Naomi‘s title is “Battles of Blood and Ink: Apophasis, Identity, and Naming Conventions across Digital and Theological Genres.” Yikes! [Abstract]

Discussions of digital identity say that it’s about making online interactions secure and safe, etc. But real world interactions have never been characterized by this. DigitalID folks say that there’s a possibility of returning to a ideal state. They want to move digitalID from the impersonal to a rich, complex human context, as if it’s obvious that a human context is a good thing. [Is this in question? Uh-oh. :)]

Some bloggers make up a pseudonym, some have multiple ‘nyms, and some just use their real world name. Naomi uses a pseudonym. But many of us distrust people who have too many names. We associate names with identity. In fact, names come to stand for everything we know about the person’s identity.

But G-d has many names. How can they resolve into G-d’s singular identity? She’s going to look at just one commentator on this: The 13th Century Jew, Abraham Abulafia. Naomi hands out a poem he wrote in which blood and ink are at war in his soul. Ink wins. This is an intellectual triumphalism, which is like the digital ID folks’ belief that eventually there will be a perfect online IDs that mirror our RW IDs. (I’m doing a particularly crumby job reproducing Naomi’s argument.)

Digital ID debates make normative statements about reality. They’re assuming a metaphysics. “We shouldn’t ignore the long history of philosophical and religious thought about the nature of identity.”

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