Digital Selfhood: Avatars, Ritual and Identity in the Metaverse
Digital Selfhood: Avatars, Ritual and Identity in the Metaverse

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the inherent paradox of avatar identity in virtual reality – a dynamic and ambivalent interplay where avatars are not merely passive products of digital spaces but active, co-constitutive agents shaping and being shaped by those environments. Grounded in Derrida’s notion of différance, we explore how identity is perpetually deferred, destabilized, and performed, inviting an alternative reading of digital presence that resists fixed meaning and embraces fluidity. Building on this philosophical foundation, Stiegler’s theory of technical mediation and grammatization is employed to illustrate the pivotal role of metaverse architectures in moulding digital consciousness, memory, and experience, highlighting the pharmacological duality of technology as both enabling and constraining spiritual and social agency. Further enriching this framework, we use insights from Ontological Design (OD) and Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) to discuss environment and interaction within the metaverse. OD emphasizes the ethical and existential dimensions of design choices in virtual environments, highlighting how interfaces, avatar affordances, and platform governance materialize normative frameworks that mediate spiritual expression and community formation. We validate this integrated approach through qualitative case studies emphasizing presence, ritual, and care (otium) within virtual reality environments, thereby offering a robust, interdisciplinary lens to understand both the being and the becoming of avatars and embodiment in contemporary digital culture. Finally, we reflect on the utopian potentials and dystopian risks inherent in virtual sacred spaces, underscoring the ethical and political imperatives for participatory ontological design and collective care in shaping inclusive, meaningful, and sustainable digital spiritualities.

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