Mind Outside the Skull and The Sense of Being: Hauntology
The third chapter of my master thesis is called Mind outside the skull: sensation through digital media
In buddhism, the crown chakra is located outside our biological body.
In the second chapter I have argued how human perception of space is mainly based on movement in space through our proprioception, interoception and cross-referential exteroceptive senses, founding my argument on Massumi’s analysis of perception and on Munster’s observations on topological cognitive processes embodied in the image of the fold. In this chapter, reflected on these elements in relation to new media, and I researched how new media interfere with our perception of space and time, and the perception of the self. To do so, I will start by explaining the term hauntology and three different interpretations of it by three different theorists, starting with its inventor, Jaques Derrida. I will then introduce Clark’s theorization of the native cyborg. In order to apply this idea in practice I will illustrate a number of spacetime perceptive alterations that are generated by frequent use of new media. To conclude this chapter on the intertwinement between humans and technology, in particular digital media, I will draw a parallel between ANT and the Internet of things, a future scenario that would connect everyday objects in a network of radio signals and digital information-sharing.
Hauntology is a neologism coined by Jaques Derrida in 1993 as a politico-philosophical concept (Derrida 1994). Hauntology is a combination of the words “haunting” and “ontology.” It refers to ghosts in that they represent a particular state of presence in non-existence. According to Derrida, the ghost haunting the present is first of all cultural, impossible to define or to escape, and only possible to approach through indirect references. He created another neologism to describe this occurrence: differánce (Derrida 1978). Differánce is a word that means “to defer” and “to differ.” It is an apt description of hauntology: something that exists but does not exist, that cannot be grasped but can only be referred to through cultural signs.
The similarities between Derrida’s hauntology and Massumi’s definition of the virtual cannot be disregarded. Massumi also speaks of virtuality as something that can never be captured; it can only exist between one image and the next one in a movement that cannot be perceived, other than through a sign referring to it, or in the form of an effect that can be felt. The main difference between the two theories is, in my opinion, their background and their area of study. Derrida is concerned with socio-cultural structures and how these can determine the future and be influenced by the past. Massumi instead dedicates his research to the study of space, architecture and the media, first on a pre-cognitive level before than social. Still, the two philosophers seem to have a common ground. In particular they acknowledge a complexity that can never be fully captured: the origin of effects that we experience as reality, which are actual experiences for Massumi and structures for Derrida.
Hauntology and telepresence: new media and experience of spacetime
Tom Boellstorff uses the term hauntology in his analysis of digitally recreated environments such as Second Life, where he conducts ethnographic research on online social networks (2008). In his book, Boellstorff brings the behavioral and software-related practices that he observes to a higher level by subjecting them to a deeper theoretical analysis through the conceptualization of telepresence and hauntology. In this case though, the term “presence” partly loses its original connotation, and is applied to the idea of telepresence, defining the possibility and actual occurrence of a “switch of reality.” What Boellstroff describes as hauntology is the degree of presence in one or another reality, in this case either the “real world” or the digital realm. He observes that we always choose to “be” in one or another reality, not only when it comes to the choice between cyberspace and “real space,” but also because every moment we could be present or absent with our mind in the same place or situation in which we are physically immersed. In Boelstroff’s understanding of the term, “haunting” refers to the invisible presence of our consciousness in our body, or in another body when we decide to occupy it. In other words, it not only refers to the real versus cyberspace debate, but to a variety of ontological modalities that we experience. This was not the original definition of the term, as Derrida explicitly excluded the idea of presence from its meaning:
“To haunt does not mean to be present, and it is necessary to introduce haunting into the very construction of a concept. Of every concept, beginning with the concepts of being and time. That is what we would be calling here a hauntology. Ontology opposes it only in a movement of exorcism. Ontology is a conjuration.” (Derrida 1994: 161)
Derrida’s connotation goes deeper than the haunting of bodies and spaces by the human mind. It is reality in its complexity and elusiveness, which is virtual reality as we know it. Therefore he does not speak about presence, but about being, because reality is not present, it just is. Nevertheless, the relevance of Boellstorff’s connotation of the term, which relates to presence, cannot be underestimated. Boellstorff re-interprets hauntology from a different perspective, starting from the study of communities and personal engagement of the participants of cyber communities, in particular Second Life. By using this specific term, Boellstorff distances himself from body/ mind dualism and aims to offer a more complex and subtle description of presence.
When we connect telepresence with Massumi’s unfolding of the actual through movement and proprioceptive experience, we can reflect on whether it is necessary to be “present” with our mind to fully experience space through the body, and to what extent mental presence would change the intensity of the experience. Probably, the human body would “record” the experience in space through our exteroceptive senses and proprioception, with no need for full presence of mind. Otherwise experiencing space the way we normally do would require full consciousness of every performed action in every situation. But a lower degree of engagement in the action might certainly affect the intensity and the quality of the experience of space.
In this respect, especially in accordance with Boellstorff’s analysis of cyberspace, we could reflect on the role that the media play for our capacity and opportunity to fully experience space. Our exploration of reality becomes progressively mediated, abstracted from physical space, confined to few actual locations and simultaneously multiplied in new experiences to which we gain virtual access. This results in a “colonization” of our time by activities whose relevance and value are debatable (Virilio 1997), such as surfing the web, jumping from one website to another, or from one chat window to another. Since time and space perception are intimately related to each other (Kubler 1962; Massumi 2002; Munster 2006; Virilio 1994), our new uses of time and its relation to the space that we occupy shapes a new concept of the world based on the disappearance of distances and the absence of a “journey” despite the increasing importance that we accord to the destination (Virilio 1994).
“Lastly, paradoxical logic emerges when the real-time image dominates the thing represented, real time subsequently prevailing over real space, virtuality dominating actuality and turning the very concept of reality on its head. Whence the crisis in traditional forms of public representation (graphics, photography, cinema..) to the great advantage of presentation, of a paradoxical presence, the long-stance telepresence of the object or being which provides their very existence, here and now.” (Virilio 1994: 63-64)
Telepresence through new media might be seen as an instance of the disjointedness of the mind from the body. We constantly struggle to build new spacetime relations[1] in order to establish a junction between what our body is feeling through proprioception and what we are experiencing on a interoceptive and exteroceptive level and on the level of communication. A simple instance of it is the experience of walking on the street while listening to a non-diegetic sound such as music or while engaging in a conversation in chat session or on a smartphone. Annet Dekker (2009) observed that the use of mobile devices facilitates isolation in a private space, which is at the same time immersed in public space.
“Advanced mobile phones with integrated MP3 players allow people to move through cities with headphones on, thereby distancing themselves from what is going on around them. […] (With the arrival of modern mobile communication devices) while being in contact with distant others, people are distancing themselves from the people around them. These long-distances conversations that are made with portable phones reinforce the privatization of public space.” (Dekker, in Urban Screens Reader: 225)
She presents a short analysis on how new portable media from the walkman to the smartphone renegotiate the burdens between private and public space. Despite the social relevance of this observation, there is still a missing layer that is more interesting with respect to affect and space perception mediated or interfered by new media, one must acknowledge the effect of mixed signals from the medium in use and from the environment around us, and how they merge together to unfold in an actual experience. Further on, assuming that every lived actuality becomes part of our experience, and so defines our perception of spacetime, I will explore how a distorted, non-diegetic experience of the environment influences our future experience of space, time and the body.
Haunted media and the flow of consciousness
Jeffrey Sconce’s re-use of the term hauntology focuses on the role of media and their existence through history, and on how their presence shapes and is shaped by our culture, introducing yet another facet of the term. In Sconce’s analysis on the electronic presence of media in society through history, it is in particular “media metaphysics” that interest him. In Sconce’s view, media presence through history is a social construct that constantly evolves. At the same time, the almost religious value that society attributes to the media and the different metaphors that have been used to speak about media, cause us to adjust our perception and understanding of the world according to the electronic media that are so prominently present in our lives. Sconce describes in his book Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television the sentient qualities that have been associated with television and later the computer, and how these qualities of liveliness, intimacy and presence might result from the continuous flux of moving images, sound and information that comes out of these media.
Sconce observes how the image of a flow has been used to (1) describe human thinking processes and affect, (2) represent electricity, also called “current” and (3) define information that is distributed through the media. The affinities between these three elements, also produced by socially generated images of them, is one of the most influential elements at the origins of media metaphysics, according to Sconce:
“ In the more fantastic discourses of presence[2], these varieties of flow frequently appear as interrelated and interdependent, casting the media and the audience as an interwoven and at times undifferentiated complex of electricity, consciousness and textual data.” (Sconce, 2000: 8)
Sconce is clearly very critical of the imagery that has emerged around electronic media, and sees it as a result of a deliberate cultural representation of human perception, electricity and information. I think instead that what Sconce observes is just one of the aspects of the ontological shift that I have described in the second chapter of my thesis. The “creation” of the image of the flow has not been deliberately introduced out of the blue: the philosophic shift and technological advances in photography and moving images cannot be radically taken apart. In the same way that information can no longer be classified in strict Aristotelian compartments, where every bit of knowledge belongs to one class and not to all other classes, ontologies have become more fluid. The different phases of human thinking processes are understood to emerge from a flow of differentiation (Derrida 1978) instead of being seen as isolated and identifiable progressive steps.
Sconce’s interpretation of hauntology refers to “haunted media,” because of the liveliness and sentience that we attribute to media, but also to “haunting media,” because their presence “haunts” our culture and our knowledge. Like Derrida’s original connotation of the term, as something that exists in our culture and shapes our thought, Sconce’s reinterpretation of it describes something that is never concrete except in its effects and can only be referred to.
[1] This assumption is also based on the case study called The walking piece, by Jolande Harris.
[2] I cannot avoid the immediate association with the natural network that connected all creatures in the movie Avatar (2009).
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