Cloud Communities, Network States and Reversed Diaspora. Law, Subject, and Politics between Dis- and Re-embodiment

My paper will deal with projects for the creation of network states relying on the Web 3.0 promises of decentralization and autonomization.
The idea is to create forms of society with like-minded people in which individual as well as societal affairs can be shaped more freely, openly, and democratically. This implies, in a first step, a comprehensive process of disembodiment, in the sense of not only detaching the citizen from its bodily and geographic constraints, but also communities from state-bound legal corpora and the territorially bound body politic. However, some of these visions don’t stop here. In a second step, a reterritorialization – and thus, to a certain extent, a re-embodiment – is envisaged: the idea is to lead the virtually emerging states back into a material reality and to establish a “reversed diaspora” (Srinivisan, The Network State). Instead of aiming at a mere retranslation of virtual into physical settings, however, the objective is rather to create a fusion of both realms – by creating a "spatial internet".
My paper will raise the question of what these two contrasting yet merging tendencies of dis- and re-embodiment imply for traditional conceptions of law, politics, and subjectivity. By taking a closer look at the role the body plays in these traditionally state-bound notions, it will seek to uncover the blind spots in the Web 3.0 promise of creating a virtual and more democratic and just society.