiosyncratic online space.
This typology reveals the crux of my claim: Lugones’ framework needs critical modernization to adapt to digital spaces, where world-travelling is not merely playful for the privileged, but increasingly necessary for emotional and social survival. As Lugones claims, these selves coexist. Yet, in the digital age, this plurality becomes more curated and intentional. Zizi Papacharissi (2011, p. 304) argues that individuals now simultaneously manage multiple selves within “networked publics”, tailoring each identity to suit the expectations of a given digital context. However, the pressures of self-creation are not innately liberated. Turkle (2011, p.194) argues cycling between digital personas may result in fragmentation of the individual’s experience. This introduces a key issue with Lugones’ argument, being that while she celebrates fluid selfhood and playfulness, she underestimates the psychological and existential strain of maintaining multiple selves, and how this may affect one’s sense of narrative stability, and coherence, a fundamental flaw of her narrative approach. This proliferation of online worlds disrupts Lugones’ playfulness/necessity distinction. Joe’s world travelling is not mere play; it is increasingly necessary for his emotional and social survival. The digital age thus demands that philosophers rethink world-travelling as a practice of ongoing negotiation between survival and self-expression, rather than a simple division between privileged play and marginalised necessity.
As established earlier, Lugones argues there are various kinds of world-travelling, and makes a key distinction between playful and necessary world-travel. Throughout the article, Lugones ties her theory to her experience as a female immigrant to the United States, she argues that people who engage in world travel out of necessity are marginalised and required to adapt their narrative selves to fit their current worlds. While not stating it definitively, Lugones claims people who are comfortable in their current worlds do not need to world travel, naming “some White/Anglo People” (Lugones, 1987, pp. 12-14), and claims they do so out of playfulness. While I take no issue with this point, Lugones effectively “limits” necessity to sociological marginalisation, viewing world travelling as a survival tactic to maintain a coherent narrative identity under oppression.
However, I will argue that the need to world travel extends beyond sociological marginalisation, to include psychological and existential necessity. As Philosopher & Psychologist Thomas Fuchs puts it, Depression is a total bodily and social detachment and a disturbance of intracorporeally and interaffectivity. (Fuchs, 2008, p.222). Depression is more than just losing a personal narrative; it dismantles one’s sense of the world as a coherent space where selfhood can exist. Depression distorts one’s world entirely. (Ratcliffe, 2008, ch.4), effectively causing a psychological need, to escape. Ratcliffe emphasizes that depression alters our feelings of existentialism, the fundamental background of reality, that structures our ability to interact with the world (Ratcliffe, 2008, ch.3) Joe’s creation of Lucien is both a narrative and psychological necessity, shows that narrative selves are grounded in pre-narrative [1]affective structures, that can be mutilated by mental illness, a point Lugones’ narrative approach, entirely neglects (Ratcliffe 2008; Fuchs 2008).
Moreover, despite Joe’s sociological privilege, it is necessary to sustain his well-being and mental fortitude. Without Lucien, Joe would succumb to the depression he felt. Forced to feel the effects of it, as Krueger and Colombetti put it, he would lose certain forms of access to the practical significance of the built environment, but its regulative significance, too; and the stability and organization of their affective life, is compromised. (Krueger & Colombetti, 2018, p.34).
This perspective reveals a critical flaw within Lugones’ work, while she focuses on narrative adaptation, under the conditions of social and racial oppression, she overlooks how mental health crises expose the fragility of those narrative selves altogether. Joe’s case accurately depicts that narrative selfhood is not only threatened by oppression and marginalisation but also by existential collapse. World Travelling Is consequently not always about an adaptation to survive within an oppressive society; it is also about restoring the fundamental affective and existential conditions, which allow for narrative selves to be created at all.
Now that I have argued the significance of psychological necessity in world travel, I will ascertain the validity of virtual worlds as therapeutic or restorative spaces. As David Chalmers argues, Virtual worlds can absolutely be “real” in their ability to support human flourishing (Chalmers, 2022). Although fundamentally man-made, so is the career space Joe inhabits. Corporate bureaucracy and expectations are not a natural phenomenon; rather, constructed systems governed by human rules, and norms. Chalmers argues that the value of a world lies not within its physical substrate, but in its capacity to support meaningful human flourishing. If Joe can gain genuine fulfilment from virtual worlds, they are as phenomenologically real, as they shape his agency, and sense of self. This concept exists in the real world, where Nick Yee conducted a survey for the motivations of MMO players and found that MMOs fulfil psychological needs, of achievement, social connection, and immersion, creating whole other worlds within these games (Yee, 2006, p.312), solidifying their role as a world in Chalmer’s framework.
The case of Joe and Lucien successfully demonstrates the validity of Lugones’ plurality of selves but exposes the critical need to rethink her narrative model and adapt her definitions and requirements for world travel. Narrative selfhood depends upon affective stability, highlighted by Philosophers of mind and psychology, which Lugones neglects. The modern invention of digital spaces heightens this tension, existing as a necessary means of world travel for those struggling with mental health. The digital age reveals that world-travelling is not merely a narrative adaptation for social contexts by the marginalised and oppressed, but a truly existential practice, necessary to restore the affective conditions that allow narrative selves to form. Through expanding Lugones’ framework to account for existential threats beyond marginalisation, we gain a more comprehensive understanding of the self in the digital age, where world-travelling is not just an adaptation, but a fundamental means of self-preservation.
Bibliography
Chalmers, D. J. (2022). Reality+: Virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy. W. W. Norton & Company.
Fuchs, T. (2008). Depression, intercorporeality, and interaffectivity. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15(7), pp. 219–238.
Krueger, J. & Colombetti, G. (2018). Affective affordances and the relational self. In D. D. Hutto & M. Kirchhoff (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of the Social Mind (pp. 332–346). Routledge.
Lugones, M. (1987). Playfulness, “world”-travelling, and loving perception. Hypatia, 2(2), pp. 3–19.
Papacharissi, Z. (2011). Conclusion: A networked self. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites (pp. 304–318). Routledge.
Ratcliffe, M. (2008). Feelings of being: Phenomenology, psychiatry and the sense of reality. Oxford University Press. (Chapters 3–4, pp. 73–134).
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books. (pp. 185–209).