The corporeal body in virtual reality

This paper considers the experience of embodiment in current and (possible) future virtual reality applications. A phenomenological perspective is adopted to explore user embodiment in those virtual reality applications that both do and do not include a visual body (re)presentation (virtual body). Embodiment is viewed from the perspective of sensorial immersion, where issues of gender, race, and culture are all implicated. Accounts of "disrupted" bodies (for example, phantom limb and dissociation of the self from the body, paralysis, and objectified bodies) are advanced in order to provide a context for understanding the ways in which embodiment in virtual reality environments may be instantiated. The explicit claim that virtual reality is an embodied experience and can facilitate the radical transfiguration of the body and its sensorial architecture is explored and evaluated.