The Transformation of the Understanding of Self in the Metaverse Reality as a Heterotopia Place

Abstract

This paper conceptually discusses how Metaverse world exists as a space through Michael Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and how within this space the understanding of self is reshaped with the concepts of sociality, partnership, immortality, being a part of a whole and the disappearance of free will. Foucault’s heterotopian mirror example defines theater and cinema as a “surreal, virtual place” and sees it as an illusion. Metaverse can be added to these examples. Metaverse has the potential of bringing people with different thoughts and lifestyles together at the same time and same place. This potential is relevant to heterogeneous spaces which will not come together normally coming together in this medium. In addition to that, a single space can contain multiple spaces and times and this heterochronicity allows the abstraction of spaces while being lived at a certain time and allows travel to other times different from the time lived. But this potential is bound to some rules as stated in the fifth rule of heterotopias and these rules are preset. Considering all the similarities, the Metaverse world was assumed as a heterotopia and the paper tries to understand the embodiment of perception of self from general to specific, from public to individual, from a part of a society to an autonomous entity with free will within this world. This study uses hermeneutic method to discover the framework of how the concept of self and the perception of human will be transformed and changed in Metaverse world.