[Commlist] cfp - Phenomenology and Virtuality

Extended deadline

*/Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology/*

Special issue

*Phenomenology and Virtuality*

edited by Gregory Swer and Jean du Toit

/Owing to a number of requests for late submissions we have, on good 
Kantian grounds, extended the deadline until the end of September.///

//

Our age is typified by technology (Kroes & Meijers, 2016: 12), but it is 
the question of the virtual that has particularly come to the forefront 
after the turn of the century. The contemporary era of emergent digital 
technologies has seen the multiplication of virtual spaces – our 
civilizations are indeed steeped in the virtual – which has resulted in 
complex changes to the dimensions of our existence and experience. While 
thinkers such as Baudrillard (in /Simulacra and Simulation/ (1981)) 
emphasize a dichotomous relationship between reality and virtual 
reality, the enmeshed character of modern individuals within emergent 
virtual spaces may call into question the continuing relevance of such 
oppositions.

The term virtuality (a conflation of the words /reality/ and /virtual/) 
may present a challenge to dichotomous views on reality and the virtual. 
Virtuality does not merely refer to virtual reality, but rather – in a 
broader sense – circumscribes the many virtual spaces that arise from 
modern digital technologies within the life-world of the individual. 
Virtuality denotes not merely those ‘obvious’ virtual spaces that one 
engages with via so-called VR headsets and goggles, but rather the 
multitudinous forms of the virtual that already find their occurrence 
through social media networking sites and data transfer technologies, 
through instant communication (words spoken or written by one person and 
sent to another), through cell phones and TV screens, through 
advertising (targeted or otherwise), and by means of geographical 
guidance via GPS systems. The modern individual is immersed within 
virtuality, and we are living in a world of technological appearances 
wherein making sense of virtuality is becoming increasingly pressing.

A danger of the technological expansion of the virtual, especially as 
the virtual heads inexorably towards omnipresence, is that everything 
seems to fall apart into mere appearances.  Robert Sokolowski formulates 
the problem of appearances in our technological era in terms of three 
phenomenological themes: 1) parts and wholes, 2) identity in manifolds, 
and 3) presence and absence. He argues that we are “flooded by fragments 
without any wholes, by manifolds bereft of identities, and by multiple 
absences without any enduring real presence. We have /bricolage /and 
nothing else, and we think we can even invent ourselves at random by 
assembling convenient and pleasing but transient identities out of the 
bits and pieces we find around us. We pick up fragments to shore against 
our ruin” (Sokolowski, 2000: 3-4). Sokolowski suggests that, in our 
engagement with the virtual, we are caught up in a crisis of 
appearances. However, are other avenues open to us?

If phenomenology allows one to “return to the things themselves” 
(Husserl, 2001: 168), to “describe the basic structures of human 
experience and understanding from a first person perspective” (Carman, 
2002: viii), then the individual’s encounter with virtuality is a 
problem that phenomenology is particularly suited to address. It is the 
aim of this special issue to promote interest in the emerging field of 
the phenomenology of virtuality, and insights from a wide variety of 
phenomenological perspectives (and multi-disciplinary viewpoints in 
conversation with phenomenology) are welcomed in addressing this topic.

Topics of discussion could include (but are not limited to) the following:

-What is the relation between virtuality and phenomenology? In what ways 
may traditional phenomenological thought be re-deployed to gain insight 
into virtuality?

-What is the relation / differences between non-virtual and virtual 
being? Is it possible to distinguish reality from virtuality?

-How is selfhood constituted in virtuality? What does inter-subjectivity 
look like in this regard?

-How are the notions of gender and race constituted in virtuality?

-What is the relation / lack of relation between cognitive science and 
phenomenological interpretations of virtuality?

-What is the relation between virtuality and the imaginary?

The contributors must submit their papers before *27 September 2020*, 
with expected publication of papers towards the end of the year. /The 
editors do appreciate that writing to deadline is particularly 
challenging under present circumstances and should any prospective 
author require additional time to prepare their submission, we ask that 
they please contact us to discuss arrangements./

*Please send articles to:*

Gregory Swer (editor of the journal): Email: (gregswer /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(gregswer /at/ gmail.com)>

Jean du Toit (guest editor of the special issue): Email: 
(jean.dutoit /at/ nwu.ac.za) <mailto:(jean.dutoit /at/ nwu.ac.za)>

*References:*

Baudrillard, J. 1981. Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan 
press.

Carman, 2002. Foreword. (In Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Phenomenology of 
Perception, translated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 
Reprint, Routledge, 2002).

Husserl, E. 1900/1901. Logical Investigations, edited by Dermot Moran. 
2nd ed. 2 vols.London: Routledge. Reprint, Routledge, 2001.

Kroes, P. and Meijers, A.W. 2016. Toward an Axiological Turn in the 
Philosophy of Technology. (In Franssen, M., Vermaas, P.E., Kroes, P. and 
Meijers, A.W. eds. Philosophy of Technology after the Empirical Turn. 
Springer Verlag. p. 11-30).

Sokolowski, R. 2000. Introduction to Phenomenology. Cambridge and New 
York: Cambridge University Press.

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