Becoming Porcupine: Migratory Identities in Digital Utopia

Anna Bugajska

doi:10.31261/errgo.15771

Published: 2025-06-30

No. 50 (2025)

Becoming Porcupine: Migratory Identities in Digital Utopia

Anna Bugajska

Section: studies and essays

https://doi.org/10.31261/errgo.15771

Abstract

The aim of the article is to draw attention to and discuss the relevance of the migration studies to the better understanding of the transformation of the human identity on entering the digital spaces, in consideration of the fact that the latter are frequently presented as a utopian destination. It is argued that the said transformation and fragmentation of the human self and identity can be compared to the one experienced by migrants. Drawing parallels between the insights of Hillis (1999), Hron (2009), Zuboff (2019), and Sisto (2022), one can discover numerous common points between the utopian studies, migration studies, and digital culture, which allow taking a new perspective on the experiences of increasingly digitalized, post-pandemic society.

Keywords:

utopia , digitalizations , migrations , trauma , identity

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Bugajska, A. (2025). Becoming Porcupine: Migratory Identities in Digital Utopia. Er(r)go. Theory - Literature - Culture, (50), 109–123. https://doi.org/10.31261/errgo.15771

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Anna Bugajska

a.m.bugajska@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6078-7405

Affiliation:

Ignatianum University in Cracow Poland

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

Anna Bugajska is an Associate Professor at the Ignatianum University in Cracow, where she heads the Institute of Modern Languages and the Language and Culture Studies Department, and collaborates with the General and Applied Ethics Department. She has given classes in ethics, philosophy of science and technology, biopolitics, and utopian studies. She is member of the Utopian Studies Society – Europe, and a number of other international groups, and sits on the Scientific Committee of the City and Philosophy Association. She is the author of Engineering Youth: the Evantropian Project in Young Adult Dystopias (2019), and a number of publications devoted to ethics, new technologies, posthumanities and utopias/dystopias.