Jean du Toit

The contemporary technosphere, and particularly digital technology, continues to challenge traditional forms of sociality. Erich Fromm, with his related concepts of biophilia and necrophilia, provides a springboard for the critical consideration of the relationship between the individual and their society under the conditions of advanced capitalism and technological totalization. The necrophilous character, beyond merely being an instantiation of an obsession with all that is dead and destructive, is closely intertwined with modern technological development that foregrounds progress without consideration of human needs and values. It entails a withered interpersonal relationship structure; one based in commodification, bureaucracy, and alienation. This affects not just the individual themselves, instantiating automaton conformity, but also how they view others and the world. The biophilic, in contrast, centres creative and productive character traits. In this chapter, the traits predominant in online communities of necrophilia (most pronounced in certain forms of contemporary politics online) are contrasted with those striven for in online communities of biophilia. The Bear community, a form of critical communitarianism, is identified as exemplar of such a biophilic community. This LGBTQ subgroup will be investigated to intuit liberatory praxis that is of importance for the broader social context, and which is in line with the biophilic ideal that Fromm proposes.

The contemporary technosphere, and particularly digital technology, continues to challenge traditional forms of sociality. Erich Fromm, with his related concepts of biophilia and necrophilia, provides a springboard for the critical consideration of the relationship between the individual and their society under the conditions of advanced capitalism and technological totalization. The necrophilous character, beyond merely being an instantiation of an obsession with all that is dead and destructive, is closely intertwined with modern technological development that foregrounds progress without consideration of human needs and values. It entails a withered interpersonal relationship structure; one based in commodification, bureaucracy, and alienation. This affects not just the individual themselves, instantiating automaton conformity, but also how they view others and the world. The biophilic, in contrast, centres creative and productive character traits. In this chapter, the traits predominant in online communities of necrophilia (most pronounced in certain forms of contemporary politics online) are contrasted with those striven for in online communities of biophilia. The Bear community, a form of critical communitarianism, is identified as exemplar of such a biophilic community. This LGBTQ subgroup will be investigated to intuit liberatory praxis that is of importance for the broader social context, and which is in line with the biophilic ideal that Fromm proposes.

This article deploys an existential phenomenological perspective to examine the crucial contribution that philosophy can make for thinking through the contemporary environmental crisis. We argue for a generative and affirmative (re-)appreciation of the multifaceted connection between happiness, circumstance, and the natural. First, a relation is drawn between environmental destruction and contemporary consumer culture’s emphasis on happiness. The happiness sciences understand happiness in a limited anthropocentric way – it excludes unhappiness, and by implication thinking about nature’s destruction. There is a need to move beyond narrow and limiting psychological, spiritual, religious and even certain philosophical understandings of happiness and humanity that restrict “nature” to what is palatable for the happiness industry. A broader conceptualisation of happiness entails an increased awareness of the contextual to more constructively relate to the environment. This awareness, of always being rooted in the natural environment, is developed by Ortega y Gasset’s notion that “I am me plus my circumstances” to emphasize our continued interdependence with and reliance upon nature. We are irrevocably, primarily engaged with nature – an understanding that contrasts with a capitalist enframing of nature as a space to be held at a distance, and which can be endlessly monetised and extracted from for human happiness. Fundamentally the “nature” of the happiness industry, and the “nature” of capitalist enframing more broadly, cannot incorporate the reality of catastrophic climate change. However, through contextualised philosophical thinking in times of environmental crisis, we may embrace nature in all its complexity through awareness of existential circumstances to fully engage with nature not merely as tourists, conservationists, activists, lawyers, politicians, or consumers.

Digital networking technologies facilitated connection between lecturers and students during the physical isolation (global lockdowns) of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2023). However, we argue that the sudden pivot to online modes of education brought significant questions regarding online intersubjectivity and resultant alienation to the forefront. This form of intersubjectivity involves the virtual as an integral feature. We argue that Merleau-Ponty’s account of intersubjectivity (as a founding corporeity) and its related concept of ‘the flesh’ provides an essential theoretical framework for the conceptual analysis of these issues since the body-subject and digital technology artefact are co-implicit in the generation of the virtual. Furthermore, the tendency to treat the virtual as concrete from the basis of our embodiment results in virtual reification, and this in turn results in an alienated form of networked subjectivity. The current chapter investigates how reification constitutes the virtual, pointing us back to the nature of alienation (which, following Marx, we view as an intersubjective social relation). The virtual on this account involves not isolation and individual atomization, but rather a deficient mode of intersubjectivity in which the individual functions in a deficient and distorted intersubjective network (particularly in terms of teaching and learning).

This paper interprets Ortega y Gasset’s Meditations on Hunting (1972) through the concept of cognitive scaffolding in order to analyse the relationship between hunter and hunting dog as a form of inter-species distributed cognitive system. In recreational hunting, the hunter and the dog engage in a reciprocal process of mutual cognitive scaffolding that transforms both their capacities. It is further argued that this scaffolding also serves as a means of affective regulation, and that it is the affective rather than the cognitive features of the system that point to the function of the scaffolding. Namely, the production of an affective state in the hunter. We detail the ways in which the cognitive and affective features of the scaffold operate and interrelate. We then explore the role of the game-animal in the affective functioning of the scaffold and consider that the hunter-dog system might represent a harmful form of scaffolding.

From Karl Marx to the early Frankfurt School theorists, into other critical traditions through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, critical social theorising has both implicitly and explicitly concerned itself with matters pertaining to nature as part of differing critiques of the destructive unfolding of late-industrial capitalism (and beyond). Horkheimer himself notes, in a defining essay that gave shape to Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), that “[the subject of critical thinking] is rather a definite individual in his real relation to other individuals and groups, in his conflict with a particular class,and, fi nally, in the resultant web of relationships with the social totality and with nature” (Horkheimer 1937 [1972]: 211) [emphasis added]. What, one may ask, is meant by this concept of ‘nature’? In Western philosophical thought, there are countless definitions and conceptions of the term, from the Greek and Roman philosophers, through different Christian theologies, the scientific turn of philosophical thought, the reaction by the Romanticists, into the more secular context of modern and postmodern philosophy and related paradigms. Nature is often placed into tension with culture, with nature referring to the separation of human from non-human (ecological environments, animals, plants, minerals, bacteria, weather patterns, etc.). However, more recent writings in the social sciences have questioned this duality as obfuscating their crucial interconnections.

The technological virtual demands philosophical scrutiny. Existing methodologies, like pragmatism and social constructivism, often limit the examination of technology to the social, neglecting questions of embodiment. Said approaches tend to overlook the intricate existential connection between the embodied individual and digital technology artefacts. This article argues that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology may be mobilised to describe, understand and reconceptualise the category of the virtual and the dynamic relation between the digital technology artefact and its user. The result is a clearer description and deeper understanding of the richly intertwined reversible relationship between the embodied individual and the artefactual – two poles or points from which virtual space as emergent perceptual characteristic arises. Questions of the body and the artefactual are therefore not tangential to the question of virtual space; rather, the re-deployment and development of key concepts from Merleau-Ponty’s work shows that such considerations are crucial for the ongoing development of a phenomenological account of the phenomenon of digital technology. We thus see that digital technology artefacts constantly, and in an encompassing manner, challenge perceptual faith, necessitating increased imaginative signification to make sense of a world via these technologies. In this manner, the process of sense-making as regards the self, world and others is modified.

Recent years have seen the global emergence of populist political formations, leading certain scholars to term our present age the “age of populism” and some politicians, such as Hungary’s current prime minister Viktor Orbán, to proclaim that “the era of liberal democracy is over”. Contemporary forms of populism are characterized by ‘us’ (often ‘the people’ in an ethnic or communal sense) versus ‘them’ (usually liberal elites, the establishment, minorities, or immigrants) forms of binary thinking. For some, the rise of contemporary populism inherently represents the resurgence of forms of reactionary populist nationalism, ranging from the ‘radical’ to the ‘extreme’ right, and the revitalization of forms of ideology that may be termed ‘neo-fascist’. The great challenge for contemporary democracies is that, in contrast to dictators who seize power via coups, the aforementioned political movements come to power via the ballot box. In light of the revitalization of such political formations, the current special issue serves to critically investigate contemporary forms of far-right populism and fascism in the Global South. Many contributors cast a critical perspective upon the political dimensions of the current proliferation of extreme forms of reactionary politics and the social conditions that gave rise, and are in the process of giving rise, to such movements. Other contributors explore the historical and theoretical roots of current forms of far-right populism and fascism (FRP/F), critical engagement with present-day problems that are resultant of their preponderance, as well as analyses of the cultural forces and tendencies that have led to, and are leading to, their contemporary ascendance. Some contributors also consider the question of whether it is possible to develop a general theory of FRP/F in contemporary society, present inquiries into the future development of FRP/F, or investigate opportunities for opposition to FRP/F in the present context.

The multifaceted nature of COVID-19 permeates all dimensions of human life. In this article, we argue that the COVID-19 crisis might teach us something about dealing with ruptures of this kind and scope in the future. The pandemic challenges our Being-in-the-world and it has the potential to help us realise the authentic possibilities of our own being – a freedom we have in our being-towards-death. We contemplate the extent to which this pandemic has caused existential angst and resultant reflection. To this end, we analyse, with reference to the work of Martin Heidegger, the existential and technological challenges that accompany the pandemic. We postulate that the pandemic has forced us to think about our existence more authentically, away from the “fallenness” of the ontological structure of Dasein in its everydayness. It proffers the opportunity to reconsider what authentic existence, technology, and embodiment entail amidst COVID-19 and for the future.

Daniel O’Shiel recently identified four categories of virtuality, which he terms “real virtualities”, that are perpetually present in human perception. These virtual horizons (Self, World, Others, and Values) continuously structure our experience without themselves being directly experienced. This essay argues that O’Shiel’s four categories of the virtual correspond strongly to the concept of the Fourfold found in the writings of the later Heidegger, and that Heidegger’s Fourfold can be fruitfully understood as a phenomenological framework of the virtual.

Academics should produce quality scholarly research. However, the demands of the marketised, neoliberal higher education institution and the increase in the academic’s bureaucratic and administrative tasks do not allow for adequate engagement with the deep work and slow forms of scholarship that are needed to produce cutting-edge and insightful research. Many academics find it challenging to think critically and creatively under such conditions, yet they are unwilling to fill their time with shallow work instead. Thus, they are torn between producing an institutionally-determined number of research outputs, and striving towards producing quality scholarly work that advances knowledge in the academic’s discipline. Reading groups serve to rework this tension by providing a communal and scheduled place and mind-space for reading major academic works. Reading takes time and persistence. We find that setting aside time and creating creative spaces for reading groups offer an opportunity for silent revolt against the pressures of the higher education institution. In this (post)qualitative inquiry we diffractively read – “through one another” – two autoethnographical accounts to experiment with our experiences of various reading groups over a period of three years while positioning ourselves in relation to Barad’s notion of diffraction. This speculative experimentation entails a myriad of ideas and methods that serve to decentre hegemonic, monolithic knowledge systems through seeking alternative ways of knowing, and recognises the importance of the entanglement of matter and meaning in tracing (and countering) the social relations produced in neoliberalist contexts. Such (re)thinking is thus a vital counterpoint to the neoliberal obsessions of the higher education context, (re)directing the scholar to new non-autonomous and mutable landscapes.

This paper explores the existential motivation for the formation of extremist echo chambers through a phenomenological analysis. We advance two claims. Firstly, following Ortega y Gasset, that virtuality is a constant framework for experience. And secondly, following Merleau-Ponty, that there is persistent embodiment in online spaces. On this account virtuality is a permanent feature of embodiment, existing prior to technological intervention while at the same time being modifiable by technological artefacts. Understanding virtuality in this way allows us to analyse the existential phenomenological characteristics of extremist echo chambers online. We argue that due to the persistence of embodiment throughout, and the restructuring of the virtual axes of experience, such online spaces can and do influence political praxis in offline spaces.

Background: The use of digital technology in higher education is overwhelmingly positively assessed in most recent research literature. While some literature indicates certain challenges in this regard, in general, the emphasis is on an encouragement and promotion of digital technology in higher education. While we recognised the positive potential of the use of digital technology in higher education, we were cautious of an instrumentalist and disembodied understanding of (digital) technology and its potential impact on higher education – as a sector of education and as a body of students. Aim: To re-conceptualise the way in which technology is understood for its use in the higher education sector, as is argued, would be of benefit for transformation in higher education. Setting: South African Higher Education sector. Methods: Phenomenology of embodiment. Results: An embodied understanding of technology through the embodied phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and an explication of its potential for transformation in higher education via the working concept of the Embodied Screen leads to a full understanding of the student as embodied and socially-embedded individual. Conclusion: A more holistic and embodied understanding of digital technology serves to supplement transformation in higher education, especially if transformation is itself understood in concrete social and bodily terms as is the case in the South African context.

It has been the better part of a century since the appearance of Dialectic of Enlightenment, and the technologies of mass communication that Adorno and Horkheimer placed at the centre of their analysis of mass culture have altered beyond recognition, and with them the culture itself. And this in turn raises the question of the continuing relevance of the ‘culture industry’ concept. Does the contemporary culture industry still operate along the same lines that Adorno and Horkheimer charted or has it evolved to a point at which their analysis no longer applies? This special issue gathers together a broad range of theoretical approaches that address the pressing need for the analysis of the contemporary culture industry in the Global South and beyond. Through the lenses of the history and theory of Critical Theory (and African critical theory traditions) and topics including digital culture, neoliberalism and its effects, and environmental praxis, the culture industry of Adorno and Horkheimer is revisited in the spirit of renewal and positive critique.

The debate between instrumentalist and technological determinist positions on the nature of technology characterised the early history of the philosophy of technology. In recent years however technological determinism has ceased to be viewed as a credible philosophical position within the field. This paper uses Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to reconsider the technological determinist outlook in phenomenological terms as an experiential response to the encounter with the phenomenon of modern technology. Recasting the instrumentalist-determinist debate in a phenomenological manner enables one to reconcile the apparent dualism of the instrumentalist and determinist positions through Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh. This ontology has recently been used to ground accounts of virtual embodiment. We argue that in addition to explaining away the classical form of technological determinism, it can also phenomenologically ground a novel understanding of technological determinism. Namely, a technological determinism of virtual embodiment.

Modernity as a philosophical and intellectual movement has cultivated a perspective of humanity as separated from nature. In modernity, nature is valuable only insofar as it has instrumental value. This paper postulates that such an approach to the nature-human relationship may have led to considerable environmental damage and misuse, and that the perspective of humanity as separate from nature should be re-evaluated. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s philosophy is investigated as a possible means to overcome this dichotomy. De Chardin describes varying ontologies that are embedded in the evolutionary process and against which all human relevance and action must be sketched. This differs from an evolutionistic approach, because whilst engaging with scientific discourse, de Chardin also incorporates spiritual and religious ideas and perspectives. Furthermore, de Chardin’s ideas differ from vague pantheism because he engages with the terminology used in modern science and re-evaluates this terminology’s application and conclusions in relation to his newly developed cosmology. Several questions are central in this paper: Firstly, could de Chardin’s approach be incorporated into the natural scientific discourse? Secondly, does de Chardin’s cosmology provide new avenues for investigation into a closer and more sustainable relationship between humanity and the natural world?

Philosophy of technology was not initially considered a consolidated field of inquiry. However, under the influence of sociology and pragmatist philosophy, something resembling a consensus has emerged in a field previously marked by a lack of agreement amongst its practitioners. This has given the field a greater sense of structure and yielded interesting research. However, the loss of the earlier “messy” state has resulted in a limitation of the field’s scope and methodology that precludes an encompassing view of the problematic issues inherent in the question of technology. It is argued that the heterodox disunity and diversity of earlier philosophy of technology was not a mark of theoretical immaturity but was necessitated by the field’s complex subject matter. It is further argued that philosophy of technology should return to its pluralistic role as a meta-analytical structure linking insights from different fields of research.

Social networking technologies have become a ubiquitous framework for social interaction, serving to organise much of the individual’s social life. Such technological structuring affects not merely the individual’s psyche (as a psychotechnics), it also affects broader aspects of society (as a socio-technics). While social networking technologies may serve to transform society in positive ways, such technologies also have the potential to significantly encroach upon and (re) construct individual and cultural meaning in ways that must be investigated. Erich Fromm, who psychoanalytically describes humans as a product of their society and the economic systems within that society, may provide insight into the influence of social networking technologies in contemporary society. He sees the relationship between the individual and society as being in a constant state of dynamic change. Utilising Fromm’s psycho-societal insight, social networking technologies are shown to conflate and confuse the relation between Thanatos and Eros – the Thanatos of a lifeless and consumerist agenda-filled mechanisation, and the Eros associated with social engagement. Thanatos and Eros are tied together via social networking technologies. This results in, firstly, social networking technologies functioning predominantly to further capitalist agendas through the monetisation of these technologies – particularly in terms of linking commodity fetishism and the foundational social drive of the individual. Secondly, social networking technologies mechanise human action according to predictable behavioural paths through the use of these technologies, especially in terms of how socialisation is possible via these technologies (shaping how platonic and romantic relationships may take place in the contemporary world). Such a mechanisation of interpersonal engagement contrasts with Erich Fromm’s assertion that interpersonal relations (vis-à-vis love) are not “mere emotion”, but rather represent an interpersonal creative capacity and interplay. Fromm’s psycho-societal insights will show how contemporary individuals may take independent and responsible rational action to establish accountable and psychologically beneficial ways of engaging with others through social networking technologies.

The virtual has become the latest rostrum for ideological heteronormativity; it increasingly plays host to an insidious rhetoric of unjustifiably fixed and oppositional gender binaries that exhort heterosexuality as a norm. Conservative political and religious groups, as well as consumerist advertising, utilise digital technology to reinforce cast-in-stone and adversarial social perspectives for manipulative and exploitative ends. Contrastingly, the virtual may be mobilised to support and facilitate queering in contemporary societies and may positively counter such fixed ideological heteronormative categories of social life. Crucial in this transformative account of the virtual is the body, which is for Merleau-Ponty the horizon of engagement with the world as a condition for perception and performativity. Queer perspectives may, in turn, overcome the oversight of Merleau-Ponty (as critically suggested by Judith Butler and Iris Marion Young) regarding the specific gendered characteristics of the body itself, and allows for an expanded embodied and queer conceptualisation of the virtual. A transformative vision of the virtual entails therefore a rethinking of our understanding of digital technology through (a) the phenomenology of the body-subject and (b) queer theory. I argue that the idea of the body as entirely discursive or performative (per queer theory) needs to be adjusted by explicating the foundational ontological characteristics of the body-subject’s encounter of the virtual.

ABSTRACT The technological virtual converges with our contemporary existence in a multitude of ways, which suggests a need to interrogate the question of the virtual existentially. Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenological account of embodiment is invaluable in this regard because the virtual is encountered from the basis of the facticity of the embodied individual – a facticity that is closely related to perception and motor intentionality. The current article argues that these characteristics of the body-subject should be taken into consideration in order to develop a clearer description of the virtual. However, beyond an embodied account that relates to early technologies, Merleau-Ponty also presents through his concept of the flesh a novel avenue for the ontological investigation of the virtual. The flesh describes the intertwining of the body-subject and the world, which is suggestive of a new account of the individual’s sensibility in relation to the virtual. An original concept is suggested to describe the existential-ontological structure of the virtual: The embodied screen. The embodied screen as neologism presents an alternative conceptualisation of the coincidence of the body-subject (who understands the world spatially) with the virtual (as non-spatial). By tracing imaginative signification and embodied habitude in terms of the virtual, this article suggests certain existential implications of the virtual for contemporary being.

The technological virtual converges with our contemporary existence in a multitude of ways, which suggests a need to interrogate the question of the virtual existentially. Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenological account of embodiment is invaluable in this regard because the virtual is encountered from the basis of the facticity of the embodied individual – a facticity that is closely related to perception and motor intentionality. The current article argues that these characteristics of the body-subject should be taken into consideration in order to develop a clearer description of the virtual. However, beyond an embodied account that relates to early technologies, Merleau-Ponty also presents through his concept of the flesh a novel avenue for the ontological investigation of the virtual. The flesh describes the intertwining of the body-subject and the world, which is suggestive of a new account of the individual’s sensibility in relation to the virtual. An original concept is suggested to describe the existential-ontological structure of the virtual: The embodied screen. The embodied screen as neologism presents an alternative conceptualisation of the coincidence of the body-subject (who understands the world spatially) with the virtual (as non-spatial). By tracing imaginative signification and embodied habitude in terms of the virtual, this article suggests certain existential implications of the virtual for contemporary being.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 and the various measures taken subsequently, either by individual countries or by government and nongovernment bodies with a global reach, have had a profound effect on human lives on a number of levels, be it social, economic, legal, or political. The scramble to respond to the threat posed by the rapid spread of the virus has, in many cases, led to a suspension of ordinary politics whilst at the same time throwing into sharp relief the profoundly political nature of the pandemic. In addition to the new issues that have arisen regarding detection and treatment of the COVID-19 virus, perennial political issues regarding the limits of political authority, racial and gender justice, and populism and demagoguery have thrust themselves to the forefront of mainstream political discourse. This special issue, titled simply Pandemic politics, is a collection of papers that casts a critical perspective upon the political dimensions of the current pandemic. We have invited papers covering a broad spectrum of pandemic-related topics, especially with the focus on aspects of the pandemic in relation to the Southern hemisphere. The eight papers that made it to this volume are reflective of this broad approach and fall, roughly, into three categories, namely power and mistrust, disaster capitalism, and COVID-19: crisis or opportunity.