Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology 3030247503, 9783030247508, 3030247511, 9783030247515

Table of contents :
Preface......Page 6
Contents......Page 9
1.1 Introduction: After Mannheim’ and Ricoeur’s Studies on Utopia and Ideology......Page 11
1.2 The Topological Space of Representation in Philosophy......Page 13
1.3 Other Philosophical Illustrations......Page 18
1.4 Utopia, Ideology, and Philosophy......Page 22
1.5 Epilogue: Utopia and Deconstruction of the Philosophy of Science......Page 26
References......Page 28
2.1 Introduction......Page 31
2.2 Perception, Presentification, and Phantasy in Husserl......Page 33
2.3 The Problem of Image-Consciousness......Page 37
2.4 Sartre: Perception and the Imaginary......Page 39
2.5 The Challenge of Virtuality......Page 44
2.6 Real and Irreal Virtualities......Page 48
References......Page 51
3 Personality, Dissociation and Organic-Psychic Latency in Pierre Janet’s Account of Hysterical Symptoms......Page 54
3.1.1 Conceptual and Systematic Views......Page 55
3.1.2 Historical and Theoretical Materials......Page 58
3.2 Mental Stigmata in Hysteria—Observing Memory Troubles and Personality Dissociation with Pierre Janet......Page 61
3.3 Alternating Memories and Multiple Personalities [Inner Alter-Ego(s)]. Some Conclusions from Clinical Data......Page 66
3.4 Social Conducts—The Outer Alter-Ego(s)......Page 71
3.5 Conclusions......Page 74
References......Page 75
4.1 Introduction......Page 77
4.2.2 Sound and Audio......Page 78
4.2.3 World and Environment......Page 79
4.2.4 Immersion and Presence......Page 80
4.3 Sonic Virtuality......Page 82
4.4 From Sonic Virtuality to Presence in an Environment......Page 84
4.5 Concluding Remarks......Page 85
References......Page 86
5.1 Introduction......Page 89
5.2 Virtuality and Illusion......Page 90
5.3 Primary Illusions and Secondary Illusions......Page 92
5.4 Feeling and Imagination......Page 94
5.5 Materiality and Virtuality......Page 98
References......Page 100
6 The Virtual as Precondition for Artistic Creation......Page 102
6.1 Uchronia—Virtuality......Page 105
6.2 The Foundation of Mediatising in Virtuality......Page 113
References......Page 115
7 The Virtuality of Cinema: Beyond the Documentary-Fiction Divide with Peter Watkins and Mark Rappaport......Page 117
References......Page 123
8.1 Introduction......Page 125
8.2 Photography and a Plea for History......Page 126
8.3 Photography and Meaning......Page 129
8.4 Movies and Meaning......Page 131
References......Page 136
9.1 Introduction......Page 138
9.2 When Virtual Is Real......Page 140
9.2.1 Transcendental Empiricism and Image-Sensation......Page 142
9.2.2 Francis Bacon’s Aesthetic Experience Between the Lived and the Thought......Page 144
9.3 Conclusions......Page 147
References......Page 148
10 The Scope of the Virtual in the Treatment of Melancholia......Page 150
10.1 Introduction......Page 151
10.2 The Reality of the Virtual in Therapy......Page 153
10.3 Kristeva’s Project......Page 156
10.4 Co-implication of Psychic and Communicative Elements......Page 164
10.5 Notes Concerning the Virtual Dimension of Therapeutic Processes......Page 166
10.6 Final Remarks......Page 169
References......Page 171
11.1 Introduction......Page 174
11.2.1 The Virtual Invaded the Real......Page 177
11.2.2 The Virtual Has Invaded the Real......Page 180
11.3.1 Mimesis......Page 181
11.4 Conclusion......Page 183
References......Page 184
12.1 Introduction......Page 186
12.2 Rejecting Spontaneity: Aristotle’s Mirage......Page 187
12.3 Teleologies, Homogeneity and the Symbol......Page 191
12.4 The Worker and the Creative......Page 194
12.5 Infrastructure, Formalization and Control......Page 197
12.6 Allopoiesis Generalis......Page 200
12.7 Unlike a Machine......Page 204
12.8 Digital Baroque......Page 209
References......Page 213

Citation preview

Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11

Joaquim Braga Editor

Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology

Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress Volume 11

Series Editor Dario Martinelli, Faculty of Creative Industries, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius, Lithuania

The series originates from the need to create a more proactive platform in the form of monographs and edited volumes in thematic collections, to discuss the current crisis of the humanities and its possible solutions, in a spirit that should be both critical and self-critical. “Numanities” (New Humanities) aim to unify the various approaches and potentials of the humanities in the context, dynamics and problems of current societies, and in the attempt to overcome the crisis. The series is intended to target an academic audience interested in the following areas: – Traditional fields of humanities whose research paths are focused on issues of current concern; – New fields of humanities emerged to meet the demands of societal changes; – Multi/Inter/Cross/Transdisciplinary dialogues between humanities and social and/or natural sciences; – Humanities “in disguise”, that is, those fields (currently belonging to other spheres), that remain rooted in a humanistic vision of the world; – Forms of investigations and reflections, in which the humanities monitor and critically assess their scientific status and social condition; – Forms of research animated by creative and innovative humanities-based approaches; – Applied humanities

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14105

Joaquim Braga Editor

Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology

123

Editor Joaquim Braga Departamento de Filosofia, Comunicação e Informação Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos Universidade de Coimbra Coimbra, Portugal

ISSN 2510-442X ISSN 2510-4438 (electronic) Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ISBN 978-3-030-24750-8 ISBN 978-3-030-24751-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

It can be asserted, with some accuracy, that the technological nature of the new media has been one of the most decisive factors for the discursive increment on virtuality and simultaneously for its philosophical rebirth. As regards philosophy, the main questions about mediation and media tend to converge to the broad question of “reality”; by extension, reality is also philosophically reborn as a thematic object, being directly articulated with the virtualization processes initiated by the new media. From this articulation between real and virtual—through which it is possible to glimpse an increase of communicative operations and contexts—several theses frequently emerge about a supposed dematerialization of the real, thus linking virtuality to a negative ontological foundation. The term “virtualization” appears, in this discursive realm, as synonymous with “derealization”, additionally emphasizing the view that the virtual is the mere suspension of the real. In Western philosophical thought, there has been, for centuries, a clear primacy of the “actual” over the “virtual”, which greatly contributes to the latter being still beset by a conceptual fog. To put it simply, it is possible to find in the historical-philosophical legacy of the virtual two contrasting dimensions that have prevailed until now: on the one hand, Western metaphysics assigns to it a role of substance, largely embodied by the platonic (and neo-platonic) ontological dualism between images and ideas; on the other hand, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is thanks to the meaning-making theories that a role of function (of the virtual) is truly revealed—notably in the works of Charles Sanders Peirce and Henri Bergson. In the sense of the latter, the virtual appears more as a relation concept than a mere ontological operator. A dynamic framing of what we mean by reality is largely due to such inclusion of the virtual in the meaning-making processes. In a word, the real opens itself, through the virtual, to the possibilities of its realization. William James’s pluralistic theses on human mind precisely display this dynamic conception of the real imposed by the virtual, since such theses are based upon the seminal idea that the possibilities of meaning, contrary to what determinism and psychological monism claim, are necessary conditions for the existence of selection and actualization psychic processes.

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With the appearance of modern media, reality and meaning-making processes can no longer be thought from a strictly logo-centric perspective. Language is not the predominant symbolic form in the life of human beings, but converges with pictures and other modalities of mediation. In fact, the increase of possibilities in the constitution and perception of reality is also connected with the growing articulation between different media. The articulation of the word with the picture not only transforms the space and time of communication, but also the symbolic nature of both. New technological devices precisely expose this convergence of media, this convergence of the word with the picture, of the picture with music, through which they can rebuild communicative and perceptive atmospheres that are no longer identifiable with the traditional characteristics of each medium involved. Although they come from two opposing semantic spheres, the two roles attributed to the virtual (those of substance and function) still tend to fuse in certain phenomena analyzed under the prism of virtuality and generate the idea that, unlike the concept of the actual, the one of the virtual will always be plunged into a paradoxical logical domain of difficult philosophical inquiry, even more prone, as attested by a significant part of the bibliography on the subject, to mythological subcategories or to utopian and dystopian literary descriptions. The symbolic universe of digital technologies has, up to a certain extent, inspired such fusion and such paradoxicality, to the point that the complex theoretical spectrum of virtuality fades away when faced with the so-called virtual reality. In this specific case, can the simulation of the real undermine the epistemic richness of virtuality? Here, in fact, arises a negative approach to the concept of the virtual, since what animates technological simulation processes are, above all, their ontological effects, that is, the sensible recreation and perception of something that appears to be what it is really not. Such a negative approach is not, as a matter of fact, an exclusive theoretical corollary of simulation devices. In the philosophy of art, the theories of mimesis frequently start by presupposing the duplication of the real to ground and justify the analogical dimensions of fiction and its consequent illusory effects on the aesthetic experience itself. In this sense, the fictum is not totally free from its analog reference—the fictum is, conversely, a deceptive factum. It is true that the philosophical inclusion of the virtual in the understanding of reality and the processes that explain it tends to bring to expression several theoretical gaps, multiple unclear conceptual fields, often only perceptible through both metaphorical and discursive intuitions. However, philosophical accuracy should not be entirely anchored in logical prejudice, nor should it be circumscribed by an absolute ontological order of reality. Consequently, virtuality as a philosophical concept displays a broad semantic spectrum that still lacks deep inquiry. Such an inquiry, however, cannot be done without the enlargement of those phenomena that can best express the theoretical dynamics of the virtual. It has been common in our days to circumscribe the analysis of virtuality to technological phenomena, particularly those that operate through digital devices. Nevertheless, such reduction has led to several conceptual misunderstandings and, in some cases, concurs to the philosophical impoverishment of the concept of virtual itself. The main reason for this is that the common

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binary logic of technological mechanisms and operations is applied in a generalized way to a purely ontological view of the virtual and to all the phenomena covered by it. Thus understood, technology would be the ultimate expression of virtuality, and the other related theoretical fields would always have to be shaped by its epistemic record. One of the main purposes of this volume is to broaden and rethink the thematic horizon of virtuality, regarding—as essential—the idea that the explanation of the concept of the virtual always depends on its programmatic extensions. As will be seen over all these chapters, the authors far exceed the theoretical and conceptual limits imposed by a negative approach to the question of virtuality. The contemporary paradigm of “virtual reality” is not, therefore, predominant at the heart of the reflections proposed here, nor is technology assumed as the dominant thematic issue. On the contrary, the themes presented in this volume range from art, perception, memory, communication and therapy to technology and utopia. Thus, various conceptions of virtuality are projected and articulated through them, supported either by authors—such as Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Susanne Langer —which formulate it explicitly, or by authors who, although they do not refer to it in a systematic way, somehow presuppose it in the construction of their main theoretical proposals, as it is the case, for example, of the French psychotherapist Pierre Janet. Coimbra, Portugal November 2017

Joaquim Braga

Contents

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Utopia, Ideology, and Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Henrique Jales Ribeiro

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Phenomenology and the Challenge of Virtuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel O’Shiel

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Personality, Dissociation and Organic-Psychic Latency in Pierre Janet’s Account of Hysterical Symptoms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edmundo Balsemão Pires

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Sonic Virtuality, Environment, and Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard

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Imagination and Virtuality. On Susanne Langer’s Theory of Artistic Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joaquim Braga

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The Virtual as Precondition for Artistic Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michaela Ott

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The Virtuality of Cinema: Beyond the Documentary-Fiction Divide with Peter Watkins and Mark Rappaport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 João Pedro Cachopo

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Digital Fabrication and Its Meanings for Photography and Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Matthew Crippen

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The Reality of the Virtual in Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Paulo M. Barroso

10 The Scope of the Virtual in the Treatment of Melancholia . . . . . . . 145 Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho

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11 The End of the Virtual? A Hermeneutical Approach to Digitality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Alberto Romele 12 Virtuality Beyond Reproduction. Remarks on the History of Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Simone Guidi

Chapter 1

Utopia, Ideology, and Philosophy Henrique Jales Ribeiro

Abstract In contrast to the vast literature on the relationships between philosophy and utopia, for which the latter is simply an object of the former, the author shows to what extent philosophy itself can be a matter of utopia, i.e., an essentially utopian discourse, while, on the other hand, being a discourse that can transform reality ideologically. The philosophy of science, from Descartes and Kant to the present, is the framework used to exemplify this new approach, starting with Karl Mannheim’s and Paul Ricoeur’s studies on utopia and its relationship with ideology. The central thesis is that the discourse on sciences has its seat in a “no-place” or a “nowhere”, which is the ideal laboratory for philosophic work, where sciences are reconstructed both epistemologically and ideologically.

1.1 Introduction: After Mannheim’ and Ricoeur’s Studies on Utopia and Ideology I may sound provocative to the majority of philosophers (especially professional philosophers) when I speak about a “theory of philosophical utopias” for, in point of fact, utopia has always been considered to be an object of philosophy rather than something which philosophy would be an object of, or that might somehow be an intrinsic and constitutive part of philosophy itself. In that first sense, utopia as an object of philosophy, we could mention, for example, utopia in the thought of Ernst Bloch, or the way how the philosophies of Foucault, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Deleuze, and others, enable us to think the problematic of utopia on the basis of this or that specific trait of human existence. It is also in that sense that I include what Mannheim (1976) and Ricoeur (1986) have written about the relationship between utopia and ideology insofar as this relationship includes philosophy, because neither of the two thinkers really addressed philosophy as utopia. That is, therefore, not the sense I’m interested in here, although it is not at all indifferent to what I am going H. J. Ribeiro (B) Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_1

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to discuss today concerning a theory of philosophical utopias about science. Thus, it is the second, more radical, sense of utopia, that sense in which, again, philosophy itself, as a discourse, is considered utopian, in contrast with the known literature, that I shall be discussing in this paper. Not a lot, or virtually nothing, has been written on this approach (at least not directly or explicitly), but it is certain that, on the other hand, as I’ll mention latter, certain thinkers, coming from different areas, have repeatedly touched upon it in their criticism of the philosophy of science. Two examples are the above-mentioned case of Karl Mannheim’s sociology, as early as in the 1930s, or, more decisively, the case of Thomas Kuhn’s history and sociology of science (Kuhn 1996, 1977). Since Thomas More’s famous book (More 2003), “utopia” has always meant, both in its common usage and for philosophy as such in general, a concept opposed to that of rationality, which philosophy is supposed to incarnate; thus, if philosophy itself, as an object, is considered utopian, when we talk about “philosophical utopias” we mean a rationality that would be utopian; and this sounds like a contradictio in adjecto. However, it really is not a contradiction, exactly for the reasons expounded by Mannheim, as early as in 1929, in respect to sociology. Let us recall the major aspects of Mannheim’s understanding of the relationship between utopia and rationality. According to the traditional views prior to the now-famous sociologist’s, the utopian reference was a “no-place” or a “nowhere” produced by imagination and fantasy, incongruent with reality and supposed not to happen or come to be; and, at first sight, these signs are the opposite of the signs of rationality. However, as the author of Ideology and Utopia has shown, this incongruence is only (sociologically and philosophically) interesting when utopia eventually emerges as actively transformative of the social, cultural, and political reality in which it operates; this is the major characteristic which, in Mannheim’s view, distinguishes it from ideology as such (Mannheim 1976, p. 173ff). As we know, the Marxist utopia played this exact role of active transformation of reality at the dawn of 20th century. From this fundamental perspective, only at a first moment (a moment characterized by its manifest incongruity vis-à-vis the establishment and its values) does utopia emerge as opposed or contrary to rationality, because, at a later stage, it is eventually assimilated by the same rationality or identified (if you prefer) as a new form of rationality (Mannheim 1976, pp. 177–179). I believe that, basically, Mannheim’s theory is still generally valid today and especially so as concerns philosophy; however, I will be suggesting some fundamental corrections to this theory, corrections without which it will be impossible to even conceive of the possibility of a theory of philosophical utopias about science (which were quite remote from Mannheim’s thought). More specifically, the topic I am going to discuss is the possible relationship between philosophy and utopia, inasmuch as philosophy purports to be a more or less systematic undertaking that aims to justify and/or found science. That undertaking is currently understood as “philosophy of science”. I shall approach it from the perspective of the history of western thought from the beginnings of modern thought, with Galileo and Descartes, to the present, particularly Thomas Kuhn’s history and sociology of science and certain “naturalised epistemologies”, such as Willard Van

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Quine’s. This historical delimitation is important for my purposes, because I will be suggesting that the philosophies of science, from the 17th century on, were essentially utopian, and that part of the work of the theories about science (either philosophical or otherwise) introduced in the second half of the 20th century, as is most notably the case of Kuhn’s, consisted in de-constructing the utopian nature of those philosophies while not completely rejecting or eliminating it. My suggestion, insofar as it is possible to introduce it briefly for now, falls into two parts: first, the philosophies of science, through their claim to found what, in each different period, is understood as “science”, are par excellence spaces of creation and establishment of utopias, which in fact consist in the more or less rational reconstructions of the science that they configure, or, if you prefer, configured by the “topoi” from which all the “u-topoi” that are supposed to philosophically constitute science or scientific knowledge in general are born and emerge; the second part of my proposal is that these “topoi” from which the philosophies of science emerge are themselves, to a certain extent, u-topian, although in a different sense from the one behind my assertion that their respective reconstructions of science are utopian. This difference has to do with the “order of reasons” rather than with “the order of things”: a theory of philosophical utopias is possible only if one accepts that the above-mentioned “topoi”, as more or less ideal theoretical spaces for the re-constructions I have mentioned, can in themselves be analysed and researched into. That was the analysis that Ricoeur (whose thought was nonetheless very distant from my assumptions in this paper) had in mind when he posited a “phenomenology” of utopian thinking (cf. Ricoeur 1986, p. 15). At first sight, it is far from obvious that such spaces do exist and can be studied, phenomenologically or otherwise. However, this is one of the major purposes of the following reflections. From this wider perspective, I will try and analyse the problematic of the relationship between utopia and ideology, first identified and discussed by Karl Mannheim and Paul Ricoeur, among others, and without which one cannot envisage the possibility of a properly philosophical theory of utopia.

1.2 The Topological Space of Representation in Philosophy “U-topia” shall here be understood, according to its common sense (including the philosophical sense), as the speculative production of a “no-place”, a “nowhere” or a “not anywhere” which is created and configurated by thought and imagination; however, in contrast with that sense I have mentioned, the “no-place” I mean is supposed to have in itself already taken “place”, happen or exist in the present, being, therefore, not a mere projection, idealization or imagination of a reality that is more or less deliberately fantasized, as happens with literary utopias proper. I will try to show how the philosophical reconstructions of science are generally utopian in that they mostly address the issue of what science can and should be; and that what science can or should be is envisaged as already occurring in an essential way, more or less distorted either by science or by the theories that deal with it in each specific period. A similar phenomenon (though not necessarily identical in conceptual

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terms) was highlighted by Thomas Kuhn concerning the movement of the emergence and establishment of new paradigms that incorporate what he calls non-normal or “revolutionary science” (Kuhn 1996, p. 92ff). As the author suggests, in a different language, the new theories of revolutionary science are disqualified by “normal science” on the grounds that they are ultimately utopian (Kuhn 1996, pp. 66ff, 92ff). This characteristic of philosophical utopias about science, i.e., the fact that they refer to something that is supposed to be or to happen essentially and which is nonetheless reflected in or translated by neither science itself nor the theories that deal with it, is not included in Mannheim’s theory, or, later, in Ricoeur’s. This happens for two reasons: first, because, in both cases, and as mentioned above, utopia is considered to be an object of sociological and/or philosophical explanation, rather than something (as in Ricoeur, particularly, but also in other philosophers) which that explanation would itself be an object of; the second is that both have failed to explain, from this essential point of view I have just mentioned, the relationship between utopia and ideology, which emerges in both authors as more or less conceptually accidental. By “accidental” I mean that neither Mannheim nor Ricoeur raised the question of the connections between utopia and ideology in their full extent or meaning, and that the two concepts remain separated or divorced in both thinkers after all. This becomes apparent in the fact that both start from ideology towards utopia when, in reality, and as I will try to demonstrate, the true connection suggests the opposite direction, that is, that one should start from utopia towards ideology, since all ideology necessarily derives from a utopia, although, synchronically speaking, not all ideology is utopian. On the other hand, without questioning it thoroughly, they did accept the traditional literary, political and philosophical paradigm for defining utopia, which posits utopia as something that has to do mostly with the future, with what might possibly come to occur, or not occur, and to that extent (or only to that extent) is anticipated by the present in this or that specific manner. A definition like this is applied by Ricoeur (1986), and others after him, to those concepts that philosophically translate utopia, like hope, “project”, etc. I definitely do not mean to say that such definitions should be rejected; I rather mean that they hinder our understanding of utopia in science, or of the philosophical utopias about science. If the concept of utopia were limited to the future and/or to the more or less “eventual”, modally, if I may put it so, (what is or is not possible), its interest for the study of scientific utopias would be scarce. One of the particular characteristics of these utopias is the fact that, even when they are introduced by this or that scientist in this or that domain, the same scientist is not aware of the fact that he/she is proposing a utopia; on the contrary, he/she presumes to be “doing science” in the ordinary sense of the concept. And this fact suffices to show that this traditional literary, philosophical and political paradigm of utopia is not suitable for either science or the philosophy of science. As I have said above, the “no-place” that is implied in philosophical utopias about science is supposed to actually have already “taken place”, to happen or exist in the present, rather than being, like I said before, a mere projection, idealization or imagination of a reality that is more or less deliberately fantasized. The “no-place” I mean does actually happen, in a more or less constitutional and inevitable way, through the claim of philosophical thought and imagination to rationally reconstruct

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science (and, notably, physics) and thereby configure a “place” or “places”—in this case, those that will be inherent in the science or the sciences that they seek to philosophically found. I shall later explain in detail what I understand by philosophical reconstruction of science. But I can advance the following explanations: briefly, reconstructions take the form of (1) theories in which a set of philosophical categories that is supposed to represent the categories of science themselves, whichever they be, is put forward in conjunction with (2) a speculative, more or less analogical, configuration of the actual physical processes in the ambit of the theory that stems from what is supposed to be the application or interpretation of the said categories. These two fundamental characteristics shape what may be called the “topological space of reconstruction” inherent in each philosophy of science. They may be found, in a different language and within a different scope and significance, in E. Nagel’s important work The Structure of Science (Nagel 1961, p. 108ff). The specificities of this topological space, for instance, the accepted philosophical categories, or the way in which they will represent those of science, may vary with each different philosophy of science (and, as we know, they indeed do); I shall be arguing, however, that all of these philosophies presuppose the same fundamental type of topological space of reconstruction, even if these vary greatly among themselves. They vary and differ because the connection established between their respective categories themselves does vary and differ from one space to another. To simply say that philosophical categories “mirror” scientific categories and thus those of the world, and that this is a debatable epistemological presupposition, as in R. Rorty’s argument (Rorty 1979, p. 3ff), is not enough, not to say that it is practically nothing, because what is at stake here is exactly knowing what the nature of that “mirroring” is. Be it as it may, the famous American philosopher was one of the first to point out, in his own specific way, not only the singular nature of the topological space of reconstruction, but also—and this is what I am now interested in—the fact that Descartes and Kant were the great founders of the idea of a “philosophy of science” to date. The major difference between the philosophy of science, understood in those terms, and the old Aristotelian “metaphysics of nature” consists basically in the idea, inherent in Cartesian and post-Cartesian modernity itself, according to which the philosophical reconstruction of science is based on a topological space of representation introduced by the subject of knowledge, irrespective of the way how both this space and the subject himself/herself are understood. Descartes’ novelty in the history of the philosophy of science is exactly rooted in the introduction of the notion that science (the science at the time) finds its foundations in a topological space of reconstruction that is inherent in the positioning of the “cogito” and, with it, of a “pure subjectivity”, within which the fundamental concepts or categories that form the basis, metaphysically speaking, of the reconstruction of science (a task to which the philosopher dedicates himself especially after the third meditation of his Meditations on First Philosophy) are established and justified (see Descartes 1901,

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p. 234ff). The distinction between “primary qualities” and “secondary qualities” of bodies is one such concept or category. Taking up the Cartesian concept, Kant (1998) decontaminates that space, casting off some of its psychological, epistemological, and metaphysical ingredients (the case, for instance, of “innate ideas”) by means of the notion of “pure reason”; the new Kantian framework for the topological space of reconfiguration becomes an essential paradigm for the subsequent philosophy of science. Taking into consideration the criticisms that certain philosophers of science (such as the logical positivists) were to level against Kant, that context need not be psychologically conceived, or it is not necessary for it to be considered as a work or an activity of the subject of knowledge himself/herself; as Rorty suggests, it suffices, and in the history of the philosophy of science it indeed sufficed, that it be taken as a more or less ideal laboratory of the rational work that aims to justify science (Rorty, p. 131ff). Indeed, in his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant himself advances a set of arguments against the psychological (or empirical) interpretation of his concept of “pure reason” (Kant 1998, p. 411ff); and Ernst Cassirer’s and others’ Neo-Kantians have reinforced those arguments (see Cassirer 1907). However, admitting that the philosopher himself has fallen into the pitfall of the very psychologism he criticises, the truth is that one may be clearly anti-Kantian, for that same reason, vis-à-vis several fundamental topics (such as a priori synthetic judgements), while subscribing Kantianism as regards the concept of a topological space of reconstruction considered in itself and completely exempt from psychological and (to a certain point) epistemological implications. Logical positivism, for example, and Rudolf Carnap’s philosophy of science in particular (Carnap 1937), is Kantian in that sense, as I shall be suggesting (Friedman 1992, p. 84ff). I will resort to an analysis of this type of spaces (including those of logical positivism) to finally, and briefly, address the concept of utopia. In science, more specifically in physics, we do not find the usual meanings of concepts like “cause”, “substance”, “relation”, or others as they are used in philosophy and even in our everyday lives, referring to material entities or events produced by these entities. Since the language of physics is the language of mathematics par excellence, what common sense or the unprepared philosopher assume as material entities in physics are, in most cases, more or less complex physico-mathematical functions which the scientist expresses through differential equations, for example. Nor is it common to find philosophical concepts of a meta-discursive kind, like prediction, indeterminism, probability, among others. This does not mean that scientists do not use them themselves sometimes, but, when they do, they do it as philosophers who reflect on their work (like the well-known case of W. Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle”). Back in his days, Russell (2007, p. 121ff) had already observed this peculiar relationship between philosophical language and the language of science. Philosophical concepts/categories are supposed to identify themselves with the very function or functions in question, as was the case during a long period in the history of the philosophy of science, or, as happened especially in the 20th century, to represent it or them, meaning to replace it or them from a philosophical point of view. If one starts from the first fundamental perspective, in which the philosophical concept and the scientific concept are essentially identifiable, philosophers will be greatly tempted to think that they are not just practising philosophy but also, and above all,

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practising science. All the “philosophy of nature” in German absolute idealism, as well as a good part of the philosophy of science of neo-Hegelian inspiration in the late 19th century, for example, result from this temptation. Not all philosophers of science became aware of this representative function of philosophical concepts and, therefore, of what may be described as their topological function. But, back in the 18th century, Kant (1998), despite finally accepting Aristotle’s table of categories, felt the need to deduce them “transcendentally” (Kant 1998, p. 201ff). The decisive turning point in this matter, or, in other words, the moment in which a philosophical apperception of the problems raised by said function occurred, is particularly evident from the first quarter of the 20th century on, following the impact of the issue of the foundations of mathematics and, in particular, of non-Euclidean geometries. The logical positivist idea according to which philosophical explanation is hypothetico-deductive in the same way as scientific explanation itself, and that such an explanation—again, as would happen in non-Euclidean geometries—is mainly expressed through the so-called “implicit definitions” (Carnap 1956), provided an answer to these problems, although it did not completely solve them. The first attempts at a philosophical classification of scientific terms— like “mass terms” and “operative terms”, etc.—associating them with philosophical language itself, occur in the ambit of the positivist movement (see Hempel 1952; Carnap 1966). The representational function would be of no value for the rational reconstruction of science if, within its framework, it did not show that the concepts or categories in question are active, or operating in science and, therefore, refer to actual and ongoing physical processes in scientific theory and practice. And there is no other way of doing it than to configure this theory and practice more or less analogically within the framework of the topological space of reconstruction. Precisely because of the status of this function, the philosopher of science has to simulate scientific activity within his own science reconstruction framework. It follows that the philosophy of science, in general, implies the use of discursive resources specific to rhetoric, such as analogies (cf. Ribeiro 2014). Analogy is the specific domain of philosophical utopias as regards science and the rhetoric which has characterized them from Descartes to the naturalized epistemologies of the 20th century. In Ideology and Utopia, Ricoeur incidentally drew attention to this fact (Ricoeur 1986, pp. 36, 40–41, 59). But, before him, Nagel had already suggested this type of connections in his The Structure of Science (Nagel 1961, p. 108ff). For common sense, as well as for the scientist himself, the nature of the philosophical reconstruction of science that I have just mentioned is, at first sight, paradoxical. How can philosophy somehow “do science” within its own scope? For the philosopher of science, there is a need to show that the philosophical categories of reconstruction are not purely speculative or imaginative, but rather a constitutive part of the science that is the object of philosophical explanation. In this sense, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, K. Popper mentioned an “epistemological theory of experiment”, which would illustrate, as a paradigmatic example of scientific experimentation, the application of his falsificationist methodology (Popper 1992, p. 89). We can find a similar type of theories in logical positivism in general, particu-

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larly when it comes to “interpreting” the implicit definitions of deductive axiomatic systems, or, in other words, when it comes to applying them to the world of experience. But, as I have suggested above, the history of this problem is much older than the contemporary philosophy of science. When, in the second of his Meditations, Descartes invokes the example of a piece of wax that melts under the heat of a fireplace to justify the difference between “primary qualities” and “secondary qualities” of bodies, and the correlative notion that mathematics and physics mainly focus on the former, he rhetorically points to example and analogy as an illustration of his philosophical reconstruction of science (see Descartes 1901, pp. 230–231). In his Critique, Kant explicitly mentions “Analogies of Experience”, in which a “possible experience” justifies the actual, ongoing experience in science and in human knowledge generally (Kant 1998, p. 295ff). In Sect. 4 of this chapter, I will argue that the aim of the philosophical reconstruction of science is not only to represent it, but also to fundamentally reorganize it and transform it according to assumptions that are not just epistemological.

1.3 Other Philosophical Illustrations Now, what I am saying is that philosophical reconstructions, so understood, are privileged spaces or instances of utopias or of “non-places”. Another way, perhaps an easier one, to put this would be to say that an “image” of science that is rebuilt, precisely for the fact that it is an “image”, is never evidently that of science itself, but rather a figurative model of it. Generally, philosophers of science will not entirely accept what I have just said. Even those who have a conventionalist and antinaturalistic mindset concerning this matter, as is the case with Popper (1992), will argue that their own models ultimately and essentially correspond to current science, and therefore, its corresponding reconstructions are themselves, in one form or another, intrinsic parts of the science to be reconstructed (see Ribeiro 1987). It is somewhat strange to find this type of argument in the present, after the institutional break between philosophy and science, typical of the first quarter of the 20th century; but it is indeed a fact. It is impossible for philosophical reconstructions to no longer be essentially utopian due to the very nature of their founding “topoi”. I am not thinking of the well-known accusation directed to philosophers according to which they usually do not have any training in the science they focus on in their reconstructions, and that, for this reason, these are “caricatures” devoid of any scientific interest. In my opinion, this not infrequent argument does not seem acceptable because it assumes that there is a more or less radical separation between philosophy and science, which does not correspond to the theory and practice of science itself. It often happens that, in the ambit of his own activity, a scientist with no philosophical training does offer a similar type of reconstruction. And, whether it be in this case or in the case of a typically philosophical reconstruction, as the history of science itself demonstrates, they can both be useful or consequential with respect to scientific developments. In fact, what

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I have in mind is that, in general, the philosophical “topoi” that characterize each reconstruction are themselves virtual. They are “topoi” whose “arrière-plan” does not assume or imply the existence of any other “topoi”. In other words, insofar as, by definition, a “place” is always capable of being seen or envisioned from at least another “place”, one may fairly say that the “topoi” of most philosophies of science since the modern era, and particularly since Descartes, do not have a “place”; that, according to tradition, that which is supposed to be the matrix that configures all “places”, paradoxically does not have a “place” itself. Philosophical “topoi” are views or perspectives that start “nowhere”, and which have no “locus” as such. Thomas Nagel suggests what I just said in a beautiful book called The View from Nowhere, published almost at the same time as Ricoeur’s lessons were published in the United States. Nagel’s thesis is that rationality in general presupposes that we must place ourselves in an ideal, potentially universal space of justification, which is external to each individual and the ultimate foundation of his/her actions, judgements and values, whatever their domains (Nagel 1986, p. 3ff). It is in such a space that each one of us is compelled to locate ourselves when we transcend our personal and subjective perspectives (or our internal perspective) in order to justify them in the most universal and objective way possible. Science is precisely one of the more objective spaces of that external (or externalist) view that characterizes rationality as such. It is a perspective from “nowhere” precisely because, given its typical configuration, it is impossible to assign a “topos” or a specific place to it (Nagel 1986, pp. 7–8). One could say that, for this very reason, it is a perspective from everywhere and from every place; a perspective from which are we supposed to be able to see the same things or objects. According to Nagel, the difference between science’s own space and other less objective spaces, like that of philosophy or the space of everyday moral actions, lies in our greater or lesser ability to exceed the particular and subjective contingencies of our personal circumstances (Nagel 1986, p. 19). But it is exactly because we are continuously forced to do this that this constraint becomes a systematic invitation to adopt a more universal and objective view from “nowhere”, as happens in the view of science itself. In this dynamic intersection between the “internal” and the “external” views lies the root of utopia, characterizing the view from “nowhere”. It is in this last sense, and not particularly in the sense that concerns the rationality of science, that we must interpret the provocative title of Nagel’s work. Therefore, I would not say that from the theory of this author we can infer that science, independently of that dynamic intersection, is utopic. But I would add that it is precisely this conclusion that must be draw from Nagel as concerns philosophy and the exercise of rationality in general. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein was one of the first contemporary philosophers to draw attention, from this perspective, to the particularity of the topological spaces of reconstruction specific to logic, including, first and foremost, the one he presents in that book. To what extent is the founding “topos” where the philosopher stands not subordinate to the same conditions of possibility that characterize the object of its foundation (logic in the broad sense of the term in Tractatus)? If logic is responsible for justifying the possibility of the existence of meaning, and particularly, sense, in language in general, to what extent can logic itself as a lan-

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guage have sense? Can there be a discourse, such as logic, about these conditions of possibility which is not a priori subordinate to these same conditions? Wittgenstein’s answer, as we all known, is “no”, and, therefore, philosophy as a discourse and a systematic research undertaking no longer makes sense. This absence of sense stems from the fact that the discourse that is specific to logic implies that the philosopher works outside the entire plan of that which is supposed to be justified by that same discourse, his position in a “topos” that cannot in itself be essentially justified, in the rational sense of the expression (Wittgenstein 1933, p. 79ff). This positioning is not just typical of the philosophical discourse as a systematic research undertaking, as it is shown in the final paragraphs of Tractatus through the famous analogy between this discourse and climbing a flight of stairs (Wittgenstein 1933, p. 181), but it is immanent to every step of the very exercise of rationality. An example of what I have been saying is Kant’s concept of “pure reason”, which, more than the Cartesian conception of reason (which, incidentally, was its starting point, historically and philosophically), essentially dictated the fate of the philosophy of science to this day. This “pure reason” is, basically, the ideal space which human rationality is supposed to consist of. I say “ideal” because Kant knew that we cannot actually find “pure reason” in/by itself “anywhere”; we can only find it, if you prefer, in its applications, or at work, that is, in judgement and, philosophically speaking, in what those applications are presumed to be [whether they be good, “constitutive” and “regulative”, or bad, meaning those that characterize their “dialectical” use (Kant 1998, p. 112ff)[. This aspect is essential: insofar as we only know the applications of pure reason by reasoning “as if ” (or assuming that) they operated in a specific way (in this case, the one that Kant himself introduces and justifies in his Critique of Pure Reason), we do not have any knowledge whatsoever of reason in itself. This is why there can never be a science of pure reason but only, if anything, a “critique” thereof. Again, reason cannot be found anywhere, it is nowhere, in no place. It is by definition a “u-topian” “topos”. Kant states that this ideal space which is pure reason is, in short, the domain of the “conditions of possibility”; in the case of science, more specifically the conditions of possibility of mathematics and physics (Kant 1998, p. 146ff). These conditions and the respective applications can be represented in the realm of what Kant calls “transcendental logic” (Kant 1998, p. 193ff). This is the realm in which reason looks outside itself, upon the science at the time, and is forced to simulate the experience in question in this science, or, in other words, to analogically configure the actual physical processes in order to be able to justify the philosophical categories that represent them (Kant 1998, p. 295ff). In this regard, even before reaching the critique of the speculative and dialectical use of pure reason with its respective Ideas, Kant episodically suggests the need for a “regulative use” of the principles of understanding (Kant 1998, p. 297ff). This is the scope of the rational reconstruction of science, which is especially carried out in the “Analytics” of the Critique of Pure Reason (that of “concepts” and that of “principles”). As we know, the “transcendental deduction of the categories” is included in the former (the Analytic of “concepts”). These categories are but the fundamental concepts, philosophically speaking, that justify those in operation in science itself (in mathematics, that is, in Euclidean geometry, and in physics, that

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is, in “rational mechanics”). How can pure reason deduct categories if not always already through other categories? What is this pure reason if left to itself, in a certain way, before being in operation in “transcendental deduction”? We could say that it is the ideal discursive space required as an ultimate condition for the possibility of science and of its founding enterprise. However, for all purposes, pure reason does not exist anywhere in the proper sense of the expression “existence”; it is a necessary fiction. Philosophers, and philosophers of science in particular, will not accept that the “topoi” from which their own creating thought in philosophy originates and develops do not, paradoxically, have a place; that through these “topoi” nothing at all can be “seen”, or that they may be, as some philosophy of science approaches began to posit from the second half of the 19th century on, mere methodological positions required by the need of conventionally postulating, in a hypothetical-deductive way, the propositions that characterize the correspondent justifications of science. This, however, should be indifferent for a theory of philosophical utopias about science (if such a theory is possible). The point is that, irrespective of their form, each of the “topoi” of philosophy cannot be, I won’t say “seen”, but rather “envisioned” from the position of other “topoi” which are supposed to be (and this is an essential requirement) constitutionally identical. It would be perfectly natural that, if such a thing could happen or if each of us could place ourselves, simultaneously with the philosophers themselves or not, in their respective “topoi” (for example in the Cartesian “cogito” or in Kant’s “pure reason”), not only would we “see” the same essential things and make the same deductions from them, but we should also be able to intersubjectively envision, so to speak, our partners’ “views”. And that, as far as I know (I would even say “as far as we all know”), does not happen, because, by definition, it cannot happen. (Outside the scope of the philosophy of science, but closely connected to it, Husserl’s phenomenology (Husserl 1999), for example, radicalizing the reduction implied in the Cartesian “topos” (the topos of the cogito) and decontaminating it from spurious psychological implications, assumed, at least at first sight, that it was possible, that we could all see, enjoy and share the same essences. I will simply note that this great philosopher, or any other follower of phenomenology after him, has never provided any proof of this, and therefore Husserl’s “eidetic reduction” is a fiction). Note that the very movement of placing ourselves in these “topoi” and the reconstruction of science that follows it cannot be intersubjectively reproduced, and that in some philosophies it entails a conceptual ‘gymnastics’ and/or an imagery that the philosophers in question will not hesitate to characterize as belonging to the ambit of analogy, that is, figurative thought. This does not mean, of course, that we cannot describe and analyse what they see and the deductions they make from that for instance, in rhetorical terms. On the contrary: it is precisely because philosophical topoi have no place and are u-topoi, in the sense that I have explained above, that such (rhetorical) descriptions and analyses are possible and (even) necessary. So, apparently, the old, naive claims of ontology (not of metaphysics) are necessarily doomed.

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1.4 Utopia, Ideology, and Philosophy That the philosophical “topos” itself be, to a certain extent, a u-topos, as I shall seek to explain in detail, is of the utmost importance for a theory of philosophical utopias. It should not simply be taken for the “no-place” or the “nowhere” of current utopias, whether they be literary, philosophical, or other, and, in particular, it should not be mistaken for those categories as they are found in the early studies of the theory of utopia, including Mannheim’s and Ricoeur’s. The main difference is that this new concept of utopia allows the decentralization of utopia, as happened since Marx with the study of the concept of ideology, from the supposed object of utopian configuration—without ever losing sight of it—to the subject who produces the configuration itself. This methodological inversion is also essential to characterize philosophical utopias. But more than that, this inversion may help clarify, from a completely novel perspective, the complex relationships between utopia and ideology which, from the authors just mentioned to the present, has remained generally obscure. It is understandable that there is a close, more or less intrinsic connection between the two, even if it is not perfectly obvious. As a result, it is frequent for ideology to be confused with utopia today, and vice versa. Just a couple of brief words in this respect before we continue. The topic we are dealing with is complex, as I explained, and therefore, for prudential reasons, brevity is mandatory. Contrary to what Mannheim (and, to some extent, also Ricoeur) postulates, it is far from obvious that the essential distinction between ideology and utopia stems from the apparent fact that the former’s imaginary, unlike the latter’s, lacks the prospective ability to transform reality, emerging basically as a form of legitimizing a previously given social, cultural, and political reality. (In Mannheim’s time (the 1930s), where the focus was particularly laid on the political ideology of Soviet communism, it was in some sense legitimate to envisage ideology as a more or less static system of beliefs, that is, not subject to evolution or transformation (cf. Mannheim 1976, p. 215 ff)). Given that not all utopias contain or imply a political ideology, for the fact that, among other reasons, not all utopias can become a power legitimizing discourse, all ideologies are inspired by a more or less utopian though and, as such, they are originally and intrinsically utopian; otherwise, they are nothing but a legitimizing discourse, depleted of the essence of their own function. Indeed, as we know, this often happens with political ideologies. For example, as already suggested, it happened recently with the communist ideology of the socalled “Eastern bloc”. Contrary to what the authors mentioned believe, the direction should therefore be from utopia to ideology, not the opposite, since the more or less dynamic and functional character of any ideology is essentially based on utopia. Utopia becomes ideology when it emerges as a more or less totalizing and symbolic system of beliefs, which incorporates human “praxis” in general, because it concerns the aims, values, and norms of human action. Language and rhetoric are included in this fundamentally positive function as essential means or instruments for the legitimation of ideological discourse. This understanding of the concept, which was emphasized by Ricoeur in his critique of Mannheim (Ricoeur 1986, pp. 269–283),

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suffices to show that it is inadequate to think of ideology as “false consciousness”, as a thought that deforms reality, as Marxism did with Marx and Engels (2004), or to construe it as something opposed to science, as did, among others, some 20th century neo-Marxists, for whom, in contrast with ideology, science was supposedly the open realm of an objectivity to be explored experimentally (Althusser 1974). Science, as indeed philosophy itself, is no stranger to ideology, not by any means, insofar as it may, for example, have an extremely important functional role in supporting the establishment and preservation of the system of beliefs in which ideology consists. As we know, Marx had seen this as regards philosophy and German idealism in particular; however, his negative concept of ideology neglected the ideological function proper to philosophy. This understanding of utopia, as far as philosophy is concerned, is contrary to its current acceptation, for which, irrespective of the practical meaning of utopia or lack thereof, its “non-place” is basically a product of imagination which refers to something “not yet come”; an idealized “nowhere”, more or less active or with the potential to transform reality itself. This is the definition we find in Mannheim and, despite everything, also in Ricoeur. I obviously do not ignore this understanding of the concept which is particularly evident in literature, because it occurs also in the domain of the philosophy of science, which, as I described it above, is by definition, or constitutionally, utopian. Since the 17th century philosophers of science, as well as scientists themselves, have repeatedly dealt with not only, or simply, what took place or happened in the world, but also with, from their more or less intellectually well-founded approaches, what was supposed to happen, i.e., what could and/or should speculatively happen, either because they did not agree with their coeval scientific theory and practice or because they sought to lead it along this or that specific direction. As concerns the philosophy of science, that is particularly evident in the reconstruction of science carried out both by logical positivism in general and by Popper’s falsificationism (Popper 1992), as well as, to a certain extent, by the naturalized epistemologies of the 20th century, as is the case of Quine’s (1969). The more or less latent idea was that, with that reconstruction, the edifice of science should be presented not so much as it really was but rather, fundamentally, as it “could and should be”. Contrary to what is often claimed (Stillman 2001), my point is that the restriction of the concept of utopia to eventuality or the future is not at all essential to its definition, and that utopia is inscribed in the very core of what is supposed to happen. This inscription is visible in the realms of the social, the cultural, and the political when utopia becomes ideology and when the latter takes up the role of an interpretation of reality (deforming it or not), because what characterizes this transformation is precisely the introduction of the future into the present, the prospective re-dimensioning of the latter as a function of the former. My contention is that something similar happens with scientific utopia. But, letting aside the concept of ideology for now, I suggest that the sense of utopia that I have mentioned is valid both in the ambit of philosophy and in the ambit of science itself. In this respect, the history of science up to the 20th century is laden with u-topias [and it would suffice to recall the development of the concept of “ether” prior to Einstein’s theory of relativity (see Schaffner 1972, pp. 3–20)]. In the specific research carried out in some scientific

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fields such as theoretical physics or astrophysics, especially in particular borderline areas (the ultimate constitution of matter, the origins of the universe, etc.), there is no true criterion, regardless of this or that explanatory theory, to discriminate what does not happen from what actually occurs. In other words, what happens in those borderline areas, where prediction cannot be experimentally confirmed, is always already that which, according to a given theory, is supposed to happen or to take place; and scientific theories, particularly when included within the scope of what a Hungarian philosopher (I. Lakatos) called, in mid-20th century, “research programs” (Lakatos 1978), are not immune to specular thought, to imagination, or to ideological factors (including, as suggested above, ethical and political factors as such). If that is so, and in my modest opinion I believe that we have all the reasons to believe that it is so, the relationship between what would ideally happen, and which is typical of the object of u-topian configuration, and what happens or is supposed to happen, which is specific to science in the borderline areas mentioned above, is by no means a relationship of contrast or opposition (as it was perceived in the past for example by those who identified utopia with fantasy), but rather, to all intents and purposes, a relationship of progressive integration and complementarity. Well then, it is exactly this relationship of integration and complementarity between the “u-topos” and the “topos” that to a certain extent characterizes both science and its respective philosophy from modernity to virtually the present. It can only be identified and recognized provided one gives the “u-topos” that characterizes the utopian object a positive dimension rooted in the very nature of philosophical “topoi”, in its immanence (or non-transcendence) vis-à-vis these same “topoi”. I have been suggesting that it is through the specific nature of the philosophical reconstructions of science, of the way science is imagined and configured through them, that we can grasp both the concepts of utopia and ideology and their mutual relationship. Imagining and representing analogically what actual scientific experience as such is supposed to be, the experience that pertains to philosophical reconstruction could never completely coincide with it. And this happens for a fundamental reason, which I will just mention briefly, even though its importance for a theory of philosophical utopia is crucial. Philosophical reconstructions of science, whatever they may have been since Descartes, do not confine themselves to ideally remaking what already exists, as when, if I may use this analogy, we fit the pieces of a puzzle together after it has been broken down before our eyes. In point of fact, only very rarely did that happen in the history of the philosophy of science Since the 17th century, reconstructions were generally motivated by two types of factors: the first is epistemological and the second ideological. The espistemological factor includes the philosophers’ more of less essential ambition to reformulate decisively, in this or that respect, in this or that more or less extensive scientific domain (and physics is what I specifically have in mind), the scientific theory and practice of their time through their reconstructions. The concepts of space, time, force, and movement are often-cited examples of that ambition from Descartes to the early 20th century. Similar examples, with a no less relevant philosophical bearing, could be given in this century. However, I shall only mention the most important: in the first quarter of the 20th century, quantum mechanics and the disagreements among scientists that

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seemed to follow from the interpretations of physics respectively pertaining to this specific mechanics and to the theory of relativity (see Jungnickel and McCormmach 1990, p. 304ff). The assumption behind reconstructions in general is that the scientific edifice as a whole lacks this reformulation in order to be coherent or consistent, and ensure that the aims that are deemed fundamental for scientific research are fulfilled. Thence the imperative need for reconstruction. I believe that the whole philosophy of science since Descartes, all the philosophical reconstructions of science arise from these epistemological reasons. This is why, as I shall exemplify below (in my conclusion) with Kuhn and Quine, the philosophy of science is constitutionally utopian. The second type of factors in philosophical reconstructions of science, as mentioned above, is of an ideological nature. This is a complex topic, although fundamental for a theory of philosophical theories. It seems obvious to me that reconstructions were guided by this type of factors. The history of the philosophy of science shows that the schematic model for the representation and analogical configuration of scientific experience, which I have analysed in the second section of this chapter, is not immune to ideological factors and is aligned, in each different period, with the framework (which includes beliefs, norms, and values) typical of the society to which the philosopher belongs. Indeed, as Mannheim showed in his famous book, and as shown after him in the vast bibliography available on the philosophy of science, what science itself is at a given time forms part of the foresaid framework, of which it constitutionally depends (cf. Mannheim 1976, p. 247). As I have suggested elsewhere, expanding on the conclusions of Ideology and Utopia from my perspective (Ribeiro 2012), the social, cultural, and political representations that national communities, for example, produce of themselves are essentially utopian constructs, which, insofar as they aim to legitimate a certain form of political power (whatever it may be), are, for that very reason, also ideological. Among such representations must be included the self-representations of scientific communities. In this broad sense, science is a cultural artefact like any other artefact. Philosophical reconstruction may simply legitimate the above-mentioned framework, but it may also (which is what happens most often when the philosopher has a real impact and influence) endeavour to reformulate it and to change it in more or less depth. To give some examples: this is perhaps what happened with the reductionist and verificationist program in the philosophy of science adopted by the Viennese logical positivists in the mid-1930s (with the idea that all the propositions of science can be reduced to atomic propositions, and that these should in turn be verified empirically), which was used as a weapon, partly for political reasons uphold by one of its subscribers (O. Neurath), not only against idealism in philosophy but also against idealism as an understanding of the world socially, culturally, and politically configurated (Cartwright et al. 1996, p. 56ff). The same apparently happened with Popper’s critical rationalism in The Logic of Scientific Discovery and The Open Society and its Enemies, and his renovation, in new terms, of democratic ideals against the authoritarian societies of the “Eastern bloc” and the closure of western democratic societies themselves (Metogo 2014, p. 261ff). Or even: a similar reformulation of the above-mentioned framework seems to have occurred in the case of Quine’s conceptions (and, indi-

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rectly, Kuhn’s) on the indeterminacy of meaning—conceptions which, in the long run, would philosophically found contemporary multiculturalism within the context of what is now usually called “post-modernity” (Patterson 1996, pp. 158–59). As these three examples show, the traditional distinction: starting from ideological assumptions or gaining ideological implications without having them in the first place, whether the philosophers involved were aware of it or not, is fictive and even fallacious. Philosopher of reconstruction, whoever he has been, has always thought while immersed or imbued in an ideological environment, be it the one he accepts and aims to legitimize, or the opposite one (see Koertge 1991). The frontier between ideology and the philosophy of science, which, as I have been suggesting, can only be understood from the perspective of a theory of philosophical utopias, is neither territorial, like our geographical borders, nor categorial. Thus, I do not oppose both things as if they were contrary and essentially different concepts. All the philosophy of science, insofar as it is utopian, is to some degree ideological.

1.5 Epilogue: Utopia and Deconstruction of the Philosophy of Science The second half of the 20th century signals the end of the philosophy of science in the traditional sense of the concept of philosophy, i.e., as systematic research, and, simultaneously, the end of the traditional concept of science, that is to say, of the idea that what essentially defines the latter is an objective, ontological basis, in the world, which the moderns (Galileo and Descartes) used to call “nature”, and which allowed not only to justify epistemologically the theories that dealt with it (and, through them, the “philosophy of science” itself), but also to demarcate science from the other areas of culture (Ribeiro 1998). K. Popper’s thought, at least till the 1960s, pointed to this decisive, fundamental conclusion, explicitly drawn by Kuhn (1996, 1977) and by Quine (1969) at around that time, and by Feyerabend (1987, 2002), one decade later. If such a foundation does not exist, as the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions suggested after having read his own conceptions in the light of those held by the author of Ontological Relativity and other Essays, then nothing exists, except sociological factors (such as the agreement among the members of scientific communities), to help us differentiate science and witchcraft—a striking, controversial suggestion, which means precisely what I have been suggesting: that whatever science (particularly theoretical physics) is or is not essentially entails the concepts of utopia and ideology. Based on Popper, Kuhn and Quine, Feyerabend (1987), more incisively and provocatively than all the others, generally dismisses rationality as such. As a whole, after Mannheim (1976) and Ricoeur (1986), the way was paved for us to rethink science in the light of the said concepts. Kuhn is arguably the major contemporary reference for a theory of philosophical utopias as concerns science. His entire work can indeed be considered a progressive, systematic deconstruction of the notions according to which there is something like

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a “philosophy of science”, and therefore, that a rational reconstruction of it is possible (cf. Kuhn 1977, pp. 3–19). I will not mention his decisive contributions in this respect, although it would be well worth to do it from the point of view that I adopted above. I will just note that the type of history and of sociology of science brilliantly inaugurated by Kuhn in the early 1960s can be read—and I indeed did that to some extent in this chapter—not only as a deconstruction of the idea of a “philosophy of science”, which I have mentioned, but more generally, as a long commentary on the whole issue of the relationships between utopia, ideology, and science, from the point of view of that same history and sociology. The opposition between what Kuhn designates as “normal science” in contrast to non-normal or “revolutionary” science, can indeed, or perhaps should, be interpreted from the standpoint of the relationship between ideology and utopia, with “normal science” being, in line with what the historian broadly understands as a “paradigm”, a characteristically ideological process aiming to legitimate the established scientific theory and practice—a process which, due to the reasons I have mentioned, we now understand as encompassing the social, cultural, and political spheres (cf. Kuhn 1996, pp. 23ff, 136ff); and “revolutionary science”, on the other hand, the fundamental vehicle for the emergence and the affirmation of utopia (Kuhn 1996, p. 92ff). From this viewpoint, as the philosopher suggests, while revisiting (in the light of Quine) his conceptions in The Structure, if the paradigms are incommensurable, that is, in Quine’s language, if it is not possible to translate the language of one into the language of the other, and, as a consequence, there is no neutral place (topos) from whose perspective they could be compared (this is what explains the revolutionary character of the emergence of new paradigms), then science (and not just the philosophy of science) is constitutionally utopian (cf. Kuhn 1996, p. 198ff). On the other hand, again, as I claimed in the previous section, also in Kuhn the source of ideology (“normal science”) is utopia (“revolutionary science”), the dialectic specific to the historical process of the development of sciences consisting precisely in the inevitable transformation of utopia in ideology, followed by the de-structuring of the latter through the emergence and establishment of a new utopia. Quine’s theory, like Kuhn’s, is that what we call the “philosophy of science” has collapsed or died, and it no longer makes sense as a systematic research undertaking on the world. The idea, which comes principally from Descartes and Kant, that there exists something like a nature divorced from scientific language, or, when this language is reconstructed by philosophy, divorced from the categories by means of which we interpret it, is for Quine a pernicious dogma that cannot be justified philosophically and which has led to all the known, repeated failures of the philosophy of science throughout its history (Quine 1969, pp. 26–67). Consequently, there is no world on the one side and science and philosophy on the other; instead, world and science constitute a sole reality or totality composed of inextricable elements. (This is what Quine shows by means of his two indeterminacies of meaning: the indeterminacy of translation and the indeterminacy of reference). It follows, as we might say (over Quine’s own head), that utopia consists exactly in thinking the opposite, that is, in thinking that there is, there before us and distinct from us, a world to be explored and founded, philosophically speaking. Such a utopia does not make sense

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and it should be eradicated from philosophy, opening the door to naturalized epistemology, which will fundamentally be based on the interpretation of the world—by philosophers and scientists, side by side—following the procedures and conceptual schemes of science itself, as, according to Quine, is supposed to happen with schemes of a behaviourist and physicalist type (see Quine 1969, pp. 69–90). Now, if it is true that Quine’s naturalized epistemology signifies the end of the philosophy of science myth as it was conceived since Descartes, this does not imply for him that the very idea of rational reconstruction has completely come to an end. It is still possible to practice epistemology and to conceive the objectivity of science within the scope of the behaviourist and physicalist schemes that I have just mentioned, and therefore it is still possible, in a certain way, to reconstruct science. This conclusion is somewhat surprising because what followed from the idea of the end of the philosophy of science, announced as early as the 1950s by Quine in certain of his texts (Quine 1953, pp. 1–45), appeared to be exactly the opposite. However, the philosopher maintains that when scientific objectivity is conceived of according to that framework, the reconstruction that characterizes his naturalized epistemology is ontologically inoffensive. In some of his books, such as From Stimulus to Science (Quine 1995) he himself contributed significantly to the positive aspects of this new way of working. It is debatable whether with it we will not become involved in the same problems of the philosophy of the past. For my part, I am convinced that Quine’s reconstruction ultimately means that utopia is not dead.

References Althusser, Louis. 1974. Philosophie et philosophie spontannée des savants (1967). Paris: Maspero. Carnap, Rudolf. 1937. The Logical Syntax of Language. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Carnap, Rudolf. 1956. Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press (First published 1947). Carnap, Rudolf. 1966. Philosophical Foundations of Physics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, ed. M. Gardner. New York: Basic Books. Cartwright, Nancy, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, and T.E. Uebel. 1996. Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cassirer, Ernst. 1907. Kant und die moderne Mathematik. Kant-Studien 12: 1–49. Descartes, René. 1901. The Method, Meditations and Philosophy of Descartes, trans. J. Veitch. New York: Tudor Publishingm Co. Feyerabend, Paul. 1987. Farewell to Reason. London: Verso. Feyerabend, Paul. 2002. Against Method: Outline of an Anatchistic Theory of Knowledge. 3rd ed. London: Verso (First published in 1975). Friedman, Michael. 1992. Philosophy and the Exact Sciences. In Inference, Explanations, and other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science, ed. John Earman, 84–98. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hempel, Carl. 1952. Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1999. The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. W. P. Alston and G. Nakhnikian. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers (First published in German in 1906).

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Jungnickel, Christa, and Russell McCormmach. 1990. Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein: The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics: 1870–1925. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Kant, Immanuel, 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. ed. and trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (First published in German in 1781). Koertge, Noretta. 1991. Ideology, Science and a Free Society. In Beyond Reason: Essays on the Philosophy of Paul Feyerabend, ed. Gonzalo Munévar, 225–242. Dordrecht: Klüwer Academic Publishers. Kuhn, Thomas. 1977. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Kuhn, Thomas. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press (First published in 1962). Lakatos, Imre. 1978. Philosophical Papers: The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mannheim, Karl. 1976. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc.; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (First published in German in 1929). Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. 2004. The German Ideology. Part One: With Selections from Part Two and Three and Suplementary Texts, ed. C. J. Arthur. New York: International Publishers (First published in German in 1932). Metogo, Christel-Donald A. 2014. Enjeux politiques du rationalisme critique chez Karl Popper. HAL archives-ouvertes.fr. https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01019885. Accessed 27 April 2017. More, Thomas. 2003. Utopia, trans. P. Turner (First published in Latin in 1516). Nagel, Ernest. 1961. The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. Newyork: Harcourt, Brace & World Inc. Nagel, Thomas. 1986. The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press. Patterson, Dennis. 1996. Law and Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Popper, Karl. 1992. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Routledge (First published in German in 1935). Quine, Willard van O. 1953. From a Logical Point of View: 9 Logical-Philosophical Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Quine, Willard van O. 1969. Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. Quine, Willard van O. 1995. From Stimulus to Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ribeiro, Henrique J. 1987. Karl Popper: A epistemologia como ‘terra-de-ninguém’, ou da tarefa de reconstrução da ciência. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 3–4: 71–108. Ribeiro, Henrique J. 1998. O fim da filosofia da ciência na história da filosofia analítica. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 3–4: 395–428. Ribeiro, Henrique J. 2012. Towards a general theory on the existence of typically national philosohies—The Portuguese, the Austrian, the Italian, and other cases reviewed. Revista Filosófica de Coimbra 41: 199–246. Ribeiro. Henrique J. 2014. The Role of Analogy in Philosophical Discourse. In Systematic Approaches to Argument by Analogy, ed. Henrique J. Ribeiro, 275–290. Heidelberg: Springer. Ricoeur, Paul. 1986. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. New York: Columbia University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. Russell, Bertrand. 2007. The Analysis of Matter. Nottingham (England): Spokesman (First published in 1927). Schaffner, Karl. 1972. Nineteenth-Century Aether Theories. Oxford: Oxford Pergamon Press. Stillman, Peter G. 2001. Nothing Is. But What Is Not: Utopia as Practical Philosophy. In The Philosophy of Utopia, ed. Barbara Goodwin, 9–23. London: Taylor & Francis Group. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1933. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Kegan Paul (First published in 1921).

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Henrique Jales Ribeiro is associate professor at Coimbra University’s Faculty of Letters (Portugal), Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information. His core areas of research are logic, argumentation theory and philosophy didactics. His main publications include: Inside arguments: Logic and the study of argumentation (2012); Aristotle and argumentation theory (2013); Systematic approaches to argument by analogy (2014); Retórica, argumentação e filosofia: Estudos sistemáticos e histórico-filosóficos (2016).

Chapter 2

Phenomenology and the Challenge of Virtuality Daniel O’Shiel

Abstract This piece explicates some chief modes of consciousness in phenomenology in order to show that a very significant challenge of virtuality surfaces both within, as well as outside of, the discipline. This issue is of no small importance today, where the difference between perception and imagination, real and irreal, as well as presence and absence, are all becoming increasingly vague because of new technologies and the intrinsic virtualities involved therein. In this context, the question is: Where does virtuality fit in such a picture? I will argue that phenomenology can start to account for such developments, although much more explicative work will be required in the future. With this in mind, sections two to four will articulate an initial phenomenology of perception, phantasy, and image-consciousness, as found chiefly in works by Husserl and Sartre. Then, section five will question the preceding phenomenological theory through some phenomenological (Heidegger) and non-phenomenological (Bergson and Deleuze) thinkers, who all seem to have a concept of virtuality at the heart of their work. Lastly, in the final two sections I will suggest a difference between real and irreal virtualities, and briefly mention some current virtual technologies in order to show that there is a constant and complex interplay between the real, irreal, and the virtual in many of our everyday experiences—an interplay that needs to be investigated much further if we are to make sense of how it is changing how we think and behave.

2.1 Introduction Virtuality is fast becoming the base mode of many of our lives. Portions of humanity’s youngest generation might be the first to be more familiar with chatting to their friends online than in person; a video game named Rocket League always has around 80,000 players online, no matter the time of day or night; and in 2016, one individual, Tom Currie, quit his job in New Zealand in order to play Pokemon Go full time. These everyday examples already show that virtual technology is changing many people’s D. O’Shiel (B) Instituto de Filosofía, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_2

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behaviour, but it is also changing what is accessible to us, how it is, as well as when and to whom. The concept of virtuality is used across a wide range of disciplines. First of all, outside the humanities it is of concern in fields from psychology to computer science. Indeed, there are technological foci on virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR, AR, and MR respectively—cf. Plascencia 2015), gaming, and ubiquitous computing (for instance: Alce et al. 2014; Boland and McGill 2015); psychological studies of on- and offline behaviour (Błachnio et al. 2016; Knop et al. 2016; Sioni et al. 2017); as well as explorations into the use of virtual technologies in fields like education and medicine (Bujak et al. 2013; Kleinsmith et al. 2015; Yilmaz 2016). The issue of virtuality is also spread throughout the humanities, from anthropology, social science and media studies (Bolter and Grusin [1999] 2000; Harper and Savat 2016; Nardi 2015; Shields 2002) to philosophy of technology (Gualeni 2015) and large Oxford compendiums (Grimshaw 2015). An international conference at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, in October 2016, demonstrated this immense diversity. What was also clear, however, was that virtuality is a very tricky concept to pin down in any cohesive manner. I believe phenomenology can help greatly in this regard. A comprehensive phenomenological account of virtuality has never been carried out. There are very interesting pieces on specific subjects (for instance: de Warren 2014; Staehler 2014; Turkle [2011] 2012), and the philosophies of Bergson ([1896, siglum: MM] 2012/2005) and Deleuze (for instance: [1966, siglum: B] 2011/2014) have it as a very central, metaphysical concept. Notwithstanding these works, the complexity and dynamism of the concept remain relatively understudied and underdeveloped. This paper aims to articulate the main initial considerations required for any subsequent and comprehensive phenomenology of virtuality, simultaneously demonstrating such a project’s relevance for the contemporary issue of virtual technology and its increasing predominance in many of our lives. Considering these points, I will first of all need to explicate the phenomenological nature of both perception and phantasy in Husserl. This has to take place within the larger discussion of Gegenwärtigung (presentation) and Vergegenwärtigung (presentification or making-present or re-presentation). Secondly, I will be able to hone in on the problem of imageconsciousness (Bildbewusstsein), analysing its phenomenological nature according to Husserl. A third section will then challenge Husserl’s assumption of a difference in kind between image-consciousness and phantasy through Sartre’s 1940 work L’imaginaire. Here Sartre, while holding an equally—or even stricter—delineation between perception and the imaginary (i.e. Husserl’s phantasy), nevertheless seems to collapse the distinction between image-consciousness and the imaginary in that the former becomes a subsection of the latter. This ultimately means, for Sartre, that

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there is a difference in degree, and not in kind, between (for instance) watching a tennis match on television, and imagining a totally irreal one in your head.1 Sartre’s stark opposition between perception and the imaginary will then be questioned in its own turn, initially through a Heidegger-inspired notion of forked being, and then through the more general trope of virtuality, as found in Bergson’s work and Deleuze’s study thereupon. Here, although the virtual and virtuality are not really terms to be found in classical phenomenology, I will start formulating the argument that there is an incredibly rich theory therein, one that moreover has imageconsciousness—as well as all the virtual technologies it makes possible—as its most powerful element. In this manner, virtuality may nuance the classical phenomenological differences between perception and phantasy, real and irreal, present and absent, as well as actual and possible. Indeed, I may even contend that virtual technology’s harnessing of the power and captivation of image-consciousness is starting to blur such basic distinctions, if not totally invert their power. Notwithstanding the rise of virtual technology, I will then argue for three types of real virtuality (namely self, world, and others) that our perceptual experiences are never without. Here I will suggest that it is actually these three broad categories of self, world, and others that virtual technologies take up and irrealize, whereby one can, for instance, perpetually represent the ‘best side’ of oneself on a Facebook profile photo. Indeed, in some final remarks I will conclude with a call for a more concerted work on these issues, in order to ultimately try and capture the many clear powers and advantages of such technologies—but also some potential dangers.

2.2 Perception, Presentification, and Phantasy in Husserl2 One may safely claim that the nature of perception is an ever-recurring theme in Husserl’s thought. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of pages on the subject matter; it is a base mode of consciousness that seems to ground all other forms. Nevertheless, it is not without issues of its own. Indeed, Husserl begins his Passive Synthesis with an apparent paradox of perception: 1 Eugen

Fink, particularly his long essay ‘Vergegenwärtigung und Bild’ ([1930] 1966), is a very important thinker with regard to all of these issues. This shorter investigation will however restrict itself to Husserl and Sartre. 2 Section Abstract—This section explicates the phenomenological nature of perception, presentification (Vergegenwärtigung), and phantasy in Husserl. Perception is essentially about presence, its objects are inexhaustible, and it is always situated and perspectival. Absence can be experience on the perceptual level thanks to its essential horizonal structure. However, I argue that absence is only properly evoked in acts of presentification (imagination in a broad sense), in which category phantasy (imagination in a narrow sense) is included. Phantasy has an essential as-if character, neutralizes reality, and presentifies us with unreal objects. There is thus a stark opposition between perception and phantasy, which can then be questioned through Husserl’s own concept of image-consciousness (Bildbewusstsein), to be dealt with in the next section. Keywords—Absence, Husserl, Perception, Phantasy, Presence, Presentification.

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D. O’Shiel External perception is a constant pretension to accomplish something that, by its very nature, it is not in a position to accomplish. Thus, it harbors an essential contradiction, as it were. My meaning will soon become clear to you once you intuitively grasp how the objective sense exhibits itself as unity the unending manifolds of possible appearances; and seen upon closer inspection, how the continual synthesis, as a unity of coinciding, allows the same sense to appear, and how a consciousness of ever new possibilities of appearance constantly persists over against the factual, limited courses of appearance, transcending them. ([1918–1926, siglum: PS] 2001/1966: 39/3)

Perception both presents the object tout court and yet, strictly speaking, one is only ever directly aware of one aspect (Abschattung) at any given moment. This is a riddle that kept Husserl occupied throughout most of his intellectual life, and it actually gave rise to an incredibly rich theory of perception that we are still trying to fully come to terms with. First of all, perception is about presence. In our everyday external senseperceptions (my focus here) an actually present, physical thing is given immediately and directly: [T]he experience that is presentive of something originarily is perception, the word being understood in the ordinary sense. To have something real given originarily and “attentively to perceive” and “experience” it in an intuiting simpliciter are one and the same. We have originary experience of concrete physical things in “external perception,” but no longer in memory or in forward-regarding expectation[.] ([1913, siglum: Id.I] 1983/2009: §1)

Here there are already hints regarding how perception is different from memory or expectation—in short and as we shall see further, various types of presentification (Vergegenwärtigung). Moreover, if memory and expectation are types of presentification, perception is the quintessential type of presentation (Gegenwärtigung—cf. [1898–1925, siglum: Hua23] 2005/1980: 108/101). Perception is thus always about physically present objects—things; this is indeed a main tenet of perception. This, however, also brings other laws of perception with it. First of all, our perceptions are truly inexhaustible. Husserl goes as far to say that even God would not be able to perceive an object all at once (cf. PS: 56/18–19), for it is in the very nature of perceiving that only certain profiles, aspects or sides are actually given to consciousness at any one moment, no matter how omnipotent this latter may be in other respects. In Husserl’s own terms, ‘[w]e can never think the given object without empty horizons in any phase of perception’ (PS: 56/19); perception is always situated, always perspectival, which means, also, that perception always presupposes a perceiver—in Husserl’s terminology a Leib, a lived-body. Along with being an absolute Now, Husserl’s Leib is also essentially characterized as an ‘absolute Here […] of all spatial orientation’ (PS: 584/297), which moreover always carries the ‘I-can’ of a conscious agent (cf. [1893–1917, siglum: T-C/Zb] 1991/2013: §18; Id.I: §27). These essential characteristics of our lived-bodies mean that we can all probe and investigate the things of perception indefinitely (so long as we are alive of course). In short, perceptual consciousness always already presupposes an embodied agent, situated in a spatial world. Such spatiality, we have seen, is necessarily horizonal in the sense that there are always inner (e.g. looking closer)

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and outer (e.g. looking beyond) horizons to absolutely everything we perceive (cf. PS: 43/6–7). Spatial horizons are just one dimension of perceptual horizon. Indeed, one of Husserl’s major achievements is to show how perceptual consciousness is always already in a complex temporal horizon as well, thereby demonstrating that the two, space and time, are inextricably intertwined in our perceptual experiences. This is Husserl’s well-known analyses of time-consciousness (see, for instance: de Warren [2009] 2011), where for every moment of perception there essentially belong three moments that are nevertheless always already fused together in a continuum of our actually lived experience (cf., for instance: T-C/Zb: §14). These moments are the primal Now, retention (i.e. the just-passed), and protention (the just-not-yet), and indeed they go a long way in explaining how an implicit notion of absence, as well as actuality and potentiality, are all already implied and experienced on the perceptual level, precisely through the latter’s ever-variable spatial-temporal horizonal nature. I contend that experiencing absence on the one hand, and explicitly evoking absence on the other, is one of the chief distinguishing factors to consider when thinking of the difference between perception (the paradigmatic case of presentation—Gegenwärtigung), and various kinds of presentification (Vergegenwärtigung). Indeed, although the horizonal nature of perceptual consciousness clearly demonstrates that absence is immediately and implicitly experienced on this level (examples: the back side of an object; the moment to come when about to strike a tennis ball), I contend that absence is only properly evoked in certain performances of presentification. I say certain performances because Husserl has a number of modes of presentification, not all of which always have explicit shades of activity. In fact, Husserl has no fewer than five main types of presentification: remembering or recollection (Erinnerung); visualising in the present (Mitvergegenwärtigung—e.g. explicitly visualising the back side of the object); expectation (Erwartung); phantasy (Phantasie); and empathy (Einfühlung). The first three correspond exactly to—and arise genetically out of—Husserl’s three sorts of empty presentations (Leervorstellungen). These latter are retention, co-intending (i.e. the implicit awareness of other sides to a thing), and protention. They are constantly at work in the essentially automatic—which is to say passive—temporal structure of perception. Here there is a crucial difference then: empty presentations are an integrally passive part of perception, whereas presentifications are essentially not perceptions in that they need imagination in the broad sense—i.e. presentification, the general capacity to evoke absence—in order occur at all. This goes for the other types of presentification as well. Empathy is essential for our ability to experience other minds, and phantasy—imagining in a narrower sense—is our capacity to irrealize and neutralize reality in a manner that opens up a whole new realm of imaginary objects (e.g. a unicorn). Hereby, although various types of presentification might have various mixtures of passivity and activity (for instance empathy can be quite automatic, but also at times an explicit effort—cf. the Fifth Mediation in Husserl [1929] 1995), it is safe to say that all types of presentification explicitly evoke something that is not (and may never be) immediately and implicitly given. Whether this is a memory, an explicit image of something co-present, an

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expectation, a phantasy, or another’s state of mind, these are all details of content as opposed to a more universal and formal structure of presentification as such. In Husserl’s own terms, presentification always concerns experiences where objects are not, strictly speaking, perceptually given: Perception is that consciousness which, so to speak, seizes a present with both hands by its shock of hair; it is a consciousness of presenting originaliter. In contrast, there are different modes of presentification. In and of itself, a presentification refers back to a presentation, though it is not a presentation. It allows something presentified—in our example, the memorial object—to appear “as if” it were present once again.3 (PS: 591/304)

This quotation should clarify how perception is always contrasted with various forms of presentification in Husserl. This latter issue is a complex one, for the various characteristics of various types of presentification can vary quite considerably, with, for instance, passivity and activity being variable, as well as the as-if tone in empathy. What should be clear, however, is that all presentifications go explicitly beyond the perceptually given—i.e. that which is simply present (gegenwärtig). Our capacity for phantasy is a case in point here. Indeed, Husserl repeatedly characterizes the as-if quality of phantasy (see, for instance: Hua23: 606–607/505); phantasy always already neutralizes and brackets the perceived precisely in order to explicitly evoke absent, irreal, or even ideal objects that are decidedly not (fully) given in perceptual experience, and may never be: Phantasying is set in opposition to perceiving and to the intuitive positing of past and future as true; in short, to all acts that posit something individual and concrete as existing. Perception makes a present reality appear to us as present and as a reality; memory places an absent reality before our eyes, not indeed as present itself, but certainly as reality. Phantasy, on the other hand, lacks the consciousness of reality in relation to what is phantasied. (Hua23: 4/4)

Phantasy is thus opposed to perception because the former has to do with non- and irreal objects, the latter with real ones. Indeed, real objects are precisely real because they are perceived (e.g. a chair); irreal ones because they are phantasized (e.g. a unicorn). This is quite a stark opposition that creates conceptual problems for Husserl’s account of image-consciousness (Bildbewusstsein), which seems, somewhat contradictorily, to contain elements of both reality (perception) and irreality (phantasy).

3 Translation modified—‚Wahrnehmung ist das Bewußtsein, eine Gegenwart sozusagen selbst beim

Schopf zu fassen, es ist originaliter gegenwärtigendes. Demgegenüber gibt es verschiedene Weisen von Vergegenwärtigungen. Eine Vergegenwärtigung weist in sich selbst auf Gegenwärtigung zurück, ist aber keine Gegenwärtigung. Sie läßt das Vergegenwärtigte, in unserem Fall das Erinnerte, so erscheinen, „als ob“ es wieder gegenwärtig wäre.’.

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2.3 The Problem of Image-Consciousness4 Image-consciousness (Bildbewusstsein) is indeed characterized by Husserl as a curious hybrid that seems to contain elements that both exist (are real, perceivable) and do not (are irreal, phantasizable). When I look at a photograph, for example, there are actual, perceived elements that are evidently there before me—and yet the photo also depicts something or someone that is decidedly not there, and perhaps can never be again. In Husserl’s own terms, image-consciousness has a structure of its own, with three essential components that nonetheless always already interlock in the actual lived experience: 1) [T]he physical image, the physical thing made from canvas, marble, and so on; (2) the representing or depicting object; and (3) the represented or depicted object. For the latter, we prefer to say simply “image subject”; for the first object, we prefer “physical image”; for the second, “representing image” or “image object.” (Hua23: 21/19)

Husserl is talking about a sculpture or painting or photograph here. However, this basic structure holds for a whole host of media that came after Husserl—televisions, computer screens, smartphones and so on. There is even a case for arguing that this form of consciousness extends beyond the primarily visual; perhaps certain physical soundwaves (physical image) are sensed (image object) in a manner that gives one intentional access to a certain song (image subject—e.g. ‘Yellow Submarine’), which latter is only made present through the specific, physical version one is listening to. In this manner, this structure of image-consciousness always has a tripartite structure: the physical image (physische Bild) as the physical matter involved, which places (at least part of) the experience squarely in the realm of the perceivable; the image object (Bildobjekt) as all the sensuous experience stemming from the physical image; and the image subject (Bildsujet), which allows one to transcend what is immediately given towards something or someone that is not perceptually there, and may never be (again). If the physical image is clearly in the realm of the perceivable, and the image subject is only accessible thanks to our capacity to presentify (i.e. imagine), the middle aspect, the image object, has a somewhat ambiguous status. Indeed, and as already mentioned, this mode of consciousness with three interlinked components covers a whole range of media, media that are actually coming to predominate in many of our lives. To take a contemporary example, imagine watching a tennis match on television. Here the television, its physical assemblage, is 4 Section Abstract—This section hones in on the problem of image-consciousness (Bildbewusstsein), analysing its phenomenological nature according to Husserl. I summarize Husserl’s characterization of image-consciousness, explicating that it is always made up of a tripartite structure of physical image, image object, and image subject. Using an example (watching a tennis match on television) I show that: the physical image is the TV; the image object is the phenomena you experience emitting from the TV; and the image subject is the actual match taking place. Image-consciousness thus allows one to be pseudo present somewhere one is not. The physical image belongs to the perceptual, the image subject to the phantasized, but the image object has an ambiguous status that requires further analysis. Key Terms—Bildbewusstsein, Husserl, Image-consciousness, Image object, Image subject, Physical image.

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clearly the physical image. One’s experience of the images emitting from the TV are then what is known as the image object here—which can again be seen as the phenomenal experience of watching a certain thing that is nevertheless not there, not in your room. It is not there because this structure of consciousness also has the third component, the image subject, which is the actually occurring match in Roland Garros or Wimbledon or wherever. If I were to be at the match, I would be perceiving it; our capacity for image-consciousness however allows me to be pseudo present at the match through the technology (TV—physical image) and my experience (image object) of it. What is this mode of consciousness, then? It is clearly not a straightforward case of perception, because in perception I do not transcend towards something that is not physically there. Actually it is often very difficult—if not impossible—to perceive the ‘pure sense data’ of a painting or photo or a TV emission; one normally always already sees an image as an image. This already points to a structure of experience over and above perception. It does not seem, however, to be a straightforward case of phantasy, either, because in this latter I can simply close my eyes and imagine a tennis match (for instance) without any reliance on a television or computer screen or whatever. For Husserl, then, straightforward—or at least ‘pure’—cases of phantasy do not seem to require a physical image and, thereby, if there is an image object or something similar, then this latter is not tied to the former. Perhaps image-consciousness is simply a hybrid then, a mixture between perception and phantasy, whereby to call it a bit of both or neither (in the latter case it would be a structure or mode of consciousness in its own right) could both be acceptable characterizations. Or perhaps we need a new term for this experience, one more contemporary than Husserl had access to, like virtual or ‘artificial presence’ (cf. Wiesing 2005). Indeed, perhaps Husserl was at pains to express a mode of experience that has grown exponentially afterwards, both in number and complexity. I feel unable to commit to a definitive answer at this point, because there is something with the image object that is still highly ambiguous and therefore hard to clearly characterize. Indeed, Husserl himself seemed to struggle quite a bit with this aspect, in that the image object was sensuous, phenomenal data that was nevertheless somehow linked and conditioned by something that was not strictly speaking there (the image subject). This kind of halfway house between a full-blown perception and a phantasy also seems to have links with Husserl’s rather murky characterizations of ‘phantasms’ (cf., for instance: Hua23: 281–282/232)—a kind of parallel to perceptual sensation in phantasy that was to be largely abandoned later in favour of emphasizing the neutralization capacities of the latter (cf., for instance: Hua23: 605, 689–692/504, 571–574). All in all, then, this middle ground in the experience of image-consciousness—which as already intimated is a category of experience that is becoming increasingly important to understand—is not yet clear enough, and thus I propose a relatively lengthy excursus in order to get partially to the bottom of the issue.

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2.4 Sartre: Perception and the Imaginary5 If Husserl had already drawn a clear distinction between perception and phantasy, Sartre did this with even more force: one is either perceiving or phantasizing, never both at once. The question with regard to the status of image-consciousness then becomes even more pressing, and Sartre’s answer is rather clear: it belongs to the realm of phantasy—or in his terms it makes up a significant portion of the imaginary. Actually, Sartre collapses the Husserlian distinction between physical image and image object, replacing these with his own concept of the analogon, whereby watching a tennis match on TV, for example, and imagining one in one’s head, are both imaging experiences with the same fundamental formal structure and thereby do not ultimately differ in kind. Thus while Sartre maintains a strict division between perceiving and imagining, for the latter Sartre sees no structural difference when considering external from internal images. It is going to take some explication of Sartre’s 1940 work L’imaginaire to arrive at his reasons for this, as well as its consequences for us.6 Like with Husserl (or any phenomenologist for that manner), for Sartre consciousness is an absolutely necessary condition by and through which a world can appear. In order for this to occur, consciousness must also be defined, for Sartre, essentially as non-coincidence; by the very fact that a world and its objects appear to a conscious subject already demonstrates that such ‘consciousness of…’ is not itself the world and its things. In this sense, the advent of consciousness introduces a kind of gap allowing for a basic and all-pervasive capacity for awareness, by and through which all can appear precisely to such fundamental awareness. This is the language of intentionality, now in Sartrean terms, whereby the elemental activity of consciousness constitutes a general ground out of which consciousness can be conscious of something. A well-known Sartrean example highlights this point: when I look for Pierre in a café, the café is automatically constituted as a ‘ground’ ([1943, siglum: BN/EN] 2005/2012: 33/44) out of which things arise through the direction of my gaze, with each individual thing then being ‘thrown back to nothingness’ (BN/EN: 35/45) when 5 Section

Abstrct—This third section challenges Husserl’s assumption of a difference in kind between image-consciousness and phantasy through Sartre’s 1940 work L’imaginaire. Indeed, while holding an equally—or even stricter—demarcation between perception and the imaginary, wherethrough recurrent themes like experiencing and evoking absence reappear, Sartre nevertheless collapses the distinction between image-consciousness and phantasy, in that both become domains of the imaginary. This is primarily done through his notion of the analogon, which presentifies something absent or irreal through materials that are present. Such present items can be TV screens, but also more mental phenomena like pieces of knowledge. This ultimately means that although there is a strict difference in kind for Sartre between perception and the imaginary, there is now also only a difference in degree between external and internal imaginations. Keywords—Absence, Analogon, Image-consciousness, Imaginary, Perception, Presence, Sartre. 6 A significant portion of the paragraphs that follow are updated and refined versions of a subsection of my Ph.D. thesis, ‘Magical Being: a Sartrean account of emotion and value, using the case of disgust’, defended at KU Leuven, Belgium, in May 2016.

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I realize that they are not what I am looking for, Pierre. If Pierre is in fact there, I would be ‘suddenly arrested by his face and the whole café would organize itself around him as a discrete presence’ (BN/EN: 34/44). In short, I would perceive Pierre, greet him, and sit down. However, Pierre is not there, and once I have searched the whole café this place is ‘thrown’ in its own turn because I have seen that the café does not contain him. In other words, I experience Pierre’s absence ‘from the whole café’ (ibid.). I have already argued, with Husserl, that in the realm of the imaginary proper, absence is not simply experienced but is evoked in a manner that transcends reality. Extending upon Sartre’s own example, I may here say that after I have left the café, I, whilst walking down the street, start to wonder where Pierre is, and here I may imagine him, for instance, on a bus. In an instant I evoke the image of Pierre on a bus whilst walking down the street. Such an imaging act is a spontaneous creation of my consciousness that has no necessary link with my very real act of walking (though it does, in this case at least, have a non-strict causal link to the preceding event, namely looking for Pierre in the café and not finding him). Sartre goes as far as to say that the real (perceived) and irreal (imaged) necessarily exclude one another (cf. [1940, siglum: IM] 2004/2005: 120/131)—and yet, at the very same time the imaginary always arises through consciousness irrealizing the real. Clarifying these points will require another example. Sartre claims that it is one thing to perceive that an arabesque continues behind a cupboard, and another to imagine what the arabesque behind the cupboard might actually look like. In the first case it is quite clear, says Sartre, that there is always, in any given perception, an emptily intended project of perceiving that continues beyond the actually given content of the present perception. In other words, there always exist elements that are not actually perceived in the present moment but are nevertheless always implicitly there—and they can always, if we so choose, be perceived (in this example, by looking behind the cupboard). This is completely in line with Husserl’s theory of horizons, with the underside of an ashtray on a desk being one of Sartre’s own examples (IM: 121/233). With regard to the arabesque, it means that if I perceive only half of it on the wall, then, according to the phenomenological laws of perception I automatically have an empty intention of the hidden half in the one and the same perceptive act of the visible half. Such empty intentions have their basis in our knowledge, Sartre says, which always has to do with being present before a certain thing (e.g. half an arabesque) or truth.7 Perception (and knowledge) thus revolve around presence for Sartre. Imagining the arabesque behind the cupboard, on the other hand, is an act of positing that radically excludes any emptily intended perception of it. Indeed, in general imaging tries to make something which is absent, present. Here the part of the arabesque behind the cupboard is no longer a mere empty continuation of the present perception, but is on the contrary directly aimed at, albeit as imaged. In other words, I isolate the absent part of the arabesque and aim directly at it through the imaging act. Such 7 More

specifically, our knowledge has its source in memory, or in implicit (‘unformulated’ or ‘antepredicative’) inferences—cf. IM: 121/233.

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an act involves a necessary neutralization of the perceptive attitude for the imaging one to occur. In this manner, imagining an object necessarily excludes emptily intending it because it is now directly aimed at as imaged. Even further, imaging excludes acts of perception in general; indeed try it, try to perceive and imagine something simultaneously. Here I think one will find that although the world does not completely disappear when we phantasize, it is clear that the details within a normal perceptive attitude, as well as its objects in any of their particulars, more or less fade into the background. Think of daydreaming, where someone might be ‘miles away’ (i.e. from their immediate world of perception) or ‘staring into space’ because they are consumed by their own phantasizing. In this way, imaging consciousness is an act whereby I both make explicit and degrade my (empty) perception in a spontaneous act that posits, for instance, the arabesque behind the cupboard in a complete though irreal manner (cf. IM: 122/234). It is important to note here that irreal does not mean purely fictional; irreal objects are simply objects of imaging consciousness and can be ideal (e.g. a circle), actual (e.g. a tennis match), or fictional (e.g. a unicorn). In short, in the imaginary I do not emptily intend the arabesque behind the wall but ‘see’ it through my imaging consciousness of it. Perception and the imaginary therefore necessarily exclude one another for Sartre because reality must be irrealized—which is to say neutralized—if an imaging act is to arise at all. How, more specifically, is such irrealizing made possible? Sartre’s answer is that absence—or nothingness—can be evoked only through materials that are present to us. Such materials form an analogon for the absent or non-existent thing. Indeed, under the heading analogon one needs to think of all the physical (a painting, a photo, an actor etc.—cf. IM: 17–53/40–112), psychophysiological (affectivity (viz. feelings and emotions) and kinaesthetic sensations (e.g. moving one’s closed eyes in order to imagine a moving tennis ball)—cf. IM: 68–83/135–164.), and psychical (knowledge of something, for instance—cf. IM: 57–68/115–135) materials imaging consciousness utilizes in order to constitute its image. Let us read Sartre on the matter. When trying to ‘capture’ my absent friend Pierre, I try to (1) mentally represent (i.e. phantasize or imagine) him; (2) look at a photo of him; and (3) look at a caricature of him: We have employed three procedures to give ourselves the face of Pierre. In the three cases we found an ‘intention’, and that intention aims, in the three cases, at the same object. This object is neither the representation, nor the photo, nor the caricature: it is my friend Pierre. Moreover, in the three cases, I aim at the object in the same way: it is on the ground of perception that I want to make the face of Pierre appear, I want to ‘make it present’ to me. And, as I cannot make a direct perception of him spring up, I make use of a certain matter that acts as an analogon, as an equivalent of perception. (IM: 18/41–42)

Imaging acts, whether they use external (e.g. pictures), psychophysiological (mainly feelings and emotions), or even purely psychical (non-affective memories and knowledge) materials, all ultimately have the same structure for Sartre: to show that an ‘object is given, when absent, through a presence’ (IM: 85/170). Such presence is

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nothing other than the analogical material (photo, feeling, etc.) of the specific imaging act. Indeed, the analogon contains all the present materials used in order to make an absent (or non-existent or reality-neutral) object appear before consciousness in a way that denotes ‘consciousness of an object as imaged and not consciousness of an image’ (IM: 86/171–172). The image, therefore, is the active form of consciousness through which the object (Pierre) is given as imaged as opposed to perceived (or conceived8 ). It is important to understand that the analogon does not have be made up of one specific type of analogical material; on the contrary there more often than not exists ‘a plurality of differentiated qualities in the analogon’ (IM: 85/168). Although these qualities, such as pieces of knowledge, bodily movements, feelings and so on can all be distinguished in the abstract through analysis, in the actual imaging act such qualities form the analogon entirely, once and for all, each and every time, in the ‘unity’ (IM: 137/263) of the same imaging act. The analogon therefore neutralizes or modifies aspects of reality (first moment) so consciousness can then use this material to evoke its imaginary object (second moment). Indeed, a feeling of sadness as real is the precise tonality of the feeling, made possible by a consciousness thereof; a feeling of sadness in missing someone who is not there uses the feeling as analogical material for the missing object. The first instance is perceptual; the second has entered the imaginary. This is what Sartre means when he states that the feeling, portrait, and the like all ‘cease[…] to be an object’ (IM: 22/51) of perception; they ‘function[…] as matter for an image’ (Ibid.). In other words, there are always materials of the world and of consciousness which, when perceived, are felt as directly there. However, such materials can also be used to evoke something that is not there, and might never be (again). It is in these latter cases that such materials, because they are presences used to evoke absences, come to stand for something else, and thus become irrealized in an imaging act that evokes something absent, irreal, or ideal. In Sartre’s words, ‘the two worlds,9 the imaginary and the real, are constituted by the same objects; only the grouping and the interpretation of these objects varies’ (IM: 20/47). Such groupings and interpretations are thanks to the two different structures of perceptual and imaging intentionality, whereby the former is soaked through with reality (physical presence), the latter with irreality (transcendent absence). Thanks to the real materials that are capable of being used by imaging consciousness in an analogical way, a whole irreal realm opens up, which is full of both enchantments and pitfalls. Indeed, imaging consciousness is ‘constituting, isolating, and annihilating’ (IM: 181/348) all at once—it is that ‘great irrealizing function’ (IM: 3/13) as Sartre himself stated. My question, now, is where image-consciousness would fit in this schema. I think it should be quite clear; image-consciousness makes up a part of the imaginary for Sartre, which means there is no difference in kind between this and phantasy. 8I

cannot enter into Sartre’s interesting ideas with regard to conception here—see: IM: 8–9/24–25. later states that the use of world is ‘inexact’ (IM: 132/254) with reference to the imaginary, because it cannot possibly contain the inexhaustibility of the real causal world.

9 Sartre

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In fact, these two—image-consciousness and phantasy—would make up the two main realms of Sartre’s imaginary. To clarify, let us take a straightforward case: to perceive a tennis match, I simply go and watch it, in the flesh; to watch a tennis match on television however, I use my capacity for image-consciousness to witness an absent event through the analogical material provided to me (i.e. the TV images); and finally, to phantasize a completely irreal tennis match, I need only make use of my knowledge of tennis, as well as perhaps the movement of my eyes (Sartre’s claim is that you cannot properly imagine a tennis ball moving without moving your eyes somewhat), which thereby function as present analogical materials that evoke the inexistent match. Now, although there is a difference in kind for Sartre between watching a tennis match in the flesh and watching one on TV—the first is a case of perception, the second is a mode of the imaginary—for Sartre there is no formal, structural difference between watching the match on TV and phantasizing a completely irreal one. This is because, even though the image subject is real in the first instance but can be fictional in the second, the basic structure remains the same for him. This structure is that of the imaginary: feelings, sensations, our knowledge and physical things like televisions can all help constitute imaging acts, which always transcend towards the absent (i.e. the match through the TV) or inexistent (the phantasized match) object through these very materials. Thus the structure is the same; in the imaginary there is always analogical material (TV, movement of eyes, knowledge etc.) which is all used to presentify something not there. Whether the absent object—the image subject—is real, fictional, or ideal, regards the content of the act, not the structure. For Sartre it is crucial that this latter remains fundamentally and formally the same, and thereby essentially opposed in nature to perception. According to Sartre, then, image-consciousness makes up a part of the imaginary, because the imaginary always uses physical (TVs, brain activity) and phenomenal experiences thereof to the extent that these two are not really distinguishable in any useful sense for him. Thus, Husserl’s physical image and image object are collapsed together and are in fact replaced by Sartre’s concept of the analogon, which can be (a combination) of anything from televisions and computer screens, to brain activity, emotions, and pieces of knowledge. The combination of analogical materials evoking transcendent objects remains the same in all cases; whether the image is an actual tennis match, or a unicorn, is of secondary importance to this more basic structure.

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2.5 The Challenge of Virtuality10 For Husserl image-consciousness seemed to contain components of both perception and phantasy. Indeed, he even goes on to call it ‘perceptual imagination’ (Hua23: 85/79). For Sartre, we have just seen that image-consciousness makes up a significant portion of the imaginary, even with its physical components. This is because these latter are not used to perceive, but are precisely used as analogical materials to presentify something that is not there. There remains, however, a nagging feeling with regard to the either-or dichotomy between perception and phantasy (Husserl) or the imaginary (Sartre), even with these clarifications of the trickiest case, that of image-consciousness. Indeed, I believe an important concept drawn from Heidegger, plus some explorative remarks into the idea of virtuality in the philosophy of Bergson (and Deleuze’s study thereupon), might show how the remaining tension between Husserl and Sartre may be framed into an overall more dynamic picture that nonetheless keeps some of the most crucial distinctions, albeit a bit more fluidly. The Heidegger-inspired concept is that of forked being. In his long analysis of Plato’s cave allegory (as well as the Theaetetus) Heidegger finishes ([1988, siglum: ET/WW] 2009/1997: §44) with an intriguing and under-emphasized idea. The whole work may be seen as a detailed exegesis, using Plato, of our dual capacity to see and perceive on the one hand, but also be knowledgeable and imaginative on the other. In short, the work concerns how we are always more than mere perception. This indeed culminates with the idea of forked being,11 where the two tines of the fork are, precisely, presentation (Gegenwärtigung) and presentification (Vergegenwärtigung): ‘the double-meaning of doxa: its forking into presentation and presentification’12 (ibid.). For Heidegger, our doxastic lives are a constantly lived dynamic between these two basic elements: The fork is the condition of the possibility of untruth, but at the same time the condition of the possibility of truth; both are subject to the same conditions. What does the fork mean? It 10 Section

Abstract—Sartre’s stark opposition between perception and the imaginary is questioned here in its own turn, initially through a Heidegger-inspired notion of forked being, and then through the more general trope of virtuality, as found in Bergson’s work (and Deleuze’s study thereupon). Indeed, for Heidegger our existence is always forked between presentation and presentification, which I argue can provide a more general and complementary metaphysical backdrop to the more specific acts of perception and phantasy that Husserl and Sartre seemed to be primarily concerned with. For Bergson, experiences rest metaphysically on two poles—pure perception and pure memory—both of which not only essentially entail virtuality, but which also meet in a constant dynamic of actualization. This hereby sets the stage for reconciling such a notion of virtuality with a phenomenology of perception, phantasy, and image-consciousness—and I actually think it can improve the latter, as I begin to explain in the subsequent section. Key Terms—Actual, Bergson, Deleuze, Forked being, Heidegger, Pure memory, Pure perception, Virtuality. 11 This precise expression is mine, although as one may see from the following it is quite directly inspired by Heidegger’s text. 12 Translation modified—‚des Doppelsinns von δ´ oξα: ihre Gabelung in Gegenwärtigung und Vergegenwärtigung’.

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is the image of the fundamental constitution of human Dasein, of its essential construction. (ibid.)

Under this interpretation, such forking between presentation (perception et al.) and presentification (phantasy et al.) stands as the ‘image’—the symbol—for the ‘fundamental constitution’ of human reality (presentation) and irreality (presentification) alike. Now one needs to ask: How might such claims tie in with Husserl and Sartre? Does the idea of forked being not fly in the face of the earlier claims that either one perceives or phantasizes, either one is occupied with the real or the non-real? I believe there is no grand conflict here; actually I believe such a concept might complement the afore-running. This is because I think Husserl and especially Sartre were more concerned with individual acts of consciousness, and here it seems phenomenologically accurate that, for the vast majority13 of the time, either one perceives or one phantasizes at a given moment. Heidegger, on top of—or alongside—this, nevertheless seems to emphasize that our general being is pervaded by a dual capacity for both acts of presentation and presentification. One may even say that the present and absent run on a continuum and thus there is no real difference in kind between perception and imagination here. Nonetheless, when looking closer I believe Heidegger’s main point is little different from—or at least can be reconciled with—Sartre’s claim in the conclusion of L’imaginaire that the real presupposes the irreal just as much as vice versa (cf. IM: 185–188/356–361). Therefore, under this interpretation I propose there is a metaphysical, third-person backdrop to our lives that is a constantly lived forked dynamic between presence and absence, reality and irreality, actuality and possibility—while at the same time individual acts of perception and phantasy are precisely that, individual, first-person acts within a more complex and dynamic whole. In fact, the concept of virtuality might by that precise conceptual bridge required between the poles of real and irreal, present and absent, actual and possible. If it is focused on, I think virtuality, although very challenging to comprehend in any comprehensive manner, could bring some fluidity into important distinctions that do remain overly rigid at times. In this manner, pure perception and pure image might ultimately be two conceptual poles of one and the same lived dynamic, even though within this dynamic you can still have phenomenological experiences of perception as opposed to phantasy. It is in the philosophy of Bergson where one finds the potential for a dynamic concept of virtuality articulated with its most force. Bergson’s invaluable challenge is that there is no such thing as a pure perception in praxis; pure perception is on one conceptual pole (pure memory on the other) of a highly complex dynamic that is ceaselessly played out between the dualistic realms of matter and memory, whereby both nevertheless always already inform and format our lived bodily experiences.

13 I will not enter into well-known cases of illusion and hallucination (cf., for instance: Smith 2002),

although I will say that these can only be fully understood once one takes the temporal and interactive aspects of both perception and imagination into account.

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Bergson begins his account with an apparent monism of the image. Indeed, even matter is ‘a collection of “images”’14 (MM: 9/1) for Bergson. Bergson starts this way to avoid both idealism and realism; the former slips into traps because it overly focuses on representations, the latter on things. Bergson’s technical use of image tries to establish a medium ground between these two—for him—unwarranted extremes: ‘by “image” we understand a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing – an existence situated halfway between the “thing” and the “representation”’15 (ibid.). This means all objects are images for Bergson—indeed even ‘the brain is an image’ (MM: 19/13)—because it is too far to assert they are definitely like that without any observer (i.e. a thing), but not enough to say that they are merely subject-dependent phenomena (i.e. a representation). Bergson’s monism of images might lead one to imply a monism in general. However, he goes on to articulate two poles to experience that differ not in degree but in nature (cf. MM: 67/69). These are metaphysical hypotheses (see, for instance: MM: 34–35/31) used to found and ultimately explain our everyday lived experiences. The first is pure perception: [A] perception which exists in theory rather than in fact, which would have a being placed where I am, living as I live, but absorbed in the present, and capable, by eliminating memory in all of its forms, of obtaining a vision of matter both immediate and instantaneous.16 (MM: 34/31)

Pure perception is a hypothetical form of perception without any mediation of memory; it is a pure coalescence and immanence with matter itself. Such perception ‘would veritably be a part of things’17 (MM: 65/67). On the other conceptual extreme, as already mentioned, is pure memory. This is the realm of spirit or mind, no longer affected or effected by perceptions, affections, and bodies—it has no need or concern for praxis and remains purely ineffectual in the proper sense of the term (cf. MM: 142). Ultimately it is a type of pure, matterless contemplation. These two hypotheses provide a metaphysics to help us understand the basic extremes that make our experiences possible. Bergson, however, is also well aware that our actual experiences are always already a mixture of these extremes. Indeed, ‘there is no perception which is not full of memories’ (MM: 33/30). Through our lived, conscious bodies, which are by nature constituted for praxis, pure perceptions are always already contracted and limited through what is useful for action (cf. MM: 14 Translation

modified—«un ensemble d’ «images»».

15 Translation modified—«par«image»nous entendons une certain existence qui est plus que ce que

l’idéaliste appelle une représentation, mais moins que ce que le réaliste appelle une chose – une existence située à mi-chemin entre la «chose» et la «représentation»». 16 Translation modified—«une perception qui existe en droit plutôt qu’en fait, celle qu’aurait un être placé où je suis, vivant comme je vis, mais absorbé dans le présent, et capable, par l’élimination de la mémoire sous toutes ses formes, d’obtenir de la matière une vision à la fois immédiate et instantanée.». 17 Translation modified—«ferait […] véritablement partie des choses».

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20/14); and pure memory, which is the ‘survival of past images’ (MM: 66/68), only surfaces out of latency and purity if it again becomes useful for such actions (cf. ibid.). Perception thus pulls memory into action, and memory contracts certain perceptions into focus—all of this because of that lived, situated actuality that is our conscious bodies, the ‘privileged image’ (see: MM: 661/3) at the crossroads of matter and mind. Till now, there seems to be little mention of virtuality. Virtuality is, nonetheless, a crucial and quite pervasive, if at times a rather implicit, concept running through all of this. Indeed, on the side of our perception, which ‘measures our possible action upon things’18 (MM: 56/57), all of those that are ‘separated from our body by an interval’ (MM: 57/57) are ‘virtual action[s]’ (ibid.). In this manner, ‘[t]he objects which surround my body reflect its possible action upon them’ (MM: 15–16)— the objects in my vicinity constantly reflect my possible actions through my very perception of them. This means there are virtual actions wherever I look, move, and so on. Virtuality has immense sway on the side of pure memory too. In fact, all memories—and the life of the mind in general—that are not pulled into action through perception are in a ‘virtual state’ (MM: 240/270); they have the potential to be actualized but are not (yet). It would then seem that the realm of actuality is on the immediate axis of the conscious body, where pure perception and pure memory intersect into a lived reality. Even here, however, there are elements of virtuality for Bergson: ‘we have to take into account the fact that our body is not a mathematical point in space, that its virtual actions are complicated by, and impregnated with, real actions’ (MM: 58/59). Indeed, one of Bergson’s overarching dictums in his philosophy is to start to think of life in terms of lived time (durée) rather than in spatializations of such time. And indeed, in duration there are constantly, by necessity, interstices of virtuality within the very fabric of our lived realities. This is because conscious bodily life is, indeed, on the crossroads of forces that pull, contract, and expand from both directions; the actual lived moment is always already informed and conditioned by virtualities that have been and will come to be—not too dissimilar to Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness on this score. Under this conception, then, it is not so much about real and irreal, present and absent, but more about actual and virtual as the two most basic categories. And indeed, Deleuze’s study of Bergson picks up and emphasizes this point. Here the virtual is not in fact opposed to the real at all—‘the virtual as virtual has a reality’ (B: 100/103)— but to the actual (actuel). In this manner, virtuality plays a key structuring role in the various processes of actualization that govern not only our experiences, but also the very constitution of our realities (and irrealities). Indeed, somewhat forgetting virtuality on the side of pure perception, Deleuze focuses on the virtuality in what he sees to be the three ‘major stages of the Bergsonian philosophy’19 (B: 13/1), namely duration, memory, and the élan vital (see: ibid.). All of these are on the side of a subjectivity (mind) that is never completely actual and is thus essentially rooted 18 Translation 19 Translation

modified—«mesure notre action possible sur des choses». modified—«grandes étapes de la philosophie bergsonienne».

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in a reality of virtuality, which also ceaselessly has elements becoming actualized through that which—for Deleuze—is the ‘absolute’ (B: 35/27): difference. Indeed, it is precisely because life and its duration is so variegated and diverse that it essentially has to be a ‘virtual multiplicity’ (B: 83/83), meaning that actual, current elements make up only one non-independent—a moreover a very small—portion of a more general and complex process of virtuality and actualization.

2.6 Real and Irreal Virtualities20 What to make of this, then? How could Bergson and Deleuze’s claims with regard to virtuality be reconciled with the phenomenological perspective? Should one even try to do this? What would be the point? I think that, although virtual and virtuality are not terms used in phenomenology, one can, through minimal interpretation, show how an implicit concept of virtuality is already at work therein. Moreover, I think phenomenology can actually show that there are various types of virtuality, not least real and irreal virtualities. Such an emphasis would not only show how phenomenology can account for virtuality; it would also provide a very promising initial framework through which we may address various contemporary issues, not least the rise of virtual technologies and the potential changes and problems they are introducing. In this manner, and with Bergson’s and Deleuze’s emphasis on a more fundamental actual-virtual distinction notwithstanding, I maintain that phenomenology still shows clear differing structural laws between perception and imagination, even given a larger overall framework. Indeed, in contrast to Bergson phenomenology starts, methodologically, from concrete first-person experiences. However, on top of this I believe the idea of forked being has shown that there can be a more general metaphysical backdrop to the individual phenomenal experiences, one governed more by impersonal dynamics between presence and absence, real and irreal, actual and possible in general. In like thought, therefore, the metaphysical analyses of Bergson (and Deleuze) can be seen to supplement, develop, and indeed challenge this basic phenomenological stance through a rich notion of virtuality. In this manner, a focus on virtuality may be able to enhance our understanding of our perceptual and imagina20 Section Abstract—Here I argue that although the virtual and virtuality are not really terms to be found in classical phenomenology, I can start formulating the idea that there is an incredibly rich theory therein, one that moreover has image-consciousness—as well as all the virtual technologies it possibilizes—as its most powerful element. In this manner, virtuality may nuance the classical phenomenological differences between perception and phantasy, real and irreal, present and absent, as well as actual and possible. Indeed, I may even contend that virtual technology’s harnessing of the power and captivation of image-consciousness is starting to blur such basic distinctions, if not invert their power—and not always for the better. Regarding this, I discuss how real virtualities on the perceptual plane get taken up and irrealized on the imaginary plane, whereby the virtual is precisely those imaginary (irreal) objects that have a tendency to be real. Key Terms—Imaginary, Irreal virtuality, Perception, Phenomenology, Real virtuality, Virtual technology.

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tive experiences in order to give a more thoroughgoing and nuanced phenomenology, as well as show how such insights may also contribute to our understanding of rising virtual technologies and the manners in which they might be changing the ways we think and behave. In general, one may say that even very basic structures of perception and imagination are becoming less clear-cut, whereby virtual technologies use their everincreasing powers to create and maintain images that increasingly approximate and encroach upon our everyday perceptions. Indeed, certain portions of humanity might be the first where digital imagination and the expansive virtual objects that come with it are fast becoming the base materials for many people’s most significant experiences, thereby supplanting—or at least partially merging with—the previously predominant perceptual layer. Even further, with the latest brand of virtual technologies, although strictly speaking their core remains imaginary (i.e. irreal, absent, and now primarily digital objects), they have become increasingly anchored in webs of actual people and machinery that arguably ultimately wish to annul the distinction between real and irreal altogether. Indeed, their very names—virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality—emphasize the apparent reality of such experiences, even though they use real things (computers) to presentify experiences that can feel somewhat real but are still, phenomenologically, ultimately of the irreal, imaginary register (i.e. transcendent digital objects). Much of such technology—including Facebook’s mantra of ‘connecting people’—is hereby trying to supplant the real (perceived) with the irreal (imagined), in ever-elaborate ways. This is indeed what virtuality with regard to such technology is: irreal (imaginary) phenomena with a strong tendency towards actuality and reality, to the point of mimicking, enhancing, and even supplanting the same. Social media, online gaming, and upcoming VR, AR, and MR technologies are thus cases in point here, where whole webs of people from all over the world become united through so many virtual networks, even to the point of addiction. Contemporary philosophy thus needs to take the issue of virtuality very seriously, because ever-innovative technologies are changing the very structures of some our most basic conscious experiences, not least the perceived and imagined. I claim that it is still very important to know this distinction, so that individuals and groups are less prone to get carried away with the numberless irrealities that are constantly being fed across the virtual wavelengths. Indeed, although a virtual world is now literally at many of our fingertips, there is a normative issue of control here that might not be as clear-cut as it seems. To explain these points in a manner more related to the theory in question, I would like to maintain that there still are important differences between reality and irreality, and that, in fact, each has their own type of virtuality—types which moreover should not be conflated. With regard to the realm of perception, I may already provisionally outline three fundamental types of real virtualities, which the history of philosophy has always engaged with, but which I may now frame in a contemporary technological context. Here we have the notions of self, world, and others. Each are essential elements of our everyday perceptual experiences that we can never really be without—even though

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we never experience any of these categories directly. This is indeed the crux of such perceptual, real virtuality: there is an essential ‘almost’ character to our experience of it. Sometimes this is quite literal; ‘I’m virtually finished!’ means I am almost finished. More generally though, the virtual in perception seems to be that which is present without actually being fully so. With Bergson and Deleuze this was clear; the actual is always already conditioned by the virtual, which can be actualized at any moment from either matter or mind. With phenomenology it is less explicit, but it is there too; Husserl’s pages and pages on the temporal and spatial horizonal natures of perception, where there is always more to the object than actually given, thus yielding the utter inexhaustibility of perception too, was fully endorsed by Sartre and shows that there are always real virtualities in perception, whether this be further aspects of my self (personality), the world and its things, or others. This was then pushed further in Heidegger as a more general structural dynamic. All in all though, even with Husserl and Sartre real virtualities on the perceptual level are all those phenomena that are always sort of present but, when being strict, they are only every given through things that actually are so. To explicate a bit further, we experience our selves through our lived-bodies, our personal reflections (ego), and our past; we experience the world through things and causal laws that always already have Husserl’s horizonal structure of perception at their core; and we experience other people through their bodies and their language (both verbal and non). My whole self, the world as a whole, and the minds of others are never actually, directly, and completely given to me, but they often feel as if they are precisely because they are always indicated through so many related specific and concrete phenomena. These, therefore, are the three broad categories of real virtuality that our concrete experiences are never without. Indeed, they are real because the structure our everyday perceptual (i.e. real) experiences; but they are also virtual because they are never experienced fully or directly themselves. In Husserl’s terms, they are horizonal; in Bergson and Deleuze’s, they border and constantly influence the actual. The three categories of real virtuality can then be distorted. On the real plane, this can happen in cases like addiction and trauma where one’s self, world, and relationship to others can greatly modify, often to very damaging and extreme lengths. In addiction I think a type of hypervirtuality takes place where one privileged object (or set of objects) starts to hold sway over everything one does and wishes for. In traumas a kind of hidden virtuality can occur where a traumatic event governs one’s sleeping and waking life without being able to be fully captured—and laid to rest, forgotten—itself. More significant here though is another type of distortion of our real virtualities, namely the fact that there is an growing realm of irreal virtualities which are nevertheless tending ever towards the real. Indeed, in VR gaming for instance, the ultimate aim in many seems to be to want to become experientially indistinguishable from the real (i.e. the perceptual). In Facebook engagement is another instance, where the idea often seems to be to supplant the need of actually meeting the person one is chatting with in person. Such virtual technologies, no matter how advanced, do remain irreal virtualities in the Sartrean sense of being imaginary however, because

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there is always analogical material through which one then experiences absent, irreal, or reality-neutral things. Nonetheless, the pretension is there, from gaming to Facebook, to supplant the perceptual world with an increasingly complex virtual world that pretends to have all the benefits of the former and more—even though, actually, it is of a different structure, of a different, imaginary nature.

2.7 Final Remarks To finish, then: the trinity of real virtuality is self, world, and others. We are never without them in our everyday perceptual experiences, even though none of them are ever directly and fully given to us. Many of our foundational experiences only exist because of these real virtualities; our personal, physical, and social realities are always already preformatted by past, co-present, and future experiences which constantly exert their influence on us at every turn. However, it is also these three categories that are, thanks to the imaginary, irrealized onto a precisely irreal and increasingly digital plane. On this plane the virtual is when the irreal tends towards being, or at least supplanting, the significance of the real. Simply put, one might not have to worry about one’s actual self and friends if one has a popular avatar in World of Warcraft or Second Life; on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and the like one can also create a persona to share with virtual others by representing an ideal version of yourself through specific, favourable, and heavily curated images. With the growing power of computer technology, who knows what is next around the corner here. The boundaries between mind and machine are getting closer, and indeed we might already be witnessing the first generation that talk more to their friends online than irl. One would do well to remember, however, that the categories of the perceived and the imagined are still proper phenomenological, experiential categories, in that they are structurally different experiences, even if our capacity for imageconsciousness and its employment in so many virtual technologies is making the lines more blurred and seemingly fluid. Whether such increasing fluidity is an overall good development remains to be seen. Before I can decide, I believe it is crucial to further investigate the differences—and relations—between my acts of perception and practical engagement on the one hand, and all of my screen-gazing and imaging on the other. This, then, has sought just to make an initial exploration into a much larger issue.

References Alce, Günter, Lars Thern, Klas Hermodsson, and Mattias Wallergård. 2014. Feasibility study of ubiquitous interaction concepts. Procedia Computer Science 39: 35–42.

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Bergson, Henri. [1896, siglum: MM] 2012/2005. Matière et mémoire. Essai sur la relation du corps à l’esprit. Quadridge/PUF/Matter and Memory. Translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. New York: Zone Books. Błachnio, Agata, Aneta Przeptiorka, and Igor Pantic. 2016. Association between Facebook addiction, self-esteem and life satisfaction: a cross-sectional study. Computers in Human Behavior 55: 701–705. Boland, Daniel, and Mark McGill. 2015. Lost in the rift: engaging with mixed reality. XRDS 22 (1): 40–45. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. [1999] 2000. Remediation. Understanding New Media. MIT Press. Bujak, Keith R., Iulian Radu, Richard Catrambone, Blair MacIntyre, Ruby Zheng, and Gary Golubski. 2013. A psychological perspective on augmented reality in the mathematics classroom. Computers & Education 68: 536–544. Deleuze, Gilles. [1966, siglum: B] 2011/2014. Le bergsonisme. Quadridge/PUF/Bergsonism. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Zone Books. de Warren, Nicolas. [2009] 2011. Husserl and the Promise of Time: Subjectivity in Transcendental Phenomenology. Cambridge University Press. de Warren, Nicolas. 2014. Towards a phenomenological analysis of virtual fictions. Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy 2(2): 91–112. Fink, Eugen. [1930] 1966. Vergegenwärtigung und Bild. In Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930–1939, 1–78. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Grimshaw, Mark (ed.). 2015. The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. Oxford University Press. Gualeni, Stefano. 2015. Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools. How to Philosophize with a Digital Hammer. Palgrave Macmillan. Harper, Tauel, and David Savat. 2016. Media After Deleuze. London, Oxford: Bloomsbury. Heidegger, Martin. [1988, siglum: ET/WW] 2009/1997. The Essence of Truth. On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus. Translated by Ted Sadeler. Continuum/Gesamtausgabe Band 34: Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Husserl, Edmund. [1893–1917, siglum: T-C/Zb] 1991/2013. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Translated by John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers/Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Husserl, Edmund. [1898–1925, siglum: Hua23] 2005/1980. Collected Works, Volume XI: Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory. Translated by John B. Brough. Springer/Husserliana XXIII: Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. Zur Phänomenologie der Anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen. The Hague/Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. [1913, siglum: Id.I] 1983/2009. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Translated by F. Kersten. The Hague/Boston/Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers/Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Husserl, Edmund. [1918–1926, siglum: PS] 2001/1966. Analyses concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Translated by Anthony J. Steinbock Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers/Analysen zur Passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskipten 1918–1926. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. [1929] 1995. Cartesianische Meditationen. Eine Einleitung in die Phänomenologie. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Kleinsmith, Andrea, Diego Rivera-Gutierrez, Glen Finney, Juan Cendan, and Benjamin Lok. 2015. Understanding empathy training with virtual patients. Computers in Human Behavior 52: 151–158. Knop, Katharina, Julian S. Öncü, Jana Penzel, Theresa S. Abele, Tobias Brunner, Peter Vorderer, and Hartmut Wessler. 2016. Offline time is quality time. Comparing within-group self-disclosure

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in mobile messaging applications and face-to-face interactions. Computers in Human Behavior 55: 1076–1084. Nardi, Bonnie. 2015. Virtuality. The Annual Review of Anthropology 44: 15–31. Plascencia, Diego Martinez. 2015. One Step Beyond Virtual Reality. XRDS 22 (1): 18–23. Sartre, Jean-Paul. [1940, siglum: IM] 2004/2005. The Imaginary. A phenomenological psychology of the imagination. Translated by Jonathan Webber. London: Routledge/L’imaginaire. Psychologie phénoménologique de l’imagination. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. Sartre, Jean-Paul. [1943, sigla: BN/EN] 2005/2012. Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes. London: Routledge/L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. Shields, Rob. 2002. The Virtual (Key Ideas). London: Routledge. Sioni, Sasha R., Mary H. Burleson, and Debra A. Bekerian. 2017. Internet gaming disorder: Social phobia and identifying with your virtual self. Computers in Human Behavior 71: 11–15. Smith, A.D. 2002. The Problem of Perception. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Staehler, Tanja. 2014. Social networks as inauthentic sociality. Metodo 2 (2): 227–248. Turkle, Sherry. [2011] 2012. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books. Wiesing, Lambert. 2005. Artifizielle Präsenz – Studien zur Philosophie des Bildes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Yilmaz, Rabia A. 2016. Educational magic toys developed with augmented reality technology for early childhood education. Computers in Human Behavior 54: 240–248.

Daniel O’Shiel, originally from Ireland, obtained his doctorate in philosophy at the Husserl Archives, KU Leuven, Belgium, in 2016. The dissertation was entitled ‘Magical Being: a Sartrean account of emotion and value, using the case of disgust’. After working in Leuven and then the University of Sussex, Dr. O’Shiel now holds a three-year postdoctoral research position at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. He researches the nature of perception and imagination and how virtual technologies might be changing their relation. He has publications mainly in the field of phenomenology, with more to come.

Chapter 3

Personality, Dissociation and Organic-Psychic Latency in Pierre Janet’s Account of Hysterical Symptoms Edmundo Balsemão Pires

Abstract A definition of virtual or virtuality is not an easy task. Both words are of recent application in Philosophy, even if the concept of virtual comes from a respectable Latin tradition. Today’s meaning brings together the notions of potentiality, latency, imaginary representations, VR, and the forms of communication in digital media. This contagious, and spontaneous synonymy fails to identify a common vein and erases memory as a central notion. In the present essay, I’ll try to explain essential features of the concept of virtual, taking the investigation of memory troubles in Pierre Janet’s work as an exemplification. Pierre Janet’s work represents a rare combination of medical observation and description of symptoms of mental illnesses, therapeutic guidance in hypnosis and philosophical writing about the main psychological themes of an epoch in transition from a Metaphysics of the Soul to the modern Experimental Psychology. Pierre Janet’s intellectual evolution since the 1880s until the end of his life (1947) is dominated by the philosophical project of a theory of the psychic system supported by three basic pillars: a concept of personality, a theory of memory and a sketch of a general theory of conduct. Such complex endeavour cannot be abstracted from the initial connections with Jean-Martin Charcot’s school at La Salpêtrière which meant a turning point in the tradition of the “animal magnetism” concerning the treatment of epileptic-hysterical symptoms along with the contributions of Hyppolite Bernheim’s “Nancy School” of hypnotism. J.-M. Charcot’s or H. Bernheim’s theorising about the organic and psychological aspects of the hypnotic treatment of the hysterical symptoms was already aware of the difficulty in dealing with the extent of the dissimulation of the patients regarding the symptoms of the illness, under hypnotic suggestion, even if Charcot insisted in the identification and cataloguing of the organic expressions, such as contractures or the posture of the body in arc during the attacks. The precise location of the “great hysteria” in the organic-psychic corridor was itself a riddle. If a symptom is a special type of sign, in the case of the “great hysteria” nobody knew for sure what it stood for. The clinical symptom of the attack stood for an organic trouble with cerebral causes, a psychological interruption of the normal sensorial and muscular movements or a disguise of the female desire? Pierre Janet described many hysterical patients, somnambulism and multiple perE. Balsemão Pires (B) Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_3

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sonality since his articles in La Revue Philosophique de la France et l’ Étranger, a Journal founded by the philosopher, experimental psychologist and his intellectual predecessor Théodule-Armand Ribot. The description of the case of the “great hysterical” Lucie, treated by him, is an example of a theoretical hypothesising on multiple personality and discontinuity of memories fragments. There are more cases revealing the same relation between hysteria, somnambulism, personality dissociation and “alternating memory”. Decisively inspired by and corroborating P. Janet’s ideas, S. Freud conceived also the essential of the hysterical sicknesses as disorders of memory. The theme of memory came even more to the foreground in the dissertation L’Automatisme Psychologique (1889). Here, the strange world of somnambulism was scrutinised along with hysterical contractures and convulsions, anaesthesia, the compulsion to repetition, obsessions, “automatic writing” in hysterical patients, multiple personality and “alternating memories”. In the depicted cases memory could not be taken as a homogenous series of remembrances or as a stock of disposable information but as a variable of the depth of the personalities’ inner formation. The so-called “seconde existence” of some somnambulists referred not only unconscious representations and unconscious thoughts but complete or inceptive latent personalities provided with multiple virtual existences and multiple memories. Hypnosis was the privileged technique to access to such multiple memories ignored by the official personality. Later and after the writing of his M.D. Dissertation, Contribution à l’ Étude des Accidents Mentaux chez les Hystériques (1893), P. Janet addressed again the themes of memory and alternating memories in a series of lectures at the Collège de France (1927–28) but now according to the larger framework of a general theory of conduct which included a description of the social actions participating in the narrative construction of personal memories, and the role of social memory.

3.1 Conceiving the Virtual 3.1.1 Conceptual and Systematic Views My approach consists in a dynamical, systemic view on the psychological operations, sequentially organised, mobilising distinctions where the virtual can be identified as a pole. I’ll not search for things in themselves, such as “the virtual” in a metaphysical dimension beyond the actuality of the psychic operations. I’ll deal with dynamical distinctions that specify virtual elements in order to organize operational references in cognitive sequences. The distinctions relying on operations are, in a particular (operative) sense, always actual. The objective of this study is not the discovery of forces beyond empirical phenomena, but the identification of the psychological operations that use virtual or virtuality as marks in distinctions emerging or vanishing with their own endurance

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as dynamical distinctions. Force, potency and other influences of the imagination, transferred to the metaphysical domain, are not our concern. Firstly, we need to identify the operations which mobilize distinctions referring to a virtual side. In our conceptual notation, the notion of virtuality applies to a similarity of functions referring to these operations in a variety of dynamical systems. A consequence of our constructivist endeavour is the thesis of the virtual as an outcome of distinctions in particular types of cognitive sequences of dynamical systems. Secondly, comes the definition of the system’s identity. A dynamical system is a unit of sequential processes whose elements consist of material components with physic-chemical and (or) semiotic properties arranged by a program in order to perform particular sequences (as biological or artificial systems); or psychic systems defined as dynamical units which elements are conscious acts (Erlebnisse) sequentially oriented according to self-perceived meanings with their own semiotic lines; or social systems characterised as dynamical units made of communications connected with each other in a variety of semiotic sequences, under diverse symbolic and semantical constraints and under conditions that pertain to the evolution of the structure of society. Processes running in each of these systems represent possibilities to the others, as sources of information. The concrete changes of possibilities into actuality depend on the cognitive outcomes of the systems’ sequences regarding what the system takes as actual or possible in itself or in its environment for the processing of further dynamical sequences. Here, emerges a first notion of the virtual, as the possible in the environment of systems. Let me clarify how the virtual in dynamic systems reflects a determination of the possible vis-à-vis the actual in concrete sequences. Dynamic systems need to process information by distinguishing between attended and not-attended events. In psychic systems, such difference is ruled by an operation called attention. What one calls attended events is an outcome of attention as a psychic operation responsible for the discrimination of information under the attended/not-attended distinction. Latency is a constructed reference to what is not the focal point of a perception within the attentional frame. A description of the attentional frame shall include the sensory-motor field of the perception with its halo. The sensory-motor dynamic of perception is the responsible for the unceasing rotation of the latent to the focus and from the focus to the latent. Accordingly, the attentional frame is bifacial. The evolution of the focusing perspective with the incorporation of both sides makes the progression of perception across its own history. In psychic systems, the notion of the possible, as a predicate of events in the environment of conscious acts, relies on attention and on its connection to perceptions, as actual contents of consciousness, and the formation of an actuality/possibility distinction for the processing of further psychological meaning. In the organisation of knowledge, the concept of latency denotes the possibility along its process of becoming. Latency is the concept of the attentional movement, according to which what is now recognised in conscious attention was formerly an

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overlooked aspect of the environment, is occurring, can occur or already came to actuality and faded out. In psychic systems, conscious attention is the frame where the many combinations of the possible and the actual are organised in order to give to perceptions a sequential orientation. A reference to latency entails the self-reflection of the attentional sequences and the acknowledgement of their internal consistency as part of the history of the perception. One of the most familiar psychological operations that differentiates the virtual from the real is memory. Memory is already present in the attentional frame, if a dynamical processing of psychological meaning is really at stake. The uses of memory are of paramount interest for the description of central features of the virtual. They are related to the construction of time and time intervals in dynamical meaning systems. The close articulation of memory and time is much more complex than the common hypothesis of a consciousness that develops along a time arrow and memorises events or representations. There is memory outside psychic systems. But let me exemplify with psychic systems for the purposes of the present essay. If one follows basic aspects of the meaning of virtual one sees that they are related to the scope of memory as an operation. In a plain explanation, the virtual, in connection to memory, signifies the process of saving and retrieving images of events in recollection. Differently from the comparison of a box containing items, in psychic systems memory is an active organisation of the personal history, entails the self-reference of a person and a set of temporal marks that are relevant for the self-recognition of the person. The temporal marks acquire the form of images of events, seem to denote something in an inner environment, but these are not independent of the image of the self. Memory’s virtuality includes the articulation of self- and hetero-reference that produces the materials for biographies. On the other hand, but along a path with crosscuts with memory, latency refers to the scales of attention with its operational distinctions. Many connections between memory and attention and operative cooperations are conceivable. Here, the complex web of liaisons explains the use of virtual and latent as conceptual equivalents. I’ll propose the terms virtual and virtuality in connection to memory. Latent and latency are to be applied to attention, and its distinctions, and to the attentional frame. Between the history of perception and the personal history, attention and memory, flows an intertwined stream. Memory and attention reflect their results in each other, attention in memory and memory in attention, because each of them defines what the other can attend to. Possible and possibility are terms with a larger and more diffuse meaning. A constructivist approach to possibility avoids the conversion of terms, such as “possible”, in transcendent realities. Thus, whenever one uses possibility one should be denoting a system’s reference that can be equated with virtual or latent dimensions in operations entailing memory or attention. This is the right method to avoid metaphysical hypostasis of analytical concepts.

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If the virtual is a mark of an operation (memory) and not an object or thing, the best way to understand and describe its meaning is to describe the operation itself. The same applies to latent and latency in regard to attention. Massive uses of memory in dynamical systems, generally speaking, are related to learning. Here, is a large domain of investigation of virtual dimensions relying on two basic uses of memory, commonly converted in types—operative or dispositional memory and representational or semantic memory. Both uses promote overlapping references to virtual elements, virtual possibilities, and virtual environments. In psychic systems, dispositional memory was depicted as sensory-motor, muscular, organic and unconscious memory. Experimental psychologists devoted a substantial amount of scientific efforts in the description and measurement of the traces of movements, stimulus and organic responses to inner and outer events. What Pierre Janet tried to decipher under his “Automatisme Psychologique” is also included here. Semantic memory, on the other hand, entails the use of concepts or representations, of words and phrases.

3.1.2 Historical and Theoretical Materials In my essay An Aesthetics of Movement (1870–1930) (Balsemão Pires 2018: passim) I have described the main lines of the History of the concept of movement of the Experimental Psychology, at the turn of the XIX century. I have examined the formation of the notion of the unconscious in close relation with the increasing appraisal of the role of body’s movements in the formation of perceptions, especially after Hermann von Helmholtz’s contribution to Physiological Optics, on one hand, and in connection to the evolution of the treatments of the hysterical symptoms (with Jean-Martin Charcot and his school), on the other hand. The rich Conceptual History one finds in this context demands a fine scrutiny through a careful reading of the texts of the authors that paved the way for the Freudian concept of the unconscious (Freud and Breuer 1955: passim). Many authors interested in psychological experimentation saw in the fact that body’s movements, eye’s movements, sensory-motor displacements produce cognitive consequences at the perception level, due to the influence of the mechanism of attention, an argument to defend the view of a physiological unconscious. This was justified mainly because they were convinced that there is not a continuous consciousness of the movements but only the awareness of their final outcomes in the present moment of the psychological attention—the perception’s content. This means that the actuality of a conscious perception is certainly ruled by attention. However, attention depends on body’s displacements and organic rhythms which cannot be contained in the actual moment of the consciousness identified with the perception’s content. A vast domain of unattended sensory-motor events is envisaged and latency or virtuality were among the earliest conceptual candidates to identify and locate the traces of movement in the psychic system and in dispositional memories.

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Thus, organic movements, voluntary and involuntary, are seen as dimensions responsible for knowledge production and knowledge substructures. Even if the cognitive contents are assigned to verbal judgements and to the syntactic possibilities of the subject-predicate relation, the general state of the psychic system is invested with activity irreducible to the propositional “is” declared about a propositional content. The meaning of the traces of the organic movements in psychic systems becomes a central psychological and clinical theme which will be crucial in the investigation of memory and memory troubles, for instance in patients with dissociative or hysterical distresses in XIX century Clinical Psychology (Janet 1892: passim). In memory, the virtual is an aspect of the psychological dynamic put in activity by sensory-motor events and it has no meaning if this activity ceases or is ignored in psychological theory. The binaries conscious/unconscious, personal/impersonal, voluntary/involuntary add further complexity to the reference of the virtual in memories (dispositional and semantic). Richard Semon’s book Die Mneme (Semon1904: passim) was a descriptive essay on the structure and operations of memory regarding the individual and the transmission of hereditary traits in the species. It was one of the first attempts to understand the structural connections of memory to latency and an effort to observe memory at a biological, evolutionary scale, anticipating Richard Dawkins’s ideas. R. Semon’s notions about the transformative effect of the engrams in the reactive organic substances, the distinction between a first and a second “state of indifference” of these substances, the action of the engrams in the transformation of the state of the organism, the latent phase and the activation mechanisms are still present in recent studies on memory. Cognitive psychologists proposed descriptive models for the psychological memory in the 1980s and 1990s. Douglas Hintzman, Bennet Murdock, Gary Gillund, Richard Shiffrin and Walter Kintsch are leading authors in the field of mathematical models of memory, carry on the seminal intuitions of R. Semon. The operations of memory were basically conceived as recognition and recall of images, previously stored. The mathematical modelling applies to the calculus of probability in decisions regarding familiarity between items in recall and recognition. Some of W. Kintsch’s studies on semantic memory were focused in recall and recognition of words, in connection to the cognitive aspects of the understanding of texts and textual contexts (Kintsch 1988; Kintsch, Welsch, Schmalhofer and Zimny 1990). The empirical data have shown that the activation processes mobilised during the search and retrieval of stored semantic predicates of words and the decisions on familiarity rely on associative chains in an associative semantic net, which is context sensitive. A connectionist reformulation of the tradition of the psychological associationism seems to be in accordance with the computational models and the semantic webs of words search and recall. Gillund and Shiffrin (1984) claimed already that the operations of recall and recognition of memory items cannot consist in direct comparisons between stored and sample (target) items. The arousal of the impression of familiarity is more complex than a direct comparison and demands a “global

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model of familiarity” (Gillund and Shiffrin 1984: 8) entailing many links between images-nodes activated in parallel. According to the psychologists, the images in the web (i) include contextual information needed for the temporal recognition and the temporal location; (ii) information concerning the item itself; (iii) information inter-item which is used to link images to other images. W. Kintsch’s essays follow also the associative model of memory recall and recognition and conceive knowledge in associative nets, “the nodes of which are concepts or propositions” (Kintsch 1988: 164–165). In this model, the nets of cognitive distribution make a “coherence network” of meaning arousal whose levels are not limited to the syntactical structures of the phrases in texts but reach the stock of the relevant knowledge needed for an adequate understanding of the context of the text and of the world’s situation. Such levels go across a surface structure to the text-base and the “situational model” where the associative paths between nodes are discriminated with different weights of probability for a decision regarding item’s familiarity. Every actual decision about familiarity of items activates nodes at these levels according to different relevancies. In the generality of the recent computational models of memory recall and recognition words’ meanings are compared to images, namely to semantic images of a semantic memory. The authors did not address the difficulties of the conversion of imagistic elements in semantic elements (psychic images vs. words). Consequently, they seem not especially concerned with the kinetic substructures of the consciousness of images and their semiotic weight. However, the simple suggestion of a separation of a psychic image from the body’s movements seems delicate and motivates logical resistances. The psychological effects of the overlapping of dispositional memories and semantic memories and the common virtual semiotic horizon were ignored. Nevertheless, the presence of these effects in the formation of psychological meaning from memories is a major theoretical challenge. The common virtual horizon of the dispositional and the semantic dimensions of memories joins the development of the image of the selves as representatives of the identity of the system as a whole (ego in psychic systems) and not as a unity of representations succeeding in the time’s arrow. If the modelling of the convergence/divergence of image’s meanings and word’s meanings is a problem for the Semiotics and Pragmatics of Language, it was already one of the concerns of the French experimental psychologists at the turn of the XIX century and Josef Breuer’s and S. Freud’s initial enigma regarding the clinical cases of hysterical patients with language troubles (Freud and Breuer 1955: passim). In the writings of the doctors, psychologists and philosophers developing their ideas in the context of the clinical experimentalism of La Salpêtrière, the hysterical patients represented a living laboratory for the exploration of theoretical hypothesis about personality, memory and memory troubles, sensory-motor influence on the flow of ideas, persistence of ideas, automatic effects in organic centres, the relations of the dispositional and the semantic memory dimensions, etc.

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3.2 Mental Stigmata in Hysteria—Observing Memory Troubles and Personality Dissociation with Pierre Janet When J.-M. Charcot remodelled the Clinique at la Salpêtrière as a centre devoted to the treatment of cases of hysteria with hypnosis, along the 1880s, a long semantic evolution of the word “hysteria” was matured (see Arnaud 2015: passim). In this semantic evolution, the differentiation of the somatic from the psychic was a major theme, even if the qualification of the exact organic location of the causes was doubtful and the psychological meaning of the patient’s acts an enigma. In 1561, supported on a suggestion of Plato’s Timaeus 91b-92b Ambroise Paré, a surgeon and anatomist, described the “suffocation of the uterus” as an organic symptom caused by abdominal vapours induced by the movements of an animal inside the female body. The pressure of the vapours coming from the lower parts produces the spreading of the air towards the head occasioning epileptic attacks and catalepsy. Some XVI century authors conceived the uterus as a “wanderer animal” seeking satisfaction. From a disease caused by unpredictable female vapours its semantic features evolve to include moral and religious dimensions, the semantic lines of enthusiasm, or political and religious fanaticism along the first half of the XVIII century, before the firming of the nosology suggesting a female sickness at the beginning of the XIX century. The semantic scope of the word “hysteria” in clinical and common uses comprises common traits with epilepsy and its cerebral location but also moral components related to social habits, luxury, sexual behaviour, frequency of sexual intercourse, dietary regime and also demonic possession. According to the needs of the clinical observation, classification and description Philippe Pinel (Paris) and Joseph-Marie Vigarous (Montpellier) gave scientific credibility to the interpretation of the symptoms of hysteria as female predicaments, at the beginning of the XIX century. The detailed article “Hysteria” in Charles-Joseph Panckoucke’s Dictionaire des Sciences Médicales (1818) follows the common etymological definition of hysteria as uterine disorder or “suffocation de matrice, etranglement de l’ utérus, mal de mère (…) névrose utérine” and identifies its cyclical phases. Due to the influence of Franz Anton Mesmer’s ideas and techniques, an increasing curiosity in the thaumaturgical influence of the physical environment in the mood and mental states of suggestible people, through the action of a fluid, is easily traceable at the end of the XVIII century. The Marquis de Puységur, a F. A. Mesmer’s follower, systematised the moves of the magnetiser in order to induce certain mental conditions in the patients. It is commonly believed that was de Puységur that accidentally discovered hypnosis and the impact of hypnotic suggestion in the arising of the artificial somnambulism. Hypnotism as a technique that gradually developed from the schools of “animal magnetism” can be summed up as a way to induce somnambular states. In La Médecine Psychologique (Janet 1923: passim), Pierre Janet remembers the essential traits of the evolution of the hypnotic techniques from the magnetisers to

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J.-M. Charcot’s school in order to establish the role of the memory in the hysterical disorders. It is in the therapeutic context of the artificial somnambulism induced by hypnotic passes, that lies the common interests about subconscious traumatic situations which trigger deep sensory changes in the patients, including anaesthesia, contractures or loss of muscular control that are visible in the spontaneous somnambulism. According to P. Janet, memory studies had always been a central concern of the magnetisers when they intervened in cases of provoked somnambulism. The notion of traumatic memory was born when some organic effects were conceived as the results of an emotional excess that causes psychic imbalances. J.-M. Charcot was already interested in these phenomena where strong emotions, organic anomalies as concomitant states and memory disturbances were patent. When signs of the rupture of memory’s continuity get into the centre of the personal consciousness their behavioural outcomes are known as psychological dissociations which P. Janet refers to as “sub consciousness by breakdown.” Fixed ideas are generated and repeated, automatisms get control over conscious states fixing bunches of associative lines of the psychic life, escaping from the power of will and personality. To the extent that these returning clusters of memories are isolated from the rest of the psychic life of a person, one shall speak of dissociated blocks of memory. Many hysterical patients revealed a propensity to develop dissociated memory clusters together with psychological automatisms. Spontaneous somnambulism carries a special feature that the psychologist emphasises, namely the discontinuity of the memories of the patients and a more or less accentuated separation between the conscious personality and the deeds and thoughts of the somnambular. If the natural occurring hysteria expresses itself through somnambular states of mind, hypnosis can convert a lucid state of a hysterical patient in a somnambular one in order to inspect the memories and locate the discontinuities and dissociation. This was a common belief among the practitioners of hypnosis. P. Janet also believed that hypnosis puts on hold the activity of consciousness, usually identified with the awakened consciousness of the ego, replacing the usual flow of mental associations by another stream of consciousness. Thus, hypnosis is a gateway to the psychic meaning that ego does not remember when vigilant. Assuming a version of the associative theory of memory, he wrote in La Médecine Psychologique: c’ est quelquefois une autre vie, un autre caràctere, une autre mémoire que est évoquée à la place de la conduite ordinaire; pour déterminer l’ hypnose on profite encore de la disposition de certains tendances à s’ activer d’ une manière automatique à propos la moindre stimulation (Janet 1923: 72). In the context of the hypnotic arousal of memory clusters we face two different concepts of memory. Common memory entails forgetting. There is no memory without forgetting. As a psychological operation memory refers to an integration of recall and forgetting. Memory relies on the concrete mental process of forgetting events. Recall is a technique to deal with forgetting that constructs the forgotten. In common memories, recalling is the construction of the forgotten in order to bring it to

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conscious attention. The bringing of the forgotten to attention is the achievement of the integration of recall and forgetting. A suitable integration of both poles brings together the virtual aspects of memory and the latent aspects of attention. The associative theories of memory explain the linking mechanism that cross memory extraction and the reference to the latent by the identification of semiotic paths between signs in memory recalling and the attentional acts of denoting items. However, the common path passing through memory and attention, the virtual and the latent, supposes the active construction of the continuity of the psychic life. This is not possible in the absence of a persona provided with a biography. The existence of clusters of discontinuous memories puts difficulties that the associative theories of memory can only partially address. According to our interpretation, discontinuous memories express disarticulation between the attentional mechanisms and memory in recall that is particularly evident with dissociative troubles or personality split. In the context of the psychological theories of the Psychotherapy of the hysterical symptoms, dissociative troubles must be envisaged as phenomena occurring in the psycho-physical parallelism—organic events produce psychological resonances, and the converse. P. Janet considered that hypnosis favoured the formation and transformation of tendencies. However, the concept of tendency is not very consistent and can be charged with the attributes of the old metaphysics of potentiality, even if its use is in conformity with the scientific worries about psycho-physical causality. Ascribing to T. Ribot the responsibility to have reflected more maturely about the role of the psychological tendencies in the psychic life, P. Janet could not avoid the notion of potentiality in his concept of tendency. Such almost confessed conceptual imprecision proves that he was very close to the understanding of the psychic system as a system made of meaning differences, connecting images, memories and semantic associations and not based on a substance or on energy levels separated from concrete meaning sequences. He was aware of the serial, sequential orientation of the tendencies as psychological phenomena related to organic conditions: (…) la tendance est une disposition de l’ organisme à produire une série de mouvements particuliers dans un ordre déterminé à la suite d’ une certaine stimulation sur un point dans la périphérie du corps (Janet 1923: 72). Nonetheless, a problem to be envisaged is the connection of force with meaning. His conceptual analysis of tendency is detailed and even imperative in saying that the tendencies “have a willingness to perform a series of movements in a particular order”. It is added that this orientation is bound to a force “capable of producing this series of movements” and the associated thoughts (Janet 1923: 73). We discover in the content of this quotation a variety of notions and not a simple relation between a force and its expression. In the characterisation of the energy of the tendency, he continues: chaque tendance semble être un réservoir d’ une certaine quantité de force en rapport avec la complexité et l’ importance de l’acte qu’ elle determine (Janet 1923: 73). The proximity to T. Ribot is even more evident when the author shows that the tendency is loaded in its primitive relation to the body and communicates a part of that load to the

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secondary (psychological and meaningful) elaborations of the drive. The remaining charge is put on hold, it is virtualised. A similar vision was supported by S. Freud in his early essays on psychological topology, giving the impression of a substantial inspiration on hydraulic models of the psychic system. Even if he was mainly interested in the associative linkage of the tendency, justified by his own version of the associative theory of memory, P. Janet followed the common interpretation of the tendency as an organic force, provided with a load that can be directed to goals, transferred, or delayed. The forces participating in the psychological dynamism can be placed in reserve (becoming latent) can be spent or recovered. Energy in reserve is mobilised to what the author calls “latent tendencies”. As a technique to access forgotten events, hypnosis cancels the influence of the higher psychological meaning elaborations over the lower levels in order to re-enact the primitive investment of the organic force, with its primitive associations, causing the move of memory portions from their virtual stance to the centre of the actual psychic life, especially visible in bodily expressions. Hypnosis can re-enact the associative linkages of the force by annulling the control of the self over the recalling process. The portions of memory items associated to the force may emerge as freed signs of the primitive investment. This view on the transference of blocks of memory from the initial associative clusters of the forces to an organic-psychic re-enactment, without the self’s awareness, relies on the theory of the psychological automatism and psychological repetition elaborated in 1889 in the dissertation L’ Automatisme Psychologique. In order to maintain his own version of the psychological energy, the psychic system as system of charges, discharges and reserve P. Janet had to retouch the limits of the autonomy of the psychological facts regarding physiology and had to rebuild, according to his own purposes, T. Ribot’s concept of the organic personality(Ribot 1885: 161). This is the case, even if the obscure compound of psychological facts with observations of organic correlations was precisely what he considered the mistake of the tradition that unfolded since mesmerism to J.-M. Charcot’s school at La Salpêtrière. The thesis remains the same previously supported. The knowledge of the physiological conditions of conduct demands the possession of its psychological manifestation and meaning. The talk about energy or psychic energy, or load, is inspired on the concepts of physiology. However, physiological conditions are only revealed in psychological signs, according to psychological elaborations, conscious or unconscious. The transmitted idea of the clinicians worried by the oddity of the hysterical symptoms was that if something escapes the power of the will and personality is because its existence misses the psychological synthesis and consequently belongs to the organic realm. The dualism of the organic and the psychic remains. One may be wondering why the hysterical afflictions seem bizarre. The bizarre comes from the unpredictable of the natural causation of organic forces or from the behavioural formations? The dualism is reproduced in the concept of the hypnotic technique and also in the conventional descriptions of the hysterical symptoms. Physiognomic ideas

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contained in J. M. Charcot’s or Paul Richer’s views on the connections of Hysteria and Art (Charcot and Richer 1887) are revelations of the dualist’s inaccuracies, but not a coherent new systematic proposal. In the particular context of the estimation of the hysterical symptoms, the dualism of the organic and the psychological domains has impact in Epistemology, Therapy and Nosology. Hypnosis had a double value in the treatment of hysteria: in modifying the excitatory state of the body to facilitate responses to stimuli, and in inducing matrixesimages that lead to memory traces, emotions and sensations which activate the general cycle of thought and action. Such duality of hypnosis partially comes from its origins in mesmerism. When applied to individual patients diagnosed with hysteria it reaches its full capacity in the producing of its own splitting symptoms in the patients’ body, acts and talk— somnambulism and memory dissociation. In the clinical setting of the Paris school, the interesting thing with dissociation and dissociative disorders is P. Janet’s claim that the kind of memory virtualisation in hysteria, or obtained by hypnosis, corresponded to a particular type of psychic reality, shaped deep inside the official persona of the patients as parallel, partially unattended, personalities. The psychologist interpreted the virtual memories of the hysterical patients as manifestations of latent aspects in psychological meaning, modifying and converting the mechanism of the reference to virtual elements (in memory) into the mechanism of the reference to latent elements (in attention). A latent memory exists. But how? How can the latent be, in some disguised way, actual? The essays addressing these questions show the scope of the dualistic approach to hysterical symptoms and dissociations and perhaps may legitimate it, but equivocally, by conceiving an “organic unconscious” as a part of the psyche located in the body. It is the psychic environment of the psychic system that is here at stake and not an organic location. The case of J.-M. Charcot’s and P. Janet’s common patient “Madame D.” is an example of an uncommon case of anterograde amnesia. Madame D. was afflicted by the traumatic event of the false announcement of the death of her husband. As a consequence of a panic attack, now the patient ignores the main events of her life after a precise date (the Fourteenth of July 1891). She couldn’t tell her personal story after this Fourteenth of July, because she was not able to memorise new facts after that traumatic date. She has lost the memorising faculty. Yet, she talks and thinks normally. According to P. Janet’s own presentation of this clinical case in 1892 in the International Congress of Experimental Psychology, the patient was not a hysterical. By hypnosis and psychotherapy, the psychologist attempted to recover her memories. In her artificial somnambulism Madame D. remembered precisely those dates and events that she has forgotten during the conscious states. Some pieces of her loose talk mentioned events that she was not able to reconstruct if demanded in her normal state of consciousness. Automatic writing and automatic speech proved to be a method to make explicit her personal history after the 14th of July.

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In his presentation, P. Janet added a theoretical conclusion to the clinical description. Memory dissociation in memory loss is an effect of a deficient personality synthesis (“perception personnelle”), but the memories are there (Janet 1892: 29). Do memories have a location?

3.3 Alternating Memories and Multiple Personalities [Inner Alter-Ego(s)]. Some Conclusions from Clinical Data Théodule Ribot was interested in the theme of the “subjective awareness of the organic states,” notion he ascribed to Condillac and Maine de Biran (Ribot 1885: 25–26). The neurological links in the brain’s cells, the physiological functions and the sense of personality are entangled in the organism through a “coordination of nervous actions” or by the equivalent of a “physical personality” (Ribot 1885: 161) that develops spontaneously, but never leaves a full image of itself. The conscious personality is a coordination of coordinations built on the “physical personality” and ultimately relying on the brain. Coming from the organic personality no uniform conscious information follows. T. Ribot regarded the relation of the conscious person (the conscious self) to the organic personality as akin to what a topographic survey plane is vis-à-vis the country it represents—un levé de plan topographique par rapport au pays qu’ il représente (Ribot 1885: 165). When coming into the detail of the analysis of the “affective personality disorders”, T. Ribot claimed that personality is the result of the influence of two factors—the body’s constitution with its tendencies and feelings, and memory. If these two factors fail to converge in their development or if the first factor evolves but not the second, then a more or less severe dissociation may emerge with a metamorphosis of the ego. A disruption may develop even further leading to a complete separation of the self and its organic bases. Famous examples of personality dissociation were the Lady of Mac Nish and the Felida X, reported by the doctor Eugène Azam. From 1885 to 1888 P. Janet wrote some articles about cases of hysteria, somnambulism, memory dissociation and double personality, including many theoretical comments close to T. Ribot’s notion of the unconscious and to his predecessor’s idea of a discontinuous terrain between memory, movements and the sense of the body. The narratives of the clinical cases of double personality were motive of scientific curiosity in late XIX century. In his The Principles of Psychology (1890), William James quoted substantially P. Janet’s experiments with the patient “Lucie”. The case of Lucie, whose name is spelled L. in the early descriptive articles, is again depicted in the second edition (1911) of L’ État Mental des Hystériques as an

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example of triple personality with anaesthesia and absence of a distinct muscular perception in the awakened state. Due to her anaesthesia and other motor troubles Lucie suffers from a disorder common to all hysterical patients that P. Janet called narrowing of the field of consciousness—“rétrécissement du champ de la conscience” (Janet 1911: 101). The sensorial condition of many hysterical patients is frequently different of the ordinary people, since they alternate their predominant sensorial type from the somnambular to the awakened states. If their type is predominantly visual in the awakened condition it is expectable that during somnambulism they behave like predominant motor persons. The alternating value of the sensory-motor type corresponds to alternating memories and associative series operating as imperative clusters of sequences of meaning. Such rule is verified if the doctor submits the patients to post-hypnotic suggestions, observes and describes their behaviour. Once under suggestion in the somnambular or awakened states the patients execute instructions that they forget immediately after. The actions they accomplish are in the proper sense subconscious (Janet 1911: 219) but they are not mechanical reflexes. On the contrary, they are described as “intelligent acts” and as such connected to sensations and memories. The experiences with induced automatic writing under post-hypnotic instructions are counted among the best proofs of the subconscious intelligence. The doctor observes the articulated symbolic thought and the corresponding actions. In the first article on the case of L. (Janet 1886a) P. Janet concluded that the progression and repetition of the hypnotic sessions led the patient to a loss of consciousness of the fact of being influenced by suggestions. The absence of a consciousness of the post-hypnotic guidance accentuated the automatic execution of the demanded acts until the psychological automatism takes the complete control over the person. Consequently, the dissociation of the personality’s images and the dissociative memories emerge and deliver behavioural traces. After a prolonged use of hypnosis Lucie revealed three different personalities with distinct memories. Additionally, the memory’s clusters seem to orbit around the personalities. In 1886, P. Janet described these phenomena under the notion of unconscious processes. The hysterical spontaneous somnambulism was normally described as a dissociation of two associative streams occurring simultaneously. The simultaneous character of the flow of the dissociated streams was inferred form the fact that the patients reported feelings in the third person, similar to those occurring in the popular descriptions of demonic possession. Feelings in the third person are special signs of dissociative troubles. However, in the case of Lucie/Adrienne the personality’s split was larger. Applying to her his theory of the multiple streams of consciousness P. Janet diagnosed a multiple personality disorder with three different personalities with their own memory’s clusters. His conclusive diagnosis relied on the observation and description of the apparent gravitational structure of the clusters of memory and their personalities attrac-

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tors. Each memory cluster referred to a unifying vector identified with a personal biography. The diagnosis of Lucie’s multiple personalities is not the most critical. The psychologist mentioned Lucie, other cases of his own and from the published clinical information as illustrations of the correlation between his theory of personality and his theory of memory. P. Janet’s hypotheses are rich in consequences in a contemporary account of the connections between memory’s recall, recognition and self-reference of the system that mobilizes memory resources. Undeniably, psychological operations dealing with memory cannot be abstracted from the formation of images of a self. On their own basis, images of the self are attractors of memories as agents of the virtual-real distinction of the psychic system. Clarifying, let us regain P. Janet’s clinical data. If the doctor postpones the execution of the post-hypnotic instructions to a future period of time and gives to the patient an order to do so and so 13 days later, for example, the patient will keep the instructions in the latent memory of the corresponding personality accountable for the accomplishment of the deeds. These instructions are present in the latent personal memory (block 2) but they are missing in the actual personal memory (block 1). The hypnotic provoked somnambulism is a technique to deal with the distribution of latency and actuality in the awakened person, forcing, in the hypnotic sleep, a new distribution of the virtual-real distinction in the memory’s dissociated blocks. This is the main reason for the use of the difference latent-actual (in attention) as equivalent to the distinction virtual-real (in memory). In the case of Lucie’s automatic writing under hypnosis the splitting of the consciousness is completed and articulated with a person (Adrienne) that apparently is ignored from the official persona when awakened. From her memories and associative remembrances, the other memories vanished. The personal memories are constructed according to discontinuous separated blocks. What is registered in one associative block is completely absent from the other and there is no available superior synthesis for the disjoint memory blocks. Except in the episodes of disruptive behaviour, also the mechanism of recall seems to obey to the principle that links the representation of the inner persons and the corresponding memory clusters. Our clinician argued that these disjunctive memories and their cyclical emergence and breakdowns prove not only the existence of an unconscious intelligence but a real separation of the inner personalities that are associated to the memory blocks which also emerge and disappear in the same cycles. Later, and clarifying his former views, P. Janet defined personality as a human construction instead of a metaphysical substance that owes its stability to the active articulation of psychological, social and temporal dimensions of a psychic system connected to an organism. A person is an operative synthesis of operations and functions designed in order to ascribe these operations and functions to itself as a centre. Here, a challenge is a clearer understanding of the prolonged use of the hypnotic techniques that may accentuate the splitting of the personalities. Is the splitting solely due to the prolonged hypnotic intervention?

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He believed that at a certain extent hypnosis did not modify essentially the patient’s personality disorders, that were already there. On the other hand, he affirms that one has only access to the unconscious by inference. If the existence and the determinations of the virtual personalities are only granted by inference, the hypnotic techniques are some of the inferential tools mobilised in the revealing of the dissociated memories. The use of artificial somnambulism in the restoring of a psychological synthesis is a well-known technical consequence of this idea of an inferential access to the unconscious entailing a general instruction to avoid externalisations of psychological concepts in theoretical modelling. However, the problem of the meaning of a virtual existence with no possible actualisation remains. In the terms of P. Janet’s early writings this question is very difficult to solve, mainly because the author seems to hesitantly assume a realism of the lost memories in parallel to the inferential status of the unconscious. He suspected already that it would be not very coherent, if at all suitable, a realism of pure virtual determinations in parallel with an operative and narrative model of the psychic system, personality and memory. In a more consistent formulation one would claim that the lost memory blocks were inferred from the cyclical failure to actualise their complete content and they have no other determinations except those discovered exactly when the efforts to grasp their full determination fail, with hypnosis or not. What has been said with respect to memory blocks shall be emphasised regarding the observation of the unconscious personalities. In 1887 and 1888 in two articles published in the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’ Étranger P. Janet resumed the case of L. to say that automatic writing is unconscious, outwardly. What is really there is a personality formed within another personality, in which one of them is unaware of what the other does or thinks. The notion of the unconscious must be attributed to the actions or thinking processes that took place in a personality with ignorance of the other(s). The unconscious is that which cannot be described in the awakened state of one of them and which is accessed, says P. Janet, “by hypothesis” (Janet 1887: 452). With respect to L. what can be said is that a set of acts and thoughts of this type are grouped around a new psychological synthesis that should be called personality. Adrienne, this new personality, makes herself known through automatic writing. This is her outer signature. In 1888, in the last of these articles before the book on Psychological Automatism, P. Janet retakes the discussion of the concept of unconscious in connection to somnambulism, automatic writing and hypnotic suggestion, referring again the case of L. (Adrienne). It is in the 1888 article that the psychologist suggests a model of the formation of memories and psychic meaning in general in three differentiated layers, according to the degree of depth reached by unconscious acts. Henceforth, the relation of memory blocks to personality is the basic configuration mobilised in the description of the dissociative disorders. The clarification of the problem of the existence of virtual determinations will guide us along a brief reading of the Lectures on the Evolution of Memory and the Notion of Time delivered by P. Janet at Le Collège de France, in 1927–28.

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Le passé n’existe pas. Il est mort (Janet 2006: 188) said the philosopher W. Hamilton according to a quote in the Lectures. In the Lectures, the philosopher seeks to prove that memory relies on narration and that without a sequential history there is no structure for operations dealing with memory. There are no real doubles in the mind. It is our use of the past in narrations that produces memories and memory troubles, creating the illusion of doubles (inneregos) demanding or commanding actions to the official persona. The Lectures entail a dialogue with H. Bergson’s Matière et Mémoire (Bergson 1896, 1939) and a critique of Bergson’s realism of the virtual as well as an overcoming of the author’s own hesitations in the 1880s. Approximately, we can describe this intellectual evolution as a move from a unique concept of memory to the later dualism of repetition and memory and the transfiguration of the former memory disorders in the diseases of narration. These are complex moves in the path toward a pragmatic understanding of the psychic system relying on the concepts of energy, meaning and conduct and on the approach to the social dimension of personality. P. Janet could not use the contemporary tools of Narratology in his own approach of the narrative order of the psychological memory. But his references to this point are an inspiration for the proposal of a narrative turn in the studies of memory in the Cognitive Sciences. If passive conservation is not a predicate of memory, which role shall we reserve to those motor phenomena that seem oriented to a restitutio ad integrum, especially in the movements and in automatic repetition? Are psychological automatisms mechanical reflexes? P. Janet rejected this solution, because, as W. James also pointed out, the movements of the somnambular hysterics were followed by feelings (James 1890 I: 229). What P. Janet calls restitutio ad integrum in automatic repetition is neither a reflex nor representative memory. The first step to a narrative theory of memory is the differentiation of repetition and true memory which P. Janet accomplishes along a critical comment to Henri Bergson’s distinction of “motor remembrance” and “representative remembrance” in Matière et Mémoire. Firstly, he argues that there is movement in the representative remembrances and says that the notion of representation in the remembrance is the hard tribute H. Bergson paid to the concept of memory as intuition of the past. Secondly, he corrects his own former notion of memory sustaining a new distinction between automatic repetition and true memory. The clinical case of Irène exemplifies the negation of the death of her mother by amnesia of the death circumstances. Initially, observing the structure of the memory trouble the psychologist thought that Irène was a patient with no remembrances. After a few weeks of treatment, she begun a ritual around a bed, where an imaginary dying person was agonising. Irène’s repeated movements obeyed to the rules of Joseph Grasset’s polygon of the psychological automatism: once an element (vertices in the polygonal figure) is invoked the others follow in an associative sequential linkage. The repeated movements in the mourning deeds of her ritual were automatic

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expressions like motor memories of an absent representative remembrance, like a virtual halo of the past? The persistence of a halo or a mysterious influence of past events in the present of consciousness is a thesis ascribed by P. Janet to H. Bergson’s notion of the present (Janet 2006: 309). Some popular interpretations of S. Freud’s unconscious have supported an equivalent version of the virtual halo. However, a definition of such halo is impossible and if one sustains that memory entails narration across a personal history, the presence of a halo is excluded. Two hypotheses can be outlined from the Lectures. 1. Repetition, psychological automatism in memory and somnambular repetition, especially, realize in the body and in movements what the representative memory associated to the discourse and the structure of verbal judgements has blocked in the intellectual images. The clinical practice reported what can be recognised as a rule: an obstruction in the completion of a representative remembrance is counterweighted by the exaggeration of the details of the automatic acts (Janet 2006: 166–167). 2. Even if one states that psychological automatisms are not pure reflexes they are not real memories, because they cannot bring narratives to a conclusion. I propose to call them the memory’s representamen, or memory’s token. In somnambulism, the psychological imbalance between automatisms and discursive memory shows to the psychologist that true memory is never identical with automatic repetition. Thus, it is not appropriate to talk indifferently of memory and restitutio ad integrum of the automatic movements. Going further, P. Janet’s new thesis in the Lectures allows us to say that when one talks about a returning rest this is always the rest of the discourse, a non-said of the said, the virtual of the symbolic real and there is no other sense in talking about virtual beings, as such. Taking into consideration the role of the images of the self in the narrative processes attached to the mechanisms of recall and recognition, a part of a theory of psychological memory demands the appropriate concept of person. New difficulties are awaiting in the articulation of personality and memory clusters. One of these is the problem of the discrimination of the social aspects of personality that are implied in the psychological persona with its memories.

3.4 Social Conducts—The Outer Alter-Ego(s) From the case of Irène’s mourning P. Janet inferred three main theoretical thesis. Firstly, it is the whole of the conscious life as represented in the present of a course of action that selects remembrances for the narratives of the self, linking actions and events in the continuity of a biography; secondly, automatic remembrances and memory are distinct in that memory entails a socialised ego-alter meaning; thirdly, restitutio ad integrum and memory are at opposed sides in the role of keeping the

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continuity of mental and social life and restitutio is frequently the symptom of psychoasthenia or incapacity to begin or terminate actions’ sequences meaningful to others. In the Lectures, the consideration of the social dimension of personality gave also a special emphasis to the communicative dimensions associated to memory, in retention, recall and recognition mechanisms embedded in defined communicative operations, as the commissions. One of the essential features of social life according to P. Janet’s Lectures is the relation of a command to a consequence of a command in interpersonal actions mediated by language and socially shared symbols. Memory is active in interpersonal actions, as social memory, whenever alter is absent from the space/time environment of ego and such absence is processed in observations and anticipations of perceptions. The scrutiny of the social treatment and communicative processing of the absence of the interlocutors is relevant in cases of deferred transmission of messages or in mediated transmissions, mobilising third parties. To communicate in the assumption of the absence of the addressees is also the beginning of society as an autonomous meaning system. Also in the social setting is true that operations dealing with memory are linked to operations dealing with attention. Many social actions are commissions developing in the absence of the addressee (alter). Spatial absence demands transportation and motor delivery efforts, and temporal absence a more or less complex anticipation of the psycho-social mechanisms of time deferring and of their impact in the energy of the person(s) available for the articulation of functions. P. Janet claimed that a fully developed self-conscious personality, as articulation centre of psychological operations and functions, can only emerge from the awareness to the social demands of interpersonal commissions dealing with the absence of someone in the space/time. The notion of memory is a social construction in such a strong sense that one explicitly denies relevance to the habitual psychological convention (H. Bergson) of a psychological memory—un homme seul n’a pas de memoire et n’en a pas besoin (Janet 2006: 219–220). Discussing the distinction of “acts of presence” and “conducts in absence”, the psychologist conceived memory as a struggle against absence that can be defeated in cases of a failure of adaptation to the social needs of the measure of the time’s blocks of public time. Communicative incapacities seem to be associated to inconsistencies in the psychological integration of public time with its effects in the construction of personal time and personal memories. According to a communicative meta-modelling of the action’s sequences, in the Lectures the study of interpersonal commissions led the author to the analysis of the psychological function of the alter’s absence from the (space/time) psychic environment of ego and the psychic traces of the temporal deferring of actions. Marcel Mauss’s study of the social-temporal structure of the rituals of beginning and termination in tribal societies led P. Janet to the conviction that the beginning and termination of actions are not psychological creations but social ceremonies relying on the social utility. Even if the Lectures did not offer a detailed conceptual analysis of the social-psychic interdependence of the construction of the temporal duration, the idea of the social ceremonialisation of duration segments is a major discovery.

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Ceremonialisation of time is a very complex notion and surely demands a great amount of psychic energy and the actualisation of socialised mechanisms of narration. Consequently, memory is not a primitive fact neither in the phylogenetic acquisitions nor in ontogenesis. According to the levels required for the socio-symbolic articulations occurring in public time’s recognition and psychological integration, the animals do not have memory but reflex conservation of automatisms. Durée means a defined block of time with its own social and psychological density, like a sequential structure of meaning which is a product of observations and of a measure of time accessible to internal observations. Both, the beginning and termination of la durée are defined by social ceremonies of beginning and termination that cause psychological stress, demand a focus of attention and concentrated neuro-muscular efforts, in contrast to H. Bergson’s reference to an inner flow. The absence of a competent psychological integration of the social demands of time’s ceremonialisation is commonly the cause or the effect of P. Janet’s “explosive acts”, he observed in the epileptic attacks (Janet 2006: 70–71). In epilepsy, there are no signs of beginning acts or termination acts, properly defined. The sudden attacks are like “primitive acts”, occurring ex abrupto, similar to reflex responses. The therapist follows their symptoms in psychoses, some neurosis, and in epilepsy. Perhaps emphatically, P. Janet uses the notions of “neurosis of beginning” and “troubles of termination”, considers melancholia a general inability to act and prolonged morbid mourning as a sign of an incapacity to terminate. Some symptoms in these diseases represent a malformation of the social meaning of time and denote incapacities in the realisation of the outer alter-ego in the social environment of the ego’s psychic system. The incapacity to realise the alter-ego in the outer social environment entailing a competent time measure regarding delivery of messages or execution of actions discloses itself in the regressive orientation to the “primitive acts” of the automatic responses, in motor repetition and in the memory troubles of psychological automatisms. P. Janet’s communicative meta-modelling of the actions’ sequences enlightens the conversion of an ego-alter space/time coordination into an addresser/addressee relation. In the Lectures (1927–28), the consequences of the conversion were not fully scrutinised. A central consequence, grasped by the psychologist, is the following of the analogy between the accomplishing of an action and a satisfactory delivery of a message. Many accidents can happen in the delivering of messages in interpersonal communication. Some of them are due to deficient motor efforts. These are psycho-motor failures that have communicative impact which produces again a psychological reentry. Other obstacles pertain to the use of communication itself. However, both reveal a lack of the realisation of the outer alter-ego and an insufficient notion of the symbolic shared social reality. It was in 1937 in a speech delivered to the Congress of Psychology, “Les Conduites Sociales”, published in the following year, that P. Janet addressed the theme of the psychological re-entries of the social actions with reference to the delusion of persecution or more specifically the verbal hallucination in persecutory delirium. According to his interpretation, the delirium of persecution and the corresponding

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verbal hallucinations refer to the censorship that the patients make about themselves. Gaëtan G. de Clérambault was a pioneer in the examination of the psycho-social corridor in the study of projected self-censorship. Both P. Janet and G. G. de Clérambault were interested in the development of psychological automatisms related to the phenomena of personalities’ fusions in persecutory hallucinations or in the bizarre cases of “theft of thought”. The situations in which people feel guilty about everything that happens or cases of subjective over-account are “problems of social objectivation and subjectivation” (troubles de l’ objectivation et de la subjectivation sociales).

3.5 Conclusions Allow me a reconstruction from a systemic perspective, with an implicit prolepsis to future work. 1. Psychic and communicative systems are evolving forms provided with operative autonomy whose elements are organised according to sequential R-O-I series (representamen—object—interpretant, according to Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic terminology) and agreeing to the distinction actuality/possibility. Due to observations, each system drives also a cognitive orientation of the meaning sequences. Cognition is a form that adapts meaning sequential elements and the actual/possible distinction to an inner/outer; system/environment difference. This binary can be rebuilt inside itself (re-entry), generating virtual inner/outer twin binaries—inner alter ego(s) in psychic systems. Communicative systems and psychic systems co-evolve through semiotic chains and such co-evolution produces cognitive rebuilding of cognitive forms from one system into the other in many ways. 2. Alternating memories in somnambulism and in dissociated personalities are aspects of the withdrawal of communication to the inner environment of the psychic system, keeping the characteristics of the non-delivered signs or incomplete signs cut from their mental or communicative interpretants. As typical psychic formations, the multiple personalities are in the true sense virtual constructions— they are those to whom ego could not speak or those who could not speak to the ego. Notwithstanding, the personae are captured within the addresser-addressee form distinguishing an ego and alter, like a psychic shadow of the communication between real people. They are literally virtual alter-ego(s) also because they emerge as buried memories in the process of narration. Buried memories are not objects in the proper sense but coagulated semiotic silhouettes of non-delivered messages orbiting around virtual personalities. P. Janet used the metaphor of the capsule of time which is appropriate to describe such encapsulated personalities with whom ego repeats the gestures of its incapacity to accomplish a direct talk, when telling first-person stories through the distressed body’s signs.

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References Arnaud, Sabine. 2015. On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category between 1670 and 1820. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Balsemão Pires, Edmundo. 2018. Uma Estética do Movimento (1870–1930). In Revista Filosófica de Coimbra, vol. 53, 9–48. Bergson, Henri. 1889. Essai sur les Données Immédiates de la Conscience. Paris: Félix Alcan. Bergson, Henri. 1896, 1939. Matière et Mémoire. Essai sur la Relation du Corps à l’ Esprit. Paris: P. U. F. Bernheim, Hyppolite. 1884. De la Suggestion dans L’ État Hypnotique et dans L’ État de Veille. Paris: Octave Doin, Éditeur. Bernheim, Hyppolite. 1891. Hypnotisme, Suggestion, Psychothérapie. Paris: Octave Doin, Éditeur. Charcot, J.-Martin, and Paul Richer. 1887. Les Démoniaques dans L’Art. Paris: Adrien Delahaye et Émile Lecrosnier, Éditeurs. Freud, Sigmund, and J. Breuer. 1955. Studies on Hysteria. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. II, ed. S. Freud. London: The Hogarth Press. Gillund, Gary, and Richard M. Shiffrin. 1984. A Retrieval Model for both Recognition and Recall. Psychological Review 91 (1): 1–67. James, William. 1890. 1950. The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. New York: Dover Publications Inc. Janet, Pierre. 1886a. Note sur quelques phénomènes de somnambulisme. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger 21: 190–198. Janet, Pierre. 1886b. Les actes inconscients et le dédoublement de la personnalité pendant le somnambulisme provoqué. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger 22: 577–592. Janet, Pierre. 1886c. Deuxième Note sur le Sommeil Provoqué à Distance et la Suggestion Mentale pendant l’ État Somnambulique (séance du 31 Mai 1886). Revue Philosophique de la France et de l´Étranger 22: 212–223. Janet, Pierre. 1887. L’ Anesthésie Systematisée et la Dissociation des Phénomènes Psychologiques. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l´Étranger 23: 449–472. Janet, Pierre. 1888. Les Actes inconscients et la Mémoire pendant le Somnambulisme. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l´Étranger 25: 238–279. Janet, Pierre. 1889. L’Automatisme Psychologique. Paris: Félix Alcan. Janet, Pierre. 1890. Une Altération de la Faculté de Localiser les Sensations. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l´Étranger 29: 659–664. Janet, Pierre. 1892. Étude sur Quelques Cas d’ Amnésie Antérograde dans la Maladie de la Désagrégation Psychologique. In International Congress of Experimental Psychology, London. London: Williams and Norgate. Janet, Pierre. 1897. L’ Influence Somnambulique et le Besoin de Direction. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l´Étranger 43: 113–143. Janet, Pierre. 1911. L’ État Mentale des Hystériques. Paris: Félix Alcan. Janet, Pierre. 1923. La Médicine Psychologique. Paris: E. Flammarion Éditeur. Janet, Pierre. 1929. L’ Évolution Psychologique de la Personnalité. Paris: Éditions Chahine. Janet, Pierre. 1938. Les Conduites Sociales. In Onzième Congrès Internationale de Psychologie, ed. Henri Piéron and Ignace Meyerson, 138–149. Paris: Félix Alcan. Janet, Pierre. 2006. L’ Évolution de la Mémoire et la Notion du Temps. Leçons au Collège de France (1927–28). Paris: l’ Harmattan. Kintsch, Walter. 1988. The Role of Knowledge in Discourse Comprehension: A ConstructionIntegration Model. Psychotocical Review 95 (2): 163–182. Kintsch, Walter, David Welsch, Franz Schmalhofer, and Susan Zimny. 1990. Sentence Memory: A Theoretical Analysis. Journal of Memory and Language 29: 133–159. Murdock, Bennett B. 1999. The Buffer 30 Years Later: Working Memory in a Theory of Distributed Associative Model (TODAM). In On Human Memory: Evolution, Progress, and Reflections on the

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30th Anniversary of the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model, ed. Chizuko Izawa, 35–58. New York/London: Taylor and Francis Group, Psychology Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1998. The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, 1893–1913, vol. 2. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Piéron, Henri. 1910. L’ Évolution de la Mémoire. Paris: Ernest Flammarion Éditeur. Ribot, Théodule-Armand. 1885. Les Maladies de la Personnalité. Paris: Félix Alcan. Ribot, Théodule-Armand. 1914. La Vie Inconsciente et les Mouvements. Paris: Félix Alcan. Richer, Paul. 1885. Études Cliniques sur la Grande Hystérie ou Hystéro-Épilepsie. Paris: Adrien Delahaye et Émile Lecrosnier, Éditeurs. Semon, Richard. 1921. The Mneme. London/New York: George Allen and Unwin, The Macmillan Company. Thornton, E.M. 1976. Hypnotism, Hysteria and Epilepsy. An historical Synthesis. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Van Dijk, Teun A., and Walter Kintsch. 1983. Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic Press. Wundt, Wilhelm M. 1892. Hypnotismus und Suggestion. Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann.

Edmundo Balsemão Pires is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Coimbra. Concluded his Licenciatura in Philosophy (1980–1985), Master and Ph.D. studies at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, Portugal (M.A.: 1986–1990|Ph.D.: 1991–1999). Authored six books on themes of his specialization—Hegel, Luhmann, Theory of Society, Theory of Systems and Aesthetics. From 2007 to the present has anchored his research on three projects—Individuation of Modern Society, Foundations of Modern Aesthetics, Sequentiality of Meaning.

Chapter 4

Sonic Virtuality, Environment, and Presence Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard

Abstract The article presents a brief introduction to the concept of sonic virtuality, a view of sound as a multi-modal, emergent perception that provides a framework that has since been used to provide an explanation of the formation of environments. Additionally, the article uses such concepts to explain the phenomenon of presence, not only in virtual worlds but also in actual worlds. The view put forward is that environment is an emergent perception, formed from the hypothetical modelling of salient worlds of sensory things, and it is in the environment that we feel present. The article ends with some thoughts on the use of biofeedback in computer games as part of the immersive technology designed to facilitate presence in such worlds.

4.1 Introduction Sonic virtuality is a concept that provides a means to think about sound in a way that includes thinking on the phenomenon of virtuality. The concept provides a framework that allows developments to be actualized in light of the practical virtuality that forms the experience of our everyday lives and that also forms the experience of artificial worlds such as those found in Virtual Reality and computer games. I have been developing the concept of sonic virtuality since it was first formulated (Garner and Grimshaw 2014; Grimshaw and Garner 2014a, 2015) by expanding it to include thinking on environment and presence both in actual worlds, that is, our everyday, non-computer-mediated experience, and those worlds typically termed virtual. The concept itself grew out of a theoretical framework that was designed to explain the practice of sound in computer games, particularly those with a firstperson perspective, and that illuminated the function and experience of sound in such worlds (Grimshaw 2008). Not only has it proved to be a useful concept to drive the development of systems leveraging biofeedback between the player and the audioprocessing capabilities of game engines (Garner and Grimshaw 2013; Grimshaw and Garner 2014b; Garner 2016) but it has also proven useful as a means to understand our M. Grimshaw-Aagaard (B) Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_4

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everyday experience of presence. This is particularly important to bear in mind given the current push to converge our experience of virtual worlds with our experience of actual worlds. This article provides an introduction to the concept of sonic virtuality. It also provides examples of how the concept has been used to explore aspects of experience such as environment and presence and how its use might be expanded in biofeedback scenarios. It begins with a brief but necessary clarification of some terminology used throughout.

4.2 Clarifying the Terminology 4.2.1 Computer Game Wherever in this article I refer to the artefacts and perceptual effects of computer games, I use the exemplar of first-person perspective computer games, particularly those that are multi-player. Such artefacts include audio, non-player characters (bots), and the visual and interactive components of the game world while perceptual effects include environment and presence—some of these terms are clarified further in this section. My reason for concentrating on this form of gaming is that such games typically attempt to provide the player with an experience mediated via the game’s immersive technology that is similar to the presence that is experienced in the actual world. In particular, I am concerned with the perceptual experience of presence; it is the case that first-person perspective games approach this experience by, and in part, placing the player visually and aurally at the centre of a world of sensory things—this is close to how it would be in everyday life—rather than, as in many other forms of computer games, providing the player with a third-person perspective on the game world and their character.

4.2.2 Sound and Audio Here, I distinguish strongly between the two. As will become clear below, the concept of sonic virtuality proposes that sound is an emergent perception. This perception arises through optional sensory stimulation (the sensation of sound waves especially but also sensations from other sensory modalities) and cognitive factors (for example, experience, knowledge, memory, and reasoning). Audio, in the case of computer games, refers to the digital files that are recordings of sound waves (or previously synthesized audio) or to the digital artefacts produced by real-time audio synthesis while the game is in progress. Audio is virtual potential that is actualized during gameplay as a sound wave and this wave is one of the sensory stimuli that can lead to the perception that is sound.

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4.2.3 World and Environment The terms world and environment are often used synonymously especially in the literature on computer games where virtual environment and virtual world are typically interchangeable. In a recent conference paper, Mads Walther-Hansen and I found it useful to separate into two concepts world and environment (Walther-Hansen and Grimshaw 2016). This distinction revolved around matters of saliency and perception and was used in that paper to formulate our concept of environment as something perceptually constructed rather than sensorially actual. In any world, there is a set of sensory things (objects and events) that are available to be sensed. I do not sense all such things at all times because of the limits of sensory horizons. Nevertheless, it is useful to take account of those things that are not directly and immediately sensed because of their causal potential somewhere down the line (it is useful for the understanding of actual worlds and for the design of virtual worlds). In the virtual world of a computer game (of the type I clarify above), I might not (and probably do not) sense all that another player senses but there are likely to be short-term and long-term consequences for me as the other player reacts to those sensory things [in terms of diegesis regarding the consequential effects of computer game audio, I have in the past referred to this as telediegesis (Grimshaw 2008)]. Thus, it is sensible to define world as the set of things that can be sensed by any one actor sensing in that world; this is as true for actual worlds as for virtual worlds. Regarding environment, Walther-Hansen and I defined it as a perceptual and dynamic construct based upon a sub-set of sensory things within the world whether that world is actual or virtual (Walther-Hansen and Grimshaw 2016). This sub-set is delimited by our sensory horizons or, in computer games, the sensory horizons the computer game engine provides based on the position of the player’s character in the game world, but is further delimited by our saliency horizons. Thus, not all sensory things within our sensory horizons (that is, the sensory world) are attended to and those that are (that is, the salient world) are attended to according to the exigencies of the need to act within the game world. Conceptually separating world (the set of sensory things that can be subdivided into sensory world and salient world) from environment (a dynamic, constructed perception of the salient world) allowed us to state that the formation of the environment was the process of individuating self from nonself. Indeed, we stated further that the environment functioned as a metonym of the nonself, creating a space in which to act and thus to be present in. As a metonym, the environment functions as a metaphorical tool with which to make use of the “ineffable and ungraspable whole” (Walther-Hansen and Grimshaw 2016, 77). There is one other advantage conferred by distinguishing world and environment and this concerns the terminological differentiation between real world and virtual world found in much of the literature on Virtual Reality and computer games. Following the standard concept of Deleuzian virtuality, Walther-Hansen and I preferred to state that all worlds are real and the real distinction lies in the question of whether the world in case is actual or virtual (Walther-Hansen and Grimshaw 2016, 78). In the actual world (popularly known as the real world), the sources of sensation, the

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sensory things, are actual and material. In a virtual world, although there are sensory things on which to construct our environment, the provenances of sensations are not actual but virtual and immaterial; that is, in the case of audio, it is virtual, pure potential, and must be actualized as a sound wave (the sensory thing) in order to be sensed—nor is the gun on the screen the actual source of the auditory sensation (that source is, in fact, the audio transducers of the headphones or loudspeakers placed at some remove from the computer screen). Despite distinguishing between actual world and virtual world, there is no distinction between actual environment and virtual environment. There are only environments and these are dynamically constructed perceptions based upon a foundation of sensations, regardless of the provenance of those sensations, and thus we are afforded a means to assess the efficacy of the construction of those environments in a virtual world when compared to the environments of the actual world.

4.2.4 Immersion and Presence As with world and environment, there is often a conflation between the terms immersion and presence; again, this is particularly the case in the literature on computer games (for instance, Ermi and Mäyrä 2005; Brown and Cairns 2004) and in the marketing hyperbole that surrounds the medium. It is useful, though, to distinguish between the two so as to grasp more securely the distinction between cause and effect. This distinction has been made by Slater (2003) who defines immersion, in terms of virtual worlds, as the capabilities of the software and hardware in providing a level of “fidelity [of sensory stimuli] in relation to real-world sensory modalities” (1). Thus, while immersion is objective, providing a means to measure the level of sensory fidelity, presence is the “human reaction to immersion” (2) and so a subjective experience. Presence itself has a number of definitions that typically involve a feeling or sense of being in a place and being able to act in that place (see Minsky 1980; IJsselsteijn et al. 2001; Slater 2003). Waterworth and Waterworth (2014) argue that presence arises “from an active awareness of our embodied environment in a present world around us” (590)1 and provide a further gloss on this by stating that it is the 1 Although

not explained in the text, I assume the ‘present’ in ‘present world’ refers to immediacy, the here-and-now and ‘to-handness’ of objects and events in that world. This is a little problematic as it does not take into account the time delay (often consciously noticeable) between modally different sensory stimuli from the same sensory thing. For example, while the time lag between reflection of light off a sensory object and its impingement on our visual system is perceptually negligible for most practical purposes, a sound wave in air at 20 °C takes a second to travel about 344 m and the speed of travel of odiferous chemicals can be highly variable depending on air currents but is always slower than the speed of light. Thus, our ‘present world’ of sensory objects and events is anything but immediate and certainly it is not synchronized in the apprehension of sensory stimuli from those objects and events. In the perception of sensory things, though, there is a synchronization in the conjoining of variously time-lagged, external sensory stimuli into discrete perceived objects and events. (At 0 °C, this time disparity is even more noticeable because, at that temperature, sound in air travels at about 332 m/s.) This is why I prefer to use ‘salient world’ rather

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feeling that “distinguishes self from nonself” (589). In our thinking, Walther-Hansen and I, while we agree that presence is the feeling of being in a place and being able to act in that place, disagree with Waterworth and Waterworth and instead state that presence itself arises from the distinction between self and nonself (Walther-Hansen and Grimshaw 2016, 81). Thus, the perceptual process of forming the environment is a process of individuating self from nonself and, using the environment as a metonym for the nonself, we are then able to be present, to feel in and be able to act within the perceived environment of a salient world. Where “distinguishing between self and nonself is part of the process that leads to the active awareness of embodiment in a salient world” (Walther-Hansen and Grimshaw 2016, 82), ultimately, we were able to define presence as that situated, active awareness. Among many presence theorists, there is an assumption of direct proportionality between immersion and presence. This is implicit in Slater’s equation between the fidelity of the virtual world’s sensory technology to ‘real-world sensory modalities’ and is also found in IJsselsteijn and colleague’s concentration on “more accurate reproductions and/or simulations of reality” despite there being a consensus that “presence is a complex, multidimensional perception, formed through an interplay of raw sensory data (sensations) and various cognitive processes” (2001, 180–181). Thus, there is the belief in a direct cause and effect relationship between the immersive technology and the feeling of presence. I feel that such an equation—increase the fidelity of the sensation produced by immersive technology and presence is increased—is too simplistic. I am not the only one to suggest that presence is not necessarily automatically attained once a given threshold of sensory quality is reached. Waterworth and Waterworth (2014) argue that one can have a feeling of “absence” rather than presence despite being surrounded by the rich sensory stimulation of the actual world (589) and those developing Real Virtuality systems (as opposed to Virtual Reality systems) work towards an “‘appropriate’ level of sensory stimulation” (Chalmers 2014, 605) across several sensory modalities rather than aiming for the perfection of a ‘realistic’ level.2 Similarly, Calleja (2014) claims that “while high fidelity systems are an important part of enhancing the intensity of an experience, they do not in themselves create a sense of presence” (225). In a 2011 article, colleagues and I proposed the notion of the Uncanny Wall as a replacement for the Uncanny Valley.3 Here, our contention was “that increased habituation with the technology used in the attempt to create realistic, human-like characters only serves to draw a viewer’s attention to differences from the human norm [and] technological discernment on the part of the audience generally keeps than ‘present world’ because the former phrase shifts the emphasis of perception (and thus the process of environment-forming) away from the perception of stimuli at a particular, immediate point in time to attending to, and perceiving, stimuli across time spans. 2 The concept of such a threshold of an appropriate sensory stimulation level also allows for the suggestion that one is either present or one is absent; there are no half measures when it comes to presence. 3 The Uncanny Valley proposition (Mori 1970) suggests that the human observer will experience negative, uncomfortable feelings at that point where a robot is almost indistinguishable in appearance and behaviour from humans.

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pace with technological developments used in the attempt to create realistic, humanlike characters such that, ultimately, the perception of uncanniness for such characters is inevitable” (Tinwell et al. 2011, 328, 339). Walther-Hansen and I made use of this to suggest that “increasing technological familiarity and discernment trumps pretensions of presence in virtual worlds” (Walther-Hansen and Grimshaw 2016, 83) and I later went a little further in proposing, if one only concentrates on improving sensory simulations of realism, the idea of a Presence Wall (Grimshaw-Aagaard 2019). Presence, therefore, is much more than a matter of providing precisely realistic sensory stimulation.

4.3 Sonic Virtuality The definition of sound in the concept of sonic virtuality is that “sound is an emergent perception that arises primarily in the auditory cortex and that is formed through spatio-temporal processes in an embodied system” (Grimshaw and Garner 2015, 1). The need for a new definition grew out of a dissatisfaction with the standard acoustics definition of sound (detailed in Grimshaw 2015) that neither accounts for many anomalies in the experience of sound nor for our everyday experience of sound. (Some of these anomalies are given as examples below.) The need also grew out of empirical research regarding biofeedback and computer game audio (e.g. Grimshaw et al. 2008; Nacke et al. 2010; Garner and Grimshaw 2013) leading to the realization that the real-time creation or processing of game audio in response to the player’s psychophysiology required a more holistic view of sound other than it was a sound wave. As the rationale for, and details of the definition and concept, has been dealt with extensively elsewhere, here I provide only the briefest of accounts of the fundamentals of sonic virtuality that are necessary to the ideas presented in this article. The emergent perception that is sound arises from the sonic aggregate. This is conceptualized as potential, in virtual terms, and elements within this aggregate can be subdivided into two groups: external factors potentially contributing to the emergence of sound, the exosonus; and internal factors contributing to the emergence of sound, the endosonus. The exosonus comprises the sensations of sensory things from the salient world and, in addition to sound waves, these can be sensations from other sensory modalities. The endosonus comprises the cognitive input to the sonic aggregate; factors such as experience, knowledge, memory, and reasoning. Sound is actualized as an emergent perception from the virtuality of the sonic aggregate through the effects of saliency. In a sensory world of sensory things, cognition gives form and meaning to the sensations we attend to of the multiplicity of sensations impinging on our body. These sensations, as a group, are multimodal and this multimodality is required to some degree to force the emergence of sound: by attending to the image of a Geiger counter, the sound that emerges acquires the form and meaning of a Geiger counter rather than, for example, the sound being that of corn popping in a hot, covered pan (which is an answer I have often been given when

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playing the audio clip without any visual guidance). As another example (one that I have also used in the past), I might play students or conference delegates a series of audio clips and these are variously identified as alarm, camera, manual saw, and chainsaw. In point of fact, the audio is a recording of the Australian Lyrebird, one of the animal kingdom’s master mimics. A number of other examples can be provided that support the need for a different concept of sound than that provided by physics: • There is a well-known aural ‘illusion,’ the McGurk Effect. In this, there are two video recordings of a person’s mouth repeatedly speaking respectively the syllables ‘ba’ and ‘fa.’ One video is left unedited while the ‘fa’ video has its original audio replaced with the ‘ba’ audio. Concentrating on the image of the articulating mouth, subjects unfailingly hear the sound ‘ba’ from the unedited video and ‘fa’ from the edited video even when they know that the audio clips, and thus the sound waves, are identical. • What is known in the field of psychoacoustics as the ventriloquism effect (see Warren et al. 1981) has been described in the realm of cinema by Chion (1994) as synchresis (it can also be experienced in many other areas such as computer games). Despite image and sound wave source (that is, the loudspeakers of the cinema’s auditorium) being physically separate (and often significantly so), we still unify images and sound waves into perceptual events located on the screen. • Play subjects a silent film of some clearly typically sounding action, perhaps the striking of a hammer on an anvil, and, with each strike, they display brain activity in the auditory cortex similar to when they actually sense the audio that has been muted (e.g. Raij et al. 1997; Hoshiyama et al. 2001; Voisin et al. 2006). A number of points can be drawn from the above examples that demonstrate some divergence between human everyday experience and the definition of sound provided by physics. For the purposes of this paper, I provide two of the most pertinent here: • Our everyday experience of sound is that it is the object (or event) that gives rise to the sound wave we sense. No-one, in their everyday experience, describes a sound by acoustic parameters such as fundamental frequency, overtone distribution, amplitude envelope, and so on. • People do disagree about what a sound is, particularly in the absence of information from another sensory modality, or might even be unable to identify the sound wave source despite all sensing the same sound wave. Once provided with the identification as to the original sound wave source, the correct identification is then recalled at the next exposure to the sound wave. From these observations, sonic virtuality makes some further assertions beyond those noted above: • What is described in the auditory neurological literature as aural or auditory imagery is in fact sound. Thus, the exosonus is not necessary for the emergent perception of sound.

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• Where acoustics and psychoacoustics claim that localization of sound is the localization of the sound wave source relative to our auditory system, sonic virtuality asserts that we actively locate the emergent sound on a source that our experience and reasoning dictate as most likely or useful. This can even occur in the absence of a sound wave [there is a locational relationship between the silent hammer and anvil and the imagined sound—see action on screen; imagine appropriate sound to action; synchronize imagined sound (auditory imagery) to hammer on anvil].

4.4 From Sonic Virtuality to Presence in an Environment In conceiving of sonic virtuality, Garner and I had the aim of providing a nuanced concept of sound as a perception. In the years since, I have started to develop this perceptual model of sound into a perceptual model of the environment. In particular, I have started to use this second model to attempt to explain the phenomenon of presence as a prelude to thinking about how to design immersive technologies of virtual worlds which will truly lead to an emulation of the presence we feel in the actual world. Some of this thinking is evident in the ideas Walther-Hansen and I have recently developed (detailed above) but these ideas on the environment as perception continue to be the focus of my work. Specifically, I have recently sketched out a framework of the environment that takes its inspiration from the model of sonic virtuality that Garner and I devised (Grimshaw 2018, forthcoming). As with the sonic aggregate comprising exosonus and endosonus, I have proposed that the perceptual environment might be conceived of as an exo-environment and an endo-environment. That is, the environment emerges from an environmental aggregate formed from external sensations and internal cognition. From the environmental aggregate, hypotheses are formed that are candidate models of the salient world. The notion of hypothesis-modelling of the world in which we are follows previous theorizing about the acquisition of knowledge about that world (e.g. Clark 2013). In my conception of the environment, hypotheses of the salient world are modelled from the environmental aggregate through an imaginative process. That is, each hypothesis is an imagining of a world, an imagining that might be an environment in which we can be present, a model of sensory things in a salient world to which imagination, using the cognitive components of the endo-environment, gives form and meaning. Because the need to be in a world is a pre-requisite for action and success in that world, the modelling of hypotheses is time-pressured. Thus, an increasingly refined hypothesis is eventually selected as the environment; an adequate model of the salient world given form and meaning and so providing the conditions, the space, in which to be present. In an essay on the virtuality of the Kanizsa Triangle, Massumi (2014) explains the ‘pop-out’ of the triangle in terms of a release of tension within the virtual cloud of potential that the arrangement of figures on the page implies. According to Massumi, the emergence of the triangle is the end result of the resolution of “a force field

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of emergence” (62) within the virtual cloud. I view the processes at work on the environmental aggregate in similar terms but specifically identify imagination as the driving force actualizing the virtuality inherent in the aggregate. Hypothesizing is imagining how things might be that allows for the testing of the veracity of that imagining; hypotheses as candidate models of a salient world are imaginings of that world conjured up from the environmental aggregate and, if a hypothesis allows for presence, the feeling that allows for action in a salient world, it is selected as the environment.

4.5 Concluding Remarks As previously mentioned, I have an interest in biofeedback in computer games. While it is all very well to speculate on what an environment is, the processes of its formation, and how we become present within it, I like to use the resultant concepts and frameworks for practical purposes. In this case, to model and drive the development of biofeedback systems that provide the conditions necessary to presence when playing a computer game. I conclude, then, with some brief remarks on how the concept of the environment sketched out in this essay might be used to improve the immersive technologies used to create virtual worlds. The perception of the environment is, in sensory and cognitive terms, a multimodal perception. The virtual worlds of computer games, though, comprise sensory stimuli that are purely visual and auditory (and, occasionally, haptic). This means that the elements of the salient virtual world fall far short of the elements available in a salient actual world. Furthermore, the monitor used to display the visual elements of the computer game is limited in size or, with Virtual Reality headsets, limited in its image resolution. Additionally, the audio of the computer game is limited in its capacity to be processed in ways that can match the effects on sound waves that the actual world imposes while the use of headphones or loudspeakers is a poor substitute for the unencumbered experience provided by our auditory system in the actual world. Current technology is good, and is improving in leaps and bounds, but is not yet up to the task of enabling an experience of salient virtual worlds that can match that of the actual world. If it is imagination that drives the process of environment formation from the highly limited exo-environment experienced when playing a computer game, then, I suggest, that imagination can be aided through the use of biofeedback that can actualize the potential inherent in the endo-environment (comprising experience, knowledge, memory, and reasoning—based not only on the worlds of computer games but also, and importantly, on actual worlds and everyday experience). Biofeedback technology comes in various guises from simple galvanic skin response and heart-rate monitors to electromyography and electroencephalography, the data from which can be used by the computer game engine to process artefacts of the virtual world in real-time according to an assessment of the player’s psychophysiology.

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In other words, in a survival horror computer game, if the game engine senses that the player is not frightened enough it will respond accordingly. Preliminary work has been done on this in the realm of audio (see Garner and Grimshaw 2013; Garner 2016) where the player’s arousal was assessed and, if it was not deemed sufficiently high, the game engine processed audio by enhancing parameters of that audio known to increase tension. I propose that it would be possible to use such techniques in order to increase the possibility of true presence when experiencing a computer game by manipulating the endo-environment such that it becomes possible to facilitate the player to efficiently and easily imaginatively create the environment of the salient virtual world to a level that matches the environments formed when experiencing the actual world. This is some way off in the future—at the very least there would need to be a real-time assessment of the player’s sense of presence and the ability to isolate and identify cognitive components of the endo-environment, testing how the player uses experience, memory, knowledge, and reasoning to form environments—but there is no time like the present to begin work on making this scenario a reality.

References Brown, E., and P. Cairns. 2004. A Grounded Investigation of Game Immersion. In Human Factors in Computing Systems [online]. New York: ACM. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=986048. Accessed 30 April 2017. Calleja, G. 2014. Immersion in Virtual Worlds. In The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, ed. M. Grimshaw, 222–236. New York: Oxford University Press. Chalmers, A. 2014. Level of Realism: Feel, Smell, and Taste in Virtual Environments. In The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, ed. M. Grimshaw, 602–614. New York: Oxford University Press. Chion, M. 1994. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Translated by C. Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press. Clark, A. 2013. Expecting the World: Perception, Prediction, and the Origins of Human Knowledge. Journal of Philosophy CX/9: 469–496. Ermi, L., and F. Mäyrä. 2005. Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion. In Changing Views—Worlds in Play. DiGRA. http://www.digra.org/digital-library/ publications/fundamental-components-of-the-gameplay-experience-analysing-immersion/. Accessed 30 April 2017. Garner, T.A. 2016. From Sinewaves to Physiologically-Adaptive Soundscapes: The Evolving Relationship Between Sound and Emotion in Video Games. In Emotion in Games, ed. K. Karpouzis and G. N. Yannakakis, 197–214. Berlin: Springer. Garner, T.A., and M. Grimshaw. 2013. The Physiology of Fear and Sound: Working with Biometrics Toward Automated Emotion Recognition. Adaptive Gaming Systems. IADIS International Journal on WWW/Internet 11: 201477–201491. http://www.iadisportal.org/ijwi/papers/2013112106. pdf [accessed 30 June 2017]. Garner, T.A., and M. Grimshaw. 2014. Sonic Virtuality: Understanding Audio in a Virtual World. In The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, ed. M. Grimshaw, 364–377. New York: Oxford University Press. Grimshaw, M. 2008. The Acoustic Ecology of the First-Person Shooter: The Player Experience of Sound in the First-Person Shooter Computer Game. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller.

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Grimshaw, M. 2015. A Brief Argument for, and summary of, The Concept of Sonic Virtuality. Danish Musicology Online—Special Issue on Sound and Music Production 81–98. Grimshaw, M. 2018. Presence Through Sound. In Body, Sound and Space in Music and Beyond: Multimodal Explorations, ed. C. Wöllner, 279–298. London: Routledge. Grimshaw-Aagaard, M. 2019. Presence, Environment, and Sound and the Role of Imagination. In The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Imagination, ed. M. Grimshaw-Aagaard, M. Walther-Hansen, and M. Knakkergaard. New York: Oxford University Press. Grimshaw, M., and T. Garner. 2014a. Imagining Sound. In Proceedings of the 9th Audio Mostly Conference. New York: ACM. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2636879.2636881. Accessed 30 April 2017. Grimshaw, M., and T. Garner. 2014b. Embodied Virtual Acoustic Ecologies of Computer Games. In The Oxford Handbook of Interactive Audio, ed. K.E. Collins., B. Kapralos, and H. Tessler, 181–195. New York: Oxford University Press. Grimshaw, M., and T.A. Garner. 2015. Sonic Virtuality: Sound as Emergent Perception. New York: Oxford University Press. Grimshaw, M., C.A. Lindley, and L. Nacke. 2008. Sound and Immersion in the First-Person Shooter: Mixed Measurement of the Player’s Sonic Experience. Paper read at Audio Mostly 2008, Piteå, Sweden. http://www.acagamic.com/wp-publications/grimshaw2008/. Accessed 30 April 2017. Hoshiyama, M., A. Gunji, and R. Kakigi. 2001. Hearing the Sound of Silence: A Magnetoencephalographic Study. NeuroReport 12: 1097–1102. IJsselsteijn, W.A., J. Freeman, and H. de Ridder. 2001. Presence: Where are We? Cyberpsychology & Behavior 4: 179–182. Massumi, B. 2014. Envisioning the Virtual. In The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, ed. M. Grimshaw, 55–70. New York: Oxford University Press. Minsky, M. 1980, June. Telepresence. Omni 45–51. Mori, M. 1970. The Uncanny Valley. Energy 7/4:33–35. Nacke, L., M. Grimshaw, and C.A. Lindley. 2010. More than a Feeling: Measurement of Sonic User Experience and Psychophysiology in a First-Person Shooter Game. Interacting with Computers 22: 336–343. Raij, T., L. McEvoy, J.P. Mäkelä, and R. Hari. 1997. Human Auditory Cortex is Activated by Omissions of Auditory Stimuli. Brain Research 745: 134–143. Slater, M. 2003. A Note on Presence Terminology. Presence Connect 3: 1–5. Tinwell, A., M. Grimshaw, and A. Williams. 2011. The Uncanny Wall. International Journal of Arts and Technology 4: 326–341. Voisin, J., A. Bidet-Caulet, O. Bertrand, and P. Fonlupt. 2006. Listening in Silence Activates Auditory Areas: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study. The Journal of Neuroscience 26: 273–278. Walther-Hansen, M., and M. Grimshaw. 2016. Being in a Virtual World: Presence, Environment, Salience, Sound. In Proceedings of the 11th Audio Mostly Conference. New York: ACM. http:// dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2986425. Accessed 30 April 2017. Warren, D.H., R.B. Welch, and T.J. McCarthy. 1981. The Role of Visual-Auditory “Compellingness” in the Ventriloquism Effect: Implications for Transitivity Among the Spatial Senses. Perception and Psychophysics 30: 557–564. Waterworth, J.A., and E.L. Waterworth. 2014. Distributed Embodiment: Real Presence in Virtual Bodies. In The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, ed. M. Grimshaw, 589–601. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard is the Obel Professor of Music at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has published widely across subjects as diverse as sound, biofeedback in computer games, virtuality, the Uncanny Valley, and IT systems and also writes free, open source software for virtual research environments (WIKINDX). Mark is series editor for the Palgrave Macmillan series Studies in Sound, and his books include the anthologies Game Sound Technology & Player Interac-

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tion (IGI Global 2011) and The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality (Oxford University Press 2014), and, with co-author Tom Garner, a monograph entitled Sonic Virtuality (Oxford University Press 2015). A two-volume co-edited anthology, The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Imagination, was published in 2019 from Oxford University Press as was the co-authored The Recording, Mixing, & Mastering Reference Handbook.

Chapter 5

Imagination and Virtuality. On Susanne Langer’s Theory of Artistic Forms Joaquim Braga

Abstract This text attempts to analyze and inquire the relationship between virtuality and imagination in Susanne Langer’s art theory. One of my main purposes is to know whether the “actual-virtual” binomial can be applied, without any theoretical concern, to artistic objects and art in general. Since, in Langer, the symbol theory is directly connected with a theory of perception, it remains to scrutinize how aesthetic experiences mediated by the several artistic modalities imply the transformation of works of art into virtual objects. That such a transformation carries the effective power of imagination is a capital condition inherent to all artistic symbolization processes. That these latter, however, do not always express a linear dynamic of the “actual-virtual” binomial is, as will be seen, a critical point of view that must be applied to the aesthetic formulations and concepts developed by Langer.

5.1 Introduction The whole philosophy of Susanne Langer is supported by a symbol theory, largely constructed after the thought of Ernst Cassirer and Alfred North Whitehead. Although Langer acknowledges such a philosophical legacy, she will privilege an area of reflection that has not been systematically developed by the two philosophers mentioned: it is, in this specific case, the subject of art. Cassirer, rather than Whitehead, devoted some attention to the questions of art and aesthetics within his Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, but he did not systematically formulate a reflection on the spectrum of the various artistic forms. Whitehead, in turn, refers to art only in some excerpts of his works, being in this sense conceived more as an example of his philosophical formulations than, indeed, a specific subject of study. However, the key question that applies to any symbol theory lies in its application to the artistic world, namely how artistic objects and the aesthetic relations they

J. Braga (B) Research Unit Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_5

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provide can be interpreted as symbolization processes. How can we distinguish these processes from those other concerning cultural forms? It is due to the intention of answering these questions and simultaneously presenting criteria for aesthetic demarcation between the various artistic forms that Langer aligns to her symbol theory a theory of virtuality, or rather, a theory of virtual objects. At first glance, such a connection between symbolization and virtualization may suggest a theoretical approach anchored only in the concept of “representation”; and this is still the subject of multiple criticism by those who think that representation—and the idea of symbol in general—is insufficient and even harmful to categorize the world created by art. This is not, however, the path chosen by Langer. As we shall see, the author rejects a merely “figurative” approach to artistic objects and conceives the virtuality of these objects in close relation with the sensory spectrum of our perceptual experiences. Strictly speaking, concerning Langer, the virtual is the operative nexus that unifies and differentiates artistic objects as objects that are individuated by aesthetic experiences. As with a significant part of Western philosophical thought, the concept of “virtual” is determined by Langer as opposed to the concept of “actual”. It is precisely in the scrutiny of the relations between both concepts that the author will find each artistic form’s individuation morphology. And it is also there, in such a relational sphere, that imagination acts inside aesthetic experience and more specifically in what unites it to perception and sensory data. Hence, as I want to show, the virtuality of artistic objects cannot, regarding Langer, be thought without the active role of imagination. It remains to inquire, however, to what extent the multiple articulations of the “actual-virtual” binomial substantiate the aesthetic dynamics of works of art and, in a broader sense, philosophy of art itself.

5.2 Virtuality and Illusion For Susanne Langer, artistic objects are true virtual entities, and, therefore, all aesthetic theories must always take into account the distinction between the actual and the virtual, as well as the relations between these two modalities in the individuation of each art form. “Anything that exists only for perception—the author states, and plays no ordinary, passive part in nature as common objects do, is a virtual entity. It is not unreal; where it confronts you, you really perceive it, you don’t dream or imagine that you do” (Langer 1957b: 5). The concept of virtual has, according to Langer, some connections to the “virtual space” of optics; and Langer even gives the example of projected images in the mirror. However, artistic virtuality differs in much from these phenomena of physical reality, since it does not project an already given reality, as that projected by mirrors. Langer moves away from a purely psychologist analysis of the work of art, solely based on the relationship between artist and viewer. Instead, her aesthetic theory is grounded on the symbolic construction of the art object itself. Here, after this assumption, we can find a great influence of Cassirer’s symbol theory. The German

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philosopher, in his formulations on art, also distances himself from such a psychological approach, namely from the emotivist theses on the aesthetic relations between artist and spectator. Instead, what guides Cassirer’s aesthetics—and his Philosophie der symbolischen Formen in general—is the construction of the articulation between sensible signs and sense modalities. To this end, Langer begins by relying on the concept of “Schein”, present in Friedrich Schiller’s aesthetics, since it “liberates perception—and with it, the power of Conception—from all practical purposes, and lets the mind dwell on the sheer appearance of things” (Langer 1953: 49).1 For Schiller, it was nature endowing humans with the ability to access the realm of the Schein, in particular through the sensory modalities of seeing and hearing. Sensible objects mediated by these two modalities are, in this philosopher’s conception, those engendered by the mind, unlike, for example, the sense of touch, which is externally imposed. So, as he reiterates, “What we see through the eye is different from what we feel” (Was wir durch das Augen sehen, ist von dem verschieden, was wir empfinden) (Schiller 1983: 40). Langer’s aim is to conceive illusion, not as a mere effect following from the art object over the perception of the viewer, but rather as the ultimate structure of the object itself. In Schiller’s theory, the assumption of a conversion from the sensible given to the purely aesthetic is already implicit, as it is simultaneously responsible both for the autonomy of the art object and the positive dimension of the illusion that it carries. Langer seems to support her concept of virtual on the same assumption. In her philosophy of art, the concepts that best introduce and clarify the actual-virtual binomial are those of “materials” and “elements”. The first has a connotation with the concept of actual and the latter with that of virtual. Essentially, this distinction is due to the fact that Langer wants to show that the tangible materiality of the work of art is penetrated by meaning-making processes, which in turn are able to give rise to the true individual status of the artistic object itself. The elements of the work are, thus, virtual inscriptions of meaning in the actuality of the material object. As the inscription of the illusion should not be confused with a mere mimetic disposition of the artwork, the virtuality of the art object is a creation, not a mere re-creation. “Appearance” is therefore a concept that does not imply the idea of optical illusion, as it is the case in the perspective painting of the Renaissance. It is quite the opposite. From her point of view, “All forces that cannot be scientifically established and measured must be regarded, from the philosophical standpoint, as illusory; if, therefore, such forces appear to be part of our direct experience, they are ‘virtual’, i.e. non-actual semblances” (Langer 1953: 188). Like Cassirer, and also Whitehead, Langer intends to delimit artistic objects and aesthetics in general from other cultural forms, whose symbolic nature can, as in the case of science, be apprehended according to purely logical and abstract principles. So, according to Langer, the concept of illusion does not illustrate something that has a deceptive disposition, nor does it report to hallucinatory mental states. 1 On

the influence of Schiller’s thought on Langer’s aesthetic theory, see, for example, Wilkinson (1955).

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Illusion is not, in this narrow sense, synonymous with “delusion”. Moreover, in Problems of Art, Langer finds, in the term “apparition”, the closest equivalent to the term “illusion”, as to enlighten it and avoid any semantic misunderstanding. Langer’s main theoretical concern is to overcome the mimetic theory of art and, in this respect, the virtuality of artistic objects is its seminal alternative. This idea is very outlined in Langer’s following formulation, when she states that as we observe a painting, “we neither believe nor make believe that there is a person or a bridge or a basket of fruit in front of us. We do not pass intellectually beyond the vision of space at all, but understand it as an apparition.” Therefore, as the author adds, our ordinary visual perception, “is suspended by the circumstance that we know this space to be virtual, and neither believe nor disbelieve in the existence of the objects in it. We see it as a pure perceptual form, created and articulated by all the visible elements in it: an autonomous, formed space” (Langer 1957b: 32). As the aesthetic-artistic illusion implies a conversion of a material object into something purely apparent, the process that is at its core can be described as the form through which the art object articulates perception with imagination. Thus designed, this articulation process can no longer be dependent on empirical criteria. The active role and aesthetic autonomy of imagination gives the artwork a real unshakeable status within reality itself. For a better understanding and theoretical enlightenment of the scope of the concept of illusion, we can find in Langer the seminal distinction between “image” and “model”. For the purposes of the author, an artistic image should not be confused with a model, since the former makes “the appearance of its object in one perspective out of many possible ones” feasible, regardless of whether it is a visual image, a sonic image or a tactile image. A model, conceived by a conventional selectivity, conversely implies a primacy of its operational functionality over the aesthetic virtuality of its object. The creation of images, mediated by human imagination, is a mental activity imposed on the sensible data of our perception, and, therefore, lies, in cognitive terms, in a stage prior to the use of models. Rather, the use of models is connected to a “higher level of conception, the level of discursive thought deliberate and analogical reasoning” (Langer 1975: 63). Here again, as it is evident at the core of this statement, Langer highlights her seminal distinction, present in her work Philosophy in a New Key, between “discursive symbols” and “presentational symbols”. These latter are, according to the author, those who most contribute to the manifestation of mental activities and the meaning-making processes that support them.

5.3 Primary Illusions and Secondary Illusions To see how virtuality is connected with imagination, let us take, as main example, painting as an art. Before this, however, it should be remembered that Langer does not depart from a negative ontology of pictorial configurations, largely based on the alleged iconic similarity between picture and represented object. The picture

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is not, therefore, an illusion which, in turn, disappoints, as in the formation of the Bildbewusstein in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology (Husserl 2006: 48–53); and hence imagination ceases here to be conceived as a faculty first immersed in the alleged indistinction between representation and reality, between the symbol and the symbolized. On the contrary, what unites imagination to the picture is the positive capacity of the first to generate a mediation autonomy of the second. The sensible discontinuity between the pictorial space and the physical space that surrounds it generates, according to Langer, the “primary illusions” of painting and the plastic arts in general. Regardless of the material nature of its inscription surface—whether it is two-dimensional or three-dimensional—the picture disposes of an autonomous space, configured and articulated through the elements that make it into a “total form”. So, here, there is, in a first moment, a transformation of the actual materials into virtual elements. As imagination has an active role, it is also through its action that the transformation of the material dimensions into the virtual existence of the artistic object is initially possible. In the case of painting, for example, such symbolic conversion is described by Langer as “the process of transforming the actual spatial datum, the canvas or paper surface, into a virtual space, creating the primary illusion of artistic vision” (Langer 1953: 80). And, referring to the so-called non-representational art, like Malevich’s square paintings, she even adds that some avant-garde painters reduced the picture surface only to the creation of this virtual space. That is, the structural virtuality of the picture is simultaneously reinforced and expressed, to the point of serving as the main theme for what it presents and the way the presentation itself occurs. The primary illusions are necessarily primary because they are, ab initio, the main virtual structure and the individual aesthetic status of each art form. If, concerning the plastic arts, the “virtual space” is the basic structure of their images, for music, on the contrary, it is the “virtual time” that, first, defines the articulation of its elements. Following up on this main idea, in Feeling and Form Langer tells us that every artistic form—as, for example, dance—in order to be considered structurally independent, must have “its own primary illusion”. This means, first of all, that every artistic form requires a different change profile from the actual to the virtual, from the materials to the elements. Langer supports the view that, although artistic forms build several interpenetrations, primary illusions are the ones that distinguish them from each other. Moreover, as the author underpins, “to insist ab initio that the fundamental distinctions among the several art genders are unimportant does not make their close interrelations more evident or more lucid; on the contrary, it makes them inscrutable” (Langer 1957b: 41). However, it is with the concept of “secondary illusion” that, strictly speaking, Langer reiterates the virtual autonomy of each artistic form. All those elements that are not part of the virtual genealogy of any artistic form, but nevertheless can penetrate it, are designated by Langer as secondary illusions. For instance, a sensation of musicality raised by the colours of a Kandinsky’s painting can presumably affect the perception of the viewer. Notwithstanding, the virtual existence of this art object does not depend, directly and primarily, on the development of such feeling. Therefore, as reiterated by Langer, secondary illusions normally have a double aesthetic

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morphology: are invasive because they come from the outside of the virtual realm of the artistic form; are, in turn, evasive, because, not being structurally constant, tend to dissipate, or in the words of the author, they’re both “coming into existence from nowhere” as “fading again into nothing” (Langer 1975: 240). Secondary illusions are not, however, mere cognitive adornments of the artwork. Although they come from an external virtuality, they “heighten its livingness, even to a degree where the form in its entirety seems to be changed” (Langer 1975: 240). In this respect, Langer even says that they are, paradoxically, as the “sublimation” of the primary virtual structure of each artistic form. In addition, they also allow to bring forth a kind of communicative aura among the various artistic spheres, which is not, of course, that of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, but always presupposes a differentiated basis. Since identity and diversity form the dialectical core of artistic objects, secondary illusions give these a true “indefinite potentiality”. As life is imbued with possibilities—and, as such, it can be described as “the progressive realization of potential acts”—also in artistic forms “the elusiveness of secondary illusions serves to give the work as a whole something of that same character; it seems to have a core from which all its elements emerge—figurations and rhythms and all the qualities to which these give rise” (Langer 1975: 206). That is, the negative background that, within the primary virtuality of the artwork, is formed by secondary illusions, paradoxically gives to the work multiple dynamics to feed its own virtuality. Given these peculiar properties of secondary illusions, Langer can then deduce that, in communicative terms, they generate a kind of ineffable aura around the sensible experiences raised by artistic objects. Since these illusions tend to show up as subjective impressions, they will hardly become able of being shared by two different viewers.

5.4 Feeling and Imagination Now, if, in Langer’s assumption, virtuality covers the condition of those objects that are created to be perceived, how, then, can they arouse a corresponding perception, that is, a perception of the created and not of the mere given? So, here appears the crucial query of whether or not Langer conceives the concept of virtual according to the traditional idea of something that, although not being an actual entity, generates the same effects of something else that already exists. The idea, widely held, that the virtual provides the same effects as something that has an empirical substrate is indeed at various levels equivocal. In particular, it prevents us from properly applying the domain of virtuality to the sphere of meaningmaking processes. What, conversely, comes out from this idea is only its applicability to an epistemological ontology based on the alleged opposition between the real and the virtual. The seed metaphor seems to be the basis of this analogical conception (given by the effects) between them. In fact, if we conceive the virtual as synonymous with Aristotelian potentiality, then we have to assume that the “effect” is already

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included in the “cause”, and, therefore, also predicates the metaphysical existence of eternal substances. Langer connects the functions of art in general with the creation of a universe conducive to the expression and articulation of feelings. “Feeling” means, in Langer’s words, “everything that can be felt, from physical sensation, pain and comfort, excitement and repose, to the most complex emotions, intellectual tensions, or the steady feeling-tones of a conscious human life” (Langer 1957b: 15). The use of the term “feeling” is, consequently, only a theoretical solution, as had William James used the term “thinking” to refer to all mental states. The author approaches William James’ solution and, in the early part of her work Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, reiterates, once again, that feeling encompasses all the conscious cognitive activities (Langer 1975: 21–22). In this regard, Langer points out that art symbolizes—and does not imitate—the vitality of feeling. But, as she points out, “To keep virtual elements and actual materials separate is not easy for anyone without philosophical training, and is hardest, perhaps, for artists, to whom the created world is more immediately real and important than the factual world. It takes precision of thought not to confuse an imagined feeling, or a precisely conceived emotion that is formulated in a perceptible symbol, with a feeling or emotion actually experienced in response to real events” (Langer 1953: 181). It is not, consequently, a process of make-believe, able to take the viewer to have purely equivalent reactions to the everyday experience. It is, rather, in the transformation process of the actual into the virtual that lies the arising of aesthetic feelings. This process is mainly correlated to how the first perception of the artwork is articulated: the immediate apprehension of the artistic object is always a perception of the whole, of the virtuality of all its elements, and not of the isolated elements. It is also in this sense that the art object should be considered “a single symbol, not a system of significant elements which may be variously compounded. Its elements have no symbolic values in isolation” (Langer 1975: 84). If the opposite happens, then the virtual elements would be grasped, solely and exclusively, by the same meaning-making articulation of the actual materials. If the perception of the work of art carries a process that goes from its “total form” to their particular elements, then, as Langer tells us, each work can resemble, by analogy, to a body, to an organic structure (cf. Langer 1957b: 44–58). Although Langer and Whitehead seem to choose music as the artistic form that best exemplifies symbolic processes—since music will tend, in a suggestive way, to illustrate the symbolic balanced fusion of perceptual experience, both authors describe aesthetic experience as the symbolic domain where a primacy of the whole over the parts takes place. Whitehead, in his assertions on art and aesthetics, shows us the importance of the whole. Conversely to what happens with logic—which reveals an “enjoyment of the abstracted details”—“The movement of aesthetic enjoyment is in the opposite direction. We are overwhelmed by the beauty of the building, by the delight of the picture, by the exquisite balance of the sentence. The whole precedes the details” (Whitehead 1968: 61). Nevertheless, as expressed in Adventures of Ideas, the fact that the details contribute to the whole does not prevent its aesthetic individuality. Every detail—and “detail” can already be seen as an indi-

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viduation of parts—“manifests an individuality claiming attention in its own right” (Whitehead 1967: 282–283). In Whiteheadian terms, there is therefore a “value of discord” between the whole and the parts. Such value “arises from this importance of the forceful individuality of the details. The discord enhances the whole, when it serves to substantiate the individuality of the parts. It brings into emphatic feeling their claim to existence in their own right. It rescues the whole from the tameness of a merely qualitative harmony” (Whitehead 1967: 282–283). Hence, the idea of process is not associated, in this case, with a discrimination, in which the parts are progressively dissociated from the whole. On the contrary, the aesthetic process presupposes a seminal inversion: the parts are only articulated through the whole, through the immanence that it creates in relation to the sensible features of the artistic object itself. Cassirer often resorts to the example of landscape painting to refer to the primacy of physiognomic perception in the aesthetic experience provided by art objects. Through it—physiognomic perception—the whole is imposed in relation to the parts, thus generating an atmospheric aesthetic effect. The painter, as Cassirer reiterates, “does not portray or copy a certain empirical object—a landscape with its hills and mountains, its brooks and rivers. What he gives us is the individual and momentary physiognomy of the landscape. He wishes to express the atmosphere of things, the play of light and shadow” (Cassirer 1944: 185). Thus, according to Langer, artistic feelings are imagined, that is, they belong to the symbolic structure of the artwork and, consequently, cannot simply be relegated to the realm of actual experience. Neither the thesis of emotional mimetism nor the thesis of make-believe are able to sustain Langer’s approach. Quite on the contrary, both are strongly criticized by the author. Art symbols, being described by Langer as presentational forms, allow us to uncover an archetypical semiotic process, that is, they lead us to the fundamental relationship between imagination and symbolization, whose main result is the world of fantasy. Langer criticizes vehemently such conception that reduces symbol to a merely representative function. The value of art lies not in mimesis or in representation, but rather in the power to create an autonomous symbolic field, which is at the same time expressive of vital foundations that support the organization of the life of human beings. Unlike the propensity to enlighten the appearance of the art object through the visual arts, Langer starts with music to show the virtual creation of art in general. Hence, from all art forms, Langer chooses music as the one that best represents the semiotic dynamic of presentational forms. Since it “is preeminently nonrepresentative”, it also exemplifies, in a comprehensive way, how artistic meaningmaking processes are linked “to the sensuous percept itself apart from what it ostensibly represents” (Langer 1957a: 209). Respecting her symbol theory, Langer owes much to Cassirer and Whitehead. In particular, her distinction between presentational forms and discursive forms highlights the symbolic singularity of artistic forms, which is already present in the works of the two mentioned philosophers. Music is, for Whitehead, one of the artistic forms that best define the subjective relation that the symbolic reference awakens in the percipient (cf. Whitehead 1967: 249). Langer will follow this intuition of White-

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head, especially when she comes to the premise that “Music is a tonal analogue of emotive life” (Langer 1953: 27). But it should be once again stressed that aesthetic feelings, regarding Langer, are conceived as imaginative feelings—an expression Langer draws from Whitehead’s Process and Reality (1978: 263)—and not as mere symptoms of the artist.2 Although Langer insists on the structural analogy between emotive life and musical symbols, between the symbolized and the symbol—which, in fact, emphasizes the Whiteheadian dictum that, for symbolic reference, there must also be a kind of structural isomorphism between causal efficacy and presentational immediacy, she does not fail to assume, however, that artistic symbols in general are symbols that do not want to be symbols. In this sense, it is the sensible dimensions of the symbol that, to a large extent, prevent a complete fulfillment of the symbolization process. Thus, for Langer, the idea of “unconsummated symbol” (Langer 1957a: 240) is, in fact, the theoretical display of the sui generis articulation of artistic forms. It is possible to show, through the relation between Whitehead’s theses on art and aesthetics and those of Langer, how this paradoxical semiotic nature of artistic symbols is created. But before that, it is useful to return to a theoretical trait present in the main articulation of symbolic reference. Whitehead tells us that the perceptual experience modes (causal and presentational) or “schemes of presentation have structural elements in common, which identify them as schemes of presentation of the same world”. However, as Whitehead adds, we must assume that there are “gaps in the determination of the correspondence between the two morphologies. The schemes only partially intersect, and their true fusion is left indeterminate” (Whitehead 1985: 30). The two perceptual experience modes are not completely determined by the process of symbolic reference. This leads us to say that the idea of unconsummated symbol, present in artistic forms, intensifies the degrees of indeterminacy of presentational immediacy and causal efficacy inside the articulation and unification provided by symbolic reference—and thanks to this, of course, also the active role of imagination is fostered. Thus, this conception of Langer is supported by Whitehead’s “symbolic reference” theory, in particular in the fusion of perceptual experiences between the mode of presentational immediacy and the mode of causal efficacy. For Whitehead, the formation of the symbol is dependent on a first individuation of the sense-data, that is, it requires a kind of structural primacy of the presentational dimension of the symbolic reference; only in this way can the symbol form a relation to the sym2 Although

the importance of music derives largely from Whitehead’s thought, Langer, to defend herself against the mimetic aesthetic theories, explicitly implies the Cassirerian concept of symbolic form: “Our interest in music arises from its intimate relation to the all-important life of feeling, whatever that relation may be. After much debate on current theories, the conclusion reached in Philosophy in a New Key is that the function of music is not stimulation of feeling, but expression of it; and furthermore, not the symptomatic expression of feelings that beset the composer but a symbolic expression of the forms of sentience as he understands them. It bespeaks his imagination of feelings rather than his own emotional state, and expresses what he knows about the so-called ‘inner life’; and this may exceed his personal case, because music is a symbolic form to him through which he may learn as well as utter ideas of human sensibility” (Langer 1953: 28–29).

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bolized. However, artistic symbols accentuate even more the sense perception, the contemporary temporality of the perceptum and the percipient, since they open, so to speak, a temporal hiatus in the causal process of the symbolic articulations. Before referring to anything out of itself, the work of art refers to itself, to its own sensible constitution.

5.5 Materiality and Virtuality There is, however, in Whitehead’s formulations on the symbol, a certain idealistic inheritance that is not completely outdated. This is the question of the materiality of the symbol. Whitehead, for example, seems to disregard the material nature of the symbol, when, early on Symbolism, its meaning and effect, asserts that “the mere sound of a word, or its shape on paper, is indifferent” (Whitehead 1985: 2). Thus, as he adds, the meaning of a linguistic symbol “is constituted by the ideas, images, and emotions, which raises in the mind of the hearer” (Whitehead 1985: 2). Cassirer, on the other hand, while giving great emphasis to the sensible dimensions of symbol formation processes, rarely considers the material surface of symbolic media. Strictly speaking, he only touches on some relevant considerations when dealing with the universe of artistic symbols. The idea drawn by Langer that aesthetic imagined feelings depend on some kind of suspension of the actual materiality of the artwork in favor of their virtual elements may, however, raise a number of issues. In particular, one can question whether this assumption does not yield a dematerialization of the art object itself. Langer gets to say that the more “perfect” the artwork is, the more its actual materiality tends to disappear from our perception. This is the case, for example, of dance—“the more perfect the dance, the less we see its actualities” (Langer 1957b: 5–6). But, is this not yet the main conception of Schiller, namely the seminal idea that nourishes his Ästhetik des Scheins, by which the “appearance” of the form presupposes, inevitably, the “disappearance” of its material medium? Some Langer interpreters acknowledge such an hypothesis. Sammuel Bufford, for example, deduces, equivocally, that in Langer’s theory, the artistic objects “do not have material existence, while other things do. We abstract the appearances of such things as buildings and pots from their material existence to consider them as works of art” (Bufford 1972: 11). In other words, in Bufford’s account, the aesthetic status of the artwork depends on a mere mental abstraction. Langer, however, states that art symbols are symbols that do not want to be symbols, that is, the material elements are never, strictly speaking, completely eliminated by the main passage of the actual to the virtual. Since the artistic symbol is not fully a symbol, it can then, according to Langer, be referred to as an unconsummated symbol. Then, the symbolic complexity of artistic forms embraces its physical surface, since “they are, indeed, not abstractable from the works that exhibit them. We may abstract a shape from an object that has this shape, by disregarding color, weight and texture, even size; but to the total effect that is an artistic form, the color matters, the thickness of

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lines matters, and the appearance of texture and weight” (Langer 1957b: 25–26). It is still in this sense that the author also makes a clear distinction between copy and original: “A work of art is and remains specific. It is ‘this’, and not ‘this kind’, unique instead of exemplary. A physical copy of it belongs to the class of its copies, but the original is not itself a member of this class to which it furnishes the class concept.” And, as the author further adds, the thematic classification of a work of art, unlike a scientific work, does not call into question its physical individuality: “We may, of course, classify it in numberless ways, for example, according to its theme, from which it may take its name—‘Madonna and Child’, ‘Last Supper’, and so on. And as many artists as wish may use the same theme, or one artist may use it many times; there may be many ‘Raphael Madonnas’ and many ‘Last Suppers’ in the Louvre. But such class-membership has nothing to do with the artistic importance of a work (the classification of a scientific object, on the other hand, always affects its scientific importance)” (Langer 1957b: 177). Being a faithful heir to Cassirer’s conception of symbolic form, Langer knows that the German philosopher always made reference to the individual material nature of art symbols. The concept of “immanence”, used by Cassirer to characterize the symbolic structures of art, presupposes precisely that sensible and material individuation of each artwork.3 Of course, the seminal passage of the actual to the virtual—and not vice versa, as happens in the Platonic theories—preserves, in some way, the material dimension of art objects. So, where lies the main problem with the materiality of the medium in Langer’s theory? From an aesthetic point of view, we can precisely place it in the seminal passage of the actual to the virtual. Langer, when designing such transformation, uses the same assumption as Schiller, who tells us that the aesthetic autonomy of the appearance means the complete overcoming of the heteronomy of sensible reality. This assumption prevents Langer from outlining a dynamic relationship between the actuality of materials and the virtuality of elements, which does not involve, solely and exclusively, the mere submission of the first to the second. As Richard Wollheim rightly points out, “the supposition that the image totally anticipates the picture” has always been a semiotic fallacy that has contributed to the linear subordination of the physical existence of pictures to the consciousness of their figurative contents (Wollheim 1990: 42) or, in the old language of Aristotelian causality, to the primacy of the causa formalis over the causa materialis. Although Langer disregards mimetic theories and considers, at the heart of her theory, non-figurative art, she does not realize that one of the aesthetic features of the avant-garde art of the twentieth century is rooted in the primacy of the medium over the form. That fact has contributed to the expansion of the relationship between materials and elements, to the inscription of the medium in the form itself—the (paradoxical) re-entry of the actual in the virtual. Above all, the concept of virtual is used by Langer to overcome the mimetic theory of art, especially the transparent correspondences that it presupposes between the symbol and

3 For

more detail on this, see Braga (2012: 169–206).

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the symbolized. But if, in mimetic theory, the materiality of artistic forms is entirely cast aside, the same also “tends” to happen with Langer’s proposal. Langer’s excessive dichotomous conceptualism—materials-elements, imagemodel, primary illusions-secondary illusions, copy-original, etc.—seems, to a large extent, to determine all of her theoretical background, to the point where it is evident that she confuses the internal and linear sequence of binomials with the description of the analyzed phenomena themselves. If this were not the case, Langer would have taken into account the twofold task that Cassirer prescribes to artistic forms: the creation of an autonomous aesthetic cosmos allows, in turn, the rediscovery and preservation of an “immediate intuitive approach to reality” (Cassirer 1979: 154). The virtuality of the work of art is thus projected into the unknown materiality of the world. Because, after all, art has not only the function to take us to a world that does not exist (that of fiction), but also to that which exists and we cannot actually see.

References Braga, Joaquim. 2012. Die symbolische Prägnanz des Bildes. Zu einer Kritik des Bildbegriffs nach der Philosophie Ernst Cassirers. Freiburg: Centaurus Verlag. Bufford, Samuel. 1972. Susanne Langer’s Two Philosophies of Art. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 31 (1): 9–20. Cassirer, Ernst. 1944. Essay on Man. An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New York: Doubleday & Company. Cassirer, Ernst. 1979. Symbol, Myth, and Culture. Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer 1935–1945, ed. Donald Phillip Verne. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 2006. Phantasie und Bildbewußtsein, hrsg. und eingeleitet von Eduard Marbach, Text nach Husserliana, Band XXIII. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Langer, Susanne K. 1953. Feeling and Form A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Langer, Susanne K. 1957a. Philosophy in a New Key. A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Langer, Susanne K. 1957b. Problems of Art: Ten Philosophical Lectures. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Langer, Susanne K. 1975. Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, vol. 1, 2nd ed. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Schiller, Friedrich. 1983. Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen [1795]. Stuttgart: Reclam. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1967. Adventures of Ideas. New York: The Free Press. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1968. Modes of Thought. New York: The Free Press. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1978. Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, Corrected edition, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: The Free Press. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1985. Symbolism, its meaning and effect, Revised edition. New York: Fordham University Press. Wilkinson, Elizabeth M. 1955. Schiller’s Concept of Schein in the Light of Recent Aesthetics. German Quarterly 28: 219–227. Wollheim, Richard. 1990. Art and its Objects, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Joaquim Braga is Invited Assistant Professor and FCT-Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Coimbra. He is also a member of the Research Unit Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos. His graduation in Philosophy took place at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra. In 2010, at Humboldt University of Berlin, he finished his Ph.D. with a thesis based upon the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. Currently, his research activity covers the fields of Picture Theory, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Culture and Modern Philosophy, with a special interest in symbolic thought. His works include, among others, Die symbolische Prägnanz des Bildes. Zu einer Kritik des Bildbegriffs nach der Philosophie Ernst Cassirers (Freiburg, 2012), Rethinking Culture and Cultural Analysis—Neudenken von Kultur und Kulturanalyse (with Christian Möckel, Berlin, 2013), Leituras da Sociedade Moderna. Media, Política, Sentido (with C. A. Carvalho, Coimbra, 2013), Símbolo e Cultura (Coimbra, 2014), Bernard de Mandeville’s Tropology of Paradoxes: Morals, Politics, Economics, and Therapy (with Balsemão Pires, New York, 2015), Antropologia da Individuação. Estudos sobre o Penamento de Ernst Cassirer (with Rafael Garcia, Porto Alegre, 2017).

Chapter 6

The Virtual as Precondition for Artistic Creation Michaela Ott

Abstract This article presumes that contemporary artistic practices relate in different ways to reality. Or, in other words, through their aesthetic compositions, they not only represent, but co-constitute different realities. Diverse examples of presentday artistic practices make us realise that there is neither one art nor one reality and no defined relationship of the two things to one another. Thanks to the application of digital media, but also the vast array of research methods, artistic practices today not merely combine aesthetic signs to futuristic heterogeneous time expressions, but actually produce time-creating or time-diversifying audiovisual articulations. They underline the time-dependent and metamorphotic character of reality. This is the reason why in certain philosophical readings of these art practices the term “utopian” is replaced with the term “uchronic” articulations. In order to provide a more general understanding of these time-diversifying artistic processes, the article aims at reintroducing the old philosophical concepts of “virtual” and “actual” reality as unfolded by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and later on by Gilles Deleuze.

A recent exhibition entitled EXOGLOBALE at ZKM, Karlsruhe (Germany, 2015/16) featured artistic practices that presented quasi-scientific experiments: for instance, the chemical syntheses that are supposed to have contributed to the Big Bang were reproduced, and research into the improvement of plant growth or the cultural history of the domestication of cattle was presented alongside images of genetically manipulated life forms. These artistic experiments represented responses—curious, critical, or parodic—to the imperative created by multiplied and actualised knowledge production. They also produced or themselves simulated novel products. Unlike the scientific kind, these artistic procedures expand our understanding of reality, by investigating the sensory qualities of the materials or playing with technological feasibility possibilities, enquiring into their aesthetic, idea-based and social implications, problematising the way they constitute reality, and operating in a conditional way, dependent on mediatising processes. M. Ott (B) Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_6

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Metachemische Forschung (“Metachemical Research”) by Ursula Biemann, for instance, seeks to penetrate into the materiality of water, with the artist allowing herself to be challenged to create new representational forms by water’s sensory quality. On the other hand, she opens up a field of investigation into the water problems of Egypt, by collecting statements on the situation there—some from nonhuman speakers—and aiming to make the space of resonance visible and audible. The artistic project invokes “an ensemble of practices incorporating chemical, biological, metallurgical and philosophical dimensions, as would be the case for the original Egyptian term Al Khemia, long before the strict division of disciplines and sub-disciplines” (Biemann 2012, 156). Egyptian Chemistry is also conceived as part of the international art and research project Supply Lines: a project concerned with the geography of resources that aims to invent a non-human-centric aesthetic vocabulary to record said resources. In Kassel’s Fridericianum and in Berlin’s Kunstwerke, the artworks Images and Secret Surface—Wo Sinn entsteht (“Where Meaning Arises”) in March/April 2016, curated by Susanne Pfeffer, once again explored different aspects of the real. Their theme is imaging processes in terms of their materiality, their attribution of meaning and their relationship to viewers. In Two Minutes Out of Time, Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Pareno raise questions concerning the appropriation of images presenting a Manga figure whom they have commercially bought and whom they present as a childlike living person. By doing so, they also question the production of collective imaginations and expectations in terms of images and viewers. In the plastic sculpture Double Hunt, Seth Price presents the migration of Paleolithic motifs from the caves of Lascaux, via their reproduction in a second cave, to his own reproductions on different carrier materials such as plastic and glass cubes, thus creating a change in their messages occasioned by historic and aesthetics factors. The artistic images collected together at the Berlin exhibition, on the other hand, are to be deciphered as testaments to secretive non-metaphysical differential, and, under certain circumstances, nonvisual creations of meaning. Aside from the production of new visual surfaces—not always related to technology—artistic processes of this type seek to draw attention to different ways of reading images and other attitudes. The first of these artworks adheres to a philosophy of not producing artworks in the traditional sense, but instead investigating social and scientific practices for their sensory affective and meaning-generating quality, their implicit value assignments and possible consequences. They depend upon the selfanalysis of contemporary imaging procedures, and reflect their mediatising processes in order to generate insights concerning changing frames of reference to reality, far beyond the realm of art. These diverse present-day artistic practices make us realise that there is neither one art nor one reality, no general singular for either one of the fields and no defined relationship of the two things to one another. If we see art and reality confined here within a single posed question, it is in order to enquire into how the artistic process relates to—or co-constitutes—reality today. Since, today, the arts and sciences concentrate less on the projection of fantastic non-places and alternative societies or ways of life than on time and media-related displacements of meaning, and the

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presenting of selfreflective experimental arrangements that display temporal asynchronies and speed divergences, the old term “utopian” gets often replaced with the new term “uchronic”. In particular, mediated movements and time-based artistic researches produce non-static, alternating, progressively changing aesthetic articulations. This phenomenon may be so far advanced that artistic practices not merely combine heterogeneous time situations in order to bring about a new synthesis of past and future, but actually produce time-creating or time-diversifying reality images. By doing so, they not only expose the permanent audiovisual transition between figuration and de-figuration, but often create futuristic articulations which seem to have already happened and bring about situations which have been called “past future” or “future II”. The degree of what can be called artistic “uchronia” thus depends on the manner in which aesthetic moves forward and back in time are interwoven in audiovisual expressions, the rhythm with which they accelerate or move apart, the type of coherence or disparity shown by the visual and auditive signs, and, all in all, the reality status of the aesthetic composition. Uchronic artistic compositions tend to emphasise the arrhythmia and non-connectivity of different speeds and (possibly culturally influenced) tempos; their theme is the distorting, displacing aspect of temporal power, its capacity for generating voids. But they also present temporal reversals portraying the future as something already happened and revive a certain past as something never seen before. Its is their quality of being lifted out of time, for which the term uchronia appears appropriate. In this sense they approximate another term which is used more often in recent theories: the term heterotopia which designates the multiplication of diverse and not synchronized temporal processes within an art work, a society or a psychic experience. Whereas heterotopia is used as a positive designation accentuating the diversification of temporal processes in an advanced technological society, uchronia points at dystopic developments in societal and psychic entities. Today, the multiplication of artistic reference points for reality is generated by the experimental character of the real as presented also by natural science itself, but above all, by contemporary socio-technological displacements. One might sum up by saying that the disciplinary boundaries of both fields are currently being broken down in the same immanent way, as they abandon their traditional epistemological distinctions and permit—or even encourage—interwoven relationships between classifications hitherto regarded as unrelated, so that no defensible ambiguous or uncontroversial reality reference point now exists. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari reinforce this tendency theoretically when they claim in Mille Plateaux (1980), that from an epistemological perspective it is more fruitful to dismiss the old taxonomical classifications based on visual distinctive characteristics and to look instead from a transdisciplinary point of view at entanglements and transversal affections between species considered hitherto as separate entities. Today, the research in terms of biodiverity moves into this direction and promotes approaches which throw a closer look at the interdependence of species across taxonomical borders and underline the necessity to widen and to diversify the field and objects of scientific research. Consequently, artistic practices can be read as a symptomatic expression of what is taking place today in all areas of humanity’s increasingly complicated existence.

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We see ourselves embedded in a network of reference points expanded by ecological and biodiversity concerns—but that is not all. We also see ourselves included in global migration movements and confronted with uchronic social and epistemological developments. Thus, we can offer only differing reference points on reality that are dependent upon our point in time and our level of perception. To summarise once again, it can be stated that, epistemologically, reality appears to be gaining more dimensions, opening up an ever more diverse space for reflection and cultural symbolisation between its presumed preexistence and the present day longing for its actualisation and discovery. From certain physics perspectives, the cosmic reality is showing us that it is far from being entirely comprehensible, that we are forced to speculate and coin terms fit for Hollywood, such as “dark matter” and “black holes”. On the other hand, reality has become the name for the spectrum of everything to which we give some kind of temporal frame, everything we make visible and audible via technological media, and everything whose status we either confirm or question. As we must therefore presuppose an elastic relationship with reality dependent upon ideas of scientific interpretation, but also aesthetic creativities, certain philosophies will be discussed here that have exposed the ambiguity of the real. With a view to creating a deeper understanding of the relationship between art and reality, the following philosophies are presented here.

6.1 Uchronia—Virtuality The philosophical term “the virtual” is here reintroduced and revived to refer to these media and time-related, uchronic and heterochronic articulations and to provide an epistemological foundation for them. The term is a rather classical philosophical concept, but for some reason does not correspond to any root Greek word. It is not understood here in the abbreviated sense defined by German media theory in the 1990s: that is, it is not equated with electronic simulations which enclose users via technological gadgets in a visual alternative world that is as immersive as possible. This sort of simulation has been interpreted by philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard as an ultimate invention intended to signal the vanishing of reality. The new (non)reality reference points have been attributed to the so called postmodern world, described in the media jargon of the time as a mirror world. Here, in opposition to this approach, the intention is to revive a concept of virtuality that allows us to think of the real as a twofold process and a varying configuration between the modes of actualisation and virtualization of time. Together with its corresponding term, “the actual”, the virtual provides an understanding of reality as something preexistent and at the same time partly unknown, always to discover. What we are able to grasp of the temporal processes and the unknown aspects of reality depends upon the chosen epistemological levels and the technological media framing today. In any case, the twofold character of the real induces all sorts of scientific and artistic researches aiming at highlighting phenomena which have not

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been perceived and reflected until now. Reality is an adventure from the point of view of its virtuality. The term of the virtual was already deployed in making fine epistemological distinctions in 13th-century European philosophy, and was distinguished from other adverbs for this purpose: Thomas von Aquinas distinguishes the term “virtual” from “actual”, “formal”, and “express”. The virtual already described something both implied and specified; as part of a predicate, it refers to something tacitly approaching the subject. It is used to determine the different personae in the Christian conception of a unique God as well as to analyse the unclear relationships between causes and effects. That an effect can be virtually contained in a cause without necessarily being actualised by it is a thought construct frequently encountered in early modern European philosophy. Its uchronic potential lies in the fact that it is not used to invoke a teleological inevitability according to the Aristotelian understanding, which states that potentiality or “dunamis” inevitably strives to realise and perfect itself through its own purpose or “energeia”. Instead, the term virtual introduces a new distinction, outside of any possibility/reality opposition; one that no longer contains the assumption that a seed—genetic information, for instance—will necessarily realise itself in a particular form. The term “virtual distinction”, first coined in the 14th century, opens up a new epistemological perspective: the aim is to distinguish between two modes of the real, a virtual and an actual way for things to be. It also means that self-realisation is no longer equated with the implementation of an inborn nature and with its unidirectional unfolding. This insight seems to be is verified today by the contemporary studies of genomics. The philosophical relevant point is that both, the virtual and actual, are considered both real, each representing a different mode of the time-based reality. In the context of theological efforts to validate the Christian concept of Trinity, it was stated that the Divine, which is in itself indivisible, may be virtually diverse in other respects: for instance, in terms of its effects. This new concept of an epistemologically divisible ontological non-divisibility is relevant to contemporary explorations of mediatising and subjectivising processes. After all, in our present day, we increasingly encounter organic and biodiverse microprocesses (primarily owing to more refined technological observation and recording instruments) that are scientifically subdivided into human and non-human elements, even though, with a view to the consistency of the whole, their coexistence appears indissoluble. For instance, billions of bacteria live in the human body; these are classified as being of different, nonhuman species, and yet, in terms of human survival, they are inseparable from the human body. Similarly, contemporary genomics confirms the virtual/actual condition of the genome, in the sense that the actualisation of human genetic information is a variable copy, paste, and transposition process coeffected by bacteria and viruses and dependent upon eventualities. Today, the genetic code is understood as virtual information that cannot be readily related to the phenotype or to an individual’s fate, since the way they achieve their own specific actuality depends on temporal interactions and feedback processes taking place between DNA, RNA, proteins and cell plasma. It is the relationships between the components—not temporally specified,

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and special in each case—that is considered to be of more significance than the material composition of the code: so-called “transposons” cut information out of the DNA and reattach it in another location, thereby effecting a “flexibilising of the configuration of the genome” (Kim et al. 2001, 193), which can be understood as temporal biodiversity on the genetic level. The constitutive self-differentiation of the genome therefore rests upon uchronic mediatising processes taking place between an unknown Virtuality X and an Actuality X that is never definitively achieved, thanks to the temporal dynamics of indeterminate multiples. In his philosophical discourses on human understanding, G. W. Leibniz draws on the noun “virtualitas” (which goes back to the 15th century) in his discussions of human reason, using it to determine human “inclinations, dispositions et habitudes” (Leibniz 1949, 122). In the German translation: “Geneigtheiten, Bereitschaften, Fertigkeiten” (Leibniz 1949, 122). In this translation, “virtualités naturelles” is rendered in German as “natürliche Möglichkeiten/natural possibilities/potentialities” instead of “natürliche Virtualitäten/natural virtualities”. This is somewhat misleading, in the sense that it obscures the aforementioned epistemological difference between the virtual and the Aristotelian “dunamis”, usually translated as “Möglichkeit” or “potentiality”. In Aristotle’s understanding, to say it once again, the potential gets neccesarily and identically translated into the actual without any time-based change. Leibniz’ idea, in contrast, introduces the possibility of deviation, of a temporal unfolding which includes a certain range of interpretation. After all, Leibniz’ supposition of innate ideas, introduced to combat John Locke’s sensualism, does not refer to any kind of unambiguous pre-determined existence. Instead, it refers to infinite virtual items of information, “more clearly” or “less clearly” actualised depending on the temporal (self)affection of the perceptions—with this creating the difference between the individual monads. To state this again in a different way: the monads are supposed to virtually contain the whole world, but are different according to the specific actualisation of its perception. Here, the uchronic aspect comes from the assertion that “in our spirit there is much that is innate, because we are so to speak innate in ourselves” (Leibniz 1949, 121), but the manifold nature of our innate aspects and its capacity for temporal actualisation is unknown to us, and thus can surprise us. This concept has an affinity with uchronia because the human monads—as a compressed version of Leibniz’ metaphysics of the infinite—are an endless actualisation of their virtual innateness, and thus make more complex versions of time a possibility. For the in-itself-innate to experience itself as a wild thing is not strange to a contemporary person who has undergone psychoanalysis. The Freudian concept of the unconscious, for instance, articulates an also time-based selfalienation of the human individual that has sometimes been understood as creative potential, sometimes as a generator of suffering. Since the unconscious and its inscriptions are referred to different pasts by Freud himself, to processes of preindividual and even prehuman traumatisation, it does not come as a surprise that the psychic development of the human being can also be interpreted as an oscillation between virtuality and actuality. In this sense one thought is not yet taken to its conclusion: the statement of Leibniz that the human individual is to understand itself as a multiple self-different coherency containing an “actual infinity of parts” (Leibniz 1986, 377) which may possibly prac-

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tice affective participation with one another. As we can see here the human individual is not understood as an undivided entity free of temporal influences, but on the contrary as a sort of infinite dividuation which combines and recombines its different actual and actualized parts. This Leibnizian assumption is an epistenologically very modern one and one, as I would like to argue, that is exploited and further dynamicised by the contemporary technological media. The virtual as understood by Leibniz, expressed in euphoric exclamations such as: “what an infinity of infinitely repeated infinities, what world, what a perceptible universe in every miniscule body that one could envision!” (Leibniz 1986, 381) can fully actualise in and of itself—in contrast to contemporary mediated subjectivities. The envisioner or mediatiser of the “multiplicity of affections and of relationships” (Leibniz 2002, 115) in the monads is identified with the “appetition”, “striving” or inner “unrest”—a translation of physics theory relating to conservation of movement (Leibniz 1971). This appetition is believed to contribute to the multiplication of actual affections and to “effect the change or transition of one perception to another” (Leibniz 2002, 117). Today, in contrast, the creation of new perceptions or affections is no longer connected with virtuality capacities and the idea of an infinity of actual parts in the human body. Instead, sociotechnological agents are called on to interconnect these with the appetitions of different persons, and, additionally, to intensify the capacity for—and the force of—affection. Interestingly, this is associated with subjects’ hopes for increased happiness, just as it was in Leibniz’ time. In the mid of the 20th century, the philosophical thought approaches first of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and then of Gilles Deleuze equate the virtual now with temporality. Temporality itself is no longer understood as a linear development between past and future, but as an uchronic entanglement of past and upcoming moments bringing about a vast field of “heterochronic multiplicity”. They identify the paired terms “virtual” and “actual” with Bergson’s conception of time as a double track, so that the virtual manifests as its infinity of future/past, and the actual as its continued other present-moment synthesis. Perceptions that bring with them something new are supposed to actualise themselves as differentiated syntheses of instants via repetition of past virtual memories and their reactualisation for and in actual perceptions. Like Proust’s novel A la recherche du temps perdu, lost memories return then as they have never been experienced, in an unknown essence. In a philosophically more relevant sense the double track of a virtual past and an actualized present and their mutual presupposition help to unfold the philosophically required figure of “self-constitution”. This necessarily paradoxical figure of self-constitution is indispensable for philosophical reflection because it has to provide a possible foundation of its ontological assumptions. Since the death of God and the lack of a supposed first creator, it became difficult for the philosophers to prove the legitimacy of their assumptions. In the dogmatic era of philosophy, in the 17th and 18th century, philosophers tried to provide axioms as first and basic true sentences very much like in mathematics and natural sciences. But for a modern thinker like Merleau-Ponty such a dogmatic and arbitrary beginning is no longer possible; a self-reflexive figure is required, which at the same time that it constitutes

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itself questions its self-constitution, de- and reconstructs itself in eternal processes of self-repetition and -affection. For Merleau-Ponty time and its timing processes are this self-reflective figure, given since ever as infinity and at the same time creating itself in endless syntheses of self-affection, repetition and differentiation. This is the reason why he enthusiastically claims: “If time is the subject, then self-constitution is no contradiction. (…) Time is ‘affection of itself by itself’; (…) here affection and being affected are the same” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 425f). Time is considered a circular and paradoxical process insofar as it must already be given in order to bring about itself in processes of timing. Infinite by definition and therefore always advancing its actual presentifications, it constitutes itself by repeating a forever lost past and by synthecizing it into present sensual moments. Without using the paired terms “virtual” and “actual”, Merleau-Ponty traces the movement of time taking place as one of (actualising) self-repetition and self-affection of (virtual) time “in” time, in which it appears to resemble vital processes. It is always already given and always appearing anew. In its endless forward flow and in the ever different repetitions of its past, he believes it to be fundamental (to itself) and to unfold its ever changing dynamic. Thanks to a rushing “pressure” it is supposed to strive toward the future and necessarily bring forth the new, which, he believes, then virtualises itself anew in heterochronic processes of timing. Gilles Deleuze’s time philosophy, as unfolded in Différence et Répétition and in the “cinema books”, Cinéma 1. L’Image-Mouvement (1985) and Cinéma 2. L’imagetemps (1985), is a direct prolongation of the temporal ontology of Merleau-Ponty. For his part, Deleuze declares time to be the foundational figure and the subjectivity as such, which thus takes the place of human subjectivity: “La subjectivité n’est jamais la notre, c’est le temps, c’est-à-dire l’âme ou l’esprit, le virtuel/The subjectivity is never ours, for it is time; that is, the soul or the spiritual, the virtual” (Deleuze 1985, 111). Unlike Merleau-Ponty, he does not start with the question of self-constitution and self-affection of time, but infers these from actual affects, from moments given “in” time: “L’actuel est toujours objectif, mais le virtuel est le subjectif: c’était d’abord l’affect, ce que nous éprouvons dans le temps, puis le temps lui-même, pure virtualité qui se dédouble en affectant et affecté, ‘l’affectation de soi par soi’ comme défintion de temps/The actual is always objective, but the virtual is the subjective: it was initially the effect that we experience in time, later time itself, pure virtuality, which divides itself into affecting and affected, ‘Self-affection through self’ as the determination of time” (Deleuze 1985, 111). Deleuze is convinced that we can only start “inbetween”, within given temporal processes; starting with a certain affect we can go back and forth and gradually unfold the idea of time as a process of selfaffection and self-differentiation, of heterogenesis. The discussion of the two modes of reality begins in the actual’s midst, with repetitions, only to return to folded-in infinity, to the differentiality of the virtual, in which the actual bases itself whilst at the same time de-grounding and distorting its processes of timing. Important ist the idea that both aspects of reality and time are always given, but in different ways: in an actualized and in a latent, virtual mode, and that they permanently exchange their status: the actualized becoming virtual and the virtual becoming actualized. It is the idea of an eternal return, but not as the same, but as a differentiated mode.

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In Difference and repetition (1968/1997) Deleuze tries to delve into the constitution of organic beings and explains their “becoming” once more as a process of self-constitution and -repetition between virtual and actual modes. He conceives of the field which is supposed to constitute itself together with vital processes as one where initial differences inscribe themselves as “passive syntheses” (Deleuze 1997, 71), an expression coined by Edmund Husserl and applied to basic human autoperceptions. In Deleuze’s perspective, the non-human field of first passive syntheses starts to develop a certain dynamic thanks to inner tensions within the syntheses which differentiate themselves and bring about minimal “active egos” who accompany the passive organic, later on the humanising processes. These small contemplative egos are somehow the virtual part of the non-human and human Egos, acting and contemplating unconsciously in our actions and perceptions, bringing about our habitudes and contemplations and further differentiations of our capacities: “We speak of our ‘self’ only in virtue of these thousands of little witnesses which contemplate within us: it is always a third party who says ‘me’. These contemplative souls must be assigned even to the rat in the labyrinth and to each muscle of the rat. Given that contemplation never appears at any moment during the action—since it is always hidden, and since it does nothing (…)—it is easy to forget it and to interpret the entire process of excitation and reaction without any reference to repetition” (Deleuze 1997, 75f.). Between these two sides of passivity and activity and their mutual repetitions, processes of “contraction” and “contemplation” are supposed to stimulate further growings of capacities: “The role of imagination, or the mind which contemplates in its multiple and fragmented states, is to draw something new from repetition, to draw difference from it. (…) True repetition takes place in imagination. (…) Difference inhabits repetition. (…) In every way, material or bare repetition, so-called repetition of the same, is like a skin which unravels, the eternal husk of a kernel of difference and more complicated internal repetitions” (Deleuze 1997, 76). This alteration of repetition and difference gradually brings about active capacities, more extended organic entities and finally human beings as complex entanglements of passive and active processes: “We can distinguish two simultaneous dimensions in such a way that there is no movement beyond the passive synthesis towards an active synthesis without the former also being extended in another direction, one in which it utilizes the bound excitation in order to attain something else (…). Moreover it seems that active syntheses would never be erected on the basis of passive syntheses unless these persisted simultaneously (…), finding new formulae at once both dissymmetrical and complementary with the activity” (Deleuze 1997, 99). Deleuze here introduces the concept of a “virtual object” (Deleuze 1997, 99) following the theory of Melanie Klein which has to govern or to compensate the progresses or failures of the human activity and its ambition to integrate its different parts. The virtual object, also called partial object, has to play a role in the combination of the different drives in human subjectivation and to hinder the totalisation of its different capacities: “In short, the virtual is never subject to the global character which affects real objects. It is (…) a fragment, a shred or a remainder. It lacks its own identity. (…) Whereas active synthesis points beyond passive synthesis towards global integrations and the supposition of identical totalisable objects, passive synthesis (…) points beyond itself

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towards the contemplation of partial objects which remain non-totalisable” (Deleuze 1997, 101). As we can see, the virtual remains connected with the pure past which at the same time has to found the upcoming presences, to diversify their presentification and to hinder their coherent constitution of a presence which can be identified. In a more general sense, the processes of thinking, perceiving and affecting are considered as continuous differentiations on the basis of repetitions, as actualisations of given virtual ideas and concepts, percepts and affects, very much like in Leibniz ideas of human understanding. For Deleuze, it is indispensable that the field of not only human expressions eventually brings about itself as a continuous heterogenesis which on the one hand unfolds wider processes of timing until time transcends the heterogenuous field and constitutes itself as time per se, on the other hand continuously reinvests the field with partial and virtual objects and differentiates time as ever smaller syntheses of time. “In order so sum up the ontology of Deleuze, Constantin Boundas states, that “in Deleuze’s ontology the virtual and the actual are two mutually exclusive, yet jointly sufficient, bodily mixtures and individuals. The virtual/real are incorporeal events and singularities on a plane of consistency, belonging to the pure past—the past that can never be fully present. Without being or resembling the actual, the virutal nonetheless has the capacity to bring about actualisation and yet the virtual never coincides or can be identified with its actualisation. (…) The variety of characterisations given the virtual by Deleuze raises the question of how the virtual ought to be understood and the extent to which each characterisation is complicit in the text That the virtual is the Bergsonian durée and élan vitalstems from the basic agreement between Deleuze and Bergson regarding the structure of temporality. Any actual present passes only because all presents are constituted both as pesent and past. In all past presents the entire past is conserved in itself, and this includes the past that has never been present (the virtual)” (Boundas 2005, 296–298). The unfolding of these processes requires aesthetic articulations, if not organic bodies. Deleuze insists on the idea that everything has to begin within, within the actual expression in order to gradually discover the underlying and constitutive repetition and the virtual objects within. The practices of fine art are the best possible mode of unfolding the virtual, partial, non-normative aspects of given aesthetic expressions since they can deconstruct visual and auditive clichés, can deconstruct given visual stereotypes, can discover and enlargen unheard sounds, can perform the asignification of certain literary expressions. Therefore Deleuze discovers processes of virtualisation in modern literature, when he underlines the minorisation of the protagonists in Beckett’s novels, when he exposes the different ways of “becomingother”, of becoming larval subjects or animal in the novels of Virgina Woolf, of Karl-Philippe Moritz or Hugo von Hofmannsthal: the writing itself minorises its expression, starts to stutter and transforms the text into virtual articulations, looses its function of representation in order to become pure movement. Deleuze while writing also on painting nevertheless prefers time-based art works and mainly film. Ambitious articulations encountered in these art practices present themselves as timecreating compositions between actuality and virtuality. They use the indeterminacy of the real that they open up to dramatise uchronic and hete-

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rochronic creations and exhibit mutually deviating speeds and dynamics, with their corresponding frictions. In particular, Deleuze sees the filmic “crystal image/l’image-cristal” (Deleuze 1985, 109) as characterised by continuous switching between actual and virtual modes of the image. The multifaceted nature of the geologically produced crystal form fascinated him. The crystal then becomes a concept that he methodologically uses in his consideration of time and film image; the concept of the “crystal-image” is enmeshed with the idea that the figure of the crystal is representative of specific states of temporality, with the exchange or better “coalescence” between the actual and the virtual, a condition in which the two become interchangeable and eventually indistinguishable. Deleuze speaks of a dynamic “twofoldedness/dédoublement” (Deleuze 1985, 109) of this sort of film image. He also equates the crystalline structure with the nature of self-reflexivity of certain feature films and the temporal medium as such. Thanks to the ambiguous connection between visual actualisation and revirtualisation of what is shown, time can present as a multiplicity of deviation and diversification and as a shimmering uchronia. Deleuze cites various filmic processes, including longduration single takes, panoramic tracking shots, interval formation between image and sound, different rhythms in montage techniques, and intensities provide by images of affection in order to describe how time displays itself in unaccustomed uchronic compositions, as timecreator and multiplier, as audiovisual heterogenesis and therefore once again as virtuality. He rediscovers the “descriptions” of the Nouveau Roman, a literary method which, instead of providing a representation of reality, absorbs and constitutes its object at the same time. He speaks of bigger and smaller circuits between the actual and virtual images until they reach a limit where the visual modes become indistinguisable. One film he mentions as an example of this indistinguisable character and as a prototype of the crystal image is Lady from Shanghai of Orson Welles: in its last scene the protagonists move and act between mirrors and multiply their images up to the point where it is no longer obvious which image is a simple reflection and which is a meta-reflection. This crystal-image displays itself as a disastruous prison, the protagonists shooting each other and destroying the multifaceted coalescence of the actual and the virtual. In Time-Image, Deleuze describes a threefold system for the crystal’s variations of past-present-future. Together with the Bergsonian concept of time as a “thoughtimage”, Deleuze discusses the crystal-image as a modality of knowing time and its possible constitution. Over time, the effects of time alter the molecular structure of things and the crystal-image is employed to encompass vast shifts in meaning caused through the exchanges of temporal dimensions. Filmically ambitious time images become uchronias because the reality that they manifest is presented as (de)figuring in indeterminate space-times, and therefore not subject to any prescribed progression. Because of its continual metamorphosis, Deleuze denies that the film image has the character of an individual, using the term “dividual” to sum up its subdivison and ongoing recombination of the aesthetic signs and their infinite transformation. While on the one hand the expression of an “image of affection” changes permanently, on the other hand it is neverthelss unique and indivisible. Like for a musical composition,

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Deleuze insists on the dividual character of the filmic art work, being metamorphotic and singular at the same time. The temporal displacement, aesthetic subdivision and changing participation in the audiovisual signs that he emphasises has still greater relevance to a linear, temporally-transversal and uchronic compositions.

6.2 The Foundation of Mediatising in Virtuality This second part of the article argues that the process of mediatising itself is based on the duplicity of the actual and virtual reality which can be observed in all sorts of time-based and therefore metamorphotic expressions. It also introduces the concept of the dividual as explained in the film philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, a concept which contains a certain critique of the idea that an art work is an individual entity or created by an individual person. Instead it features the idea that (not only) time-based expressions continuously (re)divide and transform themselves, but participate today in other articulations and therefore can only be called dividual practices. The text also criticizes the critique of technological expressions of Dieter Mersch by arguing that every expression today is a process of coding and decoding, as demonstrated by actual audiovisual art works. The possibility—and also the necessity—of mediatising human and non-human articulations is founded in the distinction between an actual and virtual reality and its time-based interdependence on one another. The actualisation of the real is only possible via a selection from the preexisting infinitive processes of timing and via their media reinforced repetition and variation. Due to its dependence on the preceding virtual process, the actualisation of the real can only be understood as a dividual process as explained in the film philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. In the realm of filmic articulations, the “dividual” reflects on the one hand the non-fixed, ever changing and time-dependent character of filmic images and sounds, especially today where they are brought about by digital technology. i.e. by infinite calculation. In comparison with Deleuze’s time and his reflection of analog image production, the digital images today consist of definitely unstable and ever changing “aesthetic re-divisions, of temporally transversal participations in each other and in other articulations” (Ott 2018, 235). Their dividual character is the result of their permanent recombinations and redynamicisings of the aesthetic signs. The dividual as unfolded by Deleuze places the accent again on the time-dependent repetitive character of every articulation: from this perspective, the impossibility of undividedness is as evident as the necessary and frequently uchronic participation in the virtuality of time. If one does not apply a technologically abbreviated concept of media in terms of the supposed facts, time-generating mediatisations that are in principle new are taking place. If reality as understood by Leibniz is thought of as an infinitely folded-in and unfoldable screen, the unknown may be manifested dependent on time situations and media reinforcing factors, and mediatisations become aesthetically and epistemically relevant. Owing to the time-occasioned indeterminacy of mediatisations, they are in

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principle unforeseeable, and therefore cannot be equated with the digital processes that aspire to predictability, which offer calculated and therefore limited new insights into reality. One questionable aspect of the contemporary equating of mediatising with digital processes is that digital processes fixedly determine the virtual according to algorithm-based programming, allowing this programming to take the place of temporal self-interpretation. In this context, it is not only the technological appropriation and temporal anticipation of human wishes and future-related projections that appears questionable, but also the orientation of artistic experiments toward the scope and feasibilities of digital apparatus. On the other hand, the refined digital observation instruments themselves work towards the virtualisation of reality: under the microscope, a life form that, from the normal human perspective, appears demarcated and self-identical with clearly defined outlines appears as a teeming mass of countless microorganisms whose boundaries and specifics cannot be easily given. In this sense, the technological media contribute to the re-virtualising of familiar assumptions about reality. Their creative capacity should therefore not be neglected or underestimated. When Dieter Mersch, a German philosopher and media-theorist, objects to digital media by arguing that “they ‘distort’ what they make possible, and open up by restricting” (Mersch 2013, 20), one can recognise an argument for the rediscovery of the sort of comprehensive and extended virtuality with a capability for heterochronia as we have explained above. On the other hand, it raises the question of whether the counter-rotating and negating process he is deploring don’t apply to all mediatising processes, including that of our own senses. And isn’t it in fact part of the possibilities that exist for epistemological and aesthetic compositions? After all, opening up always goes hand-in-hand with restriction, and enabling under the heading of time always goes hand-in-hand with distortion, since there is no such thing as a true, undistorted expression of time. Mersch’s criticism is justified if he is speaking of the binary interconnection and decision systems that exhaust their energy in “circular causality” (Mersch 2013, 39) tending to exclude heterochronia, to enclose themselves in predictions and probability assumptions, and thus subjugate and functionalise time, robbing it of the capacity to produce the unforeseeable. His warning that the technological promise of participation that lures the human user ultimately ends in de-participation is likewise justified providing that one equates the articulation of resistance with disruption and interruption of interconnection, and does not have a view to artistic re-purposings of the algorithm program and uchronic compositions. The video artworks of the German artists Hito Steyerl and Harun Farocki are a prominent reminder that digital image productions can invite us to engage in artistic/critical reflections and re-virtualisations. This is because they both engage with and critically deconstruct the equipment-based and aesthetic “finishes” of digital articulations, the perception and affect of users framed and influenced by the programmed codes and their visual restrictions; they critique the attendant “deformations” and forms of de-participation like Dieter Mersch. Harun Farocki started his work with a critical questioning of aerial views of Auschwitz produced by the US-Air Force during World War II and wondered why they did not react to the photographs

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they had taken and why they did not bomb and destroy the railways leading to the concentration camp. His assumes that they might not have been interested in doing so, but why then, why did they not use their knowledge to curtail the massacre? Hito Steyerl, instead, questions the colonial German past in her film November by deciphering the imperial facades of certain bourgeois buildings in Berlin, among others the palace in which the Congo Conference of 1884 has taken place which was responsible for the “Scramble of Africa”. She connects these film sequences with shots of the actual situation of non-German workers building the skyscrapers of the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin after the fall of the wall. And she reflects on the continuity of a certain German state of mind vis-à-vis the foreigners suggesting that the colonial experience has not been handled in Germany until now. Of equal significance for our topic are recent video artworks by John Akomfrah, which feed on historic, crosscultural, uchronic processes in a strict sense, profiling them in media terms and implementing them antithetically in artistic terms. In Tropikos, a 37-min film created in 2016, he composes montages of staged time images combined with literary texts from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Milton’s Paradise Lost and others. By so doing, he creates a knotty aesthetic problem, referencing the 16th-century English slave trade between harbours in the south of England and African bases located in Ghana, and explicitly presenting no linear narrative. Instead, he establishes references reaching back to largely unknown spaces/times, and uses contemporary views of the English Tamar Valley to create an attractive panorama that produces intensity by combining painterly views and melancholy textual passages in numerous rhythmic repetitions and variations to achieve a uchronic and unsettling expression, relocated into infinity. In such unconventional artistic processes, it can be stated that digital media practices, thanks to the critical and artistic space-time compositions that they make possible, permit virtualisations of the image-sound-conventions and allow connections with a multifold reality that has hitherto not been seen in this way. This gives us an idea of the kind of reality reference points we can expect in the future: an abundance of uchronic and heterochronic compositions, because the virtual demands the exposure of its differential temporality, but also culturally transversal actualisations in times of globalisation where time-divergent and multidynamic entanglements will become the common experience of everyone.

References Biemann, Ursula. 2012. Mission Reports. Künstlerische Praxis im Feld, Nuremberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst. Boundas, Constantin V. 2005. Virtual/Virtualiy. In The Deleuze Dictionary, ed. Adrian Parr, 296–298. Edinburgh: University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1985. Cinéma 2. L’image-temps, 92–128. Paris: Ed. De Minuit. Deleuze, Gilles. 1997. Difference and Repetition. London: The Athlone Press. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1949. Vorrede zu Neue Studien über den menschlichen Verstand, Die Hauptwerke, 117–129 (122). Stuttgart: Kröner Verlag.

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Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1971. Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand. Hamburg: Meiner Verlag. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1986. Unendlichkeit und Fortschritt. Kleine Schriften zur Metaphysik, 365–386 (377). Frankfurt/M.: Insel Verlag. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 2002. Monadologie. Monadologie und andere metaphysische Schriften, (French-German), 111–151 (115). Hamburg: Meiner Verlag. Kim, Jan T. et al. 2001. Biodiversitätsmessung bei Pflanzen anhand molekularer Daten. In Biodiversiät. Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen und gesellschaftliche Relevanz, ed Peter Janisch, Mathias Gutmann and Kathrin Priess, 181–234 (193). Berlin/Heidelberg: Wissenschaftsverlag. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception, Trans. Smith, Colin. London/New York: Routlegde & Kegan Paul. Mersch, Dieter. 2013. Ordo ab chao—Order from Noise, 20. Berlin: Diaphanes. Ott, Michaela. 2018. Dividuations. Theories of Participation. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Michaela Ott is Professor of aesthetic theories at Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Germany. Main research topics: French philosophy, historical and contemporary theories of aesthetics, aesthetics of film, theories of space, affection and affects, theory of dividuation, biennial research, postcolonial theories, art and knowledge. Main publications: Deleuze—Zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 2005; Affizierung. Zu einer ästhetisch- epistemischen Figur, München: edition text und kritik, 2010; Timing of Affect. Epistemologies of Affection, hg. mit Marie-Luise Angerer und Bernd Bösel, Zürich: diaphanes Verlag, 2014; Re*: Ästhetiken der Wiederholung, hg. mit Hanne Loreck, Hamburg: materialverlag/textem Verlag, 2014; Dividuations. Theories of Participation, London/NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Chapter 7

The Virtuality of Cinema: Beyond the Documentary-Fiction Divide with Peter Watkins and Mark Rappaport João Pedro Cachopo

Abstract Drawing on Deleuze’s account of the “virtual” as no less “real” than the “actual”, this article considers Peter Watkins’s and Mark Rappaport’s cinematic oeuvres in view of a more general discussion as to whether and how cinema captures or expresses reality. Despite their differences, both filmmakers share an intense interest in the entwinement of fiction and documentary, whose peculiarity the concept of the “virtual” may help clarify. In particular, they both made films about non-fictional people and events—artists, battles, revolutions—which cannot be labelled as documentaries due to their formal characteristics. In the end, these works suggest that the strength of cinema consists in breaking the vicious circle of the actual and the possible. Rather than mixing reality and fiction, cinema would express the impossibilities of the past and the contingencies of the future, whose virtuality insists through the interstices of the world as its everlasting shadow.

The “virtual” is among the concepts that most fascinate me since I first walked into the terrain of philosophical thought. Along with the “simulacrum”, the “untimely”, or the “transcendental” (the latter if understood in a social-historical manner), the “virtual” displays philosophy’s uncompromising capacity to disclose the contingency of reality instead of accounting for its alleged ultimate foundation. This is also true of aesthetics insofar as philosophy may shed light on how art shakes our beliefs and assumptions about the world. As for the “virtual”, it first aroused my interest when I was reading Deleuze’s Différence et répétition. It is worth mentioning, for the sake of the argument to be developed in this text, what exactly caught my eye in Deleuze’s approach to this concept. According to him, I quote, “le virtuel ne s’oppose pas au réel, mais seulement à l’actuel. Le virtuel possède une pleine réalité, en tant que virtuel…” (Deleuze 1967: 269). What follows this definition is no less relevant. So, to quote the entire passage in English: “The virtual is opposed not to the real but to the actual. The virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual […]. Indeed, the virtual must be defined J. P. Cachopo (B) Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] University of Chicago, Chicago, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_7

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as strictly a part of the real object—as though the object had one part of itself in the virtual into which it plunged as though into an objective dimension” (Deleuze 2005: 208–209). So defined, in its opposition to the “actual” rather than to the “real”, the “virtual” seems to enable an account of change and transformation (one that is primarily ontological, albeit filled with political overtones) that is independent from the category of the possible. As Zourabichvili (2003) wrote, the “virtual” is the insistence of the not-given. But whatever the not-given is in the case of the virtual, that something is entirely distinct from the possible (i.e. what may happen in the future). Indeed, a stronger and deeper connection—even an elective affinity—exists between the “virtual”, as an insistence of the not-given, and what did not happen in the past or may not happen in the future. In other words, the impossibilities of the past and the contingencies of the future, as far as they insist—no matter how remote or unlikely they might be—should also be taken into account. It should be added, however, that Deleuze’s approach is first and foremost an ontological one. Therefore, while bringing its ontological and historical implications together, it is fair to say that I am interpreting Deleuze’s virtual in a quite singular way, incidentally one that will allow me to bring it closer to Benjamin’s concept of history. Be that as it may, I can now spell out the purpose of my paper in much clearer terms. Drawing on Deleuze’s insight that the “virtual” is no less “real” than the “actual”, my aim is to bring the notion of the “virtual” to bear on the discussion of certain cinematic practices in which the “reality of facts” and the “reality of non-facts” cannot be distinguished clearly. This will lead me to the discussion of the distinction between documentary and fiction—a much-debated topic these days (LaRocca 2017) that involves the labelling of sub-genres such as “docudrama”, “docufiction”, or “pseudo-documentary”, while entailing questions such as the following: is the notion of a clear-cut boundary between fiction and documentary obsolete? What does fiction add to documentary that it cannot achieve by itself? Does such a blend of fiction and documentary entail a decrease of commitment to reality? These questions provide an important background to the discussion that follows. By the same token, given that no claim to originality can be made for these questions as such, I will try to draw new, hopefully thought-provoking consequences from them, while taking the concept of the virtual as my conceptual guiding thread. In doing so, I will not reflect in the void. Quite the contrary, my reflections will take the form of a diptych revolving around two filmmakers: Peter Watkins and Mark Rappaport. Despite everything that separates them, they share an intense interest in the entwinement of fiction and documentary, which the concept of the virtual may help clarify. In particular, they both made films about actual persons and events from the past—artists, battles, revolutions—which, for reasons yet to be explored, cannot be labelled as documentaries, and whose definition as docudramas or docufictions raises more difficulties than one expects in the beginning. This said, I guess that Rappaport and Watkins have something else in common— besides their idiosyncratic interest in the dissolution of the fiction/documentary divide. They are both rather unknown filmmakers. This fact justifies a few lines of introduction to their work and career.

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Peter Watkins, to begin with the eldest, was born in Norbiton, near London, in 1935. He joined the BBC after making three short features—The Web (1956), The Diary of an Unknown Soldier (1958), and The Forgotten Faces (1961), in which his obsession with the experience of war and the sufferings it causes is already apparent. For the BBC he directs Culloden (1964), which depicts the last battle opposing the Scottish and English troupes in 1746 and ending with the massacre of the supporters of Bonny Prince Charlie (the Catholic pretender to the throne) (Cull 2001). The comic element that pervades this feature, in which we see a reporter covering the events, along with the historical distance of the events themselves, might have concealed the harshness of Watkins’s retrospective look at history. This characteristic, however, would come to the fore in his next project even more sharply: The War Game (1965), a documentary-like film about the consequences of a nuclear attack to Britain in the sixties. The film, which laid bare the total unpreparation of the country for such a disastrous event and showed the devastating consequences it would have, was censored by the government, which forced BBC to banish the film for over twenty years. Ever since then, Watkins lurched from controversy to controversy (as well as from country to country): he films Privilege (1966) in Britain (on the latent fascism of pop culture); The Gladiators (1969) in Sweden (depicting a reality show where groups representing different countries fight each other to death); The Punishment Park (1971) in the US (a fake documentary on parks where political prisoners are forced to engage into extremely hard, eventually deadly missions, including traversing a distance of over 50 miles in three days without any support whatsoever). Meanwhile he also makes two biographical films about Edvard Munch (1973) and, more recently, August Stringberg (1994). His last project, filmed in France, is La Commune (1999): a re-enactment of the Commune of Paris, where, just as in Culloden, the spectator follows the revolutionary turmoil through the perspective of two journalists and a camera man who “cover” the events (see Baecque 2012: 159–204; Cull 2001; Jovanovic 2017: 113–167). Rappaport, on his turn, was born and lived most of his life in Brooklyn, New York, until he moved to Paris about fifteen years ago. Although many aspects of his cinematography accompany his production throughout his career (Rappaport 2008), it is possible and perhaps useful to divide it into two periods: a first period from the seventies until the late eighties, where he directed about five experimental features (which may be characterized as parodies of classic melodramas), and a second period, from early nineties until now, during which Rappaport dedicated himself to the creation of false autobiographies—or, as Rappaport (2013) terms it in French, “(f)au(x)biographies”—about actors, actresses and directors from Hollywood: Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992), From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1995), or more recently Becoming Anita Ekberg (2014), The Vanity Tales of Douglas Sirk (2015) or I, Dalio (2015). At this point, we may wonder what the main differences and similarities between the two filmmakers are. Starting with the former, it seems clear that not only their nationalities but also their temperament, obsessions and modi operandi differ. Rappaport has often commented on his difficulties in dealing with actors and non-actors (and with the whole of process filming as such), whereas Watkins is pretty well

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known for his impressive capacity of organization and extraordinary ability to interact with the actors and non-actors so that they come to perform in a way that is both realistic and theatrical. Their approaches are also distinct when it comes to theory. Rappaport maintains a vague, sometimes ironic, relationship to the theorization of his work. Even when he writes about it, which he did (2013), he would answer to a question on his early motivations with a “well, I can’t remember what I was searching for” (Marques and Lisboa 2015). Watkins, on the other hand, has always be keen to reflect about his own practice and makes no secret of the political/social/critical motivations that underlie his cinematographic work, which he has summarized in plenty of texts (some of which have been brought together in The Media Crisis). All this notwithstanding, what they do have in common is the experimentalism of their cinematography, the mastery they both show when it comes to editing, the aura of controversy surrounding their careers, and—last but not least—the way in which their films, in reworking the documentary/fiction dichotomy, defy qualification. Indeed, Rappaport film essays on Hollywood stars are not simply false-, fake-, or pseudo-autobiographies (which is why the “f” and the “x” are between brackets in “(f)au(x)tobiographies”). They actually revolve around the lives and careers of actual people: Rock Hudson, Jean Seberg, or Marcel Dalio… The same applies to Watkins, whose Culloden (1964) and La Commune (1999) are not simply false-, fake- or pseudo- documentaries either. This would be the case if these films dealt with fictional figures and situations. On the contrary, they portray historical events (and they actually try to do it in a “faithful” manner): the battle of Culloden in 1746 near Inverness; the insurrectional events of 1871 in Paris. The question thus arises as to what, in that case, prevents us from characterizing these films as documentaries? The reason is simple: an element of fakery pervades them through and through. This element, however, is not to be searched on the level of contents—which are actual events and people—but on the level of form. This is immediately apparent in Rappaport’s false autobiographies, such as Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992) and From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1995), if only because the person we see and hear talking in the first person about his or her own life and career against the background of sequences taken from films she or he actually participated in is not the actual actor or actress—who, in fact, were already dead when the films were made—but another actor or actress playing their role (Picture 7.1). As for Peter Watkins, it suffices to remember in this regard—that is, to render apparent the element of explicit fakery that prevents us from categorizing these films as documentaries despite their dealing with non-fictional events—that his last, now almost twenty-years old production was a film on the French Commune of Paris in 1871, which included “live interviews” with the participants in the events (events, of course, that took place long before TV saw the light of day) (Picture 7.2). In their attempt to “articulate the past historically” (Benjamin 1940: 391), both Watkins and Rappaport seem to appeal to an “as if”… Instead of “recognizing [or trying to recognize] the past the way it really was” (Benjamin 1940: 391) they proceed as if we could look at what happened in the French Commune through a televised

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Picture 7.1 Eric Farr as Rock Hudson in Mark Rappaport’s Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992)

Picture 7.2 TV Reporters in Peter Watkins’s La Commune (Paris 1871) (1999). Photograph by Corinna Paltrinieri

report, as if Rock Hudson or Jean Seberg, resuscitating from the world of the dead, could perform his or her own role in a biographical film. Yet the films take a further step: they intimate that the element of ignorance that the “as if” both discloses and transforms is not only accidental but also necessary. We cannot—we could never—know how Rock Hudson or Jean Seberg really thought or felt about their lives and careers; we could never know it, even if—and this is crucial—they were still alive and decided to take part in a film on their own life and

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career. Just as we cannot—we could never—know the way it really was in the Paris Commune, even if we could have had journalists interviewing people at that period, even if, instead of the commune, we were talking about what is happening nowadays in Syria. What we can—perhaps should—do is to question media, disciplines, and genres that lay a claim to transparency, objectivity, or authenticity when it comes to recognizing the way it really was: from mass audio visual media to uncritical approaches to historiography and biography. In this sense, Watkins’s and Rappaport’s films do not limit themselves to play with the ambiguity between what did happen (reality) and what did not happen but could have happened (fiction). Right from the beginning, two things are made clear to the spectator: first, that the subject matter is real (it consists of actual people and events); second, that the form of representing them is fake. What this paradoxical device enables us to grasp about the people, their feelings, the tragic or happy events they actually took part in, is what we seek to clarify with the help of the concept of the virtual. Rappaport’s and Watkins’s films suggest that reality is more than the sum of actual and possible events. There is also what insists beneath, above and through the interstices of those circumstances—incidentally, Rock Hudson’s homosexuality; Jean Seberg’s frustrations; the affinity between the concerns, hopes and enthusiasm of those who formed the Commune and those who participated in Watkins’s filmic re-enactment of its major episodes—but all this, and this is the point where the notion of fakery becomes crucial, as neither Rock Hudson and Jean Seberg, nor the Parisians of the nineteenth century, nor the actors and non-actors who collaborated with Watkins would be able to formulate. At this point, I would like to bring the concept of the virtual to bear on Watkins’s oeuvre as a whole: so, considering not only the films on actual events and people (Forgotten Faces, Culloden, Edvard Munch, The Free Thinker, La Commune) (Baecque 2012: 159–204; Cull 2001), but also the films that extrapolate from what is happening today what may happen in the near future, thus working as dystopias of the present (War Game [on a nuclear war starting in UK in the sixties], Privilege [around a fictional pop singer], Gladiators [on a faux reality show], and Punishment Park [on a non-existent prison yard]). What seems to insist in all of these films are either the most forgotten impossibilities of the past or the most neglected contingencies of the future. In other words, what the films show, what they consistently denounce, what they protest against is (1) what came to happen in the past (the becoming “actual” of war, misery, and catastrophe) and (2) what may still happen in the future (the remaining “possible” of barbarism, of fascist-like societies, of the very self-destruction of humanity). By the same token, what they intimate—thanks to an element of fakery that undermines the logic of documentary on the level of form—is the exact opposite: the most wished for, and in many case the most threatened impossibilities and contingencies of the past and the future. They haunt the present as a reminder of hope that the notion of the virtual may help us theorize in that it stresses that the consistency of those impossibilities and contingencies is real, their non-actuality notwithstanding: they are much more than just the result of nostalgic mourning and wishful thinking. What could have happened but did not happen in the event of the Commune remains real: the promises it contained and the experiences it triggered were real. This is all

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the more so—to recall Benjamin—when we acknowledge that history may well be told from the perspective of the defeated rather then from the perspective of the victorious. There is nothing unrealistic about brushing history against the grain (even if it is impossible to turn the defeated into victorious and vice versa). The same applies to the future insofar as what may not happen because of the present’s stubbornness, negligence, and selfishness is no less real than the most probable and dreadful events. Back to Rappaport, we must say that the tone running through his films is much lighter in its allusions. If Watkins’ obsessions revolve around war, modern and contemporary history, the mass audiovisual media and their crisis, those of Rappaport are the history of cinema, the sub-genre of melodrama, and the lives and myths surrounding famous actors and actresses—as well as, of course, the deconstruction of their mythology. Meanwhile, both filmmakers developed a love-hate relationship with television and cinema, which led to personal estrangements, self-imposed exiles, and recurrent conflicts with as emblematic institutions as the BBC (in the case of Watkins) and Hollywood (in the case of Rappaport). If the diptych formed by these two figures is worth exploration, the reason for this is that it shows that the scope of such an overcoming of the fiction/documentary divide (when cinema does not limit itself to play with the ambiguity between the actual and the possible but embraces the virtual forces that pervade reality), is broad and flexible enough to focus both on the individual and the collective, to entail moments of self-reflexivity and objective representation, and to unfold in a tone of seriousness and playfulness alike. If the world were nothing but a totality of facts and possibilities, it would be the reign of actualization. Cinema—as an art—has the ability to question such an understanding of the world. Through fakery it breaks the vicious circle of the actual and the possible. Such may well be the strength of cinema that the concept of the virtual brings to light: in its relation to reality, it does more than simply replacing actual facts with possible facts; it captures and expresses the virtual shadow that follows and constitutes reality wherever it goes.

References Armitage, David. n.d. The Anarchist Cinema of Peter Watkins. http://www.historians.org/ publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2013/the-anarchist-cinema-ofpeter-watkins. Accessed May 1, 2017. Baecque, Antoine de. 2012. Peter Watkins, Live from History: The Films, Style, and Methods of Cinema’s Special Correpondent. In Camera Historica: The Century in Cinema, 159–204. Trans. Ninon Vinsonneau and Jonathan Magidoff. New York: Columbia University Press. Benjamin, Walter. 1940. On the Concept of History. In Selected Writings, Vol. IV 1938–1940. Trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, 389–411. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cull, Nicholas J. 2001. Peter Watkins’s Culloden and the Alternative Form in Historical Filmmking. In Retrovisions: Reinventing the Past in Film and Fiction, ed. Deborah Cartmell, I. Q. Hunter, and Imelda Whelehan. London: Pluto Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1967. Différence et répétition. Paris: Seuil. English edition: Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Patton, Paul. New York: Continuum.

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Jovanovic, Nenad. 2017. Peter Watkins: Intuitive Brechtianism. In Montage and Theatricality in Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Peter Watkins, and Lars von Trier, ed. Brechtian Cinemas, 113–167. New York: SUNY Press. LaRocca, David (ed.). 2017. The Philosophy of Documentary Film: Image, Sound, Fiction, Truth. Lanham: Lexington Books. Marques, S.D., Mendonça, L., Vieira Lisboa, R. 2015. Mark Rappaport: ‘Interessa-me o ponto de vista da lagarta sobre a maça’ (interview). http://www.apaladewalsh.com/2015/05/markrappaport-interessa-me-o-ponto-de-vista-da-lagarta-sobre-a-maca/. Accessed May 1, 2017. Rappaport, Mark. 2008. Le Spectateur qui en savait trop. Trans. Jean-Luc Mengus. Paris: P.O.L. Rappaport, Mark. 2013. (F)au(x)tobiographies. Kindle edition. Rosenbaum, Jonathan. 2017. Fictional Biography as Film Criticism: Two Videos by Mark Rappaport. http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2016/11/fictional-biography-as-film-criticism-twovideos-by-mark-rappaport/. Accessed May 1, 2017. Watkins, Peter. n.d. Media Crisis. http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/index.htm. Accessed May 1, 2017. Zourabichvili, François. 2003. Le vocabulaire de Deleuze. Paris: Ellipses.

João Pedro Cachopo is currently a Marie SkŁodowska-Curie Fellow with joint affiliation at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the University of Chicago. He earned a degree in Musicology (2005) and a Ph.D. in Philosophy (2011) from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He is the author of Truth and Enigma: Essay on Adorno’s Aesthetics, which won the First Book Award from the Portuguese PEN Club in 2013. His work has also appeared in journals such as New German Critique and Opera Quarterly. He is co-editing a volume on Rancière and music (forthcoming in Edinburgh University Press) and preparing a monograph on opera and film.

Chapter 8

Digital Fabrication and Its Meanings for Photography and Film Matthew Crippen

Abstract Bazin, Cavell and other prominent theorists have asserted that movies are essentially photographic, with more recent scholars such as Carroll and Gaut protesting. Today CGI stands as a further counter, in addition to past objections such as editing, animation and blue screen. Also central in debates is whether photography is transparent, that is, whether it allows us to see things in other times and places. I maintain photography is transparent, notwithstanding objections citing digital manipulation. However, taking a cue from Cavell—albeit one poorly outlined in his work—I argue this is not so much because of what photography physically is, but because of what “photography” has come to mean. I similarly argue digital technologies have not significantly altered what cinematic media “are” because they have not fundamentally modified what they mean; and that cinema retains a photographic legacy, even when it abandons photographic technologies to digitally manufacture virtual worlds.

8.1 Introduction In the post-WWII era, a number of prominent scholars suggested film is essentially photographic (e.g., Bazin 1951; Cavell 1979). Since then individuals such as Carroll (1996, 2008), Gaut (2010) and Jarvie (1987) have charged it is not, and for reasons not easily challenged. Without disputing this, I aim to highlight the extent to which movies retain a photographic legacy, even in an age when CGI can be used to fabricate virtual worlds. In other words, I hope to show that the photographic legacy continues to define what movies mean to us, even in cases when photographic technologies are left behind. Though anticipating some resistance to this thesis, I take for granted that most accept that photography is historically linked to the development of cinema. I therefore presume that a thorough understanding of cinema entails a discussion of phoM. Crippen (B) School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] Department of Philosophy, Grand Valley State University, Michigan, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_8

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tography, and in examining the latter, I defend the transparency thesis. That is, with thinkers such as Santayana (c. 1900–1907), Bazin (1951), Cavell (1979) and Walton (1984), I argue that photographs allow us to see things in other times and places, notwithstanding objections citing digital manipulation. However, taking a cue from Cavell—and one poorly laid out in his work—I argue this is not so much because of what photography physically is, but because of what “photography” has come to mean. I similarly maintain digital technologies have not radically shifted what cinematic media “are” to us because they have not fundamentally altered our concepts of movies; and this, in part, because filmmakers continue to emulate older, established modes of production in CGI invented worlds, not to mention cartoons, though I attend only briefly to the latter. I begin by explicating my approach, which considers what photography is— whether digital or photochemical—by examining what it has historically meant to us. While defending the transparency thesis, I dispute some prominently cited bases for it. Specifically, I argue that proponents of the transparency thesis and the related indexical view, which holds photographs are imprints of the world, tend to overemphasize the physical nature of photography and neglect cultural-historical meaning. I also argue that adversaries do the same, and further that it does not make sense to advance claims about the ontology of photography—a human, cultural product— apart from historical-cultural interpretations of what it is and what it means. After this, I consider the extent to which meanings of photography enter into our understandings of what cinematic media are. I focus on how digital technologies are pressing conventional concepts of film, yet also how art forms retain historical lineages and therewith established meanings about what they are.

8.2 Photography and a Plea for History The indexical view of photography, as Atencia-Linares (2012, p. 19) summarizes without fully endorsing it, holds that photographs “bear a causal relation to their content,” much “like shadows and fossils.” This means that content “in photographs depends causally, and counterfactually, on the object that was in front of the camera,” and also that content “is not essentially dependent on the photographer’s intentions.” Defenders of this position hold that compared to paintings, which are interpretive, photographs are not products of imagination. Sontag (1973), to give one example, writes that a photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask. While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, never does more than state an interpretation, a photograph never does less than register an emanation (light waves reflected by objects)—a material vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be (p. 120).

Numerous defenders of the indexical view advance comparable ideas, emphasizing physical processes involved in making photographs. Key claims are that the photo-

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graphic image depends counterfactually on what was in front of the camera and that images are produced through automated mechanical processes and consequently not subject to interpretation. Building on this kind of outlook, some also argue that photographs are transparent, meaning they are windows allowing us to see into times and spaces removed from our own. Santayana suggests that photography gives us the “unalloyed fact” (c. 1900–1907, p. 397), and Bazin observes that seeing things by means of motion photography is akin to seeing them through “mirrors” (1951, p. 97). Walton (1984), who is most famous for advancing the transparency thesis, offers a comparable analogy, comparing photographs to “telescopes and microscopes [that] extend our visual powers” (p. 255). He adds that with the assistance of photography, we can “see into the past” (p. 251). Cavell (1979) echoes the point, writing that “reality in a photograph is present to me while I am not present to it; and a world I know, and see, but to which I am nevertheless not present […], is a world past” (p. 23). That the photographed world “does not exist (now) is its only difference from reality” (p. 24). What is common to these accounts is that they all hold that to see a photograph of, say, an actress is to see the actress herself, as opposed to a mere representation of her. As with advocates of the indexical view, moreover, transparency proponents maintain that photographs register emanations from the world, upon which they counterfactually depend. Though sympathetic to such accounts, and while I defend them later, I see a problem with how many are constructed, namely, that explanations focus on how photographs are physically made, less on what “photography” means, which is related but not identical to the material processes. Interestingly and at the same time, some contesting the transparency thesis do the same. Gaut (2010, p. 89), for instance, highlights problems in Walton’s account by means of illustrations emphasizing physical, causal relations. Gaut, in one case, describes two clocks, with the hands of clock B radio linked to those of A. This means that B’s movements are automatic, mechanical facsimiles of A’s. As such, they counterfactually depend on A’s, and are not a product of human interpretation. In a second illustration, he talks about an indistinguishable, mechanically produced plaster cast of an artifact. Gaut points out that few would claim that in seeing Clock B, they see A, or in seeing the cast, they see the original, even though this should follow from Walton’s account. Although I accept Gaut’s criticisms of Walton, I hope to show later that a transparency account emphasizing what photography has historically meant is more robust. A separate line of attack acknowledges a relation between the transparency thesis and meaning, particularly as influenced by culture, but then questions it on such grounds. For example, Alcaraz (2015), drawing on André Rouillé, suggests the transparency thesis is a questionable belief that emerged as a counter to the “crisis of truth” that surfaced “after the Romantic period” when “doubt in objectivity appeared” (pp. 7–8), with photography seeming to offer one avenue out. The observation itself may be correct, and might form a basis for a critique of a culture that attributes greater objectivity to outcomes divorced from human judgment; and it is indeed because photographs are products of automatic mechanical processes that many have given them greater epistemic value than paintings. Statistical analysis is

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comparable insofar as p-values of 0.05 or 0.001 are automatically adopted without critical judgment by the scientific community; using other values, even if appropriate to research, is rejected as subjective bias. It cannot be denied, moreover, that erroneous views have arisen for cultural reasons. This happened, for instance, when people clung to geocentric models partly because of religious beliefs that located humans at the center of the universe, although it is worth adding that such models can accord with data (see Crippen 2010, pp. 484-485, 501, fn. 2). At the same time, however, no comparable mistake has occurred in significant degree with photography, whether photochemical or digital, for experts and most educated laypeople have more or less known how it works all along. Moreover, it does not make sense to advance ontological claims about photography—a human, cultural product—apart from historical-cultural interpretations of what it is. Cameron (2004) makes this point generally of artifacts. Paraphrasing the philosopher and archeologist R. G. Collingwood, Cameron asks us to suppose that an archaeologist at work upon a site between Tyne and Solway were to uncover yet another elongated section of shaped rock, aligned with others, that might seem to have been part of the wall. What must the archaeologist do to come to understand what has been uncovered? The archaeologist must acknowledge that the object is an artefact that was constructed by human beings in the past to serve as a means towards ends they had wished to accomplish. […] To learn how an artefact was intended by its makers to mean (to be used), therefore, an archaeologist must engage unexceptionally in the evidentiary and open-ended task of coming to imagine better how its makers had tried to solve the historically specific problem they had faced by making it as they did (2004, pp. 6–7).

This highlights a difference between investigations of human artifacts versus physical nature per se. With the solar system, accounts likely improve as we focus more on physical nature alone and leave culturally based interpretations behind, however unavoidable they may be. With a Roman artifact, however, physical analysis in the absence of cultural-historical explanation yields little. After all, knowledge of what the artifact is entails a sense of how it was used and what it meant to the culture that produced it. The same holds with photographs, which are artifacts. Consequently those either defending or attacking transparency accounts based on what photography physically is while neglecting cultural significance adopt equally mistaken approaches. So too do those challenging transparency accounts because they are cultural. This is something like noting that a sharp tool intended by a past culture as a writing instrument would have been more effective as a weapon, and then concluding therefore that it is not in fact a writing instrument, but instead a weapon.

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8.3 Photography and Meaning As early as Santayana and continuing with others such as Bazin, Cavell and Walton, theorists have argued that photography allows us to see things that exist in other times and spaces. In this section I offer a defense of the position, and in the next consider what it might mean for cinema, especially in light of recent digital advances. However, rather than a protracted discussion, I here provide an abbreviated illustration drawn from an empirical experiment (see Crippen 2015, 2016). In addition to brevity, the experiment helps show that the question of what photographic media are is a question about their meaning. The experiment begins with two paintings of Jesus in which he looks different. When asked whom the paintings are of, the response is always “Jesus.” Following this first step, people are presented with photographic stills with two different actors playing Jesus and the same question. In this second instance, people hesitate to say the stills are of Jesus, instead stating they are of the performers playing him. This is noteworthy because there is no record of what Jesus actually looked like, which means the performers in the photographs could, in principle, have also modeled for painters. Cavell’s (1979) analysis cast light on why people respond differently to the paintings and photographic stills. In his own example, he argues that upon encountering a building in a painting, we do not take its existence for granted, recognizing it may be a product of imagination. If we conclude it exists, it is typically because of external information, as when recognizing it as a well-known site such as the White House. In Cavell’s words, it accordingly “only accidentally makes sense” to ask “what lies behind it, totally obscured by it” (p. 23). However, the same question has historically been appropriate in the case of photographs because people have historically understood “photography” to mean something showing things that exist or once did. Testifying to this is the fact that many objected that something unphotographic was misleadingly presented as photographic when the Giza pyramids were repositioned to better fit a 1982 National Geographic cover. In the words of an editor in chief from the same publication, a “firestorm” resulted (Goldberg 2016), and similar reactions have occurred more recently when digitally doctored images have been presented as photographs (see Cooper 2007; Safi 2016). This indicates that upon encountering what we understand to be a photograph, as opposed to a photorealistic painting or CGI image, people have overwhelmingly taken for granted that the building or whatnot in it exists or once did and that the image has not been manipulated post hoc. Upon learning that an image is doctored, people have, at least in the past, questioned the legitimacy of calling it a “photograph.” Paintings have a different meaning, and are not taken as truth claims about what they portray, and this helps explain why people unhesitatingly identify Jesus in the paintings: they at least tacitly recognize the images might be products of imagination. So even if models were used, the paintings are principally of Jesus and of models accidentally, and we only feel confident models were used through information not in the painting, for instance, comments in an artist’s journal. By contrast, the models are internally and perhaps analytically related

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to photographs in that we understand that things called “photographs,” by definition, show things that exist or once did.1 Notice also that the fact that photographers use different film stocks, focal lengths, lighting and so forth—all standard objections to the transparency thesis (see, for example, Carroll 1996, pp. 47, 57–58)—does not alter this meaning. That is, regardless of these variations—unless perhaps so extreme as to destroy recognizability— people consistently behave as if photographs of friends and family are a means by which we see them. This makes sense because the aforesaid variations could be introduced if we peered at the performers through a telescope, darkened pitted glass or in sunshine versus incandescent light, and in such cases few would claim they are not seeing them. Lack of retinal disparity and motion parallax are not objections either since both would drop out if we gazed at models while motionless with one eye close, and once again few would deny we are seeing them. One feature that has, however, historically made people question the legitimacy of using the term “photograph” is post hoc manipulation such that images are not produced through automatic mechanisms. This highlights that the physical processes by which photographs are made relate to what we understand photography to mean. However, examining the physical nature of photography alone will not tell us much about its meanings, nor what it is to us. Gaut’s earlier cited examples in fact indicate that physical parameters alone do not dictate how we encounter things, for people do talk as if they see loved ones by means of photographs; and the experience of seeing through time is palpable for those who have discovered, for instance, precious 8 mm home-movies of grandparents from decades past. However, it is unlikely people would experience radio-linked clocks or indistinguishable plaster imprints of artifacts in comparable ways. How much does digital photography change this? Against what some maintain, I argue very little. Thus, for example, Alcaraz (2015) writes that although “analog and digital images seem … very similar or even the same, when perceiving a digital image we can never be sure that it is true” (p. 1). She adds: “We can no longer believe in the truthfulness of digital images, since we can never be sure to what extent they represent the world around us[…], or whether they might be simulacra” (p. 11). The claim itself is of course true, but it was also true before the advent of digital photography, with doctored images around almost as long as photography has existed. The National Geographic cover is one example. A variety of others abound. Early on pointillist and impressionist images were rendered with photographic technologies. Advertisers airbrushed makeup models before the advent of photoshoping. Moreover, AtenciaLinares (2012) observes a protracted history of blending photographs to create the impression of entities that do not exactly exist, as when Wanda Wultz mixed a feline face with hers. Atencia-Linares also discusses artists creating images by passing light over film emulsions, in effect drawing with light, and adds that this “is indeed a photographic process” (p. 22). However, this is arguably a misuse of words, and the process is more accurately characterized as “photochemical” because almost nobody will perceive the result as a photograph, just as many will question whether 1 Some of the explanation offered here paraphrases and elaborates on that offered in Crippen (2015,

pp. 84–85; 2016, p. 170).

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they are really encountering a photograph if they see a human-feline face, or behold an image, then learn portions were digitally altered in significant ways, superimposed or removed. In short and to repeat, calling something a “photograph” has historically meant making a tacit truth claim about objects seen by means of it, namely, that they exist or once did. When this is drawn into doubt, so too is the legitimacy of using the word “photograph.” Having said this, digital technologies have added new means of trickery, even if trickery itself is nothing new. Barbara Savedoff (2008), in a balanced assessment, writes: “In a world where digital manipulation—digital collage—has become the norm, we may simply come to assume that a photograph has been altered if it is at all challenging to read it as straight” (p. 137; see also Benovsky 2014, p. 722). However, while the threshold that challenges is increasingly lower, digital cameras are predominately employed as their photochemical predecessors were: to capture the world. Hence we still take digital recordings of misdeeds as evidence, whereas paintings have never been accepted. In legal proceedings, perhaps, we would wish to verify digital photographs, but this would also be the case with photochemical images if doubts about authenticity existed. That digital photographs are taken as evidence also explains the surge of selfies with celebrities or at famous sites. To understand something as “photographic” is still to tacitly accept a truth claim about what it shows, which is why, for instance, Reuters fired a top photo-editor and removed Adnan Hajj’s photographs from its site after some were found to be digitally manipulated (see Cooper 2007). Digital media have, to be sure, made it easier to manipulate results post hoc. For example, people might easily brighten eye color in selfies, but this is only a more ubiquitous variation of what has occurred all along, as in airbrushed glamor shots. For this reason, the meaning of “photography” is perhaps changing and may depart widely from currently established meanings in the future. However, so far it has not changed in significant degree—hence the uproar over Hajj’s images or the more recent banning of climbers from Nepal for producing doctored images of an ascent of Mount Everest (see Safi 2016), something that would not have happened had a painter rendered a portrait of them at the summit. The possibility of manufacturing photographic-looking products was always there; digital technologies just make it more effortless.

8.4 Movies and Meaning Casablanca (1942), excepting a few animated sequences with maps and the like, is a film produced by means of motion photography; and according to the conception of photography advanced through the Jesus example, this implies that when we see Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart through the screen while viewing the film, we see performers who once lived, wearing garments that actually existed, doing things they did on past movie sets. When Bergman smiles, when Bogart lights a cigarette, we witness events that really occurred. Thus while engaging us with a fictional story, the movie also confronts us with a world that is anything but fictional—a world we

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can see without it being present in our space. In this regard, at least, Casablanca is within the domain of motion photography, and to that extent, arguably transparent. However, many films are obvious counterexamples. In spite of this, I still want to argue that photography remains connected to what film means, indeed, even in cases when photographic technologies are largely abandoned. Perhaps the most obvious counterexample is cartoon animation. When we screen scenes from “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in Disney’s Fantasia (1940) we do not see anything that ever existed before the camera. Cavell says the projected world is a world of the past, a world that does not exist now, and that apart from this, “[t]here is no feature, or set of features, in which it differs” (1979, p. 24). Yet reacting to the first edition of The World Viewed, Alexander Sesonske (1974) responds that every feature differs in the case of cartoons: “Neither the space nor the laws of nature are the same” (p. 564). The events in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” do not closely approximate anything we would see in the world, and “there is no past time at which these events either did occur or purport to have occurred” (Sesonske 1974, p. 564). Cartoon animation raises a clear objection to those either applying the transparency thesis to film or arguing movies are photographic, as Bazin and Cavell claim. Animation also raises questions about the purported importance of realism in cinema—by which I just mean that things look real, even if stories are preposterous, as in many superhero and sci-fi flicks. Animated cartoons obviously do not manifest this kind of realism, but nonetheless captivate. Few laugh when Bambi’s mother gets shot. Moreover, films departing even further from both realism and photographic technologies can be made. One could, for instance, use the scratch techniques of Len Lye to render abstract images onto celluloid by hand, and then forgo the step of photographically mass-producing the finished result. While this perhaps would not count as “a movie,” regarding it as an instance of “film” or “cinema” is perfectly intelligible. In addition to all this, there are many “middle-cases” that challenge the notion that film is either photographic or transparent. When we see dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) or gigantic creatures in Avatar (2009), we see a range of entities that never existed in front of the camera. The images may be partly photographic, as when human performers flee digitally constructed beasts. Hence the end product is not the unadulterated result of photographic automatism. So Gaut (2010), among others, is right when he says in reference to CGI that “cinematic art now deploys a possibility that painting already possesses, since it does not require some independently existing object in order to create expressive content” (p. 50). But while technically correct, this is nothing new to cinema. Over a century ago, audiences saw colored bursts of hand-tinted gunfire in shootouts in The Great Robbery (1903). A culminating scene from Anchors Aweigh (1945) pairs Gene Kelly with Jerry the mouse, blending live action with cartoon animation, and Zelig (1983) combines elements from different photographic worlds, inserting Woody Allen into old footage with Adolph Hitler. In the original Star Wars movies (1977, 1980, 1983), Harrison Ford retreats from weapons’ fire he never actually encountered. Forest Gump (1994) goes further, albeit this time with the aid of digital technologies: not only is Tom Hanks’s image introduced into archival footage with John F. Kennedy, but the brightness of the pixels

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around Kennedy’s mouth are manipulated, making movements better match lines provided by screenwriters. Gaut (2010) adds that “traditional film is ontologically realistic,” insofar as it is of things that were and events that actually happened, “but digital film is not in all cases” (p. 68). Only traditional film is not always ontologically real, as most of the above examples illustrate. In uncounted movies and for a long time, we have seen things that did not exactly happen, and not merely as a result of special effects, but also through montage or editing. Suppose, to borrow from Pudovkin (1926), that a man is filmed, …falling from a [fifth-story] window into a net, in such a way that the net is not visible on the screen; then the same man is shot falling from a slight height to the ground. Joined together, the two shots give in projection the desired impression [of a man falling from an appalling height] (p. 85).

In the individual shots we here see events that actually happened, but not in the combination of the two. The man did not plummet five stories. “The catastrophic event … is the resultant of two pieces of celluloid joined together” (p. 85). So a few things to note: in the digital era, film is often not fully photographic and consequently not properly transparent, yet it almost never has been in its century plus history. The question I want to address is the extent to which the advent of digital filmmaking and especially CGI has changed what movies are to us; and while the claim that film is essentially photographic is untenable, the position, especially as developed by Cavell, highlights an important point: that ontological questions about film relate to or are the same as questions about what film means to us. Cavell suggests just this in the first pages of the World Viewed when he explains that he came to see that “the answer to the question ‘What is the importance of art?’ is grammatically related to, or is a way of answering, the question ‘What is art?’” Import relates to significance and meaning, and questions about something’s importance are historical quandaries. History of course changes, and meanings evolve. Once film was something you “shot.” The earliest films were, in fact, composed of a single shot. Later, shots were strung together, but largely as a matter of convenience—due to a scene change or because the scene’s length exceeded that of the reel and so on. It was not long, however, before editing became an aesthetic device. It was used to create continuity (and in some later cases, discontinuity), to structure scenes, to moderate mood and tempo and as a means of constructing events not actually recorded on film; it became an expository device (e.g., establishing shots), a narrative device, a way of building suspense and tension and a way of conveying simultaneously occurring events, as when cutting between fleeing outlaws and a pursuing posse. Editing changed how films were made and how cinema functioned as an expressive medium. Films, Pudovkin (1926) would say, are “not shot but built, built up from the separate strips of celluloid that are raw material” (p. 24). “The foundation of film art is editing” (p. 23). “Every object must, by editing, be brought upon the screen so that it shall have not photographic, but cinematographic essence” (p. 25). Whether editing makes for cinematographic essence is a matter of debate, and one that Pudovkin is likely to lose today, but his basic observation that editing changed how films are made and how

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they communicated to audiences, that is, his assertion that editing shaped what films and filmmaking have historically become and therefore what we understand film to mean, is a claim not easily disputed. Editing is one tendency that remains constant throughout most of the history of filmmaking. Another longstanding constant—albeit less so—is that makers have tried to create the appearance of reality, cartoons and abstract films being exceptions. This has sometimes involved counterfeiting reality, but notice it is the appearance of reality that has been counterfeited. In superhero movies and sci-fi fantasies, for example, the overwhelming aim is to make preposterous and fictional events appear as they might if they actually happened. “Explicit artifice is,” as Cavell observes, “quite rare; not just rare, but specialized” (1979, p. 196), as in the case of the partly animated dream sequence in Vertigo (1958), where the departure from photographic realism is intentionally obvious. Most of the time such departures are avoided, and when filmmakers employ artifice, they do so with the hope of making it invisible. If an airplane flies across the screen, and it is obvious that it has been digitally inserted, then the special effects department has likely not succeeded in its job. The conspicuousness of artifice is here its failure. It is clear, then, that pre-digital and digital filmmakers have both overwhelmingly endeavoured to create the appearance of reality, whether everyday or fantastical. Sometimes doing so involves counterfeiting it, as in cases just discussed, but also in more recent instances such as Rogue One (2016) where CGI is used to a significant extent. At the same time, cameras remain prevalent in this movie and others precisely because creating the appearance of reality with them is less labour intensive, more cost effective and usually just more convincing. Furthermore, motion photography has an influence even in cases when not used. It is felt distinctly, for example, in cartoons since animators import editing techniques from motion photographic filmmaking. A lesson here is that art forms do not abandon historical legacies even when relinquishing old modes of production. The photographic legacy indeed remains in digitally constructed virtual worlds. As Mullarkey (2009) notes: “lens flare—an artefact of ‘conventional’ filmmaking that was once avoided but eventually became a stylistic cliché of the 1960s and 1970s—is these days reproduced artificially” in computer-generated productions (p. 54). This, he goes on to explain, … is one attempt to emulate the imperfections of the optical in order to be real—its flaring, its blurriness. Indeed, the optical and analogical are inherently limited (one can only move so fast, one can only go so high in a crane shot), and the shortfall from perfection, no matter how curtailed by effort, is also the index of material power. It is the weightlessness of CGI— the ability to see anywhere in focus and move anywhere at speed—that fails to convince us because it offers no material resistance, no material freedom (p. 195).

Gaut (2010) elaborates on the same point: What is striking about the notion of photorealism is that it does not employ a comparison of the image to how a real object would look to provide a standard of realism […], but rather compares the image to a photograph of an object. This notion of realism is, then, a derivative one. The use of the photograph as the standard is illustrated by the introduction by digital animators of such things as film grain, motion blur… and lens flare into digital images.

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These are not things that accompany our normal seeing of an object, but are artefacts of photography. Often the standard of photorealism is set by the traditional photograph, rather than the digital one. For instance, film grain is a feature of traditional film, because of the silver salt deposits used, but does not occur in digital photographs […]. Other features employed in digital animation are common to traditional and digital photography: motion blur occurs because the exposure time of a shot is sufficiently lengthy that the object has discernibly moved during it; and lens flare happens when some light from a light source bounces away from the lens, instead of going through it. In the case of digital animation, there is no film grain, no motion blur (the represented objects are constructs, rather than independently existing), and no lens flare, since the lens is a “virtual” one, being merely a point of view onto the constructed digital world (pp. 66–67).

This is to say, graininess, blur, lens flare and the like make the experience of watching CGI films even more removed from what we would see if we witnessed events in person since such phenomena would be absent. They are nonetheless added, to re-quote Mullarkey, in an “attempt to emulate the imperfections of the optical in order to be real.” That is, they are added because they are a part of photochemical filmmaking and photography, which has ubiquitously been taken to have privileged access to reality. At this point in time, moving images accordingly seem less real without these imperfections, and this because of the earlier history of photochemical filmmaking. This illustrates, once again, how the photographic legacy remains in film even when it abandons photographic technologies. It suggests, in other words, that photography is not easily subtracted from what films mean to us and how they are made—in short, what they are. Discussions about the making of Avatar (2009) illustrate the point in detail. The moviemakers digitally manufactured lens flare and blurriness; they limited depth of field and added the appearance of overexposure—all unnecessary in CGI. The production team, moreover, endeavoured to make the director and audience feel as if conventional cameras were employed. Joe Letteri, a visual effects supervisor, explained in a 2010 documentary that a system was set up to allow the director to behave as if on “a live action stage.” Rob Legato, a virtual cinematography consultant, added: “And the camera can do anything. It can be a crane, it can be a steady-cam, it can be all just purely handheld…. It’s basically as close to live action as one can get in a CG invented world.” Notice that while the virtual camera can “do anything,” the makers of Avatar mostly imitated constraints of conventional cameras, and fabricated optical imperfections linked with them. In terms of performance capture, they limited themselves similarly, with director James Cameron remarking in a 2010 interview that they took a human performance “with no diminishment whatsoever, and then added to it,” for example, by introducing features of fictitious alien species. So when asked “what percentage of the actor’s performance came through in the final character, [he] say[s] 110%.” Recently digital technologies have been used in even more extraordinary manners. Facial performance capture, in combination with a body double, was employed to create a young version of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys (2015). Similar techniques were used to resurrect Peter Cushing from the dead to play his 1977 character Moff Tarkin in Rogue One. At the same time, barring circumstances like these and that of Avatar, conventional cameras and recording devices remain an

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easier and more effective method of creating the appearance of reality than digitally constructing minute ripples of muscle and subtleties of line, shadow, tone and countless other alterations undulating in the human face. This is evidenced by the fact that filmmakers avoid such techniques most of the time because using them is laborious, expensive and often not that convincing. Moreover, Schwarzenegger and Cushing’s faces were impassive because of their roles and thus easier than usual to construct, and performance capture was still used, meaning actors were essential. Many filmmakers currently bypass the camera when, due to costs or feasibility, they are unable to produce some kind of event in front of the camera in a way that looks photo-real, and notice that the makers of Rogue One used old footage—not CGI—from the movie made 30 years earlier when out-takes were available for some of the fighter pilots. Though one might debate the credibility of many computergenerated effects and movies that rely heavily on them, it seems that a desire for the visual appearance of reality is often the very thing that drives filmmakers away from the camera. It is also a large part of what keeps them attached to it: the camera is still the most reliable and generally effective means of producing the appearance of reality, and this may not change for some time to come. Cameras with optical lenses—and not CGI—remain overwhelmingly ubiquitous even after the introduction of digital technologies. Filmmakers, in short, still largely aim to achieve the same results as they did before digital technologies became common; and though images are typically recorded digitally these days due to cost, ease of editing, manipulability and more, cameras with optical lenses are still the primary way that performances and events are captured, and even when they are digitally constructed, the overwhelming aim is to make them appear photographic. For such reasons, digital technologies have not radically altered what movies “are” to us, or more accurately, what they mean. Meanings are not, to be sure, disconnected from technologies, so that filmmaking and photography would not mean what they do if not for the automated mechanical processes and unprecedented ease with which images can be made to show the world. However, meanings are not solely determined by technologies, much less by philosophers. Far too many philosophers neglect this last point, including even Wittgenstein, whose supposed examples of everyday language were not everyday but schematized and one might say, essentialized (see Cameron 2004). Realism, a standard established in cinema because of its development out of photographic technologies, remains a mainstay. It is what people often expect and a part of what movies mean to them, even to the point that imperfections in old ways of doing things are intentionally introduced to digitally constructed images. Filmmakers continue to rely on optical cameras, and even when digitally producing fabricated, virtual worlds, cinema retains a legacy from photographic traditions.

References Alcaraz, Aleksandra Łukaszewicz. 2015. Epistemic Function and Ontology of Analog and Digital Images. Contemporary Aesthetics 13: 1–14.

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Atencia-Linares, Paloma. 2012. Fiction, Nonfiction, and Deceptive Photographic Representation. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70: 19–30. Bazin, André. 1951/1967. Theatre and Cinema—Part Two. In What is Cinema?, trans. Hugh Gray, 95–124. Berkeley: UC Press. Benovsky, Jiri. 2014. The Limits of Photography. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 22: 716–733. Cameron, Evan. 2004. From Plato to Socrates: Wittgenstein’s Journey on Collingwood’s Map. AE: Canadian Aesthetics Journal 10: 1–30. Carroll, Noël. 1996. Theorizing the Moving Image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carroll, Noël. 2008. The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Cavell, Stanley. 1979. The World Viewed, enlarged edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cooper, Stephen D. 2007. A Concise History of the Fauxtography Blogstorm in the 2006 Lebanon War. The American Communication Journal 9: 1–34. Crippen, Matthew. 2010. William James on belief: Turning Darwinism Against Empiricistic Skepticism. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 46: 477–502. Crippen, Matthew. 2015. Pictures, experiential learning and phenomenology. In Visual Learning, vol. 5: Saying by Showing, Showing by Saying – Pictures, Parables, Paradoxes, ed. András Benedek and Kristof Nyiri, 83–90. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishers. Crippen, Matthew. 2016. Screen Performers Playing Themselves. British Journal of Aesthetics 56: 163–177. Gaut, Berys. 2010. A Philosophy of Cinematic Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldberg, Susan, Editor in Chief. 2016. How We Check What You See. National Geographic 230, n.p. [editorial precedes pagination]. Jarvie, Ian. 1987. Philosophy of the Film: Epistemology, Ontology, Aesthetics. London: Routledge. Mullarkey, John. 2009. Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pudovkin, Vsevolod. 1926/1970. Film Technique. In Film Technique and Film Acting, ed. and trans. Ivor Montagu, 19–220. New York: Grove Press. Safi, Michael. 2016. Indian Couple Banned from Climbing After Faking Ascent of Everest. The Guardian, 30 August. Santayana, George. c. 1900–1907/1967. The Photograph and the Mental Image, In Animal Faith and Spiritual Life: Previously Unpublished and Uncollected Writings of George Santayana with Critical Essays on his Thought, ed. John Lachs, 391–402. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Savedoff, Barbara. 2008. Documentary Authority and the Art of Photography. In Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature, ed. Scott Walden, 111–137. Malden: Blackwell. Sesonske, Alexander. 1974. The World Viewed. The Georgia Review 28: 561–570. Sontag, Susan (1973/2005). On Photography. New York: RosettaBooks LLC. Walton, Kendal L. 1984. Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism. Critical Inquiry 11: 246–247.

Matthew Crippen’s research integrates a number of schools and eras, including pragmatism, embodied cognitive science, phenomenology, Greek thought and more, while drawing resources from psychological, biological and occasionally physical sciences. Much of it also revolves around value theory, especially aesthetics but also ethics and politics. Matthew has published in leading journals, and has a forthcoming book with Columbia University Press, titled Mind Ecologies: Body, Brain, and World. He is affiliated with Humboldt University’s Berlin School of Mind and Brain, and holds a visiting professorship at Grand Valley State University. Outside the academy, he has worked as a musician, mandolin and guitar instructor and gymnastics coach.

Chapter 9

The Reality of the Virtual in Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism Paulo M. Barroso

Abstract Is virtual related with transcendental empiricism? If so, how and why? The aim of this approach is to conceptualize and problematize the reality of the virtual (not virtual reality) as a transition or a changing process through signs/images, like Bacon’s image-sensation. Following a theoretical research, this paper explores and questions Deleuze’s perspective about virtual as a part extracted from real and embedded in real. Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism is critical to the conditions of possibility of experience proposed by Kant. Deleuze’s perspective goes further and admits the virtual must be defined as a strictly part of the real. The virtual is fully determined and necessary; a virtual field represents the necessary conditions to actualize the actual experience.

9.1 Introduction Le virtuel ne s’oppose pas au réel, mais seulement à l’actuel. Le virtuel possède une pleine réalité, en tant que virtuel. […] Le virtuel doit même être defini comme une stricte partie de l’objet réel. Gilles Deleuze, Différence et Répetition.

We are presently living in a full age of development and improvement of the technique. As in the etymological sense of the Greek word techne, the term “technique” commonly means an art or regular way of making or doing something, satisfying human needs and changing the way of seeing and thinking reality. Innovative ways of making or doing things emerge permanently and, therefore, human experiences also change. In a global and increasingly technological culture, it wouldn’t be necessary to mention the development and improvement of the technique to emphasize the way of seeing, thinking and feeling reality, namely through images. Considering that (i) P. M. Barroso (B) Department of Communication and Art, College of Education, Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Viseu, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_9

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there have always been images and images exist before the technological development; (ii) there are different kinds of images with sufficient realism or intensity to make reality and virtuality perceptibly indistinct; and (iii) there are not only ways of seeing, as Berger (1972) states, but also “ways of making worlds”, according to Goodman (1978)—“making” in the poetic sense of producing (from the Greek poien, to produce) or creating something from nothing (to make an image of the world is to produce a “world”), thus it is enough and relevant to mention an idiosyncratic case: the painted images that give rise to a torrent of life and perception about human experience, rather than reality itself. This idiosyncratic case is that of Francis Bacon’s image-sensation as an art or stylistic way of making or doing something (not just art), i.e. a way of making visible and sensible human experience. Bacon’s paintings allow viewers to see and feel strong sensations. The artist is not interested in reality or the reproduction of reality; he simply shapes reality through painted, fixed and intensive images. Deleuze is the philosopher of the virtual, according to Zizek (2004). What matters to Deleuze is not virtual reality, but the reality of the virtual. While virtual reality implies the idea of imitating reality and reproducing its experiences in an artificial medium, the reality of the virtual “stands for the reality of the virtual as such, for its real effects and consequences” (Zizek 2004). Bacon’s case is the best example of Deleuze’s perspective about virtual, visibility and transcendental empiricism, which is the focus of this paper. The justification for this focus is due to the gradual transformation of culture through techniques as ways of making or doing something. Culture is transformed by technique in a global, technological (digital), and more and more visual culture. In such culture, technique is not only omnipresent in everyday life, but also exerts influence, ranging from the micro-chip and the particle accelerator to the broader field of the internet, video games and digital TV. Technique brings more specifically an unprecedented range of virtual reality devices, possibilities and software to be experienced for the contemporary common citizen. Considering Deleuze’s (1985) “civilization of image” as a civilization of cliché (as well the ubiquity of images in the contemporary visual cultures), the relevance of this subject is justified by the current tendency of global cultures to become more and more visual and digital, eventually concealing reality, rather than being a medium to uncover it. If we live in a “civilization of image” or in “the age of the world picture”, according to Heidegger, it is the modern age in which the world has become a picture, i.e. a systematized and representable object of techno-scientific rationality. The “world picture” does not mean a picture of the world, but the world conceived and grasped as a picture (Heidegger 1977). For Heidegger, this phenomenon (tendency or pictorial turn) is a historical transformation equivalent to the Modern Age: “The world picture does not change from an earlier medieval one into a modern one, but rather the fact that the world becomes picture at all is what distinguishes the essence of the modem age” (Heidegger 1977). There are many research questions, but the starting-question of this paper is: Is virtual related with transcendental empiricism? If so, how and why? This question raises a host of other questions: How images and virtuality affect our perception of

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reality? How we continue to experience and perceive reality (and what surrounds us: other people, objects, images and all data we receive daily in several ways and means) in a more a more visual and digital culture? Are the effects of images on people indifferent whether they are real or virtual images and based on real or unreal referents? In what way the experience may be real and yet not actual in Deleuze’s perspective? Why does the virtual necessarily stand in opposition to something that is only possible? What is the reality of the virtual? In addition to this questioning, which guides both the approach and the discussion, the aims of this paper are (a) to argue the contemporaneity of Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism relating the conceptions about the virtual and experience; and (b) to demonstrate the relevance of Deleuze’s approach concerning the virtual. These are two small and close goals, because this approach is restricted to Deleuze’s perspective on the virtual. The strategy to do this is conceptual and reflexive. Firstly, the option is to clarify the concept of “virtual” and relate it to other equally important concepts (image, imagesensation, crystal-image, time, being, becoming, dynamics, intensity); secondly, to underline Deleuze’s perspective about the virtual as the opposite from the common sense (for whom the virtual is linked with the potential and opposed to the real). Following a reflexive methodology, this research assumes the aporias subjacent to the prior questioning. Working within the framework of the virtual, this paper reports on a theoretical approach and the method adopted is a critical discussion about the virtual connected to Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism.

9.2 When Virtual Is Real Virtual is an odd-job word. The etymology of the word “virtual” is polysemic and equivocal. The origin of the word reveals that virtual comes from the medieval Latin virtualis, meaning energy, strength, power (to produce an effect), but also from the Latin virtus, virtutis, meaning human quality, courage, value, merit (as in the case of “possessing certain virtues”, i.e. moral excellence). But virtual also means what exists as a “possibility of something”; what only exists in potency or as a faculty; not existing in reality or with a real effect; what may be, what may exist, happen or be practiced (a simulation of something created by electronic means). The “possible” is what may become a fact, what is capable of being used (have a function) or put into exercise. This paper does not intend to approach the virtual reality, but the virtuality as a transition or transformer process from the actual or real to the virtual, i.e. the virtualization of reality (Deleuze 1968; Zizek 2004; Lévy 1995). In Différence et Répétition, Deleuze emphasizes that the virtual is extracted from the real and it is also incorporated into the real. The virtual is not the opposite of the real, because the virtual enjoys a full reality. “Le virtuel ne s’oppose pas au réel, mais seulement à l’actuel. Le virtuel possède une pleine réalité, en tant que virtuel”, says Deleuze (1968). He adds: “Le virtuel doit même être défini comme une stricte

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partie de l’objet réel—comme si l’objet avait une de ses parties dans le virtuel, et y plongeait comme dans une dimension objective” (Deleuze 1968). In Deleuze’s perspective, the virtual is an integral part of the real. The reality of the virtual is composed of elements, differential relations and singular points that correspond to it. These elements and relations form a structure and this “structure is the reality of the virtual” (Deleuze 1968). For Deleuze, virtual is characterized by being actualisable and not by being realizable or materialized. In the transition from the virtual to the actual, i.e. in the actualizing process, the nature of the virtual differs and the virtual differs even from itself. But virtual does not transcend the actual nor exist outside of it; the virtual inhabits and overflows the actual. We could reasonably understand the possible as existing prior to the actual or the fact, i.e. the possible as a lack of reality. The possible is defined as something that may possibly become something else, something factual, real, concrete. Therefore, the possible is always before something, never after something; whatever exists now must have been possible before it was actual. However, Deleuze denies all this perspective, stating that the possible does not imply anything to which existence is added later. For Deleuze, the possible contains already the real, like the idea of inexistence contains already the idea of existence. Instead of the real as a resemblance of the possible, it is the possible that resembles the real. The possible is the reflected image of the real. In Différence et Répetition, Deleuze distinguishes the virtual from the possible, saying that: first, the possible is opposed to the real; the virtual is not; second, the possible has a process of realization; the virtual is a process of actualization, because the virtual has a proper and fully reality. The existence is produced from the very reality of the virtual. According to Deleuze (1968), “le seul danger, en tout ceci, c’est de confondre le virtuel avec le possible. Car le possible s’oppose au réel; le processus du possible est donc une ‘réalisation’. Le virtuel, au contraire, ne s’oppose pas au réel; il possède une pleine réalité par lui-même. Son processus est l’actualisation.” As per Deleuze, there is a big difference between virtuals and possible forms: while the former define the immanence of the transcendental field, the latter actualize them (the virtuals: virtualities, events, singularities) and transform them into something transcendent (Deleuze 2001). As per Lévy’s Qu’est-ce que le virtual?, Deleuze’s distinction between the virtual and the possible is fundamental. The possible is already constituted, but it remains in the limbo (Lévy 1995). The possible will be done without nothing changing in its determination or in its nature. It is a ghostly and latent real. The possible is identical to the real; it only lacks existence. The realization of a possible is not a creation, because the creation also implies the innovative production of an idea or a form (Lévy 1995). Therefore, the difference between real and possible is purely logic. The virtual is not opposed to the real, but to the actual. Unlike the possible, the static and the already constituted, the virtual is the set of tendencies or forces that accompanies a situation, an event, an object, an entity, etc. that needs or demands an actualizing process.

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9.2.1 Transcendental Empiricism and Image-Sensation In Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, the most crucial is the experience and the conditions of a real experience (not the conditions of a possible experience). For Deleuze, the transcendental is related to describing the virtual and not, in opposition to Kant, to defining the conditions of experience. Virtual represents the necessary conditions under which real experience is actualized. Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism is critical to the conditions of possible experience proposed by Kant and it goes further: it admits that the virtual must be defined as a narrow part of the real object. Therefore, instead of being undetermined, the virtual is, for Deleuze, fully determined and necessary. Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism is the apprehension of the thought of excessive differences, i.e. differences in intensity and strength as an immanent transcendental principle. That is why Bacon’s image-sensation is perfect to show how, in an ontological perspective, the sense of being is expressed in the difference, as Deleuze demonstrates in Francis Bacon: logique de la sensation. Deleuze discusses the fundamental concepts of becoming and difference based on Bacon’s images. The transcendental empiricism means that the discovery of the experience supposes an experience in the strict sense; it does not mean the common or empirical exercise of a human faculty: living (or empirical) data do not inform the thought about their potentialities. The human faculty is driven to its limit and philosophy only fulfils its vocation rising itself to the transcendental. The transcendental empiricism is based on the purpose of philosophy, which is not to rediscover the abstract, the eternal or the universal, but to find the natural conditions under which something new is produced. Philosophy is not intended to indicate the conditions of knowledge identified in nature or functioning as a representation; philosophy must find the conditions of creative production. This is a pragmatic perspective: philosophy should be a theory about what we do, not a theory of what exists. The concept of transcendence does not mean, as Deleuze says, that the faculty is directed to objects outside the world, which is the common sense of the transcendent. On the contrary, the faculty apprehends in the world what concerns to it. The conditions are never generic; their decline is according to the particular case and we can never speak a priori of all experiences. According to Deleuze’s own words: “l’empirisme devient transcendantal […] quand nous appréhendons directement dans le sensible ce qui ne peut être que senti, l’être même du sensible: la différence, la différence de potentiel, la différence d’intensité comme raison du divers qualitatif” (Deleuze 1968). He concludes saying that “le monde intense des différences est précisément l’objet d’un empirisme supérieur” (Deleuze 1968). In Deleuze’s perspective, the transcendental is separated from every idea of consciousness; it is an experience without either consciousness or subject: a transcendental empiricism, in Deleuze’s paradoxical expression. “La forme transcendantale d’une faculté se confond avec son exercice disjoint, supérieur ou transcendant. Tran-

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scendant ne signifie pas du tout que la faculté s’adresse à des objets hors du monde, mais au contraire qu’elle saisit dans le monde ce qui la concerne exclusivement, et qui la fait naître au monde” (Deleuze 1968). The ordinary and everyday human experience may become transcendental. Overcoming the image-sensation due to its excesses and forces is an example, when the simple image and the deepest sensation contained in the image are connected. A sensation is an immediate experience of direct contact with the world; it has the status of a “pure presence”, an imprint of data. Deleuze opposes sensation and representation. He does it with Bacon’s paintings. Bacon has repeatedly stated that he tried to overcome the narrative, the identifiable and the mere figurative painting. According to Lotz (2009), “what makes Bacon’s art of painting so interesting is not that it establishes a non-intentional relation to the spectator (which it undoubtedly does too); rather, the interesting point is that his paintings in some sense are dealing with and are about this relation.” Deleuze was looking for direct and factual effects of painting on the human nervous system and he found such effects in Bacon’s paintings. The main characteristic of Bacon’s painting is the connection between sensation and image. From this connection comes the so-called image-sensation. The image-sensation is opposed to the image-representation. The paradoxical sense of Deleuze’s approach is that a logic of sensation is antagonistic to a mimetic representation between the representative (the canvas) and the represented (the real). In this mimetic representation, signs reproduce the forms (features) of things in an image-sensation like Bacon’s paintings. However, the immediate presentation (i.e. without mediation, unlike the representation) of forces is more privileged, rather than the representation or reproduction of forms. All representation follows the semantic transitivity aliquid pro aliquo. An image is a representation and it is also a sign. Thus, an image necessarily represents something. Although Bacon prefers sensation instead representation, his images can’t avoid representation; they necessarily represent something and what is represented is always understandable by someone. Presupposing that all representations are virtual (because they follow the mentioned semantic transitivity aliquid pro aliquo) the virtual represents “another reality”. Such “another reality” consists in signs, a form of language, a medium to represent something through something (a sign, an image), or a way of making or doing something (“another reality”), giving rise to the exploitation of the possibilities of language to be efficient and effective to represent with conviction (certainty) and criteria (features). Deleuze emphasizes Bacon’s way of making or doing images, i.e. imagessensations that make visible the excesses and the forces of representation. According to Deleuze (2003), this is the task of painting that Bacon materializes with his images: to produce signs that push us out of our pattern of perception about reality, according to the representations we create and that affect us as something that (e.g. in art) exists imperceptibly, as if it were there without being there, as if it were virtual. It is the sign that forces the thought as it is assumed as involuntary and unconscious, that is, transcendental. Thus, the violence of the signs on thought is in the genesis of the act of thinking (Deleuze 1968). The object of the sensibility (the sensible, what can be felt) is the intensity, which is in the sign.

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For Deleuze, the act of thinking is provoked when the thought is stimulated by signs. The classic model of representation is refuted. The thought and the act of thinking are different. The sign forces us to think and this force correspond to the violence of the sign in provoking the act of thinking as a possibility of creation (Deleuze 2014). For Bacon and Deleuze, the human experience is the most important. The virtual is the life and it is committed to the actualizing process of the immanent and the real. According to Deleuze, the virtual is already in life, i.e. in the reality itself. “A life contains only virtuals”, because “it is made up of virtualities, events, singularities” and “what we call virtual is not something that lacks reality, but something that is engaged in a process of actualization following the plane that gives it its particular reality” (Deleuze 2001). Bacon’s images-sensations provide live sensations because they have a virtual nature. They are more than simple and ordinary artistic images; they are even more than signs-images representing something. In Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, Bacon’s images-sensations are images that force thought to a virtual experience. This is a new concept of thinking or way of thinking, in which a new image of thought (the thought without image) is contrasted to the conception of thought as a representation. Deleuze analyses the representational image of thought. He recognizes Plato as the origin of this representational image of thought, due to the distinction between the world of ideas (or essences) and the world of appearances. Deleuze (1969) develops the Platonic distinctions between essence and appearance, intelligible and sensible, idea and image, original and copy, model and simulacrum. The relation between the Platonic concepts of essence and identity determines the representational thought and relating the real and the virtual is to distinguish between the world of essences (what remains identical to itself over time) and the world of appearances. In short, the transcendental empiricism is the logic of sense and sensations; it is an opponent of the Kantian transcendental philosophy. The transcendental empiricism is constructed and based on the immanence.

9.2.2 Francis Bacon’s Aesthetic Experience Between the Lived and the Thought The artistic objects (the images) created by Bacon are basically defined by deformed figures; a stylistic innovation of brush strokes and colors; and a rupture of expectations, thematic canons and patterns of representation. These artistic objects are in the frame of an idea or concept of art. However, this idea or concept of art is principally due to the ambiguity and, more paradoxically, referentiality (an indication of conformity between the image—which is not a mere image, but an image-sensation and image-thought—and reality).

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We are not sure about what Bacon’s images mean at first sight. Bacon’s work has what Eco (1986) calls the “additional meaning”. This additional meaning is due to the ambiguity of the images. The ambiguity (from the Latin ambiguu, amb + ago, “between two”, “to impel for both sides”) arouses two or more interpretations. With ambiguity, images and signs, which can be taken in different senses, are ambiguous, vague, raise doubts and misunderstandings about what they mean. Questioning the referentiality of Bacon’s pictorial language, one wonders if it is really what it suggests, the designatum (what the sign refers to and can be a real object or just an idea). It is the reference that links the sign (which triggers the process of representation or signification) to its referent (what the symbol represents or replaces), according to Ogden and Richards (1923). The reference is the indirect relation between the symbol and what it means, which justifies that painting is an indirect language for Merleau-Ponty (1999). If language is a duplication of the whole structure of reality (Ogden and Richards 1923), the referentiality implies relations between thought, words and things or objects (reality) or just between expression (language and thought) and reference (reality). The example of different expressions or signs for the same referent or even for a non-existent referent is paradigmatic. How the relation between Bacon’s images and its referents (past events) is established? How perception and sensation of reality are created in the image? How does the transition from sign to meaning, from concept to perception/sensation happens? What exists in the image that operates this transition? What does the image do? What makes the image (as a sign) the image of something real? How can a virtual image of something inexistent legitimize the claim to serve as a reference of reality? Is there any relation between the real perceived in the world and the sensation provoked by Bacon’s pictorial images (images-sensations not concerned to represent forms, but to create excesses or forces provoking sensations)? Is it possible to avoid or to surpass the representation in the image? The excesses and forces of Bacon’s images are in the ability to puncture our sensations in a direct and immediate way, as Barthes (1980) denominates by punctum that “something” in the photograph that leads the observer to have a stronger emotion when he sees the image. Bacon’s images puncture those who observe them, because the painter expressed the tragedy, violence, anguish and crudity of the human condition through these images. He did it in a realistic way without being a realistic style painting. Bacon’s painting is not subordinated to a representation of specific appearances or real situations. Bacon’s images puncture not necessarily through a dramatic and abstract force. According to Ficacci (2007), these images mean, on the contrary, the hidden and unrepresentable sense of individualism and intimate existence, because the representation of the sense of existence inevitably results in an expression violently tragic. It is a sense transformed into an immanent and disturbing reality, more real than any realistic representation, while the objective reality of human life becomes an apparition, where only through the practice of painting it can become a flagrant and actual value (Ficacci 2007). The subjectivity of existential experience reaches the deep sensibilities of the observer. Bacon’s images are

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motivated by the real experience of empirical life, i.e. the reality of a past event is resolved in the reality of the artistic action (Ficacci 2007). For example, Bacon’s work Three Studies for Pictures at the Base of a Crucifixion corresponds to the expression of an excessive violence and feeling of horror that unites the three figures (each one with its canvas). This work does not represent any violent act; it represents an indefinite and inhuman violence that occurred in an invisible space and at a time outside the limits of the picture (Ficacci 2007). It is a triptych, a composition separated into three distinct canvases, but coordinated with forms and colors (orange color scattered in space, causing a sensation of blindness and making space perceived more at the psychic level than logical) disturbing the observer and imprinting the motive (the horror). According to Ficacci (2007), the observer is violently affected by this composition of shapes and colors. The deformation of the three figures makes them ambiguous and enigmatic, preventing any particular understanding of its meanings. These meanings are not explicit, but implicit. This triptych corresponds to the lacerating and the incomprehensible expression of a cry. For Bacon, painting is not a medium to imitate the apparent reality; it is an independent and an artificial act emerging from the most intimate and instinctual human experience and need. The sensation has an obscure origin and it is impossible to identify the visible individual in the image. Therefore, the image invalidates, on the one hand, any type of representation and penetrates, on the other hand, at the faster and more intuitive level of the mind (Ficacci 2007). This level is that of sensation. Sensations are more deeply rooted and precede logical rationality. Bacon renunciates the natural logic. Bacon’s painting is the revelation of the unconscious and the individual existence. The deformed figures in Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion are traumatic expressions of horror that have origin in the deepest feelings of human existence. The true subject of pictorial representation is the expression of horror, which is superior to any specific transitory cause (Ficacci 2007). In this perspective, Bacon conveys the most universal or transcendent expression of the horror experience through the expressive force of painting. Bacon attributes a form and an expression to subjective sensations and experiences. His figures do not show actions. It is the implicit expression of the figures that demonstrates the most essential of human nature and experience. It is the transcendental empiricism mentioned by Deleuze. In the painting entitled Study of a Baboon (1953), Bacon explores a higher and more explicit level of violence in the image. This image shows a rude and grotesque figure, with monstrous proportions. The reactions are due more to the structural components of the work than to the figurative details. Bacon seeks to stimulate the sensation of existence in painting, transcending the normal state of human existence and experience and creating another state of hypersensitivity.

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9.3 Conclusions Answering the starting-question, virtual and transcendental empiricism are related. The ordinary and everyday human experience may become transcendental if (what Deleuze calls) the virtuals (i.e. virtualities, events, singularities) define the immanence of the transcendental field. The virtuals are different from the possible forms. These possible forms actualize the virtuals and transform them into something transcendent. The experience is fundamental in Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, as well in Bacon’s paintings. An experience is an accumulation of knowledge, practice or skill obtained from direct participation in events or activities. In this perspective, it is what Heidegger (1976) states when he explains the meaning of “to do an experience” as something that happens to us, strikes us, overcomes us, knocks us down and transforms us. For Deleuze, the most important is the experience (that may become transcendental) and the conditions of a real experience (not the conditions of a possible experience). That is why Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism is critical to the conditions of possibility of experience proposed by Kant. The transcendental is related to describing the virtual and not to defining the conditions of experience. Virtual represents the necessary conditions under which real experience is actualized. This approach conceptualizes and problematizes the virtual as a transition from the actual or real to the virtual, i.e. Deleuze’s perspective presented in Différence et Répétition about the virtual as something extracted from the real and embedded in this real. Considering the profuse production and use of signs/images, reality and experience are both virtualized through these signs/images (like Bacon made in a non-digital and artistic way with his images-sensations). Such virtualization of reality and experience features a standard iconocracy of contemporary visual and technological (digital) cultures. In Deleuze’s “civilization of the image”, the actual is not opposed to the virtual nor the virtual is opposed to the real, because the virtual enjoys a full reality as virtual. Deleuze admits that the virtual must be defined as a strict part of the real object. The virtual is fully determined and necessary; a virtual field represents the necessary conditions to actualize the actual experience. Deleuze’s approach is based on the idea that the virtual is something which is not given, i.e. the virtual is (the power of) what is not given, because only the actual is given. The actual is also given in the form of a possible (a substitute, an alternative) that divides the real and gives immediate experience to a possible field (possible under the transcendent form of the necessary). Therefore, the virtual shows that not everything is given, nor everything is likely to be given. The virtual also means that everything (events, happenings or activities) can only come from the immanence of the world. There is only the actualization of the real. The virtual must be seen, therefore, as an actualization of something else which then can be confused with that of which it demarcates by definition: the transcendence. It is from what is given that the virtual is presented from the perspective of a thought about the experiment, i.e. the data.

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The boundaries between reality and virtual, between what is real and what is unreal, between “being” and “appear to be” are increasingly tenuous in a visual and technological (digital) culture. Due to the above-mentioned development and improvement of the technique and the evolution of cultures towards the visual and the digital, the technique is indistinctly and imperceptibly everywhere. If the technique is so, so are its effects and consequences. There are more and more images everywhere; we perceive them daily without being able to distinguish if they are real or virtual, or if they are based on captures of the reality (like a photograph) or computer-generated virtual environments (someone or something unreal, that does not exist). However, there are also images that are essentially sensory, not representative or significant, but capable of allowing a better understanding of reality and human experience than reality itself. These images are perceptively intense, like the so-called Bacon’s image-sensations, paintings that break with the traditional representative field of art. An image-sensation is an image of a certain reality or everyday situation carrying sensations so vivid and strongly expressive that they can be revived by those who observe them. Bacon’s paintings are an excellent example of these imagessensations and, therefore, an application of Deleuze’s conception about the virtual as something that may transcend its own immanence. An image-sensation evokes and actualizes reality, transforming the immanence into a transcendence. In this type of images, reality transcends the immanence. The actualization of the immanent is demonstrated through Bacon’s paintings, where only the sensations recreated by this artist in his figurative paintings offer an experience that is transcendental and virtual; an experience barred in the proper experience of the real. It is because of this specificity of Bacon’s images-sensations that Deleuze elected them as paradigms to question the dualities living/non-living, thought (thinkable)/unthought (unthinkable), speakable/unspeakable, visible/invisible, and virtual/actual.

References Barthes, Roland. 1980. La chambre claire. Paris: Seuil. Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books. Deleuze, Gilles. 1968. Différence et répetition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Deleuze, Gilles. 1969. Logique du sens. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Deleuze, Gilles. 1985. Cinema 2: l’image-temps. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. Deleuze, Gilles. 2001. Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life. New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, Gilles. 2003. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. New York: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles. 2014. Proust et les signs. Paris: Presse Universitaire de France. Eco, Umberto. 1986. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Indiana University Press. Ficacci, Luigi. 2007. Francis Bacon. Colónia: Taschen. Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of World Making. Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company. Heidegger, Martin. 1976. Acheminement vers la parole. Paris: Gallimard. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Age of the World Picture. In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, ed. William Lovitt, 115–154. New York: Harper & Row. Lévy, Pierre. 1995. Qu’est-ce que le virtual?. Paris: Éditions de la Découverte.

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Lotz, Christian. 2009. Representation or sensation? A Critique of Deleuze’s Philosophy of Painting. Canadian Journal for Continental Philosophy 13 (1): 59–73. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1999. La prose du monde. Paris: Gallimard. Ogden & Richards. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning. New York: A Harvest Book. Zizek, Slavoj. 2004. Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. NewYork: Routledg.

Paulo M. Barroso Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2007); post-doctorate researcher (6 years) at the University of Minho, Portugal; assistant professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Portugal (College of Education, Department of Communication and Art), teaching Semiotics, Sociology, and Ethics; integrated researcher at the Investigation Centre in Communication, Information and Digital Culture (CIC-Digital) of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, New University of Lisbon; and current research interest in Semiotics, Argumentation and Rhetoric, Ethics, Media Languages, and Theories and Models of Communication, having published several articles and participated in international conferences in these fields (e.g. Grammar, Expressiveness, and Inter-subjective Meanings: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

Chapter 10

The Scope of the Virtual in the Treatment of Melancholia Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho

Abstract As widely demonstrated by personal and clinical accounts, the onset of melancholic episodes is sometimes incomprehensible at light of present life circumstances, suggesting, as remarked by Freud, that in opposition to mourning the endured loss is not fully acknowledge or remains inaccessible to the conscious subject. Putting aside the question of whether the triggering of melancholic episodes has endogenous origins, Psychoanalysis sustained that this inaccessibility, due to the fact that the melancholic ego develops an identification with object, means that the subject was and remains incapable to mourn the lost object, unable to symbolically elaborate on its absence. Therapy depends on the ability to provide such a work of morning and the introjection of the lost object. Accordingly with various psychoanalytic theories, melancholia is marked by unconscious attempts to revive the lost object, by incorporating it inside oneself, in order to safeguard an original phantasy, which results in the general impoverishment of one’s vitality and ability to enjoy as it is attested by the prevalence of chronic symptoms of motor inhibition and asymbolia. The affects and drives of the subject became imprisoned in the relation with the first objects of the identificatory process, and the ego is under attack, constantly menaced by fragmentation, for he deemed himself unable to retain the more precious. One of the major problems in a theoretical approach to melancholia, relates to the plethora of meanings, conceptions and terminology it involves. In the present work, I will try to overcome, or at least minimize, this difficulty by privileging J. Kristeva’s account, relying mostly on her magnificent work Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1987). In various works, Kristeva proposed a valuable model to access pre-linguist affects and drives that remain entrapped in an uncompleted or wounded identificatory process. She considered two forms of antidepressants—Psychoanalysis and Art (poetic language and music)—that, under specific conditions, can access and retrieve the relation with the ambiguous object amending such a bound by introjection and sublimation. Kristeva’s contribution has been invaluable in expanding our sense of The research for this article was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia with reference SFRH/BPD/116555/2016. C. A. S. Carvalho (B) Institute of Philosophy, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_10

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the corporeal and imaginary dimensions of the unconscious. But despite the depths of her analysis of the way the semiotic processes influence moods and conscious representation, sometimes she seems to lose sight of the communicative dimension of the illness, not only in the therapeutic session but also in aetiology and everyday symptomatology. What we consider the scope of the virtual in therapy relies on a particular kind of negativity capable to grasp and transform the constitutive bifaciality of the subject, its psychic and communicative dimensions. It is from that junction that the patient is summoned to expose his feeling and thoughts providing them with new meaning. The therapeutic exploration of affective blockages grounded on the identificatory process, as it happens in melancholia, depends upon the recursive and retroactive access to the sequences and selectivity of meaning systems, not only psychic but also communicative. This access requires the virtualization of repressed elements surpassing extreme resistance to analytic transference. Instead of a fullblown exposition of the unconscious processes or the postulation of its presumed truth, the medium of therapy relies on the conditions to receive and transform elements prompt in the course of the therapeutic session. Despite its transformative techniques, the dynamic of this interactive medium differs from ordinary forms of conversation and support precisely by relinquishing a linear or pre-established path for amelioration.

10.1 Introduction Contemporary attempts to conceive and treat melancholia, including various syndromes of major depression, inherit and continue a rich tradition of therapy. In the transition to modern society, particularly with the differentiation of medical discourse (in its various paradigms) the concept of melancholia benefited from a greater precision, both in its aetiology and symptomatology. Such development privileged the likeness, continuously contested, between melancholia and depression.1 Personal complaint became increasingly important in order to understand melancholic troubles, particularly once it became evident that its affections were rooted in intrapsychic conflicts that could hardly be contained within a strict biophysiological approach. Most of the classic tradition of depiction, interpretation and treatment of Melancholy tended to insist on an expressive model where organic causality and symptoms are perfectly aligned with the wide range of its psychic manifestations. In those models, grounded on a metaphysics of the soul, the psychic dimension of melancholy is a translation of a temperament marked by the prevalence of black bile. Ancient 1 It

is possible to argue that this increase of precision, which one can associate with the advent of Psychiatric observation and experimentation on the 19th century, leads to an impoverishment on the previous valence of melancholia as an irreplaceable condition that provides the ability to conceive and reconceive the world. That tradition had always seen melancholia “as a form of malaise that denounces the imbalances between some members of a given society (Kehl 2009: 74). This aspect is particularly salient in the frequent associations between the melancholic temperament and the satiric or even the utopian.

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theories attributed it mostly to an innate imbalance of individual constitution but latter, with the onset of modernity, come also to be considered a result of the recurrence of some noxious habits.2 Contemporary descriptions, personal accounts and therapeutic models discredited that long-lasting description, and made evident that, in its various forms, melancholia presents the difference and discontinuity between biological, including cerebral physiology, and the psychic processes associated with it, both as a temperament and a pathological condition.3 Already in the influent transformation of “mechanized” and brutal forms therapy endorsed by the subscribers of “moral treatment”, generalized in the transition to the nineteenth century, the social dimension of the melancholic condition became evident as a crucial element in its understanding, relief and cure.4 Resorting on various forms of treatment focusing on individual sensibility and memory, those conceptions tried to access and change the private configuration of the psychic system. However, the full implication and repercussions of the social dimension as origin and eventual source of relief for melancholia only became discernible with the advent of experimental Psychology and Psychoanalysis. These new disciplines discovered that the imaginative and relational dimensions of this condition needed to be addressed directly and dealt within their own field. These disciplines can be seen as the first representatives of a novel pedagogic orientation which sustains that the recovery of one’s autonomy and self-determination is unconceivable outside the relational construction of expectations and practical duties formulated and contracted along the course of therapy.5 At the same time, melancholic and depressive afflictions provide a fruitful field for the evaluation of the impact of the gradual transformation of the model of individuation on the construction of identity and search for meaning. The transition for a society functionally differentiated evidences and intensifies two intertwined challenges at the core of the melancholic illness. On the one hand, the individual is no longer sustained by the force of social bounds founded on tradition, a cohesion that favoured the integration on the community and a seemingly synchrony between individual and social unconscious. But if this absence of a unifying version of the Other and the urgency of a fundamental question regarding his desire—Che Vuoi (?), a question he can evade but can never ignore, grants freedom and responsibility

2 The

medical writings of Mandeville are an exemplar landmark on a long transition from the Hippocratic and Galenic models to a new epistemology able to account for the role of the individual both on the particular configuration of his illness and on the therapeutic process (cf. Carvalho 2014). 3 Here we leave aside the possibility of a strict distinction between melancholia, as a form of psychosis, and depression, a form of neurosis, cf. Kehl (2009, 191 ff), Radden (2009: 80–85). 4 However, one must bear in mind that the transition to comprehensive methods was gradual and “the relation of the doctor with the melancholic oscillated between indulgent generosity and brutal severity (…). Alternating between complaisant and harsh methods [the doctors] tried to achieve the most reliable efficacy to break the defenses and reach the conscience of the sick” (Starobinski 2012: 179). 5 Cf. Balsemão-Pires (2015, 2016), Ehrenberg (2009, 201–204); Biegler (2011).

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for one’s life’s project, it can also turn the journey for “authenticity”6 into a burden filled with doubt and guilt, precisely the dominant feelings of neurotic syndromes (cf. Kehl 2009: 53 ff.; Ehrenberg 2009: 101–192).

10.2 The Reality of the Virtual in Therapy What I refer as the virtual scope of therapy is not directly related with the non-real or the simulation of real/actual; what Giuseppe Riva designates as the Medical clinical uses of virtual worlds, particularly relevant in Cybertherapy with the creation digital interfaces and virtual environments that aim the total or partial immersion of the patient in order to access and treat particular conditions.7 In Psychoanalytical terms, I address what can be called the “reality of the virtual”.8 Instead of departing from an opposition between a presumed real to the non-existent, the reality of the virtual refers how various systems have an inherent virtual dimension in their constitutive relation towards their environment and in their self-referencial processes (observation or description). Therapeutic medium grounds its autonomy on conversational recursivity. In the following, my aim is to explore and circumscribe the virtual dimension of this medium, particularly the way it enables the virtualization of psychic and communicative configurations inherent to the melancholic condition. Psychoanalysis advanced the groundings of this enterprise, but it maintained a wavery position concerning the autonomy of the communicative dimension and its role in retrieving and transforming a wide range of melancholic complaints. Contrary to other generalized therapeutic offers, conversation and observation of the psychoanalytical medium of therapy proceeds through an undetermined and uncertain path, although strictly contained and regulated. Instead of presenting a way, a predetermined path towards relief and self-determination, Psychoanalysis aims a dynamic discovery, or attending to von Foerster’s distinction, a creation of cognitive and practical possibilities (von Foerster 2003). These are not necessarily repressed or negated in the ordinary sense of these terms. They can only be thought through the insertion of the subject on a virtual field of self-determination that readdresses his own selectivity. This reframing of one’s own selectivity, namely the ability to adhere to a conception or insight and “forming”, “reinforcing” or “rejecting” a current disposition, is not entirely transparent to the analyst nor the analysand, neither of them can fully foresee the evolution of a problem or disorder presented at the beginning

6 Here

we can add the immense variety of terms available in the jargon of self-help literature. On the semantic clusters organizing the variegated and diffuse field of contemporary offers of positive therapies see the work of Illouz (2008: 105 ff.). 7 I explored the theoretical dimension of the virtual in Cybertherapeutic settings in a previous work (cf. Carvalho 2015). 8 I use this concept in the similar way it way applied in System’s Theory (cf. e.g. Fuchs 1998).

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of the therapeutic process. Not even the greatest commitment of the patient with the therapeutic process is able to circumvent this condition. What confers the virtual its proper context in the therapy of melancholia concerns the work through a negation that is implied in the relation towards a lost object invested with intense drives and projections. Contrasting with ordinary morning, in melancholia “the patient is aware of the loss that has given rise to his melancholia, but only in the sense he knows whom he has lost but not what he has lost in him (Freud 1917: 245). This failure to acknowledge the importance and extent of a loss is not due to a cognitive hindrance but to the fact that the relation towards such an object is primarily retained in unconscious representants of the libido and, since the subject tries to save the object by identifying with it and retaining it inside oneself, any empirical or imaginary contour of the object is erased. In a certain sense, the interiorization of the “partial objects” that relate the infans with to the body of the mother, particularly the breast, depends on the virtualization of certain qualities projected on the objects that satisfied the first needs, moulding the path of the primal drives. But according with Freudian theory this first identification of the ego must endure the crude reality of the absence of the ideal object and, finally, “the verdict of reality that the object no longer exists” (Freud 1917: 255).9 Contrary to the manic ego, which triumphs over the disappearance of the love-object,10 the melancholic reinforces his phantasies, idealizing its ability to satisfy and fetishizing its drawbacks. This originates initial forms of counter-investments of the libido on the ego, a primary wound that requires the withdrawal from the lost object, that is mourning.11 The only means for this “open wound” to heal is by introjecting the good traits of the lost object,12 namely its connection with bodily pleasure, and expelling any source of pain, at the same time that he “accepts” that the object of the previous cathexes is lost.13 If for some reason the subject refuses or is unable to lose his affective attachments with the object, namely due to an excessive investment of the mother’s love leaving no room for the frustration of the baby’s needs, it will try to 9 “[P]eople

never willingly abandon a libidinal position, not even, indeed, when a substitute is already beckoning to them.” (Freud 1917: 244). 10 “[T]he manic subject plainly demonstrates his liberation from the object which was the cause of his suffering.” (Freud 1917: 255). 11 As we will see this is “the wound the melancholic attempts to hide, wall in, encrypt” (Abraham and Torok (1994: 135). 12 “The complex of melancholia behaves like an open wound, drawing to itself cathectic energies— which in the transference neuroses we have called ‘anti-cathexes’—from all directions and emptying the ego until it is totally impoverished.” (Freud 1917: 253). 13 In analogy with the mourning person facing the dead of a loved one, infans should leave the object to rest, replacing the warmth of its presence with its “memory”. Not only is this replacement deemed unacceptable by the melancholic, he considers it unfaithful to the unblemished love attributed to the object. The apory of making memory and tribute was underlined by Derrida: “[e]ach time we know our friend to be gone forever, irremediably absent, annulled to the point of knowing or receiving nothing himself of what takes place in his memory (…). For never will we believe either in death or immortality; and we sustain the braze of this terrible light through devotion, for it would be unfaithful to delude oneself into believing that the other living in us is living in himself: because he lives in us and because we live this or that in his memory, in memory of him” (Derrida 1989: 21).

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save it by incorporating it on the ego, however the realization that the object became inconstant and ultimately lost its qualities leads to various forms of self-reproach.14 It is the context of this incorporation of an ambivalent object that Freud advances the idea of an inner division of the self, between the ego and the “ego ideal” that will reappear, at the introduction of the second topic, under the denomination of superego (see Green 1999a, b: 115). This change has considerable consequences for the conception of melancholia since the superego agency becomes “heir to the Oedipus complex”, operatively and energetically autonomous towards the ego in the repression/sublimation of erotic attachments (1923: 26).15 In the melancholic, “one part of the ego sets itself over against the other, judges it critically and, as it were, takes it as its object” (Freud 1917: 247). Freud narrates the tribulations exposed by the melancholic patient; he “represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement and morally despicable; he reproaches himself, vilifies himself and expects to be punished. He abases himself before everyone and commiserates with his own relatives for being connected with someone so unworthy” (Freud 1917: 246). This “pre-history” of the subject has further consequences in his psychic structuring, namely concerning his development along the oedipal stage and the identification with the parental figures. This is why Freud considers melancholia as a kind of arrested narcissism, based on the maintenance of the promise of completeness, always at the expenses of suffering, the melancholic shies from the dialectics of projection and introjection of other ideals. It is rooted on a “primordial desertion from the Other” (Kehl 2009: 169) that can oscillate between the extremes of a self afflicted by the cruelty of the archaic superego and the display of omnipotence and indifference towards the emptiness of words, becoming a participant in language, what Torok and Abraham called “communion of empty mouths” (1994: 197–198). In its basic dimension, the operation of interdiction to the maternal object was incomplete or it became problematic since the psychic system remained connected to a particular image or idea, not primarily fantasying about its ideal qualities but trying to retaining and actively hiding it. As remarked by P. Fédida, melancholia is not so much the regressive reaction towards the loss of the object as it is “the fantasmatic ability to relate to the object and keep it alive as lost object” (1972: 126). That is the paradox of melancholia: only the constitution of the ego as individuated enables a certain kind of imaginative recreation and retrieving of fantasies of that loss. Only the active retrieving and

14 Therefore,

it is important to remark that “[u]nlike the hysteric, it is not the object that the melancholic devours, but his own ego, confused with the object by identification” (Green 1999a, b: 114). 15 “At the very beginning, all the libido is accumulated in the id, while the ego is still in process of formation or is still feeble. The id sends part of this libido out into erotic object-cathexes, whereupon the ego, now grown stronger, tries to get hold of this object-libido and to force itself on the id as a love-object. The narcissism of the ego is thus a secondary one, which has been withdrawn from objects” (Freud 1923: 46).

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recomposition of memory traces, can aim to revive the object at the expenses of the depleted self, menaced by delirium of guilt and persecution.16

10.3 Kristeva’s Project One of the greatest merits in Kristeva’s retrospection on the history of treatment of melancholia is the way she understood the pre-linguist and pre-judicative dimension of the psychic system, what she conceived as the semiotic. Semiotic refers to a dynamic conception of the play of signs, that explains the functioning of significant practices irreducible to language as an object, i.e. a system of signifiers arbitrarily connected with the signified (Kristeva 1974: 41–42). In dealing with pathology (but also in artistic creation, namely poetic and musical) the linguistic elements are irreducible to their formal elements and connect to the exteriority of psychic and somatic orders. Here, if we return to the Freudian model, we see a translation of unconscious instincts and drives in primary processes in their linguistic articulation of metaphor and metonymies. The psychoanalytic session is able to explore this significant process by promoting the exploration of its layers of meaning by an ego or psychic system. This has been understood by Kristeva as the dynamic relation between semiotic and symbolic as the possibility, aimed in the analytic relation, of establishing a new order of the subject. Besides the depths of her analysis, Kristeva captures the essential dimensions of melancholia, and despite adopting a psychoanalytical perspective, it holds room for analogies with the phenomenological tradition of psychiatry and psychopathology.17 In the strict domain of Psychoanalysis Kristeva captures not only the classical approaches of Freud (1917) and K. Abraham (1971) but also the perspectives of M. Klein (1940) and is easily adapted to Bion’s theory of the transformative function.18 Normal pathology of melancholia is grounded on a freezing of the re-entry of excluded elements, interdicts the access to a creative elaboration of the repressed elements and the rhythms of primary processes. This is the major argument guiding the tension between the semiotic and the symbolic at The Revolutions of Poetic Language (1974), which Kristeva recovers in her approach to melancholia. In her latter work, apropos melancholia, she elaborates upon this latency between what she

16 Following Soler (2002: 52–62) we can present the particular admission of guilt in the melancholic

subject, whereas the paranoid repels any fault for the Other, the melancholic reclaims all the fault for himself. “His posture is in itself really inverse and stays in opposition to sublimatory elaboration. The delirium of indignity in itself, whch is all that remains of symbolic realaboration in melancholia (…) locates in the christalized fixity of guilty consciousness whose inertia contrasts with the interpretative dinamism of the paranoid delirium” (Soler 2002: 62). 17 Particularly the grounding works of Binswanger (1960) and Tellenbach (1961). 18 In the present work, I have no opportunity to fully explore the particularities of these currents and will only sketch a mapping of the virtual dimension implied (and necessary) in the treatment of melancholia.

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names chora19 and a particular arrangement/topos of the subjective position (stase). Chora is the unnameable, undetermined and pre-linguistic ground, in the context of developmental organization it refers an undifferentiated psychic space marked by the drives’ motility and immediate needs, feelings and perceptions. This first stage, where there is no distinction between the inside and the outside, self and other evolves and achieves a stable, yet precarious order, through the subject’s enunciation and adherence to a symbolic mandate, receiving and assuming of a name. Adapting this model to systemic terms, therapy has its possibility on the transformation of the constitutive re-entry of self-reference on this medium previous to the formation of meaning. In the history of psychoanalysis Kristeva provides a fruitful theory that deals with the core problem enunciated by Freud in An Outline of Psycho-Analysis: “[w]e know two kinds of things about what we call our psyche (or mental life): firstly, its bodily organ and scene of action, the brain (or nervous system) and, on the other hand, our acts of consciousness, which are immediate data and cannot be further explained by any sort of description. Everything that lies between is unknown to us, and the data do not include any direct relation between these two terminal points of our knowledge” (1940: 144–145). Freud exposes an ineluctable gap in our knowledge whose consideration is decisive for psychoanalysis both as a theory model and a therapeutic technique, recognizing the corporeal nature of psychic processes and the immediacy of the acts of consciousness. The innovation of Kristeva lies on the way she addressed this problem by developing a model to access this gap considering corporeal and pre-linguistic signs never fully exposed into language and symbolic structures. At the same time, she recognizes that the configuration and functioning of the psychic system cannot be accessed without some level of symbolic generalization.20 The unconscious can only appear to the narrowness and superficiality of consciousness, to which it is unpredictable, as a translation or transposition. The fact that certain processes and experiences have no adequate propositional description and are hardly satisfying from a communicative standpoint is made more conspicuous in melancholic illness and is key to understand the way therapy relies on a particular kind of negativity. Instead of presuming an exposure of the repressed or denied elements of the unconscious, Kristeva’s model of negativity highlights the way the psychoanalytic setting sets in motion a modalization of those elements and their selectivity. Following Hegel’s exposition of the dialectical process in the Science of Logic, Kristeva underlines how it values the negative, namely the subjective dimension as an essential part in the development of the Idea. In fact, she refers that “negativity” should be considered the forth term of the dialectical process (Kristeva 1974: 105).

19 This

concept is adapted from platonic myth of the cosmogenesis in Timaeus.

20 Concerning its unconscious dimensions, Fuchs (1999: 16–17) says that in that pre-linguistic level

of the psychic system “there is no speech, no silence, just possibly a drift upwards toward the spheres where language has already become effective and is retroactively conferring onto the nonmeaning having penetrated here a contingent meaning”.

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Along this path she will focus on the re-appropriation of the operation of negation as Aufhegung attempted by Freud (1974: 108 ff.).21 On his little manuscript On Negation, Freud develops a point we already sketched in Mourning and Melancholia. He notes that, in the course of the analytic session, the use of negation frequently preserves the ability to intellectually accept the repressed, despite maintaining the distinct trait of the repression, its emotional refusal (1925: 235–236). Freud showed that through the peremptory refusal another intentionality is revealed, comes to consciousness elicited by the mechanisms of suggestion, dream-work and free association of ideas. It points to a primitive form of judgment associated with the “destiny” of oral instincts, an evaluation which opts for the incorporation or expulsion a certain object (1925: 214–215). According to Freud this “judgement of attribution” is the genesis of the division between the inside and the outside.22 But there is no operation of negation in the primary drive-impulses of the unconscious, i.e. expulsion and the corresponding “destructive drive”, which Freud contrasts with the instinct of unification, must not be confused with the operation of negation whose efficiency relies on repression and results from a “judgement of existence”.23 The acknowledgement of this division between the affect and the instituted intellectual function shows that the ego is always grounded on a méconnaissance of itself. Additionally, this brings forth the realization that only the “judgement of existence” is able to thematize an object as absent or exterior. In this respect, we must note that what distinguishes the melancholic is that instead of negating the primal object or his constitutive split, he expresses a disavowal [Verleugnung] of the loss. Furthermore, he is unable to replace or admit symbolic representants of the drives and affections that were associated with the maternal object whose good parts he tries to preserve through their incorporation. Therefore, “[d]isavowal of the fundamental loss opens the land of signs but, in general, morning is incomplete. It destabilizes the disavowal and brings the signs to memory rescuing them from the signifier’s neutrality. It charges them with affects which turns them ambiguous, repetitive, simply alliterative, musical and sometimes foolish” (Kristeva 1987: 53). Due to the ambivalent nature of these drives, whose signs are reactivated in one’s “memory”, what could be an unrestrained immersion on the imaginary becomes a nostalgic submission to an object that lost all its contours, a Thing.24 This idea is further developed by Kristeva, namely in the hypothesis of a developmental phase following the immersion with the mother’s body. That phase, propelled by the identification of repression, will be punctuated by a dialectics of abjection: “considering the incertitude of the identities that specify the archaic bound 21 “[N]egation is a lifting of the repression [Aufhebung der Verdrängung], though not, of course, an acceptance of what is repressed” (Freud 1925: 235–236). 22 In his interpretation of the Freudian essay, Hyppolite (1955: 884–885) stressed that this presumed division is a myth. 23 “There is no stronger evidence that we have been successful in our effort to uncover the unconscious than when the patient reacts to it with the words ‘I didn’t think that’, or ‘I didn’t (ever) think of that’” (1925: 239). 24 In Pouvoirs de l’horreur (1980) Kristeva developed the idea that along the acquisition of identity the spectrum of the abject will be a continuous threat.

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of the ego [moi] towards the other, speaking of an abject [abjet], instead of ego and the object already there, would maybe more pertinent. The future subject constitutes himself in a dynamics of abjection of which the ideal face is fascination” (2000: 78). When he tries to recover It in language, the melancholic can only do so through gaps, in dissociation with the body, without certainty nor belief. Kristeva states that “Freud implies that complete repression (if it was possible) would have consequences in preventing the symbolic function” (1974: 148). So, according to Kristeva, an integral negation of negation is impossible, for repression never attains a full suture of the pre-linguistic organization of the drives and can be retrieved. The truth of the Real, prior to the advent of the signifier, can only be glimpsed between the lines or in the supra-segments elements of speech. Analysis or poetic language can aspire to this if they are able to regain access to the threads of the drive’s circuit as a rhythm, a tone or a timbre. Kristeva understands this possibility as an eruption of the semiotic on the welding between signifier and signified instaured by the symbolic, renouncing the exposure of an original truth, its transgression or negativity can only glimpse the “remains of the first symbolizations” (1974: 47 ff.). “This explosion of the semiotic on the symbolic, far from being a negation of the negation, an Aufhebung that would suppress the engendered contradiction through technic, to install in its place an ideal-restorative positivity of the pre-symbolic immediacy, is a transgression of the position, a retroactive reactivation of the contradiction that established this position itself” (1974: 68). A significant part of Kristeva’s conception of melancholia is indebted to M. Klein writings on the depressive position, both in her distancing from Freud’s conception of primary narcissism25 and by providing a vivid picture of the role of fantasy in child’s development.26 Influenced by Ferenczi’s hypotheses, instead of assuming a direct investment of the infans on his own body, Klein maintains that the roots of identification depend on investments on what is yet to be marked as the “outside”, through which he shapes the reference to his own organs. In this relation towards outside objects whose “cathexis precedes differentiation and cognitive discrimination” (Green 1999a, b: 75), phantasy and symbolic elaboration shape the libidinal investments forming the inner psychic world of the child.

25 That is, the hypothesis, always contested by Klein of a inobjectal state: “The hypothesis that a stage extending over several months precedes object-relations implies that—except for the libido attached to the infant’s own body—impulses, phantasies anxieties, and defenses either are not present in him, or are not related to an object, that is to say, they would operate in vacuo. The analysis of very young children has taught me that there is no instinctual urge, no anxiety situation, no mental process which does not involve objects, external or internal; in other words, object-relations are at the center of emotional life. Furthermore, love and hatred, phantasies, anxieties, and defenses are also operative from the beginning and are ab initio indivisibly linked with object-relations. This insight showed me many phenomena in a new light.” (Klein 1952: 52–53). 26 This influence is reassessed in the second volume of her Le Génie féminin. La vie, la folie, les mots. Reviewing Lacan’s arid conception of the imaginary, Kristeva values the heterogeneity of the internal objects detailed by Klein: “conglomerate of representations, sensations and substances” irreducible to Lacan’s scopic model of the constitution of the “ideal ego”; a “theoretical impurity compensated by its clinical fecondity” (Kristeva 2000: 70).

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The depressive refuses, at least unconsciously, the separation with the maternal object, produces, nourishes and stores fantasies of an ideal union with it. Klein showed that this object is always embedded in the oscillation between joy and deception. “The ego is driven by depressive anxieties (…) to build up omnipotent and violent phantasies, partly for the purpose of controlling and mastering the ‘bad’, dangerous objects, partly in order to save and restore the loved ones” (Klein 1940: 349). Psychic development requires conflict and tarrying with the loss. The interiorization of that object, along pre-Oedipal phases, is the consequence of the weening process, stabilizing the intense dynamic between projection and introjection in the early relation with the mother. “An inner world is being built up in the child’s unconscious mind, corresponding to his actual experiences and the impressions he gains from people and the external world, and yet altered by his own phantasies and impulses. If it is a world of people predominantly at peace with each other and with the ego, inner harmony, security and integration ensue” (Klein 1940: 345). Klein insisted on the difficult return of a projection without adequate recipient or container, even if one must acknowledge that children: “are so much dominated by their internal world that their anxieties cannot be sufficiently disproved and counteracted even by the pleasant aspects of their relationships with people, severe mental difficulties are unavoidable” (Klein 1940: 346). However, the reparative drives can only be unleashed if the mother reassures the projection providing undoubtful signs of love/care. This point of departure categorises melancholia as a resistance towards fragmentation of the self, a return to the schizo-paranoid phase where the ego is continuously menaced by the assaults of the sexual drives withdrawn from the good object in the form of death drives that it tried to project to the outside. Due to the hallucinatory effect of the psychic pleasure, produced by the circuit of the drive from the organic sexual pressure to an outside organ leaving a psychic mark of its satisfaction, for the child the absence of the object is always associated with the appearance of bad objects of his psychic environment. Instead of finding ways to amend and repair the hole leaved by the absence of the lost object, through play and symbolization infans remains obsessed with its idealized qualities refusing its exchange. André Green exposed this problem proposing the imago of the “dead mother”: [t]he object has been encapsulated and its trace has been lost through decathexis; primary identification with the dead mother took place, transforming positive identification into negative identification, i.e. identification with the hole left by the decathexis (and not identification with the object), and to this emptiness, which is filled in and suddenly manifests itself through an affective hallucination of the dead mother, as soon as a new object is periodically chosen to occupy this space (Green 1986: 155). One essential requirement for the process of introjection that characterizes the depressive position is the repairing of the good object. This repair takes place by the mechanism of projective identification, vital for the restructuring of the binaries that constitute the precarious ego, the distinction inside-outside and the differentiation between ego and super-ego. Kristeva considers the projective identification as the “universal field of psychic stimulation” (2000: 78), consisting in the projection of good parts of the ego to the other, particularly a caring figure, so that they remain

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protected from the menaces of annihilation. This conception opens a revision of the idea that the symbolic reparation of the object can only ensue from fear of castration posed by the father as representative of the law. In accordance with the ontogenetic reading proposed by Klein, we can take this melancholic disposition as a personality structure that can remain dormant and erupt at some point of adult life, particularly when facing grief or considerable challenges or changes that the subject is unable to cope with, putting his identity into question. That constitutive inability to lose, to let go,27 can be triggered by an ordinary event and, associated with the rigid clinging with a memory or particular theme and evolve to the loss of sense and value of the self, towards its own devitalization. According to the classical narrative of Psychoanalysis, the attempt to control the object, by the consolidation of the drives’ circuit around the erogenous zones, has been finally blown by repression of the gratification when the father enters the scene and breaks the dyad or fusion between the infans and the mother. But the depressive suffers the “irreplaceable apperception of a place or a pre-object that enchains the libido, cuts the bounds of desire” (Kristeva 1987: 23). The enclosure around the mother, that has emerged as a whole figure, and as so remains a frequent target of reproaches, was supported by infans’ assumption that he is her only object of love. The father as the representative of law and language forces infans to refrain from the mother as a source of sexual gratification and, figuratively, the oppressive security of her lap. For the melancholic this forced detachment implies a reluctant opening to other objects and the construction of desires. Sorrow and disillusionment are the precarious shell of the symbolic identity of the melancholic, they hold a generalized aggressiveness towards the figures deemed responsible for the detachment (Kristeva 1987: 75). For infans this seems to pose a kind of exclusive disjunction: either the bereavement of the gratifying mother takes place from his place within the symbolic, transforming the unconscious representants of the libidinal investments into “signs, images or words”, or he refuses this denial of the object attempting to retain and control it (Kristeva 1987: 74). If according to Freud the first possibility requires the withdrawal of libidinal investment from the object into the ego, an energy that will be reinvested in the identification with the ego ideal. The latter “choice”, however, leads to a freezing of his affects due to an attempt to convert their binding with the object in an interior tomb that, henceforth, he will hold in secrecy. The signs of this can be witnessed in some forms of speech delays but it be expressed in more pervasive strategies, namely through the “active destruction of representation” (Abraham and Torok 1994: 132), the refusal of any figurative language or metaphor, since these are the evidences of the proposed change between the mouth full with the good objects of the breast and the empty mouth filled with the void of words. But this inscrutable inside, refusing the articulation of linguistic meaning, leaves semiotic traces not only regarding the libidinal investment of certain parts of the body that punctuate the

27 Some of the most impressive descriptions of this melancholic symptom can be found in Ph. Pinel’s

Medico-philosophical Treatise on Mental Alienation (e.g. 1809, 167).

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prevalence of bodily stupor, but also in mutism and the constant interruption in the enchainment of speech. Kristeva subscribes the bases of Lacan’s scheme of identification. The symbolic identity is conferred by the insertion in the differential chain of signifiers, it implies that the subject depends on the representation of a signifier for another signifier. This operation can reinstate the reference to the subject through the actualization of signs in the differential chain. From the imaginary process of identification with the father, the symbolic retains the assuming of a name, however the reference to the imaginary elements that ground one’s sense of identity remains decisive. Despite being “closer” to a presumed substance of the subject, the elements of imaginary identity are grounded on a virtual field of possibilities that achieves a stable configuration, although it requires constant actualization. For Kristeva, the imaginary register not only holds the promise of access to archaic traces of libidinal investments and fragments of one’s projections and introjections, its exploration can also open the possibility to new forms of identification. Following Klein, Kristeva considers an alternative way to reenact the connexion with the object avoiding the need of its introjection, by reparation or forgiveness. Beauty, by its supervenient quality is the best candidate to re-enact the libido of the lost object into an object not tainted by ambiguity. But for the melancholic mind this form of sublimation is always on the verge of deriving in deliriums of omnipotence and the aggressive display of superiority over the others.28 Only exceptionally is this “reparative re-binding” (Green 1999b: 233) successful, and for Kristeva the greater representant of its possibility is Proust’s writing and his emblematic phrase: “[i]deas come to us as the successors to griefs”.29 Beyond judgement and calculation, the analytic listening is the other candidate to untie and reconstruct the relation to loss and the corresponding “vivification” of the dead object. Inspired by Dostoyevsky’s novels, Kristeva presents forgiveness as the opportunity for the “unconscious to be inscribed into a new story that is not the eternal return of the death drive in the cycle crime/punishment” (Kristeva 1987: 214). For this reconfiguration all the previous remains of imaginary idealization are liable to be mobilized, for according to Kristeva’s distinctive motto: the unconscious “is not structured as a language but as all the marks of the Other [comme toutes les marques de l’Autre], and comprises mostly the most archaic, ‘semiotics’, marked by preverbal autosensuality that restores the narcisic or loving experience” (Kristeva 1987: 214–215). A third, the analyst, is required to mediate the relation between the defiled object and its punisher(s). On the part of the analyst, this implies the need to refrain from of any attempt of abasing the value of the lost object, whose faithfulness 28 This has to do with the difficulty of including, like Klein does, the sexual drive as part of the sublimation of the lost object. Green exposed the problem: “on the one hand, sublimation appears to be a vicissitude of the sexual drive, a purified form which has its place among other possible vicissitudes but which remains within the patrimony of Eros, and, on the other, sublimation is the adverse counterpart of Eros which, far from serving its aims, sides with those forces which are antagonistic to its purposes (Thanatos). The paradox cannot easily be overcome, and this is the path which Freud’s work (the product of his sublimation) will follow” (Green 1999b: 219). 29 See in particularly the forth study of Proust and the Sense of Time (Kristeva 1993: 77–98).

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toward the subject is generally never questioned by the patient. Inversely, due to the fragile self-image of these patients, the strategy of the analyst “must” be to make the patient “realize” that any harm on himself would be unbearable for the ideal object itself. Instead of being a representative of the law, the analyst aims “prior to words and intelligence, the emotions and the injured bodies” (Kristeva 1987: 216). For Kristeva this transferencial process can only happen with a resignification of the abject with signs that echo a new dynamic of the semiotic motility. Analysis should promote the musicalization and re-sensualization of the previous libidinal relation towards the interior objects. Dialogue is the mode of access that influences primary displacement and condensation of the unconscious processes, by modulating the relation towards the other/object at the liminal register of the imaginary. It is a liminal domain for it preserves the link with the pre-linguistic and imagetic groundings of the psychic system through the coordination of the grammatical-logical processes. This intervention has a transformative force on the stream of consciousness, and impacts on two major figures of melancholia: the silence without ideation and ideational chaos without order. As seen in Revolutions of the Poetic language, this is the scope of intervention and structuration of drives. What Kristeva calls the semiotic register of meaning operates at the constitutive border of the psychic system, between drives motility (and stases) and the fixation of a subjective position in the symbolic order. Therapy oscillates between redundancy and novelty with self-reflective speech under the mandate of free association of ideas, as the instrument of discovery and change. Its relational structure puts into motion new possibilities of the unconscious in its relation with biological processes. That means that the Analyst must remain attentive not only to the logical order of speech, but also non-verbal aspects of signification. Even when he talks, the melancholic has a monotonous speech, unable to enchain the words in a fluent and coherent whole, he displays: “[a] repetitive rhythm, a monotonous melody comes to dominate the broken logical sequences transforming them in recurring litanies, enervating one’s” (Kristeva 1987: 45). The proximity of the therapeutic listening of the pain of the melancholic, a feeling distinct from anxiety,30 favours the resuming of the relation with the object and reconsideration of the affective detachment bringing it to signification. Within the psychoanalytic discourse, Kristeva is reframing an opposition already explored in communication studies, between the digital and the analogical, the way any access to discrete elements is selected within a grounding continuum of sequences, what one can name as mood disposition (Kristeva 1974: 67–68). Both of these categories are essential to grasp the virtual reconfiguration of meaning and 30 According to Green this distinction is already clear to Freud which “maintains that pain is the proper reaction to the loss of the object, whereas anxiety is the reaction to the danger that this loss entails, and consequently a displacement, the reaction to the danger of the loss itself. Thus the loss of the object produces pain by the irruption of an uncontrollable quantity into the ego, which provokes a feeling of helplessness (Hilflosigkeit). To avoid pain and helplessness, the signal of anxiety anticipates the catastrophe and orders the ego to set up defensive operations capable of controlling the disorganizing threat” (Green 1999a, b: 68).

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relational structure in the stream of consciousness in the work of therapy. “In analytic cure, that importance of the supra-segmental register of the word (intonation and rhythm) should conduct the analyst on the one hand to interpret the voice and, on another, to disarticulate the chain of signifiers, vulgarized and devitalized, to extract from it the hidden meaning of the depressive speech, that dissimulates itself in lexemes, syllable and phonic groups, that have been semanticized in an uncanny form” (1987: 67). The primary processes ground the possibilities or upper processes, which in a way are always metaphoric and whose order of sequence is coupled by common signifiers. Those processes are, in themselves, inaccessible and their influence on the flow of consciousness is always indirect. This is another way of saying that they depend upon a negation, a negation that is constitutive of the subject as a being always already immersed into language, into signifiers that now mediate the access to one’s own blind spot. In melancholia something goes wary and the subject remains stuck in some signifiers (images, thoughts and words) that retain the connection with interdicted elements, a basal dimension of what we could refer as memory that is better conceived as kind of receptacle (or container) that structures and stores affective connections (associations). In a retrospective reading, through the process of analysis it becomes clear that those elements can only be preserved by melancholic disposition. They affect the basic process of identification, the name, and impose a rigid model of self-reference characterized by the degrading of one’s value. Indeed, primary identification with the father is absent or is frail. That means that re-entry preserves and reinforces the value of the object precisely through a devaluation of oneself, beginning with the reproach that the ego is unable to preserve the good object. The refuse/inability to talk about that object is the condition of its preservation from linguistic platitude, the vital debilitation (through the refuse to eat and lethargy) are ways to punish this ego that is the cause of deprivation and the condition of defence of the object.

10.4 Co-implication of Psychic and Communicative Elements Sometimes depressive illness becomes an adaptive mechanism, not only in the sense of compensating for a loss or breakdown, but also in order to cope with expectations associated with the diagnosed condition. This means that, from the systemic point of view, the mechanism of “learned helplessness” refers to a deeply entrenched habit whose recursions are a way to assure a reduced complexity, at least in the coupling with the communicative system (cf. Radden 2009, 53ff.). The general complaint of the melancholic reveals a degradation of experience, a sense of disconnection with the body and a temporal constriction of possibilities.31 31 Recently

Fuchs (2005) explored the experience of melancholia focusing on its embodied dimension, and highlighted the increasing sense of entrapment and heaviness of one’s body. This intense

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Melancholia can be understood as a suspension of the normal temporality of experience, both in terms of its linearity and fluency. As explored in H. Maldiney’s work (1991: 313–315), the horizon of experience of the melancholic becomes closed to the reconsideration of one’s affective investments and cognition, but also towards the other. The investment on the lost object and the simultaneous deprivation of the self, blocks or limits the ability of a productive resonance of the interior objects. That is, the enchainment of psychic elements loses the capability to project or retrieve those objects into other cognitive and practical possibilities. In melancholia, we face a double rigidity in the constitutive borders of the psychic system. On the one hand, towards the interior objects, some of which play an important role as constitutive of the subject’s identity, as we saw insisting and arresting further activity and desire with ambiguity, repetitiveness and arbitrariness.32 On the other, and as a consequence to (or in conjunction with) that first opacity, communicative insertion, the place of the subject in the symbolic order is always unsatisfactory or mechanic, completely disconnected from any enjoyment. A particular aspect latent in Kristeva’s reading but explicit in Tellenbach’s work concerns the frequent indistinction between psychic and communicative elements already at the onset of melancholia. This is something conspicuous at the prodromal phase of the typus melancholicus, where the subject is increasingly unable to acknowledge and manage various expectations concerning his/her adequate role (Tellenbach 1961: 60–80). This inability tends to aggravate in some forms of delirium where the demands imposed by the subject on himself are contradictory (one can think of the concept of “double bind”) and/or impossible to fulfil. Some of the cases explored by Kristeva (1987: 83ff.) had these features and covered the most devastating episodes of melancholic episodes which tend to be triggered by bereavement, postpartum depression and demands of professional adaptation, unemployment or retirement. But other life changes have also been described by recent psychiatric literature, namely the abrupt change of country (sense of uprootedness) or the so-called empty-nest syndrome. The overlapping between psychic and communicative is not only the source of the problem, with ferocious demands associated with that indistinction, but also the key of the access and transformation the melancholic condition. The strict equivalence between the personal identity and the social/professional role is frequent in melancholia and this is probably a way for the subject to compensate for the precarious shell of his identity, as exposed in the previous section. Tellenbach noted how the subject obeys and reproduces the norms with a reduced capacity to interpret them or put them into question, he reinforces them as a safe way to avoid uncertainty or ambiguity (Tellenbach 1961: 51ff.) but we can also add the manifestations of the fierce superego as cause of a pre-emptive conformity. The sense of one’s concretude and special circumscription was already explored by previous phenomenological psychiatry. 32 In his “Discours de Rome” Lacan considered the challenge the depressive posed to the Analyst was how to overcome his “empty word”, “the mirage of the monologue” in which the associative process is disconnected from the unconscious knowledge (Lacan 1966: 247–265).

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adherence to a rigid and idealized order turns the perspective of challenges and adaptation an unmanageable burden, for the individual privileges actuality, on can say his objective “being”, over potentiality, using the grammar of existentialist philosophy his “project”. Some coping behaviour derives from the necessity to prevent new possibilities or change. This psychic blockage of selectivity is frequently accompanied by psychomotor manifestations, somatizations of one’s emptiness tend to affect the appetite and voice,33 normally initiated prior to the development of obsessions with one’s bodily functions and organs.34 The complete identification with a social role is a defence mechanism, a way to suppress ambiguity through the reiteration of an unquestioned answer to one’s function and worth. This rigid form of identification represses any insight on one’s feelings, freezing motivation on the exterior side of the constitutive bifaciality of the psychic system. This general depiction configures what Kraus (1991, 2016: 196–200) designated as hypernomia and heteronomia. The first referring an unconditional and rigid following of external rules and the established order, the latter an acritical acceptance of the expectations the melancholic projects on others, which leads to an intolerance to be in debt (Tellenbach 1961: 82) and an overidentification with one’s role (Tellenbach 1980: 465).

10.5 Notes Concerning the Virtual Dimension of Therapeutic Processes The specific characteristics of melancholia, first of all the selectivity that grounds its categorization and identification, demand a certain adaptation of that particular design, namely the ability to thematize a problem through individual complaint and a way to irritate psychic processes in order to induce a transformation. As such, melancholia does not subsist outside the observation of this system. In melancholia and depressive syndromes the therapeutic system, particularly Psychoanalysis, works on a double opacity: towards oneself (its unconscious processes and objects) and towards the symbolic mandate of the subject. Both of these knots entail the possibility of a virtual transformation of latent aspects of individuation, through imaginary reconfiguration and through the repositioning in the symbolic order. This is only possible through communicative medium, the “interpersonal” connection established in the particular conditions of the session. The process cannot be reduced to the intentional or representational dimension, it is the coupling with communication that levers the psychic sequence, enabling the access to discursive gaps and holes. The adequate thematization and scrutiny of the operative distinctions guiding therapeutic sequences is a necessary condition for the individual efficacy of the path 33 Already

at the “Draft G” Freud (1895: 99) sees anorexia as a form of melancholia. his comparative studies Kleinman (1988) showed that in non-western cultures the concept of depression is primarily supported in bodily manifestations. On the other hand, one must refer the deep historical connexions between melancholia and hypochondria, always associated with the sense of unworthiness (Noyes 2005).

34 In

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of therapy. Ultimately, this means that the transformative capacity to address and treat melancholia depends also on the self-observation of the therapist and the way the operating distinctions of therapy’s observation and interventions are object of reflection (Ferro 2011). An effective access to the deep “anchoring” of melancholic personality, namely the relation with the primary interior objects or, more precisely, the consequences of the abrupt cut with the primal object, requires the grounding on this level of self-observation. It depends on the modal thematization of distinctions, for instance, if the free association of thoughts is approaching a relevant element of one’s phantasy, the therapist must be able to prepare the elaboration of certain key elements. But beyond the sensitivity that must guide the first order of observation along therapeutic conversation, sometimes the second-order observation is required to the acquisition of new competences. We can simplify and say that the communicative source of psychic irritation propels towards self-organization, that is, a new order of understanding and disposition. Besides the connection established towards the other, the effective transformation depends upon the transformation of self-understanding of one’s position through the recovery and virtualization of elements that concern one’s identity. The repressed mnesic traces, namely those derived from the relation towards the primal objects, are no longer open to integral restoration. Another aspect of melancholia depends on the way the subject confronts the absence of the object, the Thing without contours, the void of desire or the reception of the empty return of psychic projections. This absence in the imaginary field of the psychic system does not imply the interruption of primary processes of displacement and condensation. On the contrary, they are the pre-intentional sources of recombination of the elements of the enchainment of the psychic stream. The Therapy’s task has been understood by various currents of psychoanalysis as consisting in assuring that this reordering of the projective and receptive flow of consciousness occurs in a kind of recasting of the original scene, namely through the ability of the analyst to put him/herself in the place of the first Other. But to break the narcissistic shell of the melancholic, igniting a new kind of passion, not only must the analyst confirm himself as a transactional object, he must also be awaked “by the analysand, giving proof of his vitality by the associative links he communicates to him, without leaving his neutrality. For the capacity to support disillusion will depend on the way the analysand feels himself to be narcissistically invested by the analyst” (Green 1986: 163). This requirement of neutrality invites us to reconsider a seminal question of psychoanalysis tackled by Ferenczi (see infra), which concerns the admissibility of the analyst’s active promotion of promising disclosures. How to attune the imperative of neutrality with the task of (re)activating some psychic knots? A peculiarity of the task of therapy in the cases of depression concerns the possible ways to re-establish the ability to select and work previous points that ground self-reference precisely through its particular medium. Conversation, that is a “contained” dialogical form (independently of its asymmetry), has the ability to promote a virtualization of one’s fixations, exploring their latency with actual elements, granting them a dynamic. A third aspect, connected with this, is relative to the fact that in melancholia the ability to acknowledge one’s condition is sometimes very marked.

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The problem is that this acute realization of the condition is restricted to the epistemic dimension and disconnected from affect and the ability to change one’s psychic disposition through action.35 For the semiotic process taking place in sequences of therapy it will be decisive to know if in the coupling between the psychic and the communicative systems, the first has enough interpretants to manage and process the creation of meaning and the interventions of the therapist. This is much more determinant in the possible access to a second order observation, that is, the access to a self-reflexive stance that observes motives and duties and, with a diagnose of dysfunctions, addresses new possibilities of selection. Presented in this way this may seem as a distanced and apathetic observation, but frequently this kind of path can trigger deep affective responses with the return and re-composition of unconscious/repressed material. The work of carving up the adequate discrete elements of discourse is important but it can hardly be reduced to a scientific technique, it depends on the autonomous sequence of communication of themes that takes place in therapy. It is within this path that, according to the therapist/analyst selectivity, the themes and elements that must be highlighted and submitted to suggestive or explicit reconsideration. Again, the path is uncertain, it can lead to fruitful irritation or to unsurmountable resistance, in the forms of mutism or active dissimulation (lies). In this sense, following his reading of Freud’s Negation, Ferro compares it to a “dam” since it “prevents flooding downstream: what cannot be metabolized and transformed and whose irruption on the scene would be disastrous for the psychic apparatus is ‘negated’” (Ferro 2011: 223). The access to second-order observation in therapy, that is, the thematization of the motives and possibilities of the participants in conversation, can never be superimposed. The problem can be reframed in the following way: how to adjust therapeutic constraints in order to productively explore the virtuality of the associative stream of consciousness? Even when patiently prepared, “active therapy”, the classical model of instigating an insight proposed by Ferenczi, runs the risk of collapsing the progress and the efficacy of psychic work. On the one hand, this is due to the way it overloads the ability to work on repressed material, but primarily relates to the activation of self-censure. Ferenczi considered this danger was not restricted to the possibility that suggestion replaced the psychic work based on the free association of thoughts, returning to “cathartic-abreaction therapy”, but it also encompassed the use “of other pedagogical means of assistance, of which praise and blame are to be considered the most important” (Ferenczi 1920: 215). This resort on moral language, which raised the worries concerning the use of authority, was envisioned by Ferenczi as a means to enhance the efficacy of therapeutic dialogue. Encouraging the purposive enacting of certain memories, with associated gestures and emotions, and restraining others considered unstructured, could be a way to access and organize material that would otherwise remain masked in organic or automatic responses. This method relies on 35 William Styron’s impressive account of his own ordeal with melancholia stresses this discrepancy between the psychiatric knowledge and the paralysis of one’s ability to act (2008: 104). For the phenomenological particularities of this sense of incarceration see: Ratcliffe (2014: 59–70).

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the possibility that the reverse side of the undoubtful triggering of repression covers only certain elements while releasing other impulses and drives. With particular relevance in the case of melancholia, where the affective investment of the lost object is so entrenched, setting up “psychic crypts” (Abraham and Torok 1994: 130),36 Ferenczi adverts that the use of such method requires a sensitivity to the ability of the ego to endure the frustration of its drives “for a long time the ego must be treated with forbearance or at least treated with circumspection, for otherwise no working positive transference will occur” (Ferenczi 1925: 219). We see that the virtual scope of therapy depends on the way the therapeutic system designs its own borders, the way its communicative sequences convoke its participants, particularly through a coupling with psychic systems in the shared medium of language.

10.6 Final Remarks Therapy relies upon a complex process of cross-reference between psychic and communicative systems where the inspection and transformation of actual (or brute) elements and structures requires the thematization mnesic traces, particularly those related to intense or traumatic events, and latent identitary marks in order to consider new patterns of thought and action. Even when therapy succeeds in overcoming conscious and unconscious resistances of the analysand, one must bear in mind that the access to the subject’s “pre-history” is always an imaginative recreation with considerable autonomy towards the originary primary relations with the objects and the affective value they carried. This doesn’t mean that those originary relations had a reduced importance or were indifferent! Quite the contrary, the fact that they constitute the “matrix” of the individual psyche means they are, by definition, unobservable. Therefore, one should reformulate the problem and ask how genuine are the psychic representants, registers of the primordial motility of the drives and identificatory processes, and how can they make their appearance to the constituted subject. There is no doubt that the biological dimension has an eminent role in the depressive condition, but one can only access and adjust its influence (for instance with psychopharmacs) with the interpersonal mechanisms improved along the differentiation of the therapeutic medium conceived as a particular system with a specific form of sequentially and self-reference. Interpersonal therapy suspends the biological by working on the anchoring of the psychic system on a reference to a double environment. One relates to the opacity of “interior” psychic affections, the other concerns the symbols and references grounded on communication. The repression of the maternal object is rarely complete; there remains a reference to it through sublimation. The melancholic tries to save that object resisting its exchange with representations of external world, the acquisition of language and the 36 Abraham

and Torok (1994: 125) mark their objection to Klein’s theory for supposing that such encryptation of the lost object can take place prior to the differentiation of the ego.

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attribution of a relational identity. The refusal of the signifier, of the poor translation of the primal objects into signifiers (signs), what is called disavowal of repression (negation of negation) of primal drives towards the mother, preserves the object. This leads to a constant and increasingly reproach of the individuated self since he holds himself responsible for the loss of that object. The ego is at mercy of negative drives because he is in the ambivalent position of obstacle and condition of the access to the maternal object. The scope of the virtual in the treatment of melancholia provides access to an alternative approach of the linearity and univocal causality of some neurological and biochemical explanations. This alternative is valuable not only on melancholia as a pathology, but also as a creative disposition, evocative of the tradition of melancholia generosa (see: Kearney 2003: 171–177). Instead of leading to despair, the loss and impotence felt by the subject are the condition for a transformation that departs from the instable chaos that is the environment of conscious perception and achieves a new form of observation inaccessible in ordinary perspectives. Some forms of depression may be seen as responses to certain events or life conditions and, as it happens when melancholic episodes occur when facing the difficulties of “maturation phases”, have a role (not necessarily a natural one) in transforming one’s psychic structure and relation to the world. This is all the more evident when depression is triggered by psychogenic aspects of loss and impotence to achieve expectations. Psychopharmacs may replace or distort those integrative routines, promoting the normalization or even the suppression of psychic conflict. Concomitantly, descriptive models, whose operativity lies on statistic correlations and regularity, tend to limit the relevance and depth of the patient’s complain and account, conforming them to a pre-established selectivity. Furthermore, the dominance of these therapeutic apparatus reduces its observation to outside behaviour of the subject, implicitly refusing the internal split of the subject and his positioning in communication. Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry influenced by Phenomenological and Anthropological tradition played an important part in considering psychic suffering and the personal experience of the melancholic as decisive for alleviating and treating his symptoms. Despite the variety of depressive syndromes it addresses, the therapeutic process of melancholia highlights the need for a “negative capability” that overcomes the rigidity of certain affects. This can only occur if the subject accepts the task to revive and work through the pain of loss, elaborating on its meaning and replacing the feeling of guilt with the ability to acknowledge and forgive. Our attempt to illustrate such a challenge of change points to a therapeutic commandment that resists generalization. At the same time, referring the individual configuration of melancholia, it highlights the inability of therapeutic models that consider a single level of observation of the subject.

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References Abraham, Karl. 1971. Versuch einer Entwicklungsgeschichte der Libido aufgrund der Psychoanalyse seelischer Störungen. In Psychoanalytische Studien. 1. Frankfurt: Fischer. Abraham, Nicolas, and Maria Torok. 1994. Mourning or Melancholia: Introjection Versus Incorporation. In The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, vol. 1, ed. N.T. Rand, 125–138. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Balsemão-Pires, Edmundo. 2015. Second Order Ethics. Uncanny. Philosophy and Cultural Studies Journal 2: 31–60. Balsemão-Pires, Edmundo. 2016. Terapia. Revista Filosófica de Coimbra 49 (25): 281–326. Biegler, Paul. 2011. The Ethical Treatment of Depression: Autonomy Through Psychotherapy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Binswanger, Ludwig. 1960. Melancholie und Manie: Phänomenologische Studien. Pfullingen: Neske. Carvalho, Cláudio. 2014. Mandeville and the Therapeutics of Melancholic Passions. In Bernard de Mandeville’s Tropology of Paradoxes: Morals, Politics, Economics, and Therapy, ed. E. Balsemão-Pires and J. Braga, 147–166. Berlin: Springer. Carvalho, Cláudio. 2015. Therapeutic Intervention and High-Order Adjustments of Recursion. Journal of Sociocybernetics 13 (2): 49–71. (Special Issue). Derrida, Jacques. 1989. Mémoires: For Paul de Man, eds. and trans. C. Lindsay et al. New York: Columbia University Press. Ehrenberg, Alain. 2009. The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age, trans. D. Homel. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Fedida, Pierre. 1972. Le cannibalisme mélancolique. Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse 6: 123–127. Ferro, Antonino. 2011. Negation, Negative Capability, and the Work of Creativity. In On Freud’s “Negation”, eds. Mary Kay O’Neil and Salman Akhtar, 222–236. London: Karnac. Ferenczi, Sandor. 1920. The Further Development of the Active Therapy in Psycho-Analysis. In Further Contributions to the Theory and Technique of Psycho-Analysis, compiled by John Rickman, 198–217. London and New York: Karnac (1994). Ferenczi, Sandor. 1925. Contra-Indications to the ‘Active’ Psycho-Analytical Technique. In Further Contributions to the Theory and Technique of Psycho-Analysis, compiled by John Rickman, 217–230. London and New York: Karnac (1994). Freud, Sigmund. 1895. Draft G: Melancholia. In The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904, trans. J. M. Masson, 98–105. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Freud, Sigmund. 1917 [1915]. Mourning and melancholia. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 13, ed. and trans. J. Strachey, 239–258. London: Hogarth Press (1957). Freud, Sigmund. 1923. The Ego and the Id. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 19, ed. and trans. J. Strachey, 1–66. London: Hogarth Press (1957). Freud, Sigmund. 1925. Negation. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 19. ed. and trans. J. Strachey, 235–239. London: Hogarth Press (1957). Freud, Sigmund. 1940. An Outline of Psycho-analysis. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 23, ed. and trans. J. Strachey, 144–207. London: Hogarth Press (1964). Fuchs, Peter. 1998. Realität der Virtualität - Aufklärungen zur Mystik des Netzes. In Virtuelle Wirtschaft, Virtuelle Unternehmen, Virtuelle Produkte, Virtuelles Geld und virtuelle Kommunikation, 301–322. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Fuchs, Peter. 1999. The Modernity of Psychoanalysis. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 74 (1): 14–29. Fuchs, Thomas. 2005. Corporealized and Disembodied Minds. A phenomenological View of the Body in Melancholia and Schizophrenia. Philosophy Psychiatry & Psychology. 12: 95–107. Green, André. 1986. The dead mother. In Id. On Private Madness. London: Karnac.

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Green, André. 1999a. The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse, trans. A. Sheridan. London: Routledge. Green, André. 1999b. The Work of the Negative, trans. A. Weller. London: Free Association Press. Hyppolite, Jean. 1955. Commentaire parlé sur la “Verneinung” de Freud. In Lacan. Écrits, 879–888. Paris: Éditions du Seuil (1966). Illouz, Eva. 2008. Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kearney, Richard. 2003. Strangers and Monsters. Interpreting Otherness. London: Routledge. Kehl, Maria Rita. 2009. O tempo e o cão: a atualidade das depressões. São Paulo: Boitempo. Klein, Melanie. 1940. Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States. In Love, Guilt, and Reparation and Other Works. Vol. 1 of The Writings of Melanie Klein, ed. Roger Money-Kyrle, Betty Joseph, Edna O’Shaughnessy and Hanna Segal, 344–369. New York: Hogarth Press (1975). Klein, Melanie. 1952. The Origins of Transference. In Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, 1946–1963. Vol. 3 of The Writings of Melanie Klein, ed. Roger Money-Kyrle, Betty Joseph, Edna O’Shaughnessy and Hanna Segal, 48–56. New York: Hogarth Press (1975). Kleinman, Arthur. 1988. Rethinking Psychiatry: From Cultural Category to Personal Experience. New York: Free Press. Kraus, Alfred. 1991. Modes d’existence des hystériques et des mélancolique. 37. In Psychiatrie et existence, ed. P. Fédida, J. Schotte. Grenoble: Jérôme Million. Kraus, Alfred. 2016. Melancholia from the Perspective of the Self. In An Experiential Approach to Psychopathology, ed. G. Stanghellini and M. Aragona, 189–219. Switzerland: Springer. Kristeva, Julia. 1974. La révolution du langage poétique; l’avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle, Lautréamont et Mallarmé. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Pouvoirs de l’horreur: essai sur l’abjection. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Kristeva, Julia. 1987. Soleil noir. Dépression et mélancolie. Paris: Gallimard. Kristeva, Julia. 1993. Proust and the Sense of Time, trans. Stephen Bann. New York: Columbia University Press. Kristeva, Julia. 2000. Le Génie féminin. La vie, la folie, les mots. Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein. Colette, vol. 2. Paris: Fayard. Lacan, Jacques. 1966. Écrits. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Maldiney, Henri. 1991. Penser l’homme et la folie. À la lumière de l’analyse existentielle et de l’analyse du destin. Grenoble: J. Millon. Noyes, Russell. 2005. Hypochondriasis: A Review. In. Somatoform Disorders, ed. Mario Maj et al., 129–160. West Sussex: Wiley. Pinel, Philippe. 1809. Traité médico-philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale, 2nd ed. Paris: Brosson. Radden, Jennifer. 2009. Moody Minds Distempered: Essays on Melancholy and Depression. New York: Oxford University Press. Ratcliffe, Matthew. 2014. Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soler, Colette. 2002. L’Inconscient à ciel ouvert de la psychose. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail. Starobinski, Jean. 2012. L’Encre de la mélancolie. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Styron, William. 2008 [1990]. Darkness Visible. A Memoir of Madness. New York: Open Road Integrated Media. Tellenbach, Hubert. 1961. Melancholie: Zur Problemgeschichte, Typologie, Pathogenese und Klinik. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Tellenbach, Hubert. 1980. Typus Melancholicus. In Die Psychologie des 20. Jahrhunderts, Band X, 465–70. Zürich: Kindler. von Foerster, Heinz. 2003 [1991]. Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics. In Understanding Understanding. Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, 287–304. New York: Springer.

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Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho is a Doctor in Philosophy (University of Coimbra, 2012), in the field of Ethics and Political Philosophy, with a thesis devoted to the study of the concepts of kinship and gender in the transition to modern society, with incidence in Hegel and contemporary interpretations of Lacan, Judith Butler and Niklas Luhmann. From 2006 to 2015, he was a member of the Institute of Philosophical Studies at the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information at the University of Coimbra. After finishing his Ph.D., he has been devoted to the study of the philosophical bases of psychotherapy, delving into Systems Theory and Cognitive Science. He worked as an Assistant Professor at UBI—University of Beira Interior and remains an external consultant of its Ethics Committee. Currently he is a Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy (University of Porto), on the research group “Aesthetics, Politics & Knowledge”. His postdoctoral project, supported by a fellowship of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, aims at understanding the constitution of the therapeutic medium of modern society, attending to the scientific, social and political contexts.

Chapter 11

The End of the Virtual? A Hermeneutical Approach to Digitality Alberto Romele

Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to offer the grounds for a double rehabilitation: that of hermeneutics on the one hand, and of the virtual, a concept that became popular especially between the 1980s and 1990, on the other hand. More precisely, hermeneutics will be used to lay foundations for the hypothesis according to which the virtual never ended. The argument will follow three steps. In the first section, the author accounts for theories on the end of the virtual, distinguishing between those who think that the real has invaded the virtual and those who say that it is rather the opposite. The second section, entitled “The Virtual Never Ended”, is a tribute to Philip K. Dick and his crazy idea that the Roman Empire never came to an end. The digital works through representational distanciation and performative appropriation, and it is precisely this process that makes the virtual a valid concept that still gives rise to thought, and which allows hermeneutics to be used in the context of digitality. Finally, in the concluding section, the author will briefly present the epistemological and ontological advantages of such a perspective.

11.1 Introduction No one really likes hermeneutics because it is a bastard discipline, like the god Hermes to whom the etymology of the term is often traced back. Too “soft” to be admitted among the philosophies of substance, but still too “hard” to be part of the philosophies of becoming. Furthermore, because of this “comma” episode, hermeneutics has done nothing but aggravate its own situation, opening an internal quarrel that has done almost nothing but serve its detractors (Vattimo 2000). Now, it is precisely because of its mixed nature that hermeneutics has not been able to find space of its own in the contemporary debate on digitality, with a few exceptions of course (Capurro 2010; Diamante 2014; in the context of digital humanities see, for instance, Van Zundert 2016; in the field of digital sociology, see Gerbaudo 2016; regarding Big Data, see Mohr et al. 2015). Indeed, if the Internet, the digital A. Romele (B) Lille Catholic University, Lille, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_11

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technology par excellence, is a network of networks, why should one use a theory that has undoubtedly given importance to relationship, though clearly not enough? Let us consider for a moment two currents in the philosophy and sociology of technology, that is to say postphenomenology (which some have also called “material hermeneutics”1 (Verbeek 2003), probably unaware that the expression had already been used by Peter Szondi), and the actor-network theory (ANT) as developed by Bruno Latour. The former places technologically mediated relations between the subject and the world at the center of its reflections—as will be shown later. The latter is based on a “principle of symmetry”, according to which humans and nonhumans (i.e. technologies, but also nature and institutions) must be integrated within the same conceptual framework and be acknowledged the same capacities of action. Social reality is therefore a “flatland”, as in the title of Edwin Abbott’s book, in which human beings, technologies and other things of the world are networked (Latour 2005: 172). From the point of view of the actor-network theory, postphenomenology can only appear as primitive and hierarchical. Primitive, for it is capable of considering only one relation at a time; hierarchical, insofar as it distinguishes between three types of beings: humans who interpret the world, technologies that mediate human access to the world, and objects of the world. Indeed, in postphenomenology, only individual human beings may separately engage in a technologically mediated relation with the world.2 In the actor-network theory, instead, each interpreter is by essence already entangled in a complex network. Moreover, humans are not the only interpreters and technologies are not only mediators but can be “actants” in their own right.3 There are also some problems specific to classical hermeneutics, which postphenomenology offered to fix. First, there is what might be called an “idealism of matter”, especially the matter of language. Authors such as Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur (but the same could be said of Saussurian linguistics and its inclination towards the concept and the acoustic image) are interested in language but do not care about its materiality. Suffice is to mention the difference between the Ricœurian way of thinking metaphors (among the hermeneutic philosophers, Ricoeur is undoubtedly 1 Interestingly enough, Law (2009) has presented ANT as a “material semiotics”. The use of the term

“material hermeneutics” in the specific context of digital technologies can be found, for instance, in Rastier and Bachimont (1998). 2 To say the truth, Verbeek (2005: 161–168) has demonstrated that postphenomenology and ANT can enrich each other. ANT is focused on the multiplicity of the relations, while postphenomenology is interested in their depth. Furthermore, Latour (2013) has recently criticized some exaggerations of ANT. 3 It is noteworthy how Verbeek (2013: 51–54) has misunderstood Latour’s notion of mediation. For Latour (1994), indeed, of the four forms of mediations he presents—translation, composition, reversible blackboxing and delegation—the latter in certainly the most important. In delegation, techniques do not properly mediate a present human action; they rather work in the absence of those who wanted, created and installed them. One could say that they still represent human intentions, since the term “delegate” means precisely “representative”, “deputy”, “emissary”. But one could even argue that they are henceforth “un-tied” from those intentions. Through a process of emergence, there is then a shift from mere mediation to autonomy; it is precisely such an autonomy that Verbeek refuses to recognize, partially against Latour, to the technologies (Floridi and Sanders 2004).

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the one that pushed the exteriority and materiality of language the furthest) and the way of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), according to which metaphors always depend on the embodiments that mediate our relationship with the world. A second problem is what we may call a universalism of language. Compared to Husserlian phenomenology, the merit of hermeneutics is to have understood that all access to the world is already and invariably an “Auslegung, an exegesis, an explication, an interpretation” (Ricoeur 1991: 43), in other words a mediation. And yet, its limit consists in having considered language as the sole mediator. Certainly, in digitality, presumably all that is between the input and the output is “writing”, but this is a figurative way of speaking. First, because digitality is made of a particular kind of signs, i.e. double entry signs: readable by human beings, on the one hand, executable by the machines on the other. Second, because the code is often unattainable, and digitality, in this sense, is more a matter of practice than of linguistic interpretation. It is thus easy to understand why today, one prefers to approach digitality through Simondon, Deleuze, Foucault or even Derrida rather than through Ricoeur, Gadamer and Heidegger—the latter being in addition responsible for a deterministic and pessimistic reading of technology and, in his 1962 conference “Traditional Language and Technological Language”, having accused information cybernetics to be the most violent and dangerous aggression against logos. It is also understandable that one favours the fluid notion of information rather than the mechanical terminology of hermeneutics (because eventually the hermeneutic circle remains a gearing, entangling as much as maintaining distinctions). The purpose of this chapter is to offer the grounds for a double rehabilitation: that of hermeneutics on the one hand, and of the virtual, a concept that became popular especially between the 1980s and 1990, on the other hand. More precisely, hermeneutics will be used to lay foundations for the hypothesis according to which the virtual never ended. In the literature dedicated to online environments between the 1980s and 1990s, the term “virtual” indicated, more or less implicitly, three things at once. First, a “spaceless space”, as Manuel Castells defined it, i.e. a dimension separated from real life and its physical and social constraints. Second, the virtual was viewed as an opportunity to experience new possibilities, options and actions without the risks of “true life”. This second meaning is closer to the etymology of the word. Indeed, “virtual” comes from the Latin “virtus/virtualis”, a direct translation of the Greek term “dynamis”, which can be transcribed as “ability”, “potentiality” or “power”. In his commentary to the beginning of the ninth book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Heidegger (1995) translated dynamis with “Kraft”, “force” in English, as well as “Vermögen”, a word which means “ability” but also “capacity” and “capability”. As such, the virtual is not opposed to the real, but rather to the actual—“actus” in Latin, used to translate the Greek word “energeia”. And this is precisely the third meaning of the term: virtual as individual and social empowerment. In other words, “virtual” and “virtuality” would refer to the effects, rather positive than negative, of online experimentations on real life. Today, digital technologies, especially social media, are no longer seen as technologies of choice and freedom, but rather as control and surveillance devices. This surveillance, of which we are in some way complicit (Romele et al. 2017), is exercised

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by our peers, therefore in a “horizontal” way, and by sociotechnical systems (i.e. the companies that use our data or make them available to other private companies or public agencies), here thus in a “vertical” manner. In addition, digital technologies are no longer viewed as alternatives to real life, but rather as a continuation, and often a strengthening, by other means, of the daily dynamics at work in the recognition of authority, conflict, power and social exclusion. In other words, digitality today no longer represents a way out of social reality, but on the contrary, is, par excellence, where the social makes its voice heard to the single individuals/users/consumers. Within the imaginaries of the Internet, we have shifted from utopia to ideology, from the liquidity and lightness to the harshness and heaviness of a society that, through the technologies of the Internet, Web, e-mails, smart phones, etc., mobilize its members (Ferraris 2014). The real has therefore invaded the virtual but, interestingly enough, this was made possible because the virtual had invaded the real in the sense that digital technologies are now part of our being-in-the-world, our Mitwelt, as is obvious when considering the importance of social media, but are also a part of our Umwelt (the Internet of Things, the smart cities, etc.) and Selbstwelt (the Quantified Self, etc.). The thesis that will be defended in this chapter is that if the frontiers between the real and the virtual are at the moment more “porous”, they yet exist and still resist. The argument will follow three steps. In the first section, I will account for theories on the end of the virtual, distinguishing between those who think that the real has invaded the virtual and those who say that it is rather the opposite. The second section, entitled “The Virtual Never Ended”, is a tribute to Philip K. Dick and his crazy idea that the Roman Empire never came to an end. The digital will be approached from a hermeneutic perspective. The digital works through representational distanciation and performative appropriation, and it is precisely this process that makes the virtual a valid concept that still gives rise to thought, and which allows hermeneutics to be used in the context of digitality. Finally, in the concluding section, I will briefly present the epistemological and ontological advantages of such a perspective.

11.2 The End of the Virtual 11.2.1 The Virtual Invaded the Real As mentioned, the idea of the virtual as a place apart from reality, a spaceless space, dominated the literature of the 1980s and 1990s. According to Boyd (2001: 3–4): In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many academics imagined that virtual environments would offer a utopian world where sex, race, class, gender, age, and sexual orientation ceased to be relevant. […] As digital pioneers, Donna Haraway, Sandy Stone and Sherry Turkle imagined the possibility of life online as a way to transcend physical identity and marked bodies. Cyberspace became a site, or series of sites, in which identity might be deliberately and consciously performed. (a la Judith Butler)

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Yet, the birth and development of the social web during the 2000s has increased the realism and reliability of the information provided, while making concealment more complex. In this connection, researchers have spoken of a shift from anonymity to “nonymity” (Zhao et al. 2008). According to Rogers (2009), the end of the virtual can be traced back to a specific event, the case of LICRA (International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism) and UEJF (Union of Jewish Students of France) against Yahoo! in 2000. These two organizations found out that it was possible to buy Nazi objects at auction from France through yahoo.com, in violation of the French penal code. They decided to file a complaint against Yahoo! with the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris. On November 21st, 2000, the court sentenced Yahoo! “to take all measures likely to discourage and render impossible any consultation on yahoo.com of the auction services of Nazi objects and any other site or service which constitutes an apologia for Nazism or a questioning of Nazi crimes”.4 The technical consequence of this verdict was the development of technology that geographically locates an IP address to direct content nationally. Today, by accessing google.com on a web browser in France, we are automatically sent to google.fr. Similarly, the content of platforms like Youtube, Spotify and Netflix are different for each country. This territorialization of the Web (it would be interesting to know what Carl Schmitt would say of a “sea of information” re-conquered by the earth) is today evident, among other things, in European policies on the right to be forgotten which determines variations, on a geographical basis, of online information access. From the perspective of Rogers, the end of the virtual is not necessarily a bad thing. There is indeed at least one great advantage: at the age of the end of the virtual, we can use digital traces to study social reality—or even reality itself. The best-known case is the Google Flu Trends, a service that was launched by Google in 2008 to estimate and predict influenza activity in more than 25 countries, not through conventional statistical data but by aggregating Google search queries (Lazer et al. 2014). As a consequence, we no longer need to go back “to the things themselves”, because the digital representations are sufficiently reliable. Today we have different approaches, such as “computational social science”, “digital social research”, “digital methods”, “digital sociology”, and “cultural analytics”. Beyond the methodological and “ontological” (in the sense of the privileged portions of reality) specificities, all these approaches support more or less explicitly the end of the virtual from an epistemological point of view. But many others have a decidedly negative vision of the end of the virtual, in a scale ranging from lukewarm nostalgia to the announcement of an imminent or already active apocalypse. According to Beaude (2014), the end of the Internet as we know it can be guessed from various points. First, as it has been suggested, we must acknowledge the abolition of space and the re-emergence of territory. Secondly, we are witnessing the end of the freedom of speech and the transformation of the Internet into a global panopticon. After Edward Snowden, who revealed the details of several American and British mass surveillance programs like PRISM, we are 4 See

“LICRA contre Yahoo!”, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_contre_Yahoo. Accessed 15 June 2017.

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certain that we can be spied at any moment by means of a massive collection of Internet data. According to Foucault (1995: 202), the Panopticon operates mainly through a dissociation of the couple see-being seen: “in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen”. In other words, its effectiveness lies not in the actual exercise of power, but in knowing that power can be exercised at every moment. In this sense, the revelations of Snowden are not the negation but rather the full realization of the global panoptic project, if there really is one such thing. Third, we have gone from the Internet of collective intelligence and shared skills to new forms of exploitation, called digital labor: i.e. under-qualified work, as in the case of Amazon Mechanical Turk, often unaware, as with reCaptcha, and sometimes with the aggravation of mixing with the pleasure of sociability, as is the case of Facebook Likes. Moreover, must also be added the illusion of independence and selfdetermination that leads people to be exploited by platforms like Uber and Foodora (Scholz 2013; Fuchs 2014). Fourth, the Internet is no longer the kingdom of gratuity. If platforms for sharing online music such as Napster symbolized it, today’s successful paying services like Spotify perfectly illustrate the end of the “digital gift” (Romele and Severo 2016). People are more and more inclined to pay for services and products they considered free until a few years ago. In 2017, for instance, Google will launch a new version of Google Contributor, a service first introduced in 2014, which allows users to pay for not seeing ads on their own favorite sites. Fifth, we know that the Internet was born as a military project, but that almost immediately, perhaps thanks to its “intrinsic politics” (Winner 1980), that is to say an essentially anti-hierarchical network structure, was adopted by the American Left and academic researchers as a model and medium for sharing and disseminating knowledge. It is on this decentralized infrastructure that new centralities have been built at the scale of the Web. In principle, one may visit any site and become a protagonist on this stage; in reality, we always visit the same sites, and most of us remain a passive and silent spectator. The Web is based on a hierarchical principle of recognition of authority—“translation” would say Callon and Latour—as Larry Page and Sergey Brin well understood when they invented the Google PageRank (based on hyperlinks and not, such as old search engines like AltaVista, on indexing). And as those who do academic research know (PageRank is actually inspired by scientometrics), authority creates even more authority, and the last will remain last, if the first are unreachable. Finally, the Internet is no longer a place of separation and protection, especially of privacy, but an exposure, and probably even an intensification, of the vulnerability of individuals. Our lives are immediately put on display to the performative gaze (Foucault emphasizes precisely this double nature, “epistemological” and “ontological”, of the Panopticon) not only of the others, but also of the “Other”, that is to say the socio-technical system of which we always play, more or less consciously, the game.

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11.2.2 The Virtual Has Invaded the Real As already mentioned, others believe that it is rather the virtual that has invaded the real. The philosopher Luciano Floridi, for instance, introduced the notion of “fourth revolution”. The Copernican revolution has taught humans that they are not at the center of the universe; Darwin placed them within the animal kingdom, to which they did not think they belonged; the Freudian revolution made them understand that they are not transparent to themselves, nor master in their own homes, contrary to what Descartes thought. However, from the 1950s, computer science profoundly changed our understanding of both the world and ourselves: “In many respects, we are not standalone entities, but rather interconnected informational organisms or inforgs, sharing with biological agents and engineered artefacts a global environment ultimately made of information, the infosphere” (Floridi 2010: 9). The term “infosphere” can be understood in two ways. First, it may indicate the field of the technical production of meaning: “Minimally, infosphere denotes the whole informational environment constituted by all informational entities […]. It is an environment comparable to, but different from, cyberspace, which is only one of its sub-regions […]” (Floridi 2014: 41). Second, the infosphere coincides with everything that is informational in nature: “Maximally, infosphere is a concept that can be also used as synonymous with reality, once we interpret it informationally” (Floridi 2014: 41). The digital is what makes the two definitions collapse, in favor of a new way for humans to inhabit the world: “we are probably the last generation to experiment a clear difference between online and offline environments. Some people already spend most of their time onlife” (Floridi 2014: 92). The Onlife Manifesto, an abridged version of which is currently available in five languages on the European Community website, begins by noting “the blurring of the distinction between reality and virtuality”, along with, within a post- and maybe transhumanist perspective, “the blurring of the distinctions between human, machine and nature”.5 We live in an era where, thanks to digital technologies in particular, the whole world seems to us to be increasingly “ready-to-hand”. Our intentions are more easily satisfied, our actions are more effective, we feel more comfortable because the world finally seems to better coincide with our expectations. We are therefore in the process of bridging the gap between phenomenon and noumenon, between will and reality, between epistemology and ontology. A new era of homology between thought and being is soon to come. But all that shines is not gold, and the authors of the Manifesto know it. Indeed, the invasion of reality by the virtual can lead to negative consequences, such as the loss of attentional capacities, information overload, the end of private life as we know it, or “liquid surveillance”. In this case too, Internet utopias have dystopic or, although this term deserves a separate discussion, ideological counterpoints. 5 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/sites/digital-agenda/files/Manifesto.pdf. Accessed 20 June 2017. The Manifesto has been originally edited by Floridi for Springer. An extended version of the Manifesto, with further analysis and comments, is freely available at https://link.springer. com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-04093-6.

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11.3 The Virtual Never Ended 11.3.1 Mimesis The thesis defended in the second part of this chapter is, as has been said, that if the boundaries between the real and the virtual are today probably more porous, yet they exist and still resist. Digital technologies are hermeneutic in nature, whereas “hermeneutics” indicates a process of performative interpretation based on a double movement of distanciation and appropriation. Paul Ricoeur clearly highlighted the way in which the Gadamerian “fusion of horizons” must be anticipated by a “methodical” moment, a distanciation from the object of analysis. For this reason, the French philosopher prefers writing and texts to dialogue, or even worse, to monologue. Indeed, the text is autonomous in relation to the author’s intentions, that is to say not “autonomous” in the structuralist or deconstructivist sense where one deals with the differential relations among signs. Moreover, if this were the case in the digital world, we would have ontological and epistemological problems: ontological, insofar as the computation would have a goal in itself, while we know that it has an input and, at least in most cases, the good ones, an output; epistemological, because otherwise we would have to give credit, for example, to the fake news that flourish in social networking sites. It has been opportunely observed that, especially thanks to the (new) media, “the postmodernists’ dreams were realized by populists” (Ferraris 2014). The text is rather autonomous because it refers to a world that is no longer the world of the author but “the world of the text”. Besides, if Ricoeur defended the necessity of articulating truth and method in the field of human and social sciences, where the method used in this instance was that of the structural sciences, we might today say the same of digital humanities. They represent, in fact, a new hope of “scientificity” for the human sciences, but they too are most often closed within internal, statistical results, with no possibility to open up to the world they reveal.6 A world which, incidentally, resembles less the world of the Ricoeurian text, still haunted by the Heideggerian and Gadamerian ontology, than the social reality to which Peter Szondi referred to in his literary hermeneutics. In this section, we will not consider so much truth and method, but rather narrativity and its heuristic function. According to Ricoeur, narrativity is made of mimesis and mythos, and it is precisely these two movements that one will seek in the digital (Ricoeur 1984). The term mimesis does not refer to mere imitation, but to a threefold movement of figuration, configuration, and reconfiguration. Figuration consists in textualizing human action, that is, in transposing action into a written form or in treating action as a quasi-text. Configuration is the moment when the textualized elements of action are articulated according to a spatiotemporal coherence. This is 6 In

the first volume of Time and Narrative, Ricoeur has criticized quantitative history and its use of databases, computers, and information theory. According to him, quantitative history should be understood as a methodological detour, whose aim is to bring to an extension of our collective living memories.

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where the movement of mimesis meets that of mythos, which is “emplotment”, that is to say a combination and recombination of the representing actions in order to give them meaning. Finally, reconfiguration is the moment of application and therefore the return of the text to life with its heuristic force. Indeed, a discourse is never, according to Ricoeur, “for its own sake”, for its own glory. Narratives have always, more or less directly, new reference effects on readers. Reading, we are confronted to the actions and choices made by the characters in a story; we judge them and subsequently end up judging our own life and seeing it differently, reconfiguring it spatiotemporally. Mimesis is at the heart of digital technology, because digital technologies are based on a process of dynamic representation of reality. Technologies are often surrounded by an “illusion of transparency” that has been denounced by authors like Heidegger, McLuhan, Latour, Feenberg and post-phenomenologists Ihde and Verbeek (Van Den Eede 2010). Despite their affordances and effects, technologies tend to shy away from conscious attention. This is all the more so in the case of digital technologies, perhaps because of their omnipresence and low materiality—or at least the detachment between infrastructure and “superstructure”. Those who believe in the end of the virtual are somehow victims of this same illusion. The American philosopher Ihde (1990: 72–112) distinguishes four types of technologically mediated individual-world relations: (1) embodied relations, such as when we use glasses, a technology that becomes almost transparent after a period of adaptation; (2) hermeneutic relations, for example those established by maps, thermometers or aircraft instrumentation. Here, technology provides a representation of the world to be interpreted; (3) alterity relations, for example by playing video games, where the relationship with the world is suspended and technology becomes our interlocutor; (4) background relations, when technologies determine the conditions of our being-in-the-world. This is the case, among others, of urban illumination and heating. Obviously, digital technologies cover all these mediation modalities. Yet, their effectiveness rests on their ability to represent and, therefore, interpret the world, and this regardless of whether digital is considered from the most superficial layer of user interfaces or the deep layer of digital traces. In all cases, digital gives an “image” of the world that interprets and transforms it (and can in turn be interpreted). This perspective goes beyond the alternative between representativeness and performativity: digital technologies are based on a principle of “editorialization”,7 which is both reading and transforming the world. Basically, no hermeneutics is more effective than a digital hermeneutic. Similarly, we go beyond the alternative of choosing between the virtual and the end of the virtual, as it is only because the digital takes some distance from the real that it can also appropriate it.

7 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ditorialisation.

Accessed 15 June 2017.

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11.3.2 Mythos It is on this distanciation-appropriation that the mythos of the digital is based. The logic of the software has strong analogies with the emplotment of narratives. Manovich (2013: 9) says that the software is behind all discussions about digital technologies: “If we limit critical discussions to the notions of ‘cyber’, ‘digital’, ‘Internet’, ‘networks’, ‘new media’, or ‘social media’, we will never be able to get to what is behind new representational and communication media and to understand what it really is and what it does. If we don’t address software itself, we are in danger of always dealing only with its effects rather than the causes”. Software is the foundation for all digital expressions, from the creation and sharing of cultural and social artifacts (a video on YouTube, a Wikipedia entry, a comment on Facebook, etc.) to how companies and institutions use digital traces left by users-consumers for commercial, surveillance, and other kinds of purposes. As for the logic of the software, Manovich (2013: 211) shows that it depends on two elements, the database and the algorithms: “To make an analogy with language, we can compare data structures to nouns and algorithms to verbs. To make an analogy with logic, we can compare them to subjects and predicates”. Today we refer mistakingly either to algorithms or (big) data. The function of algorithms is precisely to emplot, that is to organize and reorganize the data according to a certain spatiotemporal coherence: an Instagram image, for example, is a set of pixels to which different filters are applied; an Excel sheet of scientometric data downloaded from Scopus is a database on which several visualization algorithms can work; even the Web is, from a user perspective, a database on which algorithms like Google PageRank operate. This remains true even for algorithms of machine learning and pattern recognition, to which we must even attribute a way of “thinking”, as well as some autonomy and moral adaptability.

11.4 Conclusion The virtual has never ended because, as has been argued, the digital and its technologies are based on a double movement of distanciation and appropriation. Without distanciation, the digital simply could not have any effect on the world. In other words, from a material point of view, it is his ability to “transcode” everything that enables it to organize and reorganize the order of things. From a more phenomenological point of view, it is in its capacity to offer new patterns to human reason—increasingly a “computational” reason (Bachimont 2010)—that determines its heuristic function. A hermeneutic understanding of the digital has advantages of both ontological and epistemological order. From an epistemological point of view, it allows us to study the similarities and differences (the “transductions”, in the language of Gilbert Simondon) between reality and its representations, against any simple homology (Romele and Severo 2014). From an ontological point of view, it allows us to account for

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the “transductions” (the term, in Simondon, has an epistemological and ontological meaning) between human beings and machines, that is to say to establish differences starting from a new principle of symmetry. Indeed, while the principle of symmetry in Callon and Latour was still based on extrinsic properties, today we have to admit that humans and certain nonhumans have the same ability to figure, configure and reconfigure, i.e. a narrative and above all imaginative (in the sense of the Kantian productive imagination) capacity (Romele 2018). It is therefore the term “virtual” which takes a radically new meaning. If in the 1980s and 1990s, the word referred mainly to human powers, capacities and capabilities (digital was no more than an opportunity to reconfigure oneself), it should entail today that digital technologies have capacities and capabilities by themselves. They are able to act on us, positively or negatively, individually or collectively, and are increasingly independent from us, from our way of interpreting and understanding.

References Bachimont, Bruno. 2010. Le sens de la technique. Le numérique et le calcul. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Beaude, Boris. 2014. Les fins d’Internet. Limoges: FYP. Boyd, Danah. 2001. Sexing the Internet: Reflections on the Role of Identification in Online Communities. Paper presented at Sexualities, Media, Technologies, University of Surrey, 21–22 June 2001. http://www.danah.org/papers/SexingTheInternet.confe-rence.pdf. Accessed 8 June 2017. Capurro, Rafael. 2010. Digital Hermeneutics: An Outline. AI & Society 35: 35–42. Diamante, Oscar. 2014. The Hermeneutics of Information in the Context of Information Technology. Kritike 8: 168–189. Ferraris, Maurizio. 2014. Total Mobilization. The Monist 97: 201–222. Floridi, Luciano. 2010. Information. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Floridi, Luciano. 2014. The Fourth Revolution. How the Infosphere Is Reshaping Human Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Floridi, Luciano, and Sanders, Jeff. 2004. On the Morality of Artificial Agents. Minds and Machines, 349–379. Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Fuchs, Christian. 2014. Digital Labour and Karl Marx. New York: Routledge. Gerbaudo, Paolo. 2016. From Data Analytics to Data Hermeneutics. Online Political Discussions, Digital Methods and the Continuing Relevance of Interpretive Approaches. Digital Culture & Society, 2/2. https://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2016-0207. Heidegger, Martin. 1995. Aristotle’s Metaphysics 9, 1–3. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ihde, Don. 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld. From Garden to Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnosn. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Latour, Bruno. 1994. On Technical Mediation. Philosophy, Sociology, Genealogy. Common Knowledge 3 (2): 29–64. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2013. An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence. An Anthropology of the Moderns. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Law, John. 2009. Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics. In The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, ed. Bryan S. Turner, 141–158. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Lazer, David, Ryan Kennedy, Gary King, and Alessandro Vespignani. 2014. The Parable of Google Trends. Traps in Big Data Analysis. Science 343: 1203–1205. Manovich, Lev. 2013. Software Takes Command. London: Bloomsbury. Mohr, John, Wagner-Pacifici, Robin, and Breiger, Ronald. 2015. Toward a Computational Hermeneutics. Big Data & Society 2 (2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715613809. Rastier, François, and Bachimont, Bruno. 1998. Herméneutique matérielle et artéfacture: des machines qui pensent aux machines qui donnent à penser. Texto! Textes et Cultures. http://www. revue-texto.net/Lettre/Bachimont_Her-men.html. Accessed 15 June 2017. Ricoeur, Paul. 1984. Time and Narrative, I. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1991. From Text to Action. Essays in Hermeneutics, II. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Rogers, Richard. 2009. The End of the Virtual. http://www.govcom.org/rogers_paris_medialab.pdf. Accessed June 10 2017. Romele, Alberto. 2018. Imaginative Machines. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 22 (1): 98–125. Romele, Alberto, and Marta Severo. 2014. Une approche philosophique de la ville numérique: méthodes numériques et géolocalisation. In Devenirs urbains, ed. Marise Carmes and Jean-Max Noyer, 205–226. Paris: Presses des Mines. Romele, Alberto, and Marta Severo. 2016. The Economy of the Digital Gift. From Socialism to Sociality Online. Theory, Culture & Society 33: 43–63. Romele, Alberto, Francesco Gallino, Camilla Emmenegger, and Daniele Gorgone. 2017. Panopticism is Not Enough: Social Media as Technologies of Voluntary Servitude. Surveillance & Society 15: 204–221. Scholz, Trebor (ed.). 2013. Digital Labor. The Internet as Playground and Factory. New York: Routledge. Van Den Eede, Yoni. In Between Us: On the Transparency and Opacity of Technological Mediation. Foundations of Science 16: 139–159. Van Zundert, Joris. 2016. Screwmeneutics and Hermenumericals. The Computationality of Hermeneutics. In: A New Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, 331–347. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. Vattimo, Gianni. 2000. Histoire d’une virgule. Gadamer et le sens de l’être. Revue internationale de philosophie 213: 499–513. Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2003. Material Hermeneutics. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 6 (3): 181–184. Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2005. What Things Do. Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2013. Moralizing Technology. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus 109: 121–136. Zhao, Shanyang, Sherri Grasmuck, and Jason Martin. 2008. Identity Construction on Facebook: Digital Empowerement in Anchored Relationships. Computers in Human Behaviors 24: 1816–1836.

Alberto Romele is associate professor of philosophy of technology at Lille Catholic University. He is the author of Digital Hermeneutics: Philosophical Investigations in New Media and Technologies (2019).

Chapter 12

Virtuality Beyond Reproduction. Remarks on the History of Metaphysics Simone Guidi

Abstract This essay focuses on the ontology of the virtual, looking especially at its historical connection with today’s technology. The work begins by discussing the metaphysical structure of the Aristotelian dynamis, understood as the conceptual root of the Latin virtus. Reading Aristotle, especially through bergsonian concepts, I show how his dynamis allows a proto-deterministic account of spontaneity, strictly related to goal-oriented processes of human serial production and with the possibility of a homogeneous area of manipulation. Thus we stress how the ‘reproductive’ model works in every ontological account of the virtual and especially in the Renaissance ones, connected with the idea of a full “enginerization” of the real. The core of metaphysical virtuality seems to lie rather in an ontological account of “form” that denies its processual becoming and its process of stabilization through an infrastructure. Finally, I reject any ontological use of the virtual in teleonomy, especially in its metaphysical attempt to identify autopoiesis and mechanism, and I conclude by stressing how current digital technology is fully oriented to the reproductive model, conceptually rooted in a metaphysical account of the virtual.

12.1 Introduction In the popular understanding of technology, “virtual” and “digital” can be treated as synonyms, even though the two notions cover different conceptual fields: digital technology always belongs to the “virtual”—that is, it finds in the “virtual” a higher, ontological possibility of realization—but not everything “virtual” finds its realization in digital technology—that is, the “digital” is a specific kind of enactment of a wider region of the “virtual”. Such a structure inherits the premise of a classic metaphysical hypothesis about the reality-technology relationship, that is the demand to think of technological activity—and especially of technological representation—as placed within an already onto-technical area (the “virtual”). Reality would be ontologically (and not only S. Guidi (B) Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Braga (ed.), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art To Technology, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24751-5_12

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practically) manipulable, that is it would be naturally used in goal-oriented processes; accordingly, there would be a specific region of reality that is homogeneous to the processes of technological transformation, allowing us to understand the latter as provided with its own, “secondary” reality that can be put in continuity with the “primary” one. By operating within the domain of the “virtual”, technology would establish a stable and complete area of reality, a “world”, provided with its own objects and activities. Hence, the technological “world” would own an independent, internal phenomenology, able to make of it a fully technological and virtual “secondary” reality. In the following pages, we critically examine such a specific understanding of virtuality, trying to show that: (1) the idea of the “reality” of a technological simulation comes from the improper, ontological qualification of the concept of “virtual”; (2) that of the “virtual” is nothing but a regulative concept and its ontological understanding is the root of many metaphysical misunderstandings; (3) the very concept of “virtual” strictly depends on the way of operating of technological infrastructures and it even represents, from an abstract point of view, the improper ontologization of this way of operating.

12.2 Rejecting Spontaneity: Aristotle’s Mirage Our common meaning of the “virtual” finds its roots in Aristotle’s thought, even if it actually does not come entirely from him. The very invention of the word virtus must actually be attributed to medieval Aristotelianism, pushed to coin such a concept for philological and theoretical reasons. They were seeking a name for a notion that Aristotle theoretically introduced, leaving it without a specific name. Medieval philosophers derived the world virtualis from the Latin vis (power), from which the word virtus, “capability, strength”, derives. That of “capability” may nowadays seem like a familiar concept, but—rather than its self-evidence—such a popularity shows its nature as a metaphysical fossil. The genesis of the Latin virtus is nevertheless tied to a major conundrum in the History of Philosophy, as virtus is actually thought of as a specific translation of the Greek dynamis—the Aristotelian potency—as it is taken in contrast with the passive form of the verb, the dynaton—the Aristotelian “possible”. The latter is something that can be produced, enacted, by a power that Aristotle demands to be in a dynamis understood qua dynamis, that is before the very, actual process of the energhein. Thus, the word virtus gives a name to a paradoxical “active power” of being a potency (see Met.  1, 1046 a 19–29) that did not have a specific term in the Greek doctrine, even if it was partially theorized by its author. Among many texts, Heidegger’s reading of Metaphysics , 1–3 (1995) is the sharpest in showing how crucial is the context in which the concept of capability is philosophically justified. From a theoretical point of view, Aristotle’s point is by no means obvious, and it actually represents one of the most crucial theoretical choices

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in the entire History of Metaphysics, that is the granting to the concept of act and potency an ontological value, rejecting the possibility of a true spontaneity. The act-potency couple allows many possible uses and interpretations. Among them, there is one consistent with a fully non-Platonic idea of nature: a descriptive, non-ontological value of both the concepts that understands the process of transformation qua process, and avoids introducing any transcendental, prescriptive entity, or making this process a stable region of being. Let us read this concept in the words of Henri Bergson, the first author that directly superseded the ontological approach of Plato and Aristotle: This reality is mobility. Not things made, but things in the making: not self-maintaining states, but only changing states, exist. Rest is never more than apparent, or, rather, relative. […] All reality, therefore, is tendency, if we agree to mean by tendency an incipient change of direction (Bergson 2002: 274).

According to this conception: (1) all processes would be ontologically free and spontaneous; (2) in their being, it would be impossible to isolate any “moment” or “part” from the whole of their “being-a-process”; (3) act and potency, entelechia and dynamis, could be individuated only relatively, since their individuation would be logical, and not ontological; (4) the entelechia and the dynamis will be nothing but two indivisible sides of the same entity; (5) the essence of such a reality, as well as the essence of all its objects, would be the radical multiplicity resulting from the multiple “moments” making up each event. In this world, there would not be room for any ontological or metaphysical understanding of conservation and substantiality that could easily be reduced to the continuous repetition or variation of the same-but-always-different process. The concept of “repetition” is here borrowed from the lexicon of Bergson, Tarde and Deleuze (see Jankélévitch 1959, Ansell-Pearson 2001, Vitali-Rosati 2009: 163–69; 2012) where it is used as a synonym of variation and as an opposite of “replication” and “reproduction”. Substantiality does not lie in the concretization of an abstract similarity—the replicability of something previously prepared for happening—but rather in variation, a repetition that keeps its internal multiplicity unaltered, as well as its continuous difference and novelty: The likeness between individuals of the same species has thus an entirely different meaning, an entirely different origin, to that of the likeness between complex effects obtained by the same composition of the same causes (Bergson 1944: 247).

Two stones can fall in the same way, but this does not imply that their “sameness” has an ontological value. They act regularly without expressing any metaphysical “regularity”. Even the common or recurrent causes of that behaviour can be clearly understood without granting to their causality any ontological or prescriptive value (X is the cause of Y), but only a descriptive one (X acts as the cause of Y). Such a model understands indeed physical phenomena without assuming their inner intelligibility, and strictly reduces their essence to their behaviour. From an ontological perspective (what phenomena are), it is misleading to postulate in physical things a (metaphysical) essence, a cause or a “reason” of their behaviour; instead,

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on a practical level (what phenomena do), one can easily and rightfully describe them from their “effects”. Conversely, the “Aristotelian” understanding of physical change finds its roots in the (still-Platonic) demand for a logical preeminence (see especially Met.  8) of the state of actuality (the effects); and, accordingly, for the idea of a previously, teleological determination of every process (the “causes” and their actualization) towards their outcomes (X acts as the cause of the generation of Y, since it metaphysically is its cause). Such a structure asks Aristotle for an ontological understanding of the potency (X is the potency of Y, instead of X makes Y), able to individuate in the process X some specific and ontological causes for the generation of Y (and not Z), as if the process could be reversed and started again ad infinitum. In this sense, Aristotle’s turning point comes especially in Metaphysics  3, with the confutation of the Megarics’ doctrine (1046 b 29—1047 b 37). Here he denies any possibility for the potency to be reduced to its enactment, and thus to an actual energheia (the making, not ontologically) oriented toward its entelechia (Met.  3, 1047 a 18—1047 b 37). A musician is a such even when not enacting his playing, as his capability persists beyond the end of its actualization. As Heidegger argues, the Aristotle-Megarics debate is developed along the internal modulation of a common philosophical parenthood. Their common term is a philosophy of being rooted in eleatism, including its need to explain movement and generation within an ontological conceptual framework. Heidegger’s idea is that Aristotle pursues Plato’s breaking with Parmenides’ denials of movement, providing a new perspective, able to give dignity to change in being. But he seems to forget that providing an explanatory model of something does not coincide with the understanding of it. Aristotle’s account comes actually within a (very refined) version of the same eleatic model, and this makes his solution nothing but a reduction of the problem to its demanded explanatory framework. What Heidegger disregards is indeed that the background of Metaphysics  3 is not the simple “presentialist” account of becoming—in which Aristotle and the Megarics are actually opposed (as the first predicates the reality of the potency and of change whereas the second argue its continuous reference to the act)—but rather a common eleatic denial of a pure spontaneity of generation and kinesis. Both Aristotle and the Megarians exclude a priori the possibility of a radical, uncontrolled and unfinalized process of change (that nevertheless has a specific outcome), inseparable from that actual reality it continuously renews. The Megarians’ solution is to think of generation as strictly predetermined by the act: potency has no reality but that of the enactment (as energeia). By a more subtle strategy, Aristotle does nothing that is actually different. Even in theorizing an ontological independence of the dynamis qua virtus from its actual enactment (Met.  3, 1047 a 17–24), he introduces in the logic of the process the need for the dependence of the potency on a logical (Met.  8, 1049 b 12–19) and a teleological (Met.  8, 1050 a 7–10) pre-determination, which makes it fit perfectly with the subsequent act. Paradoxically, the Aristotelian dynamis qua dynamis, the principle of change, is always logically the virtus of something pre-determined (playing, swimming,

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reading, living, etc.…) whereas, from the ontological side, it is conceived in a the “negative” form of the unenacted capability (see especially Agamben 2014): the musician is the one who may not be currently playing, as the eyes are able to not see anything (for the possible as non-impossible see Met.  4). Anyway, this account of the dynamis excludes the possibility of a pure, spontaneous (that is: not logically pre-determined or ordered) dynamis (that would coincide, instead, with the very act of “being in the making”): that which is ‘capable’ is capable of something determined and at some time in some way (with all the other qualifications which must be present in the definition). (Met.  5, 1047 b 35–1048 a 2)

Thus, Aristotelian processes of change are self-controlled and self-ordered but not spontaneous, since they are meant as actualized by an agent that has the virtus of something logically represented exactly as it would be in an act. Accordingly, the act is doubled: it is (1) in the act itself as the actualization of a “potency”, and (2) in a previous potency, prepared to it from its very essence. Using Deleuze’s words, “to the extent that the possible is open to ‘realisation’, it is understood as an image of the real, while the real is supposed to resemble the possible” (Deleuze 1994: 212). In such a way, Aristotle manages to reserve an ontological dignity for a specific model of spontaneity (or random happening) that he calls automaton (Ph. II, 4, 195 b 31). This word can be translated as “acting by itself”, since it comes from the (méntis, thought), meaningfully revealing Greek autós and the indo-european the idea of an action continuously led by an inner logical principle that pre-orders its own activity. According to Aristotle’s famous explanations (Ph. II, 5–6; Met. Z, 1032 b 22–31), spontaneous “automatic” activities (like those happening by chance) are nothing but teleologically (previously) oriented processes, deviated by accidents towards the failure of the expected outcome (see the “in vain” of Ph. II, 6, 197 b 23–32) and the constitution of another teleological-like event (a goal). Significantly, Aristotle holds that accidents are (accidental) causes of spontaneous goals, but since they have no determined cause, their cause is undetermined (Met.  30, 1025 a 24–25; Met. E 2, 1027 a 5–8) and they are even “akin to non-being” (Met. E 2, 1026 b 21). Because of their nature, accidents cannot operate on the level of the “natural” teleo-logic of the virtus, which continuously determinates the substantial events. Accordingly, Aristotle theorizes what we might call a logical determinism (every process is logically finalized), even if not a physical determinism (within such a logical structure, the becoming can or cannot go towards a specific direction (see the famous De int., 9, 19 a 30–33) and can be altered by accidents). Therefore, all “normal” processes are thought of as ruled by an “operational scheme” finalized to the goal of a determined outcome, which Aristotle improperly attributes to the level of being, instead of to those of action.

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12.3 Teleologies, Homogeneity and the Symbol A masterful analysis of such a misunderstanding is provided again by Bergson in Time and Free Will (2001 but see also the very relevant Bergson 2016: 17–68, for a comprehensive analysis of the discontinue nature of symbols; see already Bergson 2014). Here Bergson dealt with the metaphysical rejection of spontaneity, describing it as the reduction of “sequences” to “simultaneities”, as the transformation of “progresses” and “directions” into “things” (Bergson 2001: 113), and as the substitution of the “trajectory” for the “path”. The conversion of freedom into the “mechanical oscillation between two points”—two pre-figured choices—is nevertheless, for Bergson, the common core of determinism and dynamism, as it shows a teleological structure. “Once the figure is constructed”, explains Bergson, “we go back in imagination into the past and will have it that our […] activity has followed exactly the path traced out by the figure” (Bergson 2001: 181). The “sequence” of the beingin-making (that is radically multiple, free and not logically pre-determined) is thus substituted by the “simultaneity” of the reconstruction, in which the becoming is divided into “moments”, linked in a succession oriented toward the (already-got) goal. Such a psychological remark will gain a metaphysical dimension especially in The Possible and the Real, where (inspired by Jankélévitch 1959: 2), Bergson will directly attack the concept of “possibility”: As reality is created as something unforeseeable and new, its image is reflected behind it into the indefinite past; thus it finds that it has from all time been possible, but it is at this precise moment that it begins to have been always possible, and that is why I said that its possibility, which does not precede its reality, will have preceded it once the reality has appeared. The possible is therefore the mirage of the present in the past (Bergson 2002: 229).

The “possible” which Bergson is referring to is a traditional notion, but it clearly finds in Aristotle’s dynamis qua dynamis a metaphysical turning point. It is not by chance that, in On Interpretation, the dynaton can be found as strictly joined to the virtus, the capability of animated or inanimated things of triggering determined processes, led by logical teleologies: ‘Possible’ itself is ambiguous. It is used, on the one hand, of facts and of things that are actualized; it is ‘possible’ for someone to walk, inasmuch as he actually walks, and in general we call a thing ‘possible’, since it is now realized. On the other hand, ‘possible’ is used of a thing that might be realized; it is ‘possible’ for someone to walk, since in certain conditions he would (De int., ch. 13, 23 a 8–23 a 13).

In both its senses, the logical possibility is thought of as radically connected with the pre-determination—and even with the definition—of its possible actualization. Something can walk since it is actually walking, or because it has the capability to walk, and specific conditions for the actualization are granted (see Met.  5, 1048 a 15–24). Hence, in its purest form, the “possible” is the ontological nihil obstat for the actualization of something logically determined and pre-figured in the current capability of an agent or in a given context (Met.  7, 1048 b 37—1049 a b 18). Such

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a virtus can later remain unenacted or be enacted, providing two different forms of the same, abstract possibility. Even the famous sea-fight of On Interpretation, 9 looks like a consequence of that conceptual framework. According to Aristotle, a given X (the sea-fight) can be enacted (XA ) or not (X¬A ), and even if “no necessity is there, however, that it should come to pass or should not”, “what is necessary is that it either should happen tomorrow or not” (De int. 9, 19 a 29–32). But such a conclusion finds a crucial premise in the representation of the sea-fight as a virtual contingency, independent of both its happening or non-happening (De int. 9, 18 b 20–25). Accordingly, XA and X¬A are thought of as two independent possibilities, whereas the “fork” should rather oppose the actual, positive happening of X (the battle) or the actual, as much positive happening of X1 , X2 , X3 , etc. (something else; Bergson 1944: 254–258). In this case, there is not any ontological necessity that either X and XN should occur tomorrow or not, but only the logical necessity that the abstract, non-ontological possibility of X will correspond or not with an independently-generated, actual, matter of fact. By the introduction of an ontological abstraction, the virtus—which would intermediate between transformation processes and their result in the entelechia—Aristole manages to explain why, in any process of change, a logical substantiality would be (teleo-logically) kept stable by the regularity of the concrete natural processes of generation. This also allows him to avoid placing the logical level that orders the kinesis, what is possible, as abstracted to the process of generation. In Metaphysics  4, indeed, Aristotle openly established that the dynaton depends directly on what can be really enacted. Hence the logical possibility derives from the capability of the natural agents of doing something (or not); but such agents are already directed towards specific goals, prescribed by their virtus. It is worth noticing that the metaphysical action of the Aristotelian virtus seems really close to those criticized by Bergson’s concept of “homogeneous time”: an intermediate entity between duration and space through which the process, in its becoming, is always represented “under the form of simultaneity” (Bergson 2001: 180). In “homogeneous time” the sequence, the action, is continuously understood as a line of already-given integral points, a network of simultaneous instants seen from above their flowing. Yet, such an overlapping is made possible especially by a symbolic entity, geometry, that provides an abstract level on which the becoming can be divided and repositioned. In order to analyze the concept of virtus, the ontology of the fractive–and–reconstructive mechanism attributed by Bergson to the geometrical space is crucial. According to Bergson, the geometrical space is nothing but an “interruption” of duration, a discontinuity generated from the limitation of the sequence (pure multiplicity), which converts the qualitative into a quantitative dimension. “Extension”, Bergson explains, “appears only as a tension which is interrupted” (Bergson 1944: 267) and geometry is a “diagram of infinite divisibility” (Bergson 1991: 206). A crucial point is that such an “interruption” is realized by perception in the symbolic activity of coordinating a schematic motion, a reflex movement, with reality. In Matter and Memory, Bergson thinks indeed of perception as fully finalized to action, an automatic scheme of the body that receives the input of external objects

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and immediately converts it into the output of a re-action. Hence, by acting on the plan of a pure operation, perception uses geometry as an order of “symbols”, a homogenous language able to finalize the mind for matter and matter for the mind. Perception ideally “covers” reality with a Cartesian plane, treating it as if its essence was geometrical, and acting towards its goal in the same language as geometry: in order to divide the real in this manner, we must first persuade ourselves that the real is divisible at will. Consequently we must throw beneath the continuity of sensible qualities, that is to say, beneath concrete extensity, a network, of which the meshes may be altered to any shape whatsoever and become as small as we please (Bergson 1991: 209–10).

So, unlike Aristotle’s dynamis, Bergson’s homogeneous space does not work as a metaphysical entity but rather as a logical map of finalized action, a symbolic diagram of possible (understood operatively) goals: The distance which separates our body from an object really measures, therefore, the greater or less imminence of a danger, the nearer or more remote fulfillment of a promise. And, consequently, our perception of an object distinct from our body, separated from our body by an interval, never expresses anything but a virtual action (Bergson 1991: 56–57; see also Ibidem: 144 and Bergson 1944: 228 ff).

Like Aristotle’s the concept of “virtual” is used here by Bergson with the meaning of “possible”; but also, unambiguously, as a circular activity, whose ontology is fully reducible to action. Its virtuality is not ontological, but performative. The virtual is the purpose of a goal launched outside in matter and then teleologically recovered as a relationship between the mind and its object, as measuring. On the “screen” of this map perception can ideally convert the free process in terms of simultaneity, in a collection of crystallized moments of action, as if it was already finished. Bergson’s concept of space is thus less far than one could think from Heidegger’s ready-to-hand. But what is relevant here is the idea that action can be projected only in the homogeneous, representative space of symbols. Classic metaphysics instead misunderstands the symbol as an “image”, inevitably falling into a deterministic view: “we give a mechanical explanation of the fact”, and a mechanical scheme of action too, “and then substitute the explanation for the fact itself” (Bergson 1944: 181). Therefore, Bergson’s symbolic homogeneity perfectly describes the performative and “active” ontology of the virtus without including it in reality. The symbolic scheme acts introducing a teleology, and “finalizing” things toward possible actions. Thus, it converts the process into a circuit, spreading its sequence on the “eternal present” of simultaneity and continuously breaking-and-rebuilding the original continuity of the performance into an operative-oriented space. But its improper “ontologization” in the Aristotelian virtus leads us to think of the always-new repetition as an essential repeatability of the phenomenon, based on a teleo-logical capability of its causal conditions.

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12.4 The Worker and the Creative A meaningful question is now: why did classical Metaphysics attribute an ontological value to a scheme that properly works for goal-directed actions? Because the model adopted by Aristotle to think of spontaneous generations is actually taken from human production. It is not by chance that Aristotle’s model is perfectly understandable in explaining goal-directed human actions, but, when it tries to explain the ontological essence of natural, non-human activities, it triggers the paradoxical need to place in the object’s ontology the regulative, symbolic representation of the virtus. The presence of a hidden technical scheme under Aristotle’s teleological model is nevertheless suggested by Bergson again, and thus developed by Simondon. Bergson’s contribution is crucial especially in pointing out the metaphysical connection between technology and teleology, which Simondon would think of as an “inner resonance” of technological artifacts (Simondon 1958: 20). Nevertheless, in Creative Evolution he criticized teleology as a theory that “likens the labor of nature to that of the workman, who also proceeds by the assemblage of parts with a view to the realization of an idea or the imitation of a model” (Bergson 1944: 99). And again, in The Possible and the Real, he remarked how insurmountable metaphysical problems “arise […] from our habit of transposing into fabrication what is creation” (Bergson 2002: 226). It is not by chance that Aristotle—save for human free actions led by desire—treats natural and artificial teleological events exactly as having analogous causes of generation, that is the non-rational or the rational agents, whose actions are teleologically oriented. Aristotle openly argues that teleology joins both technical production and natural generation (Ph. II 8; Met. Z 7) and also that artificial goal-directed processes provide us with a model to think of natural ones (Ph. II 8, 199 a 16–19). It should not be forgotten that, in the Aristotelian world, the main actor of teleology is the eidos, or form. Aristotle seems to be continuing that of Plato, who tried to think of a productive process as aimed at a stable (and even separate) logical goal, and such a goal as nothing but the logical portrait of the “productive scheme” of teleological, artificial processes. As Cassirer remarks in his Form and Technology, when Plato develops the relationship between “idea” and “appearence” and seeks to justify it systematically, he does not seek to ground it in the shapes of nature but in the products and organization of téchne. The art of the “craftsman”, the “demiurge”, provides him with one the great motifs with which he represents the meaning of the idea (Cassirer 2012: 19).

Simondon (1958: 241) also points out that Aristotelian hylomorphism represents “the transposition into philosophical thought of the technical operation, drawn from labor and taken as the universal paradigm for the genesis of beings”. This “analogic” model of explanation implicitly represents the becoming acting like a workman who shapes some clay, repeating a specific sequence of actions depending on the model he wants to reproduce. Such a model obviously works fine as long as it is considered as an operative scheme for planning actions, or at least a model to understand spontaneous events as

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if they were produced by man. Acting teleologically in the world, we introduce-andfind in reality a project that is in our mind, a general “simultaneity” of the process that works only as our “map” in acting (so, it is restricted to the operative ontology of action). We develop our activity following this map, and then we recognize it as if it was previously marked out in reality; a real diagram of production which would come before the process itself. As in the case of Bergson’s symbolic-driven actions, “animated” actors are able to project and goal-direct a process of production since they can control and use a symbolic apparatus, the mind, which allows them to “homogenize” the external reality and action, thinking of reality as if the action was pre-contained in it. But, as soon as we try to make productive teleology the model for a natural generation process, a paradox arises: where is the symbolic scheme contained? For the Aristotelian dynamis qua dynamis, it lies in the capability of the agent, or, literally, in a current status of things that makes (the nihil obstat) the potency possible. Metaphysics  12 even defines potency as “a source of movement or change, which is in another thing than the thing moved or in the same thing qua other” (1019 a 15). Aristotle’s pure dynamis introduces the idea of a real scheme of the process, a general nihil obstat of reality that converts it to a screen on which the agent can symbolize the action in the form of simultaneity. Such a “presence” of the potency in another thing, or in the same thing qua other, could be understood in many ways, even if without ever actually going out of the “productive”, teleological scheme in which the virtus is radically thought of. In its entry for Baldwin’s Dictionary (1902) Peirce, inspired by Scotus (see infra), defines the virtual as “something, not an X, which has the efficiency (virtus) of an X”, being the first to stress how such a notion “has been seriously confounded with ‘potential’ which is almost its contrary”. A virtual velocity, Peirce explains, “is something not a velocity, but a displacement; but equivalent to a velocity in the formula, “what is gained in velocity is lost in power’” (Pierce 1902: 763–4). According to Peirce, a virtual Z is thus a Y able to act in X as a Z, that is producing the same effects as Z. It is not hard to see that Peirce’s definition is also based on the Aristotelian understanding of the virtus as the capability of producing a determined X, based on which a cause Z of X can be replaced by another cause Y, given its abstract equivalence in terms of causation. Pierce’s entry notoriously inspires Deleuze, who will merge it with Bergson’s concept of virtual, proposing the virtual as an “obscure and distinct” coexistence of multiplicity, an inner difference and—he says—an area of differentiation. Even if coming from Bergson’s and Simondon’s philosophy of the process, Deleuze’s attempt to think of the virtual on a “univocist” ontological background thus risks paradoxically reanimating metaphysical positions. Especially Badiou (2000) has stressed how the virtual is, for Deleuze, a different name for Being, and how the author reveals a proximity even with neo-Platonism. The Deleuzian virtual would act as a “ground” beneath the actual and as a neoplatonic One, a unity, a totality of differentiation. Ansell-Pearson (2001: 96 ff.) has perfectly remarked that Badiou’s judgement needs to be corrected recognizing that Deleuze’s ‘Being’ is not transcendent nor emanative like the neo-Platonic One.

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Nevertheless, Deleuze thinks of the virtual both as an immanent area for differentiation and as the fact that any being cannot get a complete determination. The virtual is this ontological “coexistence”, in which all beings differentiate themselves from others without converting differentiation into this completeness, in an individual substance or differentiation. Such an area is hence a positive place of the difference, and together the condition of a differentiation that is originally thought of as combined with indeterminacy. Deleuze notoriously opposes the virtual to the actual (but not to the real) because of its non fully completed determination. He argues as if not being fully determined was equivalent to not being fully determining. Deleuze’s virtual thus acts like a cause, and signally as an immanent efficient, productive presence of the formal distinction as the cause of beings thought of as the results of the very formal distinction. The core of Deleuze’s argument is the overturning of Bergson’s “operative” notion of virtual. Bergson starts to use this term univocally in Matter and Memory, so in the years in which he knows Tarde and his works (see especially 1895, 1910). Inspired by Leibniz, Tarde often uses ‘virtual’ to talk of forces of action or generation, what he defines as “sources of possibilities” (1910: 12) or a “surplus of the potency on the act” (1910: 15). According to Tarde, the laws of physics “virtually” open an ontological door to the many possibilities of bodies’ behavior, like hunger. This concept again takes its roots in the Aristotelian dynamis, and it seems really close to Deleuze’s account of virtual as an “area of problematization”. Yet Bergson uses Tarde’s notion always referring to activities and never attributing to it an ontological meaning. A single recollection exists, for Bergson, in the state of a virtuality because it can be operatively “extracted” from memory; but memory does not represent—as Deleuze (1991: 55–72) claims—a preliminary ontological area. The ontological preeminence is rather placed by Bergson in multiplicity: quality, memory, sensation are intrinsically multiple, thus single qualities, memories, sensations are virtually enactable from this multiplicity. Furthermore, Bergson’s famous rejection of the “nothing” (1944) coincides with the idea of a pure actuality, in which an act passes into another one. The virtual comes from the multiplicity of the act and not as an inner engine of their difference. On the contrary, Deleuze makes the virtual and the multiplicity coincide in his concept of “internal difference”: multiplicity would flow out from a demanded ‘virtual’ essence just as the virtual is the “internal” differentiation of a multiplicity; its reproduction. What in Bergson was the “positive” account of difference is an ontological multiplicity that comes before the virtual, and not a logical, even if immanent force, the virtual, with which multiplicity produces itself. We can fairly say, hence, that Deleuze “ontologize[s] the conception of creative evolution” (Ansell-Pearson 2001: 113) and, overall, that he ontologizes Simondon’s concept of “pre-individual”. What Deleuze seems not to grasp is that the historical failure of classical, fundamental ontology does not mereley lie in its bad understanding as unity instead of multiplicity, but rather in a demanded prescriptive nature, which it takes from a productive, teleological model. Hence, we can agree with Badiou in seeing a connection between Deleuze and classical philosophy of Being, even if the major reference should be sought in Spinoza

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and—especially—in Scotus. Deleuze’s “One”, the virtual, is not emanative but immanent only because it develops itself using Scotus’ formal distinction (two beings can be distinguished—or differentiated—even if they are actually unseparated—or not differentiated), which was dormant in Peirce’s definition of the virtual. This would allow Deleuze to think of determination as a pure free process if he did not reintroduce a prescriptive substance. He indeed doubles the formal making of formal distinctness, the ontological virtual understood as Being-only-as-formally-distinct, a condition of possibility for formal distinction, the virtual being understood as the expression of this virtuality. Such a movement allows Deleuze to retrieve Spinoza too, thinking of the ‘formal’ as a substance, a canvas entirely coinciding with its wrinkles. The doubling of the formal dimension hence entails the reintroduction of an ontological self-causation that is a form of circular predetermination: the formal distinction comes as always contained in its own identity, as it was causally predetermined by its double presence, both in the formal distinction, as the result, and in its coincidence with the immanent distinctness that it funds, as the retrospective cause. A recursive circle here ‘causalizes’ the formal distinction, transforming it into a logical stability. The canvas is made up of its wrinkles. The wrinkles are the cause of a canvas made up of its wrinkles. It is not by chance that Deleuze’s rhizomatic ontology has been commonly identified with an ontology of autopoiesis (which we will discuss infra), especially of networks and systems, and with an ontological (mis)understanding of cybernetics (Marks 2006). Processes, individuation, organization would be ontological since multiple Being is coincident with the multiple becoming of its beings. But here again the virtual keeps in itself the teleological idea of a productive force recognized ex post, or during the activity; so one can fairly talk of the virtualization of something during an actualization—like Bergson and, for instance, Lévy (1995, 1998)—but we are not allowed to talk of the virtual, as an ontological structure for a new univocity of the Being.

12.5 Infrastructure, Formalization and Control The analysis of the Aristotelian dynamis qua dynamis revealed its fundamental connection with the idea of a logical “presence” of the future in the present—in the potency of the agent’s capability, or in given, positive conditions of the present state. Nevertheless, according to Metaphysics  12, the “source of movement” and enactment of the potency literally is in the context, as an ontological, symbolic scheme available for the teleological action. Now, such a logical presence of the process’ goal in both the present and the future, seems granted by Aristotle’s believing that: (1) everything has a formal organization that works like the logical driver of teleologies; (2) all the teleologies are forms acting towards other specific forms; (3) the current (innate or acquired) formal organization of things grants them specific capabilities, that can also be found in nature; (5) the virtus would always be the capability of

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“forming” something; (6) hence, this capability is an ontological feature of things (the musician is capable of playing, even when not actually playing). Hence, in Aristotle’s idea, the logical (and supposedly real) dimension of the “forms” acts like a natural but abstract, homogeneous “geometry”, through which the becoming is spontaneously divided into “states” or “things”; each of these present segments would be logically oriented by the presence of a capability or a potentiality, towards the generation of other logically-given “states” or “things”. Accordingly, Aristotelian reality develops itself along a logical web of logical connections; and things are continuously wrapped in the virtual dimension of formality: they are themselves but, at the same time, they are also the (re)production of a potency, contained in a previously actual state: they are real but their essence and functioning is logically ideal, the effect of an eidos. In order to better analyze the metaphysical roots of the concept of “virtual”, we would like to show that the very idea of a stable, metaphysical reality of forms comes from an improper “ontologization” of a teleological model of “production”, and thus from the misunderstanding of a operative stabilization as an ontological stability. Especially, we will argue that: (1) form can be understood as the emergent outcome of an operative, non-ontological process of “formalization” and as the very process of metastabilization of this process; (2) indeed, the form can be improperly considered as ontologically real—as Aristotle does—only thanks to the real and recursive shaping action of an apparatus of stabilization of this homogeneity, which is an infrastructure teleologically aimed at it. The hidden function of an activity of shaping is thus fundamental to converting something into its formal model, allowing metaphysics to improperly claim that: (2.1) the same X would lie, at the same time, in two different places (the virtual and the actual), as it was originally a reproduction of a model (as if there was not an original); (2.2) that this supposed reproducibility, would be natural instead of the outcome of a recursive process of maintenance-and-repetition. The specific feature of the metaphysical understanding of the “forms” is the request for a formal reality, that is an environment in which its formality can be considered as real. Reality would be continuously self-formed, self-formal and selfformalizable, a regular environment in which all forms are kept stable and identifiable, and the formal “transferability” of the virtus (Y is in X) from one form to another (YZ has become Z) is granted. Given the constant becoming of things, such a formal regularity can only be the result of an ordering activity that can be thought of: (1) as immanent to nature’s processes (as Aristotle does); (2) as external to nature’s processes. In the first case, we are back to the paradox of the metaphysical reality of forms: how can such a metaphysical activity be naturally oriented towards “productions” and keep forms stable and identifiable without an already-formal environment? Let us consider the second possibility. In the metaphysical model, implicitly inspired by teleological, productive activities, we have seen that the virtus needs a subject or rather a substratum in which to operate, like an actual context or an agent. The substratum is itself (a given X), but its reality is also used as a formally homogeneous “screen”, whose disposition (or

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nihil obstat) makes the emergence of the goal (Z) possible, and so it makes the virtus of Z (YZ ) “real”. That is because the metaphysical understanding of the concept of virtus (YZ ) improperly recognizes an ontological stability to the process of using a substratum (X: for instance, the Aristotelian hyle) in order to shape and recursively metastabilize the organization, or “formalization” that individuates something else (Z). As Simondon remarks (2005: 46), the hylomorphic scheme takes nothing but the extremities of the technological activity, forgetting the “mediation” of the process itself; such a mediation lies especially in a process that can never free itself from an abstract side (Simondon 1958: 19–49), and that can increase or decrease its level of internal determination, but never really deny its shaping activity (Ibidem: 74–5). A letter is written on a paper sheet, used as the substratum of writing; its “formal” reality comes not from its metaphysical structure, but rather from the fact that the sign “can” continuously be reproduced thanks to an availability of paper sheets. Only thanks to given conditions—that is to the availability of a passive substratum, is a “matter”—the act of formalization of something (Z) instituted and repeated, making a “form” permanently “possible”. Given the (neutralized) substratum X, the same Z can indeed be obtained at will, converting its concrete “repeatability” into an abstract “reproducibility” and also making possible the emergent, “virtual” presence of YZ in X (that is, the possibility of generating Z at will). We can formalize, for instance, what ideally happens to a sphere S on a downhill road using Galileo’s inclined plane, P. A collection of single throws (T1 , T2 , T3 , Tn ) on a real road would cause single, non-formalizable experiences (“repetitions”); but the availability of P, projected as a homogeneous environment for the action of measuring, makes it possible to understand them as “reproductions” (T1,2,3,n ) of the phenomenon; that is: as they would all follow a unique “simultaneous” scheme of (re)production. Thanks to the substratum P, indeed, the “form” T has been logically generated, and the various T1 , T2 , T3 , Tn have been converted into a series, generated by the “virtual” presence of T in P (that is, out of the ontological understanding: the availability of P for the “serialization” of T). The reality of formalities lies therefore in nothing but their possible reproduction in a substratum, and thus it firstly depends on the possibility of acting unimpededly towards a goal on that substratum. Yet, such a possibility is neither ontological nor strictly logical, but operative—since it is the full and constant availability of a passive substratum for an specific action. Hence, the logical root of form lies in its actual implementation, and the latter is nothing but the fact that we have complete, stable and total control of something that is reduced to a substratum, now aimed at the virtual (re)production of the formalizable X. But is there something that is ontologically a substratum? Or what makes this substratum a substratum? The idea of an ontological substratum, a pure hyle that virtually hosts all the possible forms and that a virtus can naturally shape in all the directions, is metaphysical and naïve, and it again seems to come from the improper misunderstanding of technical production and natural generation. In the logic of productions the first substratum is obtained from the “capture” of a “resource” (for

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instance, the geological status of rocks, or the biological life of trees or animals) and from a mechanism of stabilization of such a domain. This mechanism, which we will call “infrastructure”, always implies the use of a symbolic apparatus that individuates something as a substratum, and teleologically uses on it goal-oriented tools (a hammer, a saw, a fence, etc.). Once it is implemented, the “infrastructure” allows us to deal with the resources as they were naturally aimed at our goal, that is, as they permanently had an essential “form”, teleologically oriented towards a specific production.1 Thus, the substratum is understood as the “matter of”, stabilizing the repeated action as a “capability” and clearing the way for an ontological (mis)understanding of the “virtus of”. Aristotle’s idea of a given virtus seems indeed to metaphysically portray a society in which the workforce and its maintenance are given and are kept steady and regular by slavery (see Simondon 1958: 86–8). A zero-degree of the system keeps our capability to do some actions unaltered. There is no real change in society, the order is permanent and logic can crystallize, describe and universalize it, discarding the processes that maintain this energy stable. Like pure dynamis, the slave is, for Aristotle, an “instrument” and “not his own, but totally another’s” (Pol. I, 4). He is part of the social workforce, but he is radically excluded from government and the management of the city (Pol. I, 5). Likewise, the musician is born as a musician, so he does not need to continuously practise to keep his capability. The slave is simply naturally oriented to slavery, he is energy to automatize and teleologically confirm some environmental conditions.

12.6 Allopoiesis Generalis As we sketched before, a relevant feature of Aristotelian dynamis qua dynamis lies in its supposed capability of processes to teleologically control themselves (as) from the outside, as if they were moved by an inner project and technologically steered to (re)production of logically given “forms”. The “homogeneous”, representative space of the virtual is supposed to be in reality, continuously working in containing spontaneity within a linear chain of reproductive relationships. Over and over again, dynamis would shape the actual in the reproduction of “possibilities” determined by the actual status, ordering the first towards the second. What is crucial here is therefore how the reality of the dynamis qua dynamis helps Aristotle to metaphysically hypothesize a conservation of an order of the process out of the process itself. Potency would have the capability of being spontaneously under the control of the act, and of transmitting this order to the following one. It ideally keeps stable any generation, converting its spontaneous multiplicity into the 1 Later,

the concept of “infrastructure” can be also be used relatively and mereologically, since it can individuates an already-formed techno-teleological apparatus—for instance, the collection of technologies A1 (A1.1 + A1.2 + A1.3 , etc.)—ordered in the view of the formalization (that is, the “reproducibility”) of a “secondary” one, A2 (in turn, A2 can be the “infrastructure” of A3 , as well as A0 could be the infrastructure of A1 , and so on).

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flowing of pre-ordered, (re)productive series. It is not by chance that, especially from the Middle Ages, the notion of virtual will be developed in connection with the idea of God as a universal Architect of the world, and his ordered or unordered power of generation. Historically, the concept of virtual shifts little by little from Aristotle’s dynamis to Scotus’, Peirce’s (and actually Deleuze’s) notion. Since its function is to control processes, it can be reduced to a formal name for a fully overdetermined causation, a formal dimension opened by the statement that the whole of the possible process always happens within a logical order that reflects a real one. Accordingly, virtuality becomes a full teleology (whatever God wants is virtually already done) that wraps and prepares ontology, projecting in it an entire world of possibilities (formally predetermined actions with a virtual existence). We can find this account of the “virtual” already sketched in Aquinas’ dealing with the distinction between God’s attributes. Such a distinction can be made, even if none of them actually have an independent existence from the others, as well as from God’s substance. Similarly, Aquinas defines as “virtual” the status of the whole of Creation in God’s essence, “in which originally and virtually every being pre-exists in its first cause” (ST I, q. 79, a. 2), and we can especially find the virtual at work in the concept of quantitas virtualis. This expression indicates a position in the space in which something—especially God or angels—can produce specific actions from a distance as if it actually was in the place. Angels (and other metaphysical entities) are thus virtually located in space—as they are not materially extended but—at the same time, they have the ability and power to be causally active on material bodies. A similar but stronger use can be found in Scotus, through which all modern thought, especially Suárez and Peirce, would receive an account of virtuality focused on ordered and overdetermined production. According to Scotus, a virtual thing—e.g. the First Object who virtually contains all the truths of the habit of science—“does not depend on another but other things depend on it” and, “in its containing, it does not depend on other things but other things depend on it, that is, that if, per impossibile, all other things in the idea of the object were removed and only it remained understood, it would still objectively contain them” (Duns Scotus 1954, Prologus, a. 2, 144). This is the reason why he claims, regarding perception, that “no object will produce a simple and proper concept of itself and a simple and proper concept of another object unless it contains this second object essentially or virtually”. The first object transcends the second, predetermining and containing in its possible activity all the actual being of the other. In the light of the reading of Metaphysics  12, it is not hard to see that Scotus’ “containing” is nothing but the capability of a preeminent cause X to formally (re)produce the entire reality of an effect Y, including its possibile effects Z as a cause. The actual existence of Y and Z is therefore totally reduced to a productive virtus, on which the possible production of Y depends as a totally overdetermined reality. What is relevant is that Scotus’ account is based on the belief that Y exists only as the product of a goal-directed process of reproduction of a given possibility, that is: the virtus of Y makes Y possible and, if enacted, it makes it actual.

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Within this model, the sixteenth century would show a tendency to openly declare the link between virtuality and the formal disposition of its instruments. Suárez—who often uses the concept of “virtual”, stressing its continuity with eminence and formality—goes for instance to the extreme consequences of Scotus’ position. The Jesuit significantly uses the notion of “virtuality” especially in his discussion of proximate causes, (Suárez 1856–61, d. 18) claiming that the virtual existence of something is such “only as an external label”, because “that virtual being is nothing but the existence of the instrument” (d. 18, s. 7, § 2). As shown before, virtuality is openly thought of as the idea of a set or a chain of preordered instruments, even reducing its being to the ordered and therefore teleologically aimed chain of instruments. Scotus’ and Suárez’s understanding of the virtual is on the way to what Heidegger would describe in The Age of World Picture, (Heidegger 1977) as the reduction of the world to its reproductive, technological representation, that is “measurement” or what we called a “formalization”. Basing on the misunderstanding of generation and production, the “analogical” value of the technological explanation is raised to the level of a “real” explanation. Our explanation is, indeed, analogical to technological processes, but generation is analogical to the latter. Beings are thus conceived as products of a general technological process. They are chains of ordered causes for which each segment is virtually overdetermined by the oriented causality of the previous one and can be replaced by its “formal” productive scheme. Hence, a technologically-driven experience of reality, like the measurements of scientific experiments, can even fully take the place of the access to the real causes, since the artificial, epistemological explanation is able to explain all the effects and it is virtually the same of them. As Cassirer remarks (here especially about Galileo), the genuine explanation of […] facts is that theoretical activity and technological activity do not only touch each other externally, insofar as they both operate on the same ‘material’ of nature, but, more importantly, they relate to one another the principle and core of their productivity. The image of nature that thought produces is not captured by a mere idle beholding of the image; it requires the use of an active force (Cassirer 2012: 43).

General metaphysics is implicitly converted in a general allopoiesis of the world, which seems to be the root of Renaissance and modern engineering. Reality is represented as a machine, virtually projected and realized by a Great Engineer; thus, engineering can extend, or carry on, God’s work without ever going outside natural limits. These limits are the limits of a virtual that is already identified with the entire ontology, in a general “naturalization” of the technological model. We find a meaningful summary of this view in Browne’s Religio Medici: …Nor do I so forget God, as to adore the name of Nature; which I define not with the Schools, the principle of motion and rest, but, that straight and regular line, that setled and constant course the wisdome of God hath ordained the actions of his Creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution every day, is the nature of the Sunne, because that necessary course which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve, but by a faculty from that voice which first did give it motion (Browne 1645: s. 16, 31).

Hence, nature can be totally reduced to a “straight and regular line” of (vertically) ordered, productive activity. This because God himself acts according to a techno-

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logical model, formally disposing and ordering “secondary” causes as (replaceable) instruments: God is like a skilfull Geometrician, who when more easily and with one stroke of his Compasse, he might describe, or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a circle or longer way; according to the constituted and forelaid principles of his Art: yet this rule of his he doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason should question his power, and conclude he could not; and thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore to ascribe his actions unto her, is to devolve the honour of the principall agent, upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our writing (Ibidem: s. 16, 32).

And, accordingly: …nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence: Art is the perfection of Nature: Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a Chaos: Nature hath made one world, and Art another. In briefe, all things are artificial, for Nature is the Art of God (Ibidem: s. 16, 33–4).

In the light of God’s absolute and eternal virtus, nature and art are nothing but two different varieties of production. Reality can thus be thought of according to the model of a formal project that pre-contains all the possible realities, an absolute formal representation, distinct from a mere “imitation” only by the eminence of its Cause. A project virtually and formally “contains” all the possible behaviors of each of the components of a machine. It virtually is the engine because of its capability of (re)producing in all its possible workings before they happen and as if they had already happened. It does not matter that the machine can actually work only because the (re)presentation has previously prepared its implementation in the logic of simultaneity. A machine’s work is supposed to be in time and out of time at the same time, as it controls the time of the entire process, addressing it to the homogeneous membrane of the virtual. In the Renaissance context, a new, crucial approach in Aristotelian metaphysics starts to focus on the essential role of the “secondary causes” as the efficient, proximal instruments of an absolute, divine pre-disposition and overdetermination of the world (Carraud 2002). Like an engine, reality would work as a chain of predetermined relationships between efficient causes and their effects, without breaks in their continuity. The mechanization of space, conceptually converted into the homogeneous language of Euclidean geometry, will complete this identification, straightening the demand for a self-controlled reality, which every pre-controlled instrument, apparatus or environment can “virtually” (re)produce; for instance in Descartes’ theory of “figuration” (Rule XII), which rebuilds in the mechanical model the classic, Aristotelian semiotic of the form; or in Leibniz’s concept of monad as a virtual, tabular container of the whole of reality, in which reality and formalization are continuously overlapping; more broadly, in these Baroque philosophies that reveal the paradoxical equivalence of the formalization with a reproduction in continuously confusing its hermeneutical models, theatre, representation or image with reality itself.

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In Symbolic Exchange and Death (1993: 50) Baudrillard would masterfully place this trend as the first of his “orders of simulacra”, basing it on a semiotic of the “counterfeit”—“the dominant schema in the ‘classical’ period, from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution”—which precedes and allows the semiotic rise of “production” and “simulation”. We might say indeed that Baudrillard’s concept of “hyper-reality” also finds its roots here: in the movement with which the world is, at the same time, thought of as the consequence of a vertical ordering and a free becoming along the lines of this order that continuously reproduces itself. Especially in early modern mechanism, the Aristotelian virtus seems to finally find a definitive ontological modelization. The virtus is fully exhausted in the alwayspredisposed structure of a machine-reality, but such a reduction claims there is no actual reality that one cannot convert into its “virtual” representation, that is into a stable, operative pattern. There is no room anymore, for any virtus, power or force that cannot be represented and pre-scribed as a network of causal, proximate relationships, continuously reproducible and reproducing within the same scheme. To paraphrase Korzybski’s famous sentence, the territory has become the map. Such an exclusion of any difference between reality and its (re)productive representation would mark the final eclipse of spontaneity, gradually reduced to the Aristotelian “automatic” predisposition of the physis to its operative scheme. As Bergson remarked in his Time and Free Will, this principle is thought of as a power, and especially as a power of representation of a prefigured action that can always be (re)produced. As Leibniz said in his Confessio Philosophi, “spontaneity comes from potency, freedom from knowledge” (1994: 83): here we can see at work all the paradoxical identification of change with its representative and reproductive scheme; a Möbius’ strip in which the early modern era (and sometimes the contemporary) would not be able to fully distinguish a truly free actor from a predisposed one.

12.7 Unlike a Machine Nowadays, an unwitting recovery of the metaphysical virtual can still be found in teleonomy. This concept was widely discussed in biology and cybernetics, especially starting from the ’70s, and often received in ontological, misleading terms. Unlike Aristotle’s telos, teleonomy’s circular activity of (re)production would not come thanks to a logically external process, since it would be in the system itself as its ontology. A process’s “external” processuality, or even the hidden technological model of the process, is denied not so as to recognize its technological structure, but so as to include it as a part of the working system. This model seems able to keep a homogeneity between technology and spontaneity, applying to the second the circular form of the first. Natural systems are supposed to have a natural capability of balancing themselves, and to be able “by nature” to virtually reproduce the environment and interact with it. They are supposed to be intentional and to reveal that spontaneous goal-directed actions come from the same operative dispositions as the structure. The virtual dimension establishes a homo-

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geneity, an equivalence in the effects that allows us to postulate an equivalence of the causes. There are two points we would like to stress regarding this perspective: 1) stability and ergonomics cannot take on the form of an essential property or a telos; this would be to mistake progress and performance with a thing—as Bergson claimed— giving an onto-teleological justification of currently working systems. As we said, virtual-actual processes are at most teleological tendencies, circuits of actions that simulation allows us to repeat and that may continuously need to (re)stabilize themselves. They are able to enhance or weaken their activity, but never to reach an ontological independence from the environment they take as their substratum. As Suárez openly admitted, the Aristotelian virtual is completely solvable in the maintenance of a teleological order of the tools (they are disposed for the goal); there is not any stable, separated “capability” in things, even if we can processually stabilize (but not “ontologize”) this tendency isolating the action within the boundaries of a productive (re)presentation, that follows the supposed capability or virtus. This means that they need to be intrinsically eco-logical, since they are bound to the oikos in which their activity lies; 2) the base of interaction remains a (re)productive formalization, renamed as “information” or “communication”. Like Aristotle’s dynamis, teleonomy also seems to implicitly sneak the technological pattern into spontaneous processes. Recognizing them as spontaneous-aspurposeful; spontaneity would be intrinsically techno-teleo-logical, and the goaloriented model an ontological model for reality. Some crucial remarks on this point are obviously those by Maturana and Varela in their Autopoiesis (1980). Autopoiesis, the phenomenon in which systems “maintain constant, or within a limited range of values, some of their variables” thanks to a feedback effect “internal to them” (78) is for them fully separable from teleonomy, a “descriptive and explanatory” (85) notion, “adequate for the orientation of the listener towards a given domain of thought” (86) but completely useless as causal elements in the functioning of this phenomenon. The use of the machine “belongs to our description of the machine in a context wider than the machine itself” (77–8). Maturana’s and Varela’s rejection of teleonomy is epistemologically crucial since it helps us to think of automation beyond its metaphysical analogy with human technology and its teleological patterns. Automata can maintain a stable homeostasis even if they are not programmed to this behavior as their specific purpose. They can be phenomenologically described as machines only for their regular behaviour—and this also involves the possibility of a range of regularity—and as long as such regularity is expressed. In this perspective, every regular behaviour can be analogically considered an automaton: the Solar System, cells, the water cycle, etc. Such a perspective implies avoiding the use of “machine”, rather adopting a nonontological category of “automata”. Machines (including Aristotelian automaton) do indeed work thanks to their project; automata are, by contrast, systems producing stable patterns. It is possible that something stays stable without being designed to be stable, without attributing such a possibility to its ontological capability. Thus, we can more easily talk of: (1) onto(teleo)logical automata, or machines— this concept entails the ontological, original virtuality of their project as the core of

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their functioning; (2) analogical automata—regular, spontaneous things, that simply show, without any ontological commitment, a regularity in their behavior, or in specific relations, without postulating a metaphysical capability. In the first case, ontology can easily be converted into simultaneity without any loss of reality. In the latter case, regularity is the outcome of a completely different account of simultaneity: the regular behavior of these automata can indeed be recognized only from the synchronicity between two different processes (external simultaneity, say a cell and a clock), or as a simultaneity between multiple sub-processes in the same process (internal simultaneity, say several chemical bonds that constitute the same cell); yet such a simultaneity comes not before the processes but during them, as their effect. They are not coordinated, but they are coordinating. This organization is formal since it does not follow a previous scheme but rather because we are here epistemologically isolating (in the definition) only its simultaneous elements. Accordingly, such an “analogical” simultaneity is not a homogenous, ontological area of virtuality pre-existing before the processes involved, but rather an emergent homogeneity and virtuality opened, in a general perturbation, by the simultaneous, non technological coexistence of spontaneous and different processes or sub-processes. Under “Aristotelian” influence, Western culture is instead so used to overlapping the two concepts, and so the two kinds of simultaneity, that even Maturana and Varela’s discussion seems to lack the proper difference between “machines” and “automata”. According to them, the reason for an epistemological distinction between machines and living systems “can be easily disqualified” because it would imply a previous, undemonstrated belief, “that living systems cannot be understood because they are too complex […] or that the principles which generate them are intrinsically unknowable” (83). Maturana and Varela’s argumentative strategy is to reduce living beings (analogical machines) to autopoietics, in order to demonstrate an identity between autopoiesis and machines (onto-teleological machines) and thus to argue the equivalence between living beings and machines. Once again, it is the implicit introduction of virtuality in the explanation of autopoiesis that allows commutation. Although the two authors strongly reject teleonomy, their demand for an equivalence between living autopoietic systems and machines is achieved through an only partial reduction of autopoietics to its functioning. In shaping their concept of “autopoietic machines” Maturana and Varela define them as: a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produces them; (ii) and constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network (Ibidem: 78–9).

Focus especially on the first part. The definition introduces an element, organization, that is “descriptive and explanatory” at least as teleonomy. Autopoietic systems would be organized—rather than organizing—toward the process of production of something. This “something” is nothing but themselves—we recall that Aristotelian

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dynamis also worked “in the same thing qua other”—in their “fundamental variable which they maintain constant” (78). They would have a capability, a virtus, that comes from their organization, to “continuously regenerate” themselves as the cause of their following regeneration. Focus now on the second part. Here Maturana and Varela try to avoid a retrieval of teleology by reducing this organization to the spatial topology to the components. But these components are previously thought of as organized. At point (ii) the definition specifies that the constitution is that of the machine, but it is actually that of the machine “organized as a network of processes, etc.”. So the machine is considered here twice: (1) as the organized machine (the virtual machine, the machine as organization); (2) as the supposed non-teleological machine that follows the virtual, the abstract organization of the first, recreating it in space and topology (actually). The reduction of the machine to the (organized) components is nevertheless, nothing so new. It can already be found, as we showed, in Scotus’ and Suárez’s definition of the virtual. The virtual is formally nothing but “the [ordered] existence of the instrument” (Suárez). Accordingly, such a topological organization would virtually contain (Scotus) the real object and even its reality. Likewise, Maturana and Varela’s definition places organization in a leading position in relation to topology, making their “machines” “self-referential, selfreproductive monadic entit[ies]” (Ansell-Pearson 1997: 141–142). As Simondon remarked (1958: 47), every equivalence between autopoietic beings and machines is ontologically misunderstanding, since the logical structure of human technology implies teleological goal-directedness. Accordingly, if living beings are analogous to human apparatuses, they are intrinsically teleological; if they are not teleonomical— as Maturana and Varela accepted—they are machines in an equivocal meaning, that is that of what we called “analogical automata”. Outside of the conceptual tools of “classical” metaphysics, autopoietic systems do not show an onto-teleological capability—a metaphysical assumption—of reproducing and maintaining themselves; they show the fact that they are continuously reproducing themselves. Another interesting example of the surreptitious reintroduction of the virtual into living systems through a ‘mechanical’ account of teleonomy is Monod’s. In the renowned Chance and Necessity Monod (1972) presents teleonomy as able to finally found an “objective” model of nature, that systematically rejects any goaldirectedness (20–2). At the same time he still defines teleonomy as the “transmission of content of invariance” (15), basically reducing teleonomic structures, organization and performance to information. Monod is really accurate in thinking of teleonomy as a process—which he defines as “oriented, coherent and constructive” (45) and not as a preconceived project— but he seems not to grasp the need to distinguish, on these very bases, between living automata and human machines. The ontological overlap between the two is argued for again because of an ontological use of information, which is nothing but the Aristotelian virtual. Information is able to codify and transmit an invariable teleonomical organization, yet such an invariance is not contained in information, as a property, but rather through some information, as an always new reproduction process.

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Baudrillard (1993: 59) would attack Monod’s position as a “metaphysics of the code” in which “life is […] ruled by the discontinuous indeterminacy of the genetic code, by the teleonomic principle”. In such a model “finality is no longer at the end, there is no more finality, nor any determinacy. Finality is there in advance, inscribed in the code”. According to Baudrillard Monod indeed entails a “phantasm of nature” that is “no longer a metaphysical sanctuary for the origin and substance, but this time, for the code”. Monod is thus a “strict theologian of this molecular transcendence”, in which the phantasm of the code, which is equivalent to the reality of power, is confused with the idealism of the molecule. Again we find the hallucination or illusion of a world reunited under a single principle – a homogeneous substance according to the Counter-Reformation Jesuits (Baudrillard 1993: 80).

By contrast, outside of any substantialism, we can say instead that spontaneous systems teleonomically stabilize a previously non-teleonomical organization using information, whereas human machines are completely reducible, from the beginning, to their informational structure; they were designed as an information-simulation diagram. Nevertheless, as Simondon stressed, a “perfect” mechanical automatism has its core in a total reduction of indetermination (the demanded, never-reallyachieved ontological coincidence between the system and its information), but such a reduction implies the erasure of any possible variation, with the consequent loss of any signification (Simondon 1958: 139–40). The machine becomes a project expressing nothing but a process itself (as in Deleuze’s Spinozism). To avoid any misunderstanding, we stress that we are not denying mechanical patterns in nature, but rather that it can be assumed as ontological. Mechanism can spontaneously flow from freedom, or chance, practicing and maintaining an order in it, but it cannot exhaust it as its ontological scheme. What biology stresses is that living systems (not ontologically technological or reducible to technology) are seen to practice some reproductive, teleonomical patterns, shared, as a scheme of action, by both analogical automata and ontoteleological machines. This realisation does not require or allow us to reduce the whole ontology of these beings to the mechanisms they produce. This would lead us to reintroduce an ontological virtuality—what metaphysics did—as a common plan for the equivalence of the two. We must rather say that both, in equivocal ways (the first is a production and a use, the second is the very structure) perform these patterns. Unless we want to represent these mechanizing systems as given, that is created, we are forced to recognize that they come from a non-already-mechanized process. Otherwise, we illegitimately identify autopoiesis (the process), with cybernetics (the control system). These systems organize themselves using cybernetic practices, although they are not this organization. As a branch of technology, cybernetics can legitimately work to achieve more or less complex control-systems, as well as try to reproduce, in technological terms, what one can find in spontaneous systems. But as soon as it appoints itself as an ontology of non-technological systems, it immediately falls into the mistakes of “engineering” metaphysics. Onto-cybernetics cannot find a real distinction between

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a thing and its reproduction and it is forced to start an infinite work of recursive optimization trying to epistemologically reproduce what actually is an ontological level; every time it finds something interesting, it claims it has discovered something about natural systems. Conversely, non-mechanist autopoiesis recognizes that spontaneous processes (automata) can control and organize themselves without this previously being an aim for which they are set up. It is all about recognizing that such order does not come from an ontological scheme but rather on an epistemological practical, level. It is all about reducing automatism to an emergent form of spontaneity (translated by autopoietic mechanism in terms of perturbation) and avoiding any ontological equivalence between spontaneous technological processes and our cybernetic organizations. As we claimed, the definition of automata as analogical apparatuses is fully based on their internal or external simultaneity and the latter opens an emergent virtuality, which equivocally allows us to categorise them as machines. Such virtuality indeed represents a space in which an organizing simultaneity, without losing its nature as a process, can be actually stabilized through an organized topology. The machine is hence organized by the process and within the process, in the stabilization and control of some of its free patterns.

12.8 Digital Baroque Even if the idea of a “technological” nature properly represents a philosophical misunderstanding, technology has found in it—and especially in the metaphysical account of the virtus—a complete validation of its inner (operative) ontology, as well as of its operative structure, oriented towards the concepts of simultaneity and reproduction. Digital technologies seem especially to concretize, in the form of technology, the metaphysical idea of a stable—rather than stabilized—virtus. Software packages are fully-controlled and fully-formalized environments, able to overdetermine all their possible, formal objects, funding an actual virtual ontology. Technology would be finally capable, by themself, to institute a “new reality”, or a “secondary” reality, within the specific domain of a “formal” reproduction. Moreover, objects filling this ontology are entirely formal, and entirely manipulable, as they were intrinsically products of the shaping system, and their reality would entirely depend on the “efficiency” of that system. In this, digital technologies take to its extreme the idea of an inner and infinite reproducibility of things, and especially that this reproducibility is always a copying. Thanks to the fully controlled and ordered nature of the system, the software owns an ontology in which one can copy a file losing every distinction between the original and the copy. The object is taken as “a file”, that is in the natural reproducibility of its “form”, abstracting from any physical circumstances of individuation.

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Just because of its direct derivation from the metaphysical model of technology, such a view keeps hiding the “real” virtus, that is the availability of a controlled substratum. In this sense, the digital actually is a vertical, ordered sequence of instruments; but its functioning and ontology should be understood exactly as opposed to how metaphysics understood it. Its movement does not start from the above, that is from a logical overdetermination of a production, but rather from below, that is an operative process of “shaping” and technological formalization of nature. Behind the “virtual worlds”, the “virtual objects” and the full, homogeneous control of the “digital” environment, lies a permanent process of maintenance of an “infrastructure”, which keeps stable the organization of the conditions required for the digital technologies’ functioning. These conditions are not taken for granted, as they rely on the availability of other substrata and infrastructure. From this perspective, they are the outcome of a process that happened between the seventeenth and the twentieth century, when mechanization and engineering have taken on a leading role in the homogenization of chronological, geographical, anthropological, economic coordinates and many others. Such a development of infrastructures provided to technology an entire and stable operative ontology; a general system—and a general, concrete metaphysics—which meant thinking of humans, animals, artifacts, natural events, biology, as different sketches on the same diagram. Hence, the digital represents the conclusive form and the apogee of a process of “naturalization” of technology that starts with the process of industrialization, able to transform environment, spaces, work, living, into the working parts of a great machine, (re)producing itself by the means of everyday life, correcting and “forming” spontaneity in a designed totality. Such an “idealism” of the machine has been able to hide the organized work of millions of living beings, representing its outcome as an ontology, as a category of a supposed natural economy or natural cybernetics. On that previous mechanization, the digital sets its virtus, but formalizing all its substrata as mere infrastructures. Laid on this transparent homogeneity, the digital exists nowadays as “the” virtual, as a pure simulation, as a pre-controlled system of ordering, as a reproduction of a mechanical disposition of the “parts” and, finally, as the reproduction of this disposition in every field of society and nature. It is not by chance that such a totality took, in a first phase, the form of a new Baroque. The first part of the history of digital virtuality—especially most of the VR projects from the ‘60s to the ‘90s: Sensorama, Aspen Movie Map, Active Worlds, Second Life—are characterized by this open simulation form, and so by the aim (not so far from Browne’s view) of building a virtual-as-fictional reality. Their virtuality is hence essentially interface-based, as a pure manipulability given in its simplest form. Baroque machines acted by pre-controlling the interaction patterns of viewers. Their main tools were visual “machines” like anamorphosis, perspective, deformation, but these tools ask the viewer to take a specific posture. Accordingly, the early digital started working by persuading users they had an additional power that kept their previous organization unaltered (a “second” life), but it basically took billions of people in front of a screen, set on a chair. It reorganized our daily spaces and times placing them on the homogeneous, formal plane of simultaneity, and converting

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them into infrastructures of the functioning of the digital. Here—that is starting from this technological premise—it unchained new forms of differentiation, identities and economies. Such an operative strategy also had other applications than the “digital” and did not leave today’s technology even in its further, current evolutions. Like Baroque machines, the aim of contemporary robotics, cybernetics and AI is nevertheless that of “replicating” living automata, starting still from their efficiency. Robotics “virtually” understands man as a set of capabilities, and “formalizes” it trying to replicate these spontaneous behaviours and activities. According to such an old scheme, the equivalence in the effects (the “performance”) provides a “formal” notion, or a “formula” of man, that would allow us to “reproduce” it at will. Hence, measurement acts like a “homogeneous” symbolic plan, on which the actual behavior can be transposed, “formalized” and reproduced. Even the main goal of Artificial Intelligence seems not that of developing a new, non-human form of consciousness and thinking, but rather that of reproducing its performances, until they are indistinguishable. It is not by chance that Turing’s famous test finds its roots in a Cartesian paradox, that of “parroting”, that is to establish if a machine-animal, able to talk (“performance”) is also able to think (“causes”). According to Descartes, these machines could never use words, or put together signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others. For we can certainly conceive of a machine so constructed that it utters words, and even utters words that correspond to bodily actions causing a change in its organs. […] But it is not conceivable that such a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence, as the dullest of men can do (AT VI, 56–7; CSM I, 240).

Descartes’ idea was that speaking is not uttering, since the first reveals a different capability of “reasoning” and the latter only expresses (in men) or imitates (in animals and machines) such a virtus, that is a conscious intelligence (and, for Descartes, a substantial consciousness). Therefore, Descartes’ machines are not humans since they cannot reproduce or imitate such a given capability, and this reveals that they do not possess it. The reproduction and even the imitation of a performance would require, indeed, a specific capability, and only beings provided with this capability are able to do that. Actually, for Descartes, one cannot reproduce intelligence without showing intelligence, and so being actually intelligent: there is no proportionality between being intelligent (mechanical) and non intelligent. The approach of AI uses intelligent behaviors as a stable maximum grade for generating a scale of intelligence, and, on that measurement, for formalizing it. Human intelligence is previously considered, repeating a metaphysical understanding of the concept of capability, as a “formal” cause of such a maximum grade, as if the effects shown in the intelligent behavior would depend on an “efficiency” able to re-produce them in the scheme of simultaneity. Thus, conscious and intelligent thinking would be not an action, but the effect of a pre-determined capability that can be reached. Accordingly, software that is able to reproduce the effects of human intelligence would thereby be considered as really “thinking”, even if such an attribution can be only analogical. It can be said “thinking” like humans can be called “thinking”,

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on a scale that has previously understood thinking as a “capability” inferable from “effects”, placing humans at the top of such a scale. Just as in the Baroque model, the analogy is coined on the level of “effects”, then it is transposed back to the “formalization” of a supposed natural “efficiency”, and finally it is “naturalized” in arguing the common descendence of both the artificial and the natural from a given virtus. But the “ghost” of the Baroque can be found also in today’s mobile communication technologies where the Baroque machine is parceled out, taking the new-old form (as much Baroque) of the symphony. Billions of devices, or infrastructures, are coordinated, and always pre-ordered, by a general simultaneity, acting as parts of a single formalizing apparatus, and as multiple enactments of a single, general virtus. This simultaneity is again still granted by a formalization that relies on common infrastructures able to provide a technological form of memory. It is worth noticing that, for Bergson, memory represents the ultimate form of (non-classic metaphysical) virtuality, since there the past information is contained as an indefinite plurality that at most can be used by the virtual action conceived by perception: Whenever we are trying to recover a recollection, to call up some period of our history, we become conscious of an act sui genesis by which we detach ourselves from the present in order to replace ourselves, first in the past in general, then in a certain region of the past – a work of adjustment, something like the focussing of a camera. But our recollection still remains virtual; we simply prepare ourselves to receive it by adopting the appropriate attitude. Little by little it comes into view like a condensing cloud; from the virtual state it passes into the actual; and as its outlines become more distinct and its surface takes on colour, it tends to imitate perception. But it remains attached to the past by its deepest roots, and if, when once realized, it did not retain something of its original virtuality, if, being a present state, it were not also something which stands out distinct from the present, we should never know it for a memory (Bergson 1991: 133–4).

According to Bergson memory is therefore essentially virtual, it cannot be known as something past unless we follow and adopt the movement by which it expands into a present image, thus emerging from obscurity into the light of day. In vain do we seek its trace in anything actual and already realized: we might as well look for darkness beneath the light (Ibidem: 135).

Conversely, technological memory is conceptually close to what Bergson terms “memory image”, or memories associated with a scheme of recognition-and-action. This memory is virtus, fully aimed at the recall of a virtuality that is already prepared by the operative schemes of perception. Likewise, technological memory is essentially a “formalized” scheme of (re)production of data, as here information is stored within an ontology (that of the software) that gives its objects the structure of the reproducible “form”. Data are thus goal-oriented virtualities, ready to be copied, visualized and reproduced, but first of all they are “analogical” reproductions of something happening in the physical, natural environment, captured and “formalized” in the form of data. Mobile devices act as a swarm of measuring infrastructures, appointed to “formalize” reality in its technological, reproducible form. Thanks to them, the theatrical, “virtual” Baroque of the ’60s has been converted into a dynamic theatre in which

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real and virtual actions are basically inseparable. Digital devices import reality into the symbolic apparatus of technological memory, making it manipulable, and overall aimed at an unlimited reproduction. It is indeed such a reproducibility that makes of images, sounds, texts, and many other experiences a homogenous “stage”, the analogical model and a measure for the understanding of reality. The user acts as if this reproduction was the equivalent, the “virtual” representation of real, and he teleologically aims his actions at this reproduction, at such a formal, reproducible image of reality. On the ubiquitous stage of this analogy, of this multimedial theatre, the user is both the actor and the audience of such a reproduction, and, little by little, he becomes at the same time the substratum and the agent of the reproduction of this form: Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy. This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants that the scene Wherein we play in. (William Shakespeare, As You Like It—Act II, Scene VII, 6)

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Deleuze, Gilles. 1991. Bergsonism. Translated by H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam. New York: Zone Books. Duns Scotus. 1954. Opera omnia, vol. 3. Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Age of World Picture, in Heidegger, M., The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by W. Lovitt, 115–36. New York: Springer. Heidegger, Martin. 1995. Aristotle’s Metaphysics Th 1–3. On the Essence and Actuality of Force. Translated by W. Brogan and P. Warnek. Indiana University Press. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1994. Confessio Philosophi. Das Glaubensbekenntnis des Philosophen. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Lévy, Pierre. 1995. Qu’est-ce que le virtuel?. Paris: La Découverte. Lévy, Pierre. 1998. Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Age. Translated by R. Bononno. New York-London: Plenum Trade. Maturana, Humberto, and Francisco Varela. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Netherlands: Kluwer. Monod, Jacques. 1972. Chance and Necessity. Translated by Austryn Wainhouse. New York: Vintage Books. Pierce, Charles Sanders. 1902. Virtual, in Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, ed. J. M. Baldwin, vol. II, 763–4. London: Macmillan and Co. Simondon, Gilbert. 1958. Du mode d’existence des object techniques. Paris: Aubier. Simondon, Gilbert. 2005. L’individuation à la lumière des notions de formes et d’information. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon. Suárez, Francisco. 1856–61. Metaphysicae Disputationes, in Opera Omnia, voll. 25–26. Paris: Vivès. Tarde, Gabriel. 1895. La variation universelle. In Essais et mélanges sociologiques, 391–422. Paris: A. Maloine. Tarde, Gabriel. 1910. Les possibles. Fragments d’un ouvrage de jeunesse. Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle 193–4: 8–41.

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Simone Guidi is currently FCT Post-Doc Research Fellow at the University of Coimbra’s Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos (IEF). He has taught Aesthetics of the New Media at the New Fine Arts Academy (NABA) of Milan, Italy (2013–2017). He is the managing editor of the international peer-reviewed WoS journal of Philosophy Lo Sguardo and an editor of Azimuth. Philosophical

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Coordinates Between Modern and Contemporary Age. In 2013 he received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from La Sapienza, University of Rome. Among his publications are L’angelo e la macchina. Sulla genesi della res cogitans cartesiana, FrancoAngeli, Milan 2018; H. Bergson, Lezioni di metafisica. Spazio, tempo, materia e teorie dell’anima (translation, Mimesis, Milan 2018) and many essays and encyclopedia entries on Medieval, Modern and Contemporary philosophy.