Abstract
The article focuses on the phenomenon of virtual reality in the context of a ‘paradise lost’. The contemporary desire for virtualization somehow corresponds with religious will of transcendency. An especially interesting question, which is the basic topic of the article, seems to be the idea of virtualization of body as a way to cyber-salvation. Thus virtualization, which mostly and literally means specific de-carnation, could be described in terms of return to old, medieval mysticism with its aspirations to eternal life. Such understood de-carnation seems to be one of the main problems in cyberpunk literature. Author of the paper arranges an interesting and inspiring meeting between cyberpunk authors (William Gibson, Bruce Bethke, Bruce Sterling or Rudy Rucker) and philosophers somehow inspired by this kind of literature (David de Kerckhove, Katherine Hayles, Marshall McLuhan or Jeffrey Fisher). It appears that one of the consequences of the last popularity of wide understood virtuality could be revalidation of body or even better to say of meat.
The future is monstrous.
(Jacques Derrida)
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Notes
- 1.
See Hayles, N.K. The Seduction of Cyberspace, in Rethinking Technologies, ed. Conley, V.A. (Minneapolis, 1993).
- 2.
See Farnell, R. In Dialogue with ‘Posthuman’ Bodies: Interview with Stelarc, in Body Modifications, Featherstone, M. (London, 2000). See http://stelarc.org/_.swf (Retrieved: 01. 05. 2011).
- 3.
Since the word ‘flash’ seems to be traditionally reserve to human sphere and its status is rather ambivalent (especially from theological and religious point of view), I have decided to use the word ‘meaty’ instead.
- 4.
See Agamben, G. Nuditá. (edizioni nottetempo, 2009). Polish translation: Agamben, G. Nagość. trans. K. Żabolicki (Warsaw, 2010).
- 5.
Ibidem.
- 6.
Idem, p. 99.
- 7.
See idem, p. 100.
- 8.
Rewers, E. Post-polis. Wstęp do filozofii ponowoczesnego miasta (Post-Polis. An Introduction to Philosophy of Postmodern City) (Cracow, 2005), p. 168.
- 9.
See De Kerckhove, D. Connected Intelligence. The Arrival of the Web Society (Toronto, Ontario, 1997). Polish authorized translation: De Kerckhove, D. Inteligencja otwarta. Narodziny społeczeństwa sieciowego, trans. A. Hildebrandt and R. Glegoła (Warsaw, 2001), p. 76.
- 10.
See Hayles, K.K. The Seduction of Cyberspace, op.cit., p. 173.
- 11.
See De Kerckhove, D. Connected Intelligence…, op.cit. The same aspect considers Mark Pesce but in the contest of ‘holostetic media’. See Pesce, M. Final Amputation: Pathogenic Ontology in Cyberspace. (http://hyperreal.org/∼mpesce/fa.html) (Retrieved: 01. 05. 2011).
- 12.
See M.C. Taylor, E. Saarinen, Imagologies: Media Philosophy (New York/London, 1993).
- 13.
Bakke, M. Ciało otwarte. Filozoficzne reinterpretacje kulturowych wizji cielesności (The Open Body. Philosophical Reinterpretation of Cultural Visions of Corporality) (Poznań, 2000), p. 151.
- 14.
See Welsch, W. Artificial Paradises? Considering the World of Electronic Media – and Other Worlds. In: Idem, Undoing Aesthetics (London, 1997), pp. 168–190. Compare Sandbothe, M. The Transversal Logic of the World Wide Web. (http://www.sandbothe.net/266.html) (Retrieved: 01. 05. 2011).
- 15.
See Welsch, W. Artificial Paradises?…, op.cit.
- 16.
Sobol, A. Cyberprzestrzeń – elektroniczny afterlife (Cyberspace – the Electronic Afterlife), in Nowe nawigacje II (New Navigations II), eds. Kletkowski, P., Marecki, P. (Cracow, 2003), p. 152.
- 17.
See Angerer, M.-L. “The Body as Interface”. Magazyn Sztuki, 17 (1/1998), pp. 269–274. See Flusser, V. Bodenloss (Frankfurt am Main, 1999). See http://www.flusser-archive.org/ (Retrieved: 01. 05. 2011).
- 18.
A similarity between medieval will of transcendention and postmodern will of virtualization discern Kroker and Weinstein. See Kroker, A., Weinstein, M.A. Data Trash. The Theory of the Visual Class (New York, 1994).
- 19.
Fisher, J. The Postmodern Paradiso: Dante, Cyberpunk, and the Technosophy of Cyberspace, in Internet Culture, ed. Porter, D. (Routledge, 1997), pp. 111–132.
- 20.
Ayers, R. Serene and Happy and Distant: An Interview with Orlan. In ed. Featherstone, M. Body…, op.cit., pp. 171–184. See also: Clarke, J. The Sacrificial Body of Orlan, in Body…, op.cit., ed. Featherstone, M., pp. 185–208.
- 21.
Haraway, D. A Cyborg Manifesto. In: idem, Simans, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature (New York, 1991).
- 22.
Baudrillard, J. Le paroxyste indifferent. Entretiens avec Philippe Petit (Paris, 1997), p. 11.
- 23.
Ibidem.
- 24.
Agamben, G. Nagość, op.cit., p. 69.
- 25.
See Bakke, M. Ciało otwarte…, op.cit, p. 63.
- 26.
Ibidem, p. 22.
- 27.
Brach-Czaina, J. Szczeliny istnienia (Slits of Existence). (Cracow, 2006), pp. 162–163.
- 28.
It is a travesty of famous Nietzschean sentence from his “The Birth of Tragedy”: “only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the world justified”.
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Sułkowska-Janowska, M.A. (2012). Cyber-Salvation: Body in Virtual Skies. In: Tymieniecka, A. (eds) Art, Literature, and Passions of the Skies. Analecta Husserliana, vol 112. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4261-1_15
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