Virtuality and immanence in Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty

From Firenze University Press Journal: Aisthesis

Andrea Colombo, University of Padova

Floriana Ferro, University of Udine

The words “virtual” and “virtuality” are of common use, especially since the development of digital technology. In a specific sense, one talks about “virtual reality” (VR) referring to specific environments characterized by an immersive experience, which takes place inside a simulated version of analog reality. However, the word “virtual” is used also about less immersive cases: one calls “virtual identity” the one used in social networks, just as Facebook Twitter, Instagram, etc. In this case, the word “virtual” seems to be closer to the word “digital”: a virtual identity is simply a digital identity, our identity transposed in a digital dimension. Moreover, one shall not forget that there is a less recent (and maybe deeper) sense of “virtual” and “virtuality” that is not strictly bond to digital technology: it is something in potency which is related and/or opposed to something in act. The first name coming to our mind is Aristotle (Metaph. IX), who develops this distinction, thus giv-ing birth to the Western concepts of “possible” and “virtual”. Another important author is Leibniz, who writes about the «power to receive ideas» (Leibniz [1765]: Book II, Chap. xxi), also known as virtual innatism, which opens the way to the Kantian concept of transcendental3. However, our aim here is not to outline the full history of the idea of virtual, but to understand how we conceive it philosophically in our own time, therefore in light of the new technological developments and of their effects on our subjectivity. Our proposal is a definition of virtual which takes inspiration from two crucial ideas: Deleuze’s immanence and Merleau-Ponty’s flesh. Notwith-standing the differences between these concepts and their philosophical background, they have something in common: they give sense to virtuality, conceiving it on a ground of dynamical immanence, which overcomes the traditional concept of substance and consists in a deep inter-twining of bodies and technology. According to our perspective, the virtual is defined by the following characters:

(a) it refers to an epistemoogical and ontological monism;

(b) it implies elationality;

© it is not opposed to the “real” or “actual”, but is entangled to it.

Our proposal will start from the analysis of the virtual according to Deleuze, who takes inspiration from Bergson’s Matter and Memory and develops an idea of immanence which extends to all the bodies in the world. We will then focus on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh, deepening the passages where he writes about a “virtual focus” or a “virtual center” of the flesh in The Visibile and Invisible. Interpreting these passages in light of a posthuman interpretation of the idea of flesh, the bond between bodies and technology will turn out to be very tight, dynamical, and in line with future developments. The virtual will be thus considered not only as related to digital technologies, but even as a condition for shaping our view of and our being in the world as such, in both analog and digital dimensions.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/Aisthesis-14203

Read Full Text: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14203