The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places

Edited by Erik Malcolm Champion

i
Table of Contents

Table of Figures

Preface and acknowledgements (to be added after review)

Foreword, Jeff Malpas

Introduction, Erik Champion,

1. The Inconspicuous Familiarity of Landscapes-Ted Relph

2. Landscape Archaeology in Skyrim VR-Andrew Reinhard

3. The Efficacy of Phenomenology for Investigating Place with Locative Media-Leighton

Evans

4. Postphenomenology and “Places”-Don Ihde

5. Virtual Place and Virtualized Place-Bruce Janz

6. Transactions in virtual places: Sharing and excess in blockchain worlds-Richard Coyne

7. The Kyoto School Philosophy on Place: Nishida and Ueda-John W.M. Krummel

8. Phenomenology of Place and Space in our Epoch: Thinking along Heideggerian

Pathways-Nader El-Bizri

9. Norberg-Schulz: Culture, Presence and a Sense of Virtual Place-Erik Champion

10. Heidegger’s Building Dwelling Thinking in terms of Minecraft-Tobias Holischka

11. Cézanne, Merleau-Ponty, and Questions for Augmented Reality-Patricia Locke

12. The Place of Others: Merleau-Ponty and the Interpersonal Origins of Adult Experience-

Susan Bredlau

13. “The Place was not a Place”: A Critical Phenomenology of Forced Displacement-Neil

Vallelly

14. Virtual Dark Tourism in The Town of Light-Florence Smith Nicholls

- Author and Contributor Information (at end of book??)

ii
Table of Figures

Chapter 2 Reinhard

NOTE TO ROUTLEDGE

Figure 2.1: The Village of Rorikstead (source: screenshot by author)

Figure 2.2 Valley and Ruined Fort (source: screenshot by author)

Chapter 9 Champion

• Figure 9.1 Hamar Museum, Norway, by Sverre Fehn (source: author)

Chapter 10 Holischka

• Figure 10.1: Minecraft’s landscape in blocks (source: screenshot by author)

Chapter 14-Smith Nicholls

• Figure 14.1: A Scene from the Game: Town of Light (source: company screenshot)

Permissions

2.1 And 2.2 Andrew Reinhard

.. With images, the PlayStation 4 limits these to 72ppi when I take captures inside the game. I can look for some CC-

BY pictures that might have higher resolution. Bethesda Game Studios ToS allows for the use of screenshots from its

games as long as they are not for commercial use. Typically academic, short-run monographs do not fall under the

"commercial" rubric.

9.1 photo by Champion (author). I may also use in another book by Routledge I am submitting. On Nordic

architecture.

10.1: Tobias Holischka said:

Regarding copyright, I texted Mojang, but they just forwarded their terms and conditions. As far as I can see, we're

more than save with the remark in the footnote. Anyway, it's just a screenshot and not a republication of a piece of art.

14.1 Florence Smith Nicholls said:

iii
I have been in email conversation with the head of the development studio in the past so I can contact him again

regarding images and copyright. Would you like me to send over some potential screenshots that could be used for the

chapter/cover?...

Thank you, I'm very glad to hear that you like it! I have attached the updated draft with full bibliography. I also went

through the text and tried to tighten it up some more (plus The Town of Light also came out on the Switch just the

other day so I added that in too!).

Yes, I was thinking screenshots would be helpful and could be included as long as its not a copyright issue-I have

many of my own and could send some examples over. I also checked the official game website and their presskit has a

number of screenshots which would be relevant

(http://www.thetownoflight.com/press/sheet.php?p=the_town_of_light).

iv
Foreword:
The Place of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Place

Jeff Malpas

Can there be any inquiry into place that is not phenomenological? Can there be any inquiry,
and especially any phenomenological inquiry, that does not involve place? Whatever else
phenomenology may be, it is surely, at the very least, a form of inquiry into appearance and
the apparent – into phenomena and the phenomenal. That inquiry may be descriptive or it
may be analytical, it may concern itself with what appears or with that which enables
appearance, and yet in that very concern with appearance – with the phenomena –
phenomenology is already and unavoidably concerned with place, since every appearance is,
by its very nature, contextual, situated, placed. Phenomenology is thus always concerned,
even if sometimes only implicitly, with place. But if any and every appearance is placed, so
too is every inquiry also itself placed. In the case of phenomenology, which is in part
characterized by a concern with its own conditions of possibility, the concern with place is a
concern both with the place of appearance and with the place of its own appearance. In the
language I have used elsewhere, phenomenology always takes the form, whether explicitly
recognized or not, of a topology or topography.
The close relation of appearance and place, and so of place to phenomenology, is a
particularly important feature of the twentieth century phenomenological tradition that
develops from Husserl, and that encompasses Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty among others.
Husserl may not take place as an explicit theme (though he does address space at some
length), but many of his own key concepts – most notably the concept of horizon – clearly
have connections back to the notion of place. One might even argue that the development of
phenomenology after Husserl, is in part characterized by the gradual uncovering and
explication of the place of phenomenology as well as of the phenomenology of place.
Even outside of the conventional European phenomenological tradition, in the thought, for
instance, of the Japanese Kyoto School, and especially in Nishida, the connection between
appearance and place, and the placed character of thought, is evident once again. As soon as
we turn our attention to the phenomena – to the reality of what appears or comes to presence
– then we are also drawn to attend, even if sometimes indirectly, to the way that appearance
takes place, is held in place (and here we see the way place properly encompasses time as
well as space).
It should not be surprising to discover that phenomenology has played a central role in
the development of place-oriented thinking over the last fifty years or so – a period that has
indeed seen place become an increasing focus for scholarly attention. Even within geography,
a discipline that has its own important tradition of thinking about place in the work of
thinkers such as Ratzel and Vidal de la Blanche, phenomenology nevertheless played a
crucial role in the turn towards place that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s in the work of such

xii
as Tuan, Buttimer, Relph, Samuels, and others. Phenomenology was not alone in its influence
here – psychological and ecological ideas were also at work – but it is hard to envisage the
turn towards place in humanistic geographic circles without phenomenology. The same is
true elsewhere – in architecture, for instance, ideas concerning the importance of place have
been largely driven through the appropriation into architectural thinking of ideas from
phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and also Bachelard. Even
environmental thinking, which might otherwise be thought to have exercised its own
influence in the turn towards place, has been strongly influenced by the place-oriented
thinking of phenomenologists, notwithstanding its frequent mediation through the work of
others.
Perhaps we become phenomenologists in the very turn towards place, in the move to
take place as a focus for our attention. In that case, to be a thinker of place is necessarily to be
a phenomenologist, just as to be a phenomenologist is to be a thinker of place.
The essays gathered together here provide powerful testament to the closeness of the
connection between place and phenomenology – and they do so in extremely diverse ways
from discussions of video games, cryptocurrencies, and social media to analyses of
architecture, painting, and landscape. Yet these essays also demonstrate the way in which the
phenomenological attentiveness to place not only remains central to reflection on human life
and activity, but also turns out to have a crucial part to play in the investigation of some of
the most important new developments in the contemporary world – especially developments
around technology, media, and communications. It is often assumed that what is most
characteristic about contemporary technologies is that they operate to free us from the
constraints of place.
The mobile phone, the internet, mechanized transportation, virtual reality systems are
all readily understood as enabling us to act in ways that give us control over space and time in
new ways, that break down the barriers between places, that enable the equal accessibility to
us of all places irrespective of our bodily location (rendering even bodily location
ambiguous). Yet although there can be no doubt that technology changes the way places
appear, the fundamental role played by place in the very possibility of appearance, including
the appearance even of technology, remains unchanged. It is this that seems to be very clearly
demonstrated in the essays here – and the point brings us right back to the way place and
phenomenology are themselves so closely related through the way both connect to
appearance.
It is the placed character of appearance, and phenomenology’s own concern with such
appearance, that must underpin any inquiry that aims to bring place and phenomenology
together. It is still a question, however, as to exactly how place and phenomenology are to be
understood in any more developed sense within such an inquiry. The question as to the nature
of phenomenology, and the various forms in which phenomenology may itself appear, recurs
throughout many of the essays contained here. In many respects, this is the primary question
on which almost all of these essays converge. The question can be given more precision by
saying that what is at issue is the following: how is phenomenology to be understood once it
is explicitly situated in relation to place?
This is a not a question that seems to me to have been given sufficient attention in the
literature so far, and even this volume represents only a starting point for a more adequate

xiii
inquiry. The question goes beyond any exploration merely of the methodological usefulness
of phenomenology for certain forms of empirical inquiry or as a framework to enable inquiry
within certain fields or with respect to certain objects – it is the very character of
phenomenology that is at issue.
To some extent this question connects with a deep uncertainty that has arisen within
contemporary phenomenology: on the one hand phenomenology originates as an inquiry that
looks to investigate appearance as it occurs in experience (one might add: in subjective
experience, except that such a characterization immediately raises questions as to what
‘subjective’ really means here) and yet on the other phenomenology is also increasingly
drawn towards a conception of itself as ‘naturalistic’, and even ‘scientific’. This uncertainty
is not itself directly thematized here, at least not in any especially salient way, but it does sit
in the background of those approaches that look to connect phenomenology with cognitive
scientific approaches or to combine phenomenology with certain forms of technical inquiry.
If we do take the phenomenological connection to place seriously, and we also attend
to what place itself might be (the latter question being seldom directly addressed – even in
this volume), then phenomenology will always stand somewhat apart from any purely
‘naturalistic’ inquiry, if by this is indeed meant a form of inquiry that models itself on the
natural sciences and its modes of explanation. The concern with appearance is a concern that
cannot be captured within the frame of any straightforwardly empirical inquiry nor within the
bounds of any particular natural scientific discipline (which does not mean that the inquiry
into appearance does not connect with such inquiries or disciplines, but only that it is not
restricted to them nor exhausted by them).
I would be inclined to say that this reflects the properly ‘transcendental’ character of
phenomenology (there is a further connection here between the transcendental and the
topological or topographic), except that the notion of the transcendental is nowadays so little
understood and so often misused. Moreover, even putting questions of its ‘scientific’
character aside, phenomenology will always remain irreducible to any set of methods or
principles of the sort that can then be ‘applied’ in any straightforward fashion. There is no
‘method’, no set of ‘principles’, that completely determines the proper manner in which place
(or appearance either for that matter) is to be inquired into. Taking place seriously means
taking seriously the placed character of any and every inquiry and recognizing that different
inquiries will look to place in different ways and with different aims and interests.
This will also apply to phenomenology, and it is one of the reasons why
phenomenology has developed in so many different forms (including what Ihde refers to in
his chapter as ‘postphenomenology’) and with so many different ‘applications’ –
phenomenology operates, one might say, in many different places. Still, in saying this, one
must not lose sight of the fact that these different places, and these different modes of
phenomenology, all reside within the more encompassing structure of place as such and with
respect to a conception of phenomenology that can itself be located, even if not
uncontentiously, in relation to that structure. The difficult task is to hold both ends of what is
at issue here together – to keep hold of place and phenomenology as they appear in their
multiplicity and their unity.
If place and appearance are tied together, so that every appearance is placed
(something affirmed by Aristotle no less than Nishida), then the inquiry into place, and so

xiv
also phenomenological inquiry, must be counted as the most fundamental form of any inquiry
– the mode of inquiry that underpins all else (here its genuinely transcendental character does
indeed become evident). This is why the inquiry into place, and so also phenomenology, has
a continuing importance that is all the stronger precisely because of the uncertainties that
seem to surround place in the contemporary world. It is not only the uncertainties of place
created by technology that are relevant here, but the uncertainties that come from the
displacement of individuals and populations, the disruption of environmental systems, the
destabilization of identities and communities, the loss even of any sense of the place that
might belong to human beings in a world that also encompasses what goes beyond the
human. What this suggests, moreover, is that the issues at stake in relation to place, and that
must also be addressed by phenomenology, are not only those concerning the way place is
configured in different domains and with respect to different modes of appearance or
experience, but also those issue that relate to place in the sense of ethos – place as that which
is the basis for ethics.
To invoke this sense of place is not, contrary to some commonly held assumptions, to
invoke a reactionary or conservative sense of ethics, or a reactionary and conservative politics
along with it. It is rather to recognize that ethics too is shaped by the relation of appearance to
place and especially by the relation between appearance, place, and commonality. If ethics
essentially concerns the relation to others, as well as to one-self and the world, then ethics can
only arise in that common place in which relationality is first possible.
Ethics has its origins in place. Although one might say that the issue of the relation
between place and ethics receives little in the way of explicit attention in the pages that
follow, it is never far from the surface of the discussion – questions of value and identity, of
responsiveness and responsibility, of involvement and implication runs throughout these
essays. If one cannot think phenomenology or appearance without place, one also cannot
properly think place without ethics – to be in place is already to be oriented in ways that give
order and significance to what is around us, that set orders of responsibility and obligation,
that shape our sense of who and what we are. Just as this book concerns itself with place, then
so too does it concern itself, whether explicitly or not, with the very ethos, in its many forms,
in which our lives are shaped.

xv
Preface

“If One Is Truly to Succeed in Leading a Person to a Specific Place, One Must First and

Foremost Take Care to Find Him Where He is and Begin There.”

Kierkegaard, Søren. (1998). The point of view. Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press,

p.45.

There is so much one can write about phenomenology, real places and virtual

places, and as the interests of you the reader is an enigma wrapped in a mystery to us

the writers, it can be hard to know where to start. The Finnish architect Alvar Aalto

apparently observed “it is easier to build a grand opera or a city center than to build a

personal house” but it is also no easy task to compile chapters examining the

phenomenology of real and virtual places.

Given the many backgrounds and disciplines possible in collecting chapters

from a variety of real and virtual place-related disciplines, and the various

configurations with which these points of view could be ordered, I invite the reader to

make their own way through these chapters. My primary editorial aim was to show how

the phenomenology of real places can and cannot be easily modified to also examine

how virtual places can be experienced. The journey is ambitious and only preliminary

but well worth undertaking.

xiv
Acknowledgements

Much thanks to the editing team of Routledge, especially to Andrew Weckenmann, and

to Professor Jeffrey Malpas for graciously agreeing to write a foreword despite his busy

schedule.

My gratitude also to my thirteen co-authors for their patience and good humor.

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The Phenomenology of Virtual Places

Author and Contributor Information

Susan Bredlau; Erik Champion; Richard Coyne; Nader El-Bizri; Leighton Evans; Tobias Holischka; Don
Ihde; Bruce Janz; John W. M. Krummel; Patricia M. Locke; Florence Smith Nicholls; Andrew Reinhard;
Edward "Ted" Relph; Neil Vallelly.

1. Susan Bredlau is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. Her research focuses
on perception, embodiment, and the role that other people play in our perceptual
experience. She is currently working on a book on Merleau-Ponty's conception of objectivity
in the Phenomenology of Perception.
2. Erik Champion is UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation and Professor at the
School of Media Creative Arts and Social Inquiry (MCASI), Curtin University, Australia, and
Theme Leader of Visualisation at the Curtin Institute of Computation. His recent books are
Playing with the Past (Springer, 2011), the edited book Game Mods: Design, Theory and
Criticism (ETC Press, 2012), Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage, in
Routledge’s Digital Humanities Series, and he co-edited Cultural Heritage Infrastructures in
Digital Humanities (2017). Trained in architecture, philosophy and interaction design, he has
also written book chapters and journal articles on virtual places, cultural presence, serious
games and virtual heritage.
3. Richard Coyne BArch MLArch PhD RIBA RIAS FRSA, Professor of Architectural Computing.
Richard researches and teaches in the areas of architectural and design theory, computer-
aided design in architecture, and the philosophy of technology. He is author of 8 books on
design and the impact of digital technologies. His ninth book due out at the end of 2015 is
entitled Mood and Mobility: Navigating the Emotional Spaces of Digital Social Networks with
MIT Press He has researched the implications of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer
and Jacques Derrida on digital technologies. His management roles include Head of
Department and Head of School. He is currently Dean of Postgraduate Research in the
College of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Edinburgh.
4. Nader El-Bizri is a Professor of Philosophy and Civilization Studies at the American University
of Beirut. He also serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and
directs the General Education Program. He previously taught at the University of Cambridge,
Nottingham, Lincoln, the London Consortium, Harvard, and held research positions at the
Institute of Ismaili Studies in London and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in
Paris. He also served as a consultant to the Science Museum in London, the Aga Khan Trust
for Culture in Geneva, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York/Berlin, and the BBC.
His areas of expertise are in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, Architectural Humanities, and
Phenomenology. He received awards and honors, including the Kuwait Foundation for the
Advancement of Sciences Prize, and was elected as a Mellon Global Liberal Arts Fellow via
the Claremont consortium of colleges in the US.

5. Leighton Evans is Senior Lecturer in Media Theory at Swansea University. Leighton’s primary
research interests are in locative media, the effects of digital media use on everyday
understanding of the world and the translation of everyday phenomena into data. Leighton
is the author of Locative Social Media: Place in the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015),

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and has published work on locative social media in First Monday, New Media and Society
and The Journal of Location-Based Services.

6. Tobias Holischka, PhD, is a scientific assistant at the Chair of Philosophy at the Catholic
University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and an associate member of the interdisciplinary research
group “Philosophy of Place”. His PhD project “CyberPlaces” was on the philosophy of virtual
places.
7. Don Ihde is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Stony Brook University. He is
widely known as a principal developer of postphenomenology and several of his recent
books address this development out of classical phenomenology. Postphenomenology and
Technoscience (SUNY Press, 2009); Heidegger’s Technologies (Fordham University Press,
2010) and Husserl’s Missing Technologies (Fordham University Press, 2016).
8. Bruce Janz is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at UCF, graduate faculty in the Texts
& Technology Ph.D. program, and co-director of the CAH Center for Humanities and Digital
Research. He has been at UCF since 2003, and was chair of the Philosophy department from
2008 to 2013. Previously he was at Augustana University College (now the Augustana
Faculty of University of Alberta), in Alberta, Canada. His Ph.D. is from the University of
Waterloo in Canada. He has taught in Canada, the US, Kenya, and South Africa. URL:
http://philosophy.cah.ucf.edu/staff.php?id=19
9. John W. M. Krummel is Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Hobart and William Smith
Colleges; Assistant Editor of The Journal of Japanese Philosophy; Editor of Social Imaginaries.
He is the author of Nishida Kitarō’s Chiasmatic Chorology: Place of Dialectic, Dialectic of
Place (Indiana University Press). His writings on various topics have appeared in a variety of
journals and books. He has translated several works, including Place and Dialectic: Two
Essays by Nishida Kitarō (Oxford). His scholarly interests include phenomenology, Heidegger,
Schürmann, Nietzsche, Buddhist thought, Japanese and Kyoto School philosophy, Nishida,
Nishitani, Ueda, Dostoevsky, Mishima, comparative philosophy/religion, nihilism,
imagination.

10. Patricia M. Locke is a Tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis MD, where she teaches across
the curriculum. Her research interests are in phenomenology, philosophy of the arts, and
philosophy of science. Most recently, she co-edited with Rachel McCann the collection
Merleau-Ponty: Space, Place, Architecture (Ohio University Press, 2016). Her current project
is a monograph, The Nighttime World of Marcel Proust.

11. Andrew Reinhard is a PhD candidate at the University of York's Department of Archaeology
and Centre for Digital Heritage where he is writing his thesis on applying archaeological tools
and methods to the investigations of digital built environments. He is the Director of
Publications for the American Numismatic Society and runs the archaeogaming.com blog.

12. Edward "Ted" Relph is a Canadian geographer and an emeritus professor at the University
of Toronto. He is best known for Place and Placelessness, published in 1976, reissued in
2010, which was one of the one of the first books relating phenomenology and place. He has
also written several books on urban landscapes, and articles about the phenomenological
foundations of geography, sense of place and urban design. His most recent book is Toronto:
Transformations in a City and its Region, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. He is
currently developing a website about the wide range of ideas and interpretations of place at
placeness.com.
13. Florence Smith Nicholls received an undergraduate degree in Classics from the University of
Cambridge and an MA in Mediterranean Archaeology from University College London. She

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currently works as a Planning Archaeologist in London. Her research interests include dark
tourism, archaeogaming and queer theory.
14. Neil Vallelly, University of Otago, is a former Commonwealth PhD Scholar (2012-2015) at
the University of Otago in conjunction with Shakespeare's Globe. He has published across
the fields of phenomenology, critical theory, and literary studies. He currently teaches in the
Dept. of English and Linguistics at the University of Otago.

2. Authors and email addresses

Editor and introduction: erik.champion@curtin.edu.au;

Foreword: Jeff.Malpas@utas.edu.au;

Authors: bruce.janz@ucf.edu; don.ihde@stonybrook.edu ; ted.relph@gmail.com;

KRUMMEL@hws.edu; Patricia.locke@sjc.edu; sbredla@emory.edu; neilvallelly@gmail.com;
tobias.holischka@ku.de; nb44@aub.edu.lb; Richard.Coyne@ed.ac.uk;
erik.champion@curtin.edu.au; fsmithnicholls@gmail.com; adr520@york.ac.uk;
L.Evans@swansea.ac.uk

Table of contents

Distinguished Professor Jeffrey Malpas, University of Tasmania, [http://jeffmalpas.com/ email:

Jeff.Malpas@utas.edu.au] has graciously agreed to write the foreword.

Introduction-Erik Champion, erik.champion@curtin.edu.au

1) The Inconspicuous Familiarity of Landscapes, Professor Ted Relph, Emeritus Professor University
of Toronto, ted.relph@gmail.com
2) Landscapes in Skyrim VR, Andrew Reinhard, University of York, adr520@york.ac.uk
3) The Efficacy of Phenomenology for Investigating Place with Locative Media, Dr Leighton Evans,
Swansea University, L.Evans@swansea.ac.uk
4) Postphenomenology and ‘Places’, Don Ihde, Stony Brook University, don.ihde@stonybrook.edu
5) Virtual Place and Virtualized Place, Professor Bruce Janz, University of Central Florida, United
States of America, bruce.janz@ucf.edu
6) Transactions in virtual places: Sharing and excess in blockchain worlds, Professor Richard Coyne,
University of Edinburgh, Richard.Coyne@ed.ac.uk
7) The Kyoto School Philosophy on Place: Nishida and Ueda, Associate Professor John W.M.
Krummel, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, KRUMMEL@hws.edu
8) Phenomenology of Place and Space in our Epoch: Thinking along Heideggerian Pathways,
Professor Nader El-Bizri, American University of Beirut, nb44@aub.edu.lb
9) Norberg-Schulz and The Phenomenology of Built and Virtual Places, Professor Erik Champion,
Curtin University, erik.champion@curtin.edu.au
10) Heidegger’s Building Dwelling Thinking in terms of Minecraft, Dr. Tobias Holischka, Katholische
Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, tobias.holischka@ku.de
11) Cézanne, Merleau-Ponty, and Questions for Augmented Reality, Dr. Patricia Locke, St. John’s
College, Patricia.locke@sjc.edu
12) The Place of Others: Merleau-Ponty and the Interpersonal Origins of Adult Experience, Assistant
Professor Susan Bredlau, Emory University, sbredla@emory.edu
13) “The Place was not a Place”: A Critical Phenomenology of Forced Displacement, Dr. Neil Vallelly,
University of Otago, neilvallelly@gmail.com

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14) Virtual Dark Tourism in The Town of Light. Florence Smith Nicholls, independent scholar,
fsmithnicholls@gmail.com

xix
100 word abstracts

Virtual Place and Virtualized Place, Bruce B. Janz

When we use the term "phenomenology", we are using a shorthand for a tradition that has

significant variation within it. We know this, and yet often we are inclined to collapse those

distinctions. Every taxonomy is inexact; it should be seen as at best provisional. The

provisionality, though, can be useful, it helps us think through just how place is rendered,

depending on the emphasis of a particular phenomenological mode. If we hold these modes

in tension, we might be able to see how and why phenomenology has been so engaged with

place over the past century or more. We might also be able to think through the potential for

the digital that is afforded.

Places and Postphenomenology, Don Ihde

Classical phenomenology through many of its primary authors--Edmund Husserl, Maurice

Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger—all produced analyses of spatiality which

deconstructed a “Cartesian” space-from-nowhere. Thus, the role of bodily space and related a

notion of place was developed as a counter, a situated space and place. Postphenomenology

continues this trajectory, but by adapting an anti-essentialist, non-foundational emphasis from

pragmatism could better said to deal with “places” or a set of multistable possible places. In

this chapter a postphenomenological analysis of places, including virtual places, will be

undertaken.

The Inconspicuous Familiarity of Landscapes, Edward Charles "Ted" Relph

Phenomenological description reveals things in the world of everyday experience that have

the character of “inconspicuous familiarity” (the expression comes from Heidegger) because

we already know their meanings and purposes without having to reflect on them. Landscapes

have precisely this character. Landscapes are for the most part noticed in a diffuse way, there

in the background, familiar except when we travel to other places and countries. This chapter

xxii
aims to unravel the inconspicuous familiarity of landscapes by considering the elusiveness of

landscape experiences, the ways in which they simultaneously hide and reveal social values,

and how specific details can suggest immensity. It will also consider the challenge that

inconspicuous familiarity poses for constructing virtual landscapes and places.

The Kyoto School Philosophy on Place: Nishida and Ueda, John Kummel

Nishida Kitarō, cofounder and central figure of the Kyoto school, once stated that to be is to

be implaced. Nishida’s second generation Kyoto School descendant, and current

representative of the Kyoto School, Ueda Shizuteru, furthered this concept to understand both

place and implacement in terms of a twofold world or twofold horizon. I will explore this

legacy of place as Nishida first formulated it and then as developed by Ueda. I will also

discuss each of their relations to phenomenology and end by looking at the implications these

ideas have for our current situation of globalization in the contemporary world.

Cézanne, Merleau-Ponty, and Questions for Augmented Reality, Patricia M. Locke

Cézanne’s late watercolors offer a comparison point in function and aesthetic qualities to

Augmented Reality interpretations of the natural world. Cézanne’s watercolors, both in their

effect upon a viewer and their mode of production, demonstrate what Merleau-Ponty calls

“wild being.” I contrast the aims and effects of his painting with the potential of Augmented

Reality to transform our felt sense of space and time, particularly with respect to atmosphere.

While these new technologies offer exciting possibilities for creative expression, AR may

devalue lived experience (especially wild being), and limit our capacities to find affinity with

others.

The Place of Others: Merleau-Ponty and the Interpersonal Origins of Adult

Experience, Susan M. Bredlau

In The Fate of Place, Edward Casey argues that we must recognize the centrality of place

within our experience. We do not live in a homogenous and indifferent space. Rather, our

xxiii
lives are set within places as loci of intimacy and particularity. Moreover, Casey cites the

work of Merleau-Ponty as offering particularly valuable insight into the phenomenon of

place; and the lived body itself as place. I focus on the intersubjective character of our

perception of place. Places are not simply ours individually but are also ours collectively as

those of a family, culture or nation. We must identify these structures as traditional and take

responsibility for them - rejecting, sustaining or transforming the way we inhabit the world in

light of our relations with others.

“The Place was not a Place”: A Critical Phenomenology of Forced Displacement, Neil

Vallelly

The contemporary concept of place rests on a paradox: in order to move seamlessly within

and between places (real and virtual), one must possess a secure—primarily, legal and

economic—connection to a place. Without this secure connection, being-in-the-world means

being displaced. By drawing on examples in literature, anthropology, and the testimonies of

displaced persons, this chapter illustrates that an over-insistence on the ontological

primordiality of place potentially aligns phenomenology with the exclusionary dimension of

place in the globalized 21st century. In response, I construct a critical phenomenology of

forced displacement that is at once critical of the phenomenology of place, but also views

phenomenology as critical to overcoming the contemporary paradox of place.

Heidegger’s Building Dwelling Thinking in terms of Minecraft, Tobias Holischka

Heidegger's essay Building Dwelling Thinking is a key text to understand his conception of

place. 'Building' and 'dwelling' are fundamental ciphers, following Hölderlin, to his central

philosophical problem, the question of being, and beyond that they reveal our relation

towards our own being when making the world inhabitable by ‘building’. The target of my

contribution is to point out parallels between Heidegger's essay and the virtual world of

Minecraft. Heidegger's cryptic metaphors posit a direct connection to virtual places. In

xxiv
particular, the concept of the fourfold is made concrete within the game and its structures as a

virtual world and several placial qualities not only apply to physical places, but also to virtual

places, which makes them both real in a certain perspective.

Phenomenology of Place and Space in our Epoch: Thinking along Heideggerian

Pathways, Nader El-Bizri

This chapter investigates the being of place from a phenomenological standpoint that is

orientated by Heideggerrian ontological directives, as set particularly against the background

of the unfolding of modern techno-science, while also addressing the existential analytic of

Dasein’s being–in–the–world. This serves as a prolegomenon to meditating on place within

architectural thinking about the built/natural environments, including sensory-enhanced

cybernetic matrices. Such inquiry accounts for the embodied lived experience in the flesh that

characterizes the architectonic/topological attributes of dwelling in physical places, or of

being embedded in simulated spaces that generate sense-stimuli parameters via plenoptic

projections and haptic sensors.

Transactions in virtual places: Sharing and excess in blockchain worlds, Richard

Coyne

The sharing economy encourages trusted person-to-person commercial transactions

comparable to the exchange of goods for cash, but enabled by cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin,

now moving into the tribal world of virtual environments. I adopt a phenomenological posture

towards such emerging practices, investigating how innovations built on the idea of the

“blockchain” are grounded in the gift society. Phenomenological insights and metaphors can

inform our understanding of the apparent costliness and extravagance of platforms supporting

cryptocurrencies and the consumerist excesses of virtual environments.

xxv
Norberg-Schulz: Culture, Presence and a Sense of Virtual Place, Erik Champion

Norberg-Schulz was a formative influence on architects but his writings also attracted strong

criticism. Yet in virtual place design, Norberg-Schulz’s theory of phenomenology has

received scant attention, even if concepts like dwelling and a sense of place (Genius Loci) as

well as embodiment are desirable if elusive goals in computer games, virtual places and

virtual worlds. Are the criticisms of Norberg-Schulz’ theory of genius loci and dwelling

valid? Is this theory of any interest to real-world architecture or to virtual place design?

Virtual Dark Tourism in The Town of Light, Florence Smith-Nicholls

This chapter explores a phenomenology of virtual space and place and how it could be

applied to dark tourism in video games. The Town of Light is used as a case study with a

focus on the phenomenological experience of the non-fictional asylum recreated in the game.

Drawing from archaeology, queer phenomenology and game studies, the central argument is

that a phenomenology of virtual dark tourism should pursue the theory of an assemblage of

play which considers neither the player, gaming platform nor virtual space in isolation.

Landscape Archaeology in Skyrim VR, Andrew Reinhard

Phenomenology meets practice in the synthetic world of Skyrim VR as the author completes

an archaeological survey of a digital valley equipped with a Sony PSVR virtual reality rig

and the classical theory of Heidegger and Husserl paired with more contemporary approaches

of Barad, Bogost, DeLanda, Haraway, and Ingold. The author reports from the field

regarding exploration and embodiment in a designed psychogeographic environment where

both nothing and everything changes depending on player presence. Fantasy and reality

converge successfully in archaeological output including a GIS map and 3D-printable

artifact, as well as public-facing panoramic images and VR tours.

xxvi
The efficacy of phenomenology for investigating locative media, Leighton Evans

This chapter outlines and critiques an approach that can be used to provide empirical data to

query and research such phenomena within the field of Media Studies from a

phenomenological perspective: a mixed-methods approach that deploys phenomenological

theory as analytic tools. In particular, this approach can be used when assessing and

understanding users’ comportment towards place and space through a detailed, theoretically-

informed reading of their accounts of ‘being-in’ place augmented by data and information

provided by mobile media. I investigate the location-based social network Foursquare, via an

ethnographic study of users of the application but also drawing on a utilization of

Heidegger’s notions of mood and attunement to the world I also discuss the success,

weakness and efficacy of this conceptual framework and what a phenomenological approach

may provide for media studies as new technologies that affect the understanding of place

become a focus for the discipline.

xxvii
Introduction

Why produce yet another edited volume on phenomenology, let alone on phenomenology and

virtual place? There are excellent works available on modern phenomenology (Casey Edward

1984, Casey Edward 1998, Casey 1993, 1996); postphenomenology (Ihde 2009, 2010, 2016,

Selinger 2012), philosophers of place (Malpas 2014, 1999, 2008), phenomenology of place

(Coyne 2010, Feld and Basso 1996, Seamon and Mugerauer 1985, Donohoe 2017)

placelessness (Relph 1976) and phenomenology of architecture (Bachelard 1994, Pallasmaa

1965, Norberg-Schultz 1980, Seamon 2000, Malpas 1999, Locke and McCann 2016).

However, there are few if any large-scale focused publications on the phenomenology

of virtual place (notable execptions include Seamon 2014, Ritzhaupt et al. 2016, Kinsley

2014). There are still large gaps in the understanding and application of virtual place design

and theory amongst related disciplines, such as architecture, geography, planning,

anthropology, and archaeology. The most immediate sign of academic panic is the speed with

which terms are formed, distorted, and thrown around. For example, augmented reality is

used to cover objects appearing in your phone over the camera view without any attempt to

spatially locate them in relation to the real world. Panoramas are labelled virtual reality by

designers and even Microsoft call their augmented reality headset a HoloLens (it does not

actually allow you to view holograms).

And the term “computer game” or “video game” covers many contentious issues, is

there an essence to (digital) game studies that distinguishes it from other activities? Must a

game involve the prospect of winning, or a magic circle (the conceptual space of game play

within which normal reality is suspended for the rules, goals and reality of the game)? When

is a digital simulation a game?

1
 Perhaps we could turn to the philosophers for more precise and useful terms and

concepts. Yet, worryingly, there are still philosophers who talk of virtual reality as being in

essence a capture, simulation, and abstraction of the real-world around us, and some confuse

what they believe is available now in virtual reality with what can and will be available in the

future. Many of the writers in this book may also differ on their interpretations of virtual

reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and computer games, but I will offer these

definitions as a starting point.

First, virtual reality. Historians may debate the first use of the term, the first concept

of virtual reality as being provided by (digital) computers, or the first working virtual reality

device. Naming the first virtual reality device is perhaps the easiest task. Unless one counts

the 1939 patent of the View-master as a form of virtual reality (which was in turn inspired by

the 1838 invention of the stereoscope), one could argue that the first virtual reality device

was probably in the 1960s.

One could provide either the example of Morton Heilig’s 1957 (1962 patented)

Sensorama Simulator, which allowed people to view mostly passive 3D films (Brockwell

2016); or the 1967/1968 augmented reality invention by Ivan Sutherland nicknamed “Sword

of Damocles”, a head-mounted display so heavy it had to be mounted from the ceiling

(Lowood 2015; Anon 2018). These machines not only existed and worked, you can buy one

today. You too could be the proud owner of the 1962 version of the Sensorama Machine (see

http://www.mortonheilig.com/).

However, these devices provided an experience that was not, as far as I know, called

virtual reality. Although it was used much earlier in French theatre, as an explicitly

computational term, “virtual reality” has been attributed to computer scientist Jaron Lanier in

1987 (Virtual Reality Services undated) but even today, thirty years later, definitions vary.

2
 John Steuer (Steuer 1992) noted that popular media has tended to base virtual reality

around notions of technology rather than experience. Many dictionary definitions are also

based on technology rather than a specific experience, although they often include the unclear

criterion that virtual reality needs to seem “real”. For example, the online Oxford English

Dictionary (English Oxford living Dictionaries undated) defines it virtual reality as:

“The computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or

environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way

by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a

screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors.”

In Encyclopaedia Britannica, Henry Lowood defined virtual reality as (Lowood 2015):

“… the use of computer modeling and simulation that enables a person to

interact with an artificial three-dimensional (3-D) visual or other sensory

environment. VR applications immerse the user in a computer-generated

environment that simulates reality through the use of interactive devices,

which send and receive information and are worn as goggles, headsets,

gloves, or body suits.”

However, The Online Cambridge Dictionary differs from the above (Cambridge Dictonary

undated): “[virtual reality is] … A set of images and sounds, produced by a computer, that

seem to represent a place or a situation that a person can take part in.”

The Merriam-Webster (Merriam-Webster undated) differs as well:

“… an artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli

(such as sights and sounds) provided by a computer and in which one's

actions partially determine what happens in the environment; also: the

technology used to create or access a virtual reality.”

3
 If we were to summarize the above definitions, they are vision-based but don’t clearly

state that for a full VR experience, the participant’s head should be fully tracked (and the

digital environment should respond believably to the participant’s moving of their head). For

example, while 360-degree video is often confused with full VR, the field of view does not

change with the head position and orientation of a person, it is not virtual reality (Smith 2015,

Goldman and Falcone 2016).

In telepresence research (https://ispr.info/) there is much debate over immersivity and

presence and which of the two is observed of the participant or believed/understood by the

participant. Many computer scientists would argue that virtual reality requires head-tracking

along with a digital simulation of some form of three-dimensional environment that

surrounds the participant, and appears to be, and preferably is, interactive (for more

information and a more demanding definition, see (Jackson 2015). The definition implies two

conditions; a digitally simulated “reality” or environment that changes in relation to changes

in where the participant’s location and orientation; and the participant believing or acting that

the digital simulation is their primary environment.

The provision of precise, quick and stable head-tracking equipment is not always

sufficient for many people. Head-tracking the dynamic (free) viewpoint of a human in a

three-dimensional digitally projected or displayed space does not necessitate that the human

participant believes or acts in that “virtual reality”. A comprehensive definition should be

based on both technology and beliefs (or observable actions and reactions), in other words,

the technology and the subjective experience of being immersed in a digital environment.

Augmented reality is a little harder to define in practice. I suggest that augmented

reality calculates real-world data to superimpose a digital simulation onto a camera-screen or

see-through display showing the real-world or provides non-visual data to the participant

based on their view or position in relation to the real world. Unfortunately, many phone

4
applications say they provide augmented reality when they merely retrieve the user’s latitude

and longitude and let a digital object or text hover very approximately over a spot on the

viewfinder of the phone’s camera. I’d prefer to call that type of rough and ready proto-

augmented reality a layered or collaged reality.

An exacting 3D-calibrated definition of the term “augmented” as “augmented”

implies the digitally generated additional content not only supplements (Azuma 2004) but

also improves the real-world. Further, many earlier uses and descriptions of augmented

reality in projects and publications assumed augmented reality has to be vision-based (I

suggest non-sighted people also experience reality).

Thirdly, augmented reality (AR) implies the main content is real, and the digital is a

smaller if important addition to the underlying reality but the digital content mixed with the

real-world content could actually create an experience of a totally different reality, world, or

place. I personally prefer the term mixed reality (MR) although MR has traditionally been

defined more vaguely as “the merging of real and virtual worlds somewhere along the

“virtuality continuum" which connects completely real environments to completely virtual

ones”, in other words mixed reality is a digitally-provided experience somewhere between

augmented reality and virtual reality (Milgram and Kishino 1994).

Given these working definitions of virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed

reality, can we agree on the usefulness of virtual reality to provide an experience of place? I

am afraid not. Just as I finished revising this introduction, I came across an online article by

Professor of Philosophy Janna Thompson (Thompson 2018). The title of Thompson’s article

is “Why virtual reality cannot match the real thing”. While I agree that a real-world travel

experience is difficult to simulate let alone be equaled by virtual reality technology, the

whole article only considers the point of view of virtual reality as attempting to provide

5
accurate and equivalent realistic interactive simulations of the existing real world, she even

talks of “real experiences”.

Should virtual reality only attempt to parasitically emulate that which we can already

directly experience (given mobility, money and initiative?) For example, Sir David

Attenborough (Hamilton 2018) sees the potential of the Natural History Museum’s “Hold the

World” VR application to allow people to not be “separated from it [a fragile museum object]

by glass… You want to be able to look at it and see the back of it and turn it around and so

on.”

Virtual reality does not only have to copy what is there, it can allow people to

reconfigure, view underlying hypotheses and processes or mix and match contested views or

clashing interpretations. Virtual reality (and augmented reality) can show you, on site or

remotely, what you would not have seen, contested, inferred, amalgamated or extrapolated,

from a more locally-situated or past point of view. This potential inspired my last twenty

years of research and it has led me to ask thirteen other academics to explore whether

phenomenology can be successfully moved from describing and understanding our

experiences in the world around us to the virtual places (and virtual worlds) that may be

created in the near future.

While Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places focuses more on VR than on AR or

MR, many challenges and opportunities are relevant to all three. Given the wide range of

author backgrounds and it being the early days of consumer-accessible AR and VR, I propose

considering the phenomenology of virtual places to be facing (at least) five major issues:

Firstly: how does or could our experience of landscape and geophysical space carry

over to the exploration of virtual and otherwise digitally mediated places? Places are built,

formed, shaped or just appear. Landscapes are too seldom mentioned in a discussion of

virtual place, they are everywhere and hidden. In Chapter One, well-known geographer

6
Edward Relph borrows from Heidegger to describe landscapes as suffering from

“inconspicuous familiarity”, because we believe we already know their meanings and

purposes without having to reflect on them.

In contrast, archaeologist and archaeogaming scholar Andrew Reinhard approaches

landscape from an archaeological point of view, but his discussion of landscape is the

landscape setting and journey in the computer game (and now VR game) Elder Scrolls:

Skyrim, and Skyrim as surveyed by an archaeologist. Computer games have evolved from

single game levels to sandboxes (providing freedom to roam or in cases to change the game

world) to expanding universes (such as No Man's Sky). Ethnography and phenomenology are

two approaches that may be in need of appropriate recalibration.

Media scholar Leighton Evans approaches phenomenology from the point of view of

locative media research. How can phenomenological approaches and methods be applied to

locative media studies? Evans’ case study was Foursquare, a location-based service that

builds a database of places by users who create and check in at "spots" and he considers the

vexing conundrum of how to measure individuals’ experiences of place and the use of

qualitative data.

The onwards march of technology encounters a second issue with phenomenology, its

age. Has phenomenology as a discipline (or even as an approach) maintained its relevance in

terms of changes in scientific knowledge and advances in technology? Don Ihde, famous in

philosophical circles for his development of the concept postphenomenology, (for Ihde a

hybrid phenomenology, combining aspects of philosophy of technology and pragmatism).

His chapter raises important but difficult questions, such as whether traditional

phenomenology can address the multistable requirements of possible places.

Another philosopher, Bruce Janz, investigates place by considering the implications

of virtuality (for example, via The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality (Grimshaw 2014)) which

7
leads him to consider place as more of a spontaneous event than as a static, neutral stage.

Janz proposes “We construct representations of worlds, but we do not construct worlds.”

But how could or should we apply a phenomenological approach to modern digital

ways of reorganizing the real-world? Architect and philosopher Richard Coyne raises an

economic and technical issue not foreseen a decade ago, the world of the bitcoin and the

blockchain world and how these new forms of currency exchange can influence or even help

create virtual environments, via commerce in virtual places. His chapter examines key

concepts about commercial transactions in virtual places, and platforms such as Decentraland

(“Decentraland is a virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain”,

https://decentraland.org, accessed 23.02.2018).

If phenomenology could be viewed as a discipline, a distinct field of research, it

would not only be challenged by the passing of time and the whims of intellectual fashion,

but also by distance. If phenomenology is a fundamental approach to life as experience, to

understand others we should also study how they view the experience of place. John

Krummel provides us with one such perspective, make that two; Kyoto School philosophies

of place via an investigation of the writings and observations of Nishida Kitarō and his

“grand-student” Ueda Shizuteru. Krummel focuses in particular on their concept of place and

implacement; he then places their thinking in relation to the phenomenon of globalization.

Krummel also notes the interactions and influences between these two important

philosophers of place in Japan with an important philosopher of place in Germany, Martin

Heidegger.

Professor of Civilization Studies and Philosophy, Nader El-Bizri (who is also an

architect), approaches the concept of place directly from a close reading of Heidegger and the

notion of unfolding and Dasein’s being–in–the–world. How can we apply Heidegger’s

8
thoughts to new forms of digital place-making and new forms of embodiment that may soon

be available, say via sensory-enhanced cybernetics?

A fourth question is the matter of place-making, dwelling and inhabitation. We dwell

in places, and sometimes we speak of genius loci, a spirit of place. Does this carry over to a

phenomenology of virtual places? The phenomenology of architecture, by contrast, might

seem to be a straightforward development of Heidegger’s thinking applied to the design and

appreciation of architecture and place-making in the real-world, and then applied to the

design of virtual places.

I disagree, in my chapter I critique the relationship of place and phenomenology in the

writings of Norberg-Schulz. Issues in Norberg-Schulz’s theory of dwelling and meaningful

architecture include romantic notions of regional identity and aesthetic unity, architectural

form as essence, and a startling omission of people in place and variations in cultural

worldviews. I propose instead to look at how culture is constructed, preserved and

disseminated, and how the wear, tear and care of physical places along with an understanding

of human embodiment and mortality may actually help improve the user experience of virtual

environments and virtual worlds.

Philosopher Tobias Holischka approaches dwelling and a sense of place not from

architectural history but from within Minecraft, and in light of the thoughts of Heidegger, in

particular those found in his essay Bauen, Wohnen, Denken (Building Dwelling Thinking).

Holischka’s primary aim is to point out parallels between Heidegger's essay and Minecraft.

We may question whether one can genuinely build, dwell and think in the low-resolution and

rather clunky if charming graphical user interface of Minecraft. However, looks can be

deceiving. In 2014 Microsoft bought Minecraft for 2.5 billion US dollars (Gilbert 2014). In

2015 Minecraft became the second highest selling game of all time, after Tetris (Peckham

2016).

9
 From a philosophical point of view, we may still question whether Minecraft preset

tools are designed to be so user-friendly and immediate that we don’t spend time to think and

therefore dwell through building. Tarrying (or being distracted by “marginal practices”) is

usually resisted by the gameplay of games, survival mode etc., they try to hurry the player

along, and yes Minecraft allows you to dawdle, but dawdle in order to linger over and reflect

on what, exactly? Balancing constant engagement against an aptitude and space (or place) to

learn is a problem for educational games that attempt to create and inspire reflection.

Even apparently simple virtual environments such as Minecraft may lead to insights

into human behaviors and attitudes. Insights by philosophers are now appearing to be

supported by research into how we perceive virtual environments. For example, Martin

Heidegger wrote about a ‘thingly character’ to works of art (including paintings and

buildings), which is not encompassed or created by the perception of mere stimuli; we don’t

typically hear noise, we hear sounds. Heidegger’s argument has been recently bolstered by

experiments in virtual environments. Researchers have suggested that there is indeed a

‘toolness’ quality to certain objects in virtual environments. We may further extend the

argument to suggest there is an aspect of ‘thingness’ to our perception of our world that

should be considered when we design virtual environments:

“Objects that we associate with grasping – things such as cups, utensils, cell phones,

and so on – appear to have a special hold on our visual attention.”

(Handy and Tipper 2007, 941).

Virtual place design has not yet fully explored the distinction between ready-to-hand

(a useful tool) and present-at-hand (such as an object just lying on a table), but it also must

catch up to the mediation of virtuality through tethered and untethered head mounted displays

(HMDs). Or does it really need to? The ubiquity of digital technology has coerced us into

conflating data with digital data (data was not always digital), and digital with virtual (when

10
in fact virtual is from the Latin and in its current usage preceded the digital, unless by digital

you are referring to fingers and toes). i

While places are obviously made up of architecture and landscape, mediated by

technology (Borgmann 2012), and are experienced within the framework of quite different

worldviews, our experience of place is also more intimately social: personal, familial and

communal, yet also sometimes foreign and menacing. Chapters in the fifth theme of this

collection of essays examines these other aspects of place. Patricia Locke, co-editor of

Merleau-Ponty: Space, Place, Architecture (Locke and McCann 2016) explains how painting

can be viewed as a portal to reality, a form of virtual reality interface; and how new

technology such as Google Tilt Brush (https://www.tiltbrush.com/) and WebVR examples

such as A-frame (https://aframe.io/) hold out the promise of individual and collaborative

artistic possibilities (these applications allow you to paint in space, walk around your painting

and export it to a 3D modeling program). However, Locke considers phenomenology by

applying Merleau-Ponty theory to Locke experiencing Paul Cézanne’s late watercolors,

which were painted at Château Noir outside Aix-en-Provence, France. Can we apply the

experience of the effect of painting as seeing? Is painting a form of freeze-game, can it

suspend time and split open space?

Susan Bredlau explains more personal and inter-personal aspects of place from

an approach influenced by Merleau-Ponty, treating the lived body itself as place, and

she then expands on the intersubjective quality of many human places. These

landscapes are “places as loci of intimacy and particularity” and Bredlau notes that the

collective nature of place can extend to the virtual.

Sometimes inter-personal and communal forces are forced, necessary or

unpleasant. Neil Vallelly asks, how can phenomenology be “adopted to address the

issue of forced displacement?” He suggests that eventually we will have to address the

11
mental condition of refugees and their traumatic relation to place via their own

condition of embodiment and he concludes with three powerful questions:

“How do we recover the lived bodies of refugees and displaced persons? How

do we return them to themselves? And how might phenomenology be useful in

this endeavor?”

Unpleasant encounters can also take place in video games. Archaeologist and media

scholar Florence Smith Nicholls’ chapter explores how a phenomenology of virtual

space and place could be applied to dark tourism. Her case study is a non-fictional

asylum recreated in the Italian game: The Town of Light.

Erik Champion, 1 June 2018

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Norberg-Schultz, Christian. 1980. Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture.

New York: Rizzoli.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. 1965. "The geometry of feeling: A look at the phenomenology of

architecture." Theorizing a new agenda for architecture: An anthology of

architectural theory 1995:448-453.

Peckham, Matt. 2016. "'Minecraft' Is Now the Second Best-Selling Game of All Time."

[Website article]. Time, Last Modified 2 June 2016 accessed 1 March 2018.

http://time.com/4354135/minecraft-bestelling/.

Relph, Edward. 1976. Place and placelessness. Vol. 1. London, United Kingdom: Pion.

Ritzhaupt, Albert D, Nathaniel Poling, Christopher Frey, Youngju Kang, and Margeaux

Johnson. 2016. "A Phenomenological Study of Games, Simulations, and Virtual

Environments Courses: What Are We Teaching and How?" International Journal of

Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations (IJGCMS) 8 (3):59-73.

Seamon, David. 2000. "Phenomenology, place, environment, and architecture: A review of

the literature." Phenomenology Online 36.

Seamon, David. 2014. "Physical and virtual environments: Meaning of place and space."

Willard & Spackman’s occupational therapy:202-214.

Seamon, David, and Robert Mugerauer. 1985. Dwelling, place, and environment: towards a

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 phenomenology of person and world. The Netherlands: Dordrecht Netherlands: M.

Nijhoff.

Selinger, Evan, ed. 2012. Postphenomenology: A critical companion to Ihde. New York,

USA: SUNY Press.

Smith, Will. 2015. Stop Calling Google Cardboard’s 360-Degree Videos ‘VR’. WiIRED.

Accessed 4 July 2017.

Steuer, Jonathan. 1992. "Defining virtual reality: Dimensions determining

telepresence." Journal of Communication 42 (4):73-93.

Thompson, Janna. 2018. "Why virtual reality cannot match the real thing." The Conversation.

Last Modified 14 March 2018, accessed 1 June 2018.

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i
For more historical background, please consider reading https://www.fi.edu/virtual-reality/history-

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stories/digital/ (accessed 23 February 2018).

16
The Inconspicuous Familiarity of Landscape

Edward Relph

Landscape is an unavoidable, ubiquitous companion whenever we are outside, or, for that
matter, indoors looking out through a window, whether at mountains or a city street. It
consists of assemblages and collages of earth and sky, of trees, buildings, streets, cars and
people, and may be predominantly urban, rural or wild. It is the context of wherever we are,
filled with sights, sounds, memories, possibilities, and movement. Landscape is the
background, context, and visible manifestation of the polysemic phenomenon of place.
Regardless of whether place is understood in terms of geographical location, territories of
meaning, nodes in networks of social and economic relationships, built spaces, somewhere
that can be branded in order to attract business, a container, a gathering and opening in the
world, or an extension of the body, and regardless of whether place is real or a virtual
construction, it is impossible to imagine place without landscape.
Yet landscape is easily taken for granted or even ignored. This is partly because it is
such a familiar aspect of the world, partly because we are immersed in it much the same
way we are unthinkingly immersed in time, and partly because it is elusive and our
attention is usually drawn to particular things in landscapes, such as displays in store
windows, other people, architecture, gardens, or highway signs. Unlike these sorts of things,
landscape is untouchable. Though we may sit to contemplate a view of landscape we can
never walk to its other side because it unfolds as we move through it. Furthermore,
landscapes continually change with the weather, the rhythms of daily life, and the cycle of
the seasons. They evade definition or objective analysis even though they surround us and
we know them simply by looking around. Nevertheless, it is possible to disclose their
elusive character through phenomenological description.

The Limits of Conventional Definitions of Landscape

The English word “landscape” is usually defined and commonly understood as an attractive
piece of inland rural scenery. This isn’t altogether surprising because the word, though it
has origins in Old English, came into widespread use in the early seventeenth century as a
corruption of the Dutch landschap, a term that was used to describe paintings of mostly
rural scenery that business travelers were bringing back from Holland as souvenirs. It soon
came to be used to refer to any well-composed rural view that could be seen from a suitable
prospect, and in due course was applied to a genre of poetry and painting that aimed to
convey the aesthetic qualities of attractive scenery, and then to the landscape gardens of
grand country estates. English is not alone in this rural emphasis. The French word paysage,
which is usually translated as “landscape” and is the origin of the Italian paesaggio and
Spanish paisaje, derives from the Latin word pagus, meaning a rural district, and is
conventionally defined as the general appearance of a rural area. These definitions need to
be set aside because they have nothing to contribute to a phenomenological understanding
of landscape as the visible assemblages that surround us everywhere.

17
 The origins of the words ‘landscape’ and ‘paysage’ do, however, point to deeper and
more complex meanings. The suffix –scape in “landscape” is the equivalent of the suffix –
ship in English words such as friendship or companionship, and means a state or condition
of things being together, so in its Old English context landscape meant something like “being
together with the land.” Similarly, the suffix –age in ‘paysage’ means an ensemble or
grouping together of things, or perhaps an action of perception linking subject and object. In
these meanings there are indications of the wholeness that is implicit in everyday
experiences of landscapes.

Landscape comes before environment

In his essay “Thought and Landscape” the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1979, 100) made a
distinction between landscape and environment. He began with the phenomenological
observation that to understand the world at all we must start with the evidence of the
senses and our feelings about them. But he then argued that it is “environment” that
surrounds us and to which we respond unthinkingly in automatic and subconscious ways,
while landscape is essentially a cultural phenomenon that involves learning and cognition.
In other words, he gave phenomenological primacy to environment. This interpretation is, I
think, flawed both because it assumes an everyday idea of environment and a contrived,
pictorial definition of landscape, both of which have become increasingly inappropriate.
In the decades since Tuan wrote his essay the idea of environment has been
systematically objectified and detached from immediate experience. Environment has
become the object of research in ecology, environmental science, physical geography,
geophysics and climatology, and variously subjected to policies and practices of
degradation, exploitation, management, assessment, sustainability and conservation. It has
become almost impossible to use the word “environment” without abstract and scientific
associations. There is little about environment that now might be said to involve unthinking
responses.
In contrast, the word “landscape” has begun to shed its former connotations
associated with art and rural scenery. It is widely applied to cities, especially through its
offspring terms “townscape” and “cityscape,” and is frequently used metaphorically (as in
“the political landscape”) to convey the idea of a broad spectrum of backgrounds and
contexts. I believe it is now preferable to regard landscape rather than environment as the
aspect of the world to which we respond unreflectively in automatic and subconscious
ways. Landscape, with its original implications of togetherness, comes closer to capturing
the experiences we have of the world around us as we walk the streets of our city, look out
of the window of the bus on our way to work, or when we travel to other regions, cities and
countries.
Landscape Experience

At the end of the street where I live in Canada is a major inlet of the Pacific Ocean, the Strait
of Juan de Fuca. To get to it I walk past houses with gardens filled with flowers and shrubs. I
meet a few people, some with their dogs on their way to an off-leash park. The street is lined
with magnolia trees that I remember were covered with white blossoms in the spring. A bus
passes. I feel the cool wind that carries the salt smell of the ocean. I hear waves breaking on

18
the beach. Seagulls and occasionally eagles soar in the sky. On the grey-green water of the
Strait a giant container ship is heading out towards the Pacific. In the distance are the blue
outlines of the Olympic Mountains, some of them snow-capped. Some cars are parked on a
rocky promontory overlooking the ocean edged by a pebble beach covered by a jumble of
bleached logs and tree roots that have washed ashore. If I chose I could walk a mile more to
the center of the city with its office towers, crowded sidewalks, bank machines, restaurants
and homeless people begging.
Everything I have described here involves experiences of landscape. This is the best
word available to refer to the way in which all the things I have mentioned – houses,
seagulls, the sky, people, ocean, cars and so on - are always and unavoidably seen in
conjunction with and at the same time as everything else that is in view or being heard and
sensed. We have numerous words for these individual things, and our attention is
repeatedly drawn to them, but they are always experienced in the context of countless other
things. Concepts of nature or city, of environment, of transportation, countryside,
community, society or economy are not part of our initial experiences of landscape. I do not
step out through my front door and see nature, or a city. What I see all together and all at
once is the togetherness of familiar houses, trees, clouds, street lights and wires, people
walking, and parked cars. Concepts and theories about cities and nature all come later and
are the consequence of reflection and generalizations that are derived from diverse
experiences of different places and landscapes and the things within them. These concepts
and theories can, however, become so entrenched in habits of thought and perception that
act as useful but distorting lenses to make sense of the world, that the experiences of
landscapes from which they arose and to which they refer are almost completely
suppressed.

The Elusiveness of Landscape Experience

In the preface to his Philosophical Investigations the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who
spent many years reflecting on the nature of language and how it conveys meaning,
suggested that there exists a family resemblance between language and landscape. “The
philosophical remarks in this book,” he wrote (1958, vii), “are, as it were, a number of
sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved
journeyings.” He thought that language is too elusive for systematic logical analysis, and his
analogy suggests that landscape is no less elusive. Later in the book Wittgenstein (1958,
200) made this explicit: “The concept of ‘seeing’ makes a tangled impression,” he wrote., “…I
look at the landscape, my gaze ranges over it, I see all sorts of distinct and indistinct
movement; this impresses itself sharply on me, that is quite hazy. After all, how completely
ragged what we see can appear!”
This raggedness is confirmed by our experiences. Study any scene carefully and
there is always more in it than can be depicted or described. Even the highest resolution
photographs leave out smells and sounds and everything that is above, below and on either
side of them. Even the most skillful writers and artists cannot depict entire landscapes. All
they can do is to select details that imply a complete landscape, and then to encourage our
imagination to grasp and extend those implications so that they correspond with our own
ragged experiences of similar or imagined landscapes.

19
Variations in Landscape Experiences

Experiences of landscapes are neither uniform nor constant. They vary both with the
character of scenes experienced and the moods and intentions of those experiencing them.
Some landscapes consist mostly of trees or fields, others of buildings; some are closed in, for
instance the busy streets of Manhattan, while others, such as the view across the Strait of
Juan de Fuca, open to distant horizons. The dispositions of all landscapes are affected by
weather. I was once in Manhattan during a blizzard when the streets, including normally
noisy, crowded Broadway and Times Square, were carpeted with snow, almost deserted,
free of traffic and completely quiet. If I am depressed my feelings are likely to be projected
onto the landscapes I encounter and everything appears despondent. Some individuals are
especially sensitive or attentive to smells, or sounds, or colors, or plants, or buildings, and
this inevitably influences their perceptions of landscapes.
While at any given moment in any given place there may be some who are
contemplating the ragged togetherness of the landscape around them, there are many more
who are engaged in conversation, worrying about work or what to prepare for lunch,
talking on cell phones or driving. Yet even when our attention is distracted or focused on
something else, the inclusiveness and wholeness of landscape is unavoidably present. It is a
constant though usually inconspicuously familiar backdrop to everyday life.
Nevertheless, relatively small changes and events, such as trees coming into bloom, a
repainted house, unusual weather, or a parade, may make us temporarily aware of the
wholeness of landscape. In effect, we then see things in a different light and notice what has
changed in its larger context. When we travel to see other places and countries, even if we
are part of a tour group or spend most of our time going to beaches, the unfamiliarity of
distinctive local landscapes is likely to engage our senses and become a source of interest
and pleasure. In these instances what is usually inconspicuous becomes conspicuous by
virtue of its difference from what we normally experience. This can also happen through a
deliberate effort to grasp the meanings of landscapes and the processes that have made
them look as they do.

Landscape Surfaces and Identity

Eric Dardel wrote in his phenomenological account of geography, L’Homme et la Terre

(1952, 41), that landscape is more than the juxtaposition of picturesque details, “it is an
assemblage, a convergence, a lived-moment.” It is a combination of many things that create
contexts for each other, an assemblage that constantly changes as the things in it change
and as we move through it. He suggests that the landscape consists mostly of surfaces that
offer insights into our connections with the Earth. He writes of “telluric” surfaces, such as
those of granite and hard rocks, which offer experiences of solidity and suggest the dense
substance and mass of the planet. In contrast, the aquatic landscapes of waterfalls, rivers,
breaking waves, the ocean, are restless and seem to open to the unseen world beyond the
horizon, to lead elsewhere. The constructed landscapes of cities and industrial zones, of
cultivated farmlands, which are the ones that most of us experience most of the time, offer
fundamentally different qualities of experience because they are evidence of human effort
and labor, of accomplishment or despoliation, of meanings that can be interpreted. These

20
constructed landscapes cannot be experienced without some recognition, however fleeting,
of the hopes and intentions that have gone into making them.
However, the space of air and sky, Dardel suggests (1952, 32), is an omnipresent
aspect of landscape that has no surface. It is atmospheric and diffuse, “invisible and always
present, permanent yet changing,” a medium for smells and sounds, subject to changes in
temperature and humidity, to night and day. It is simultaneously close to us yet reaches to a
horizon that is not a limit but a permeable boundary that travels with us. More than
anything else, the space of air, sky and horizon reveals the elusiveness of the landscape as
something that is always here, always around us, yet cannot be pinned down, delimited,
divided into parts, measured or analyzed.
The distinctive characteristics of the everyday landscapes we encounter, whether telluric or
constructed, everyday or exceptional, provide the basis for our dreams, thoughts and
feelings. They enter into our memories and contribute to a greater or lesser extent to our
character and identity. The phenomenological philosopher Jeff Malpas (1999, 189) has
expressed this concisely: “The landscape in which we find ourselves is…as much a part of
what we are, of our minds, our actions and ourselves, as the food we eat and the air we
breathe.”

Reverberations

Gaston Bachelard’s book The Poetics of Space (1964) is a phenomenology of the intimate
interior spaces of the house as they are revealed in poetic images. He referred to his study
as a topo-analysis of felicitous and intimate spaces and he devoted his attention to drawers,
attics, nooks, and corners. He also noted that experiences of these small spaces have a
quality of what he called “intimate immensity” because the reverberations they induce
bring about an awakening of feelings that transcend the moment and the intimate space,
and open into an appreciation of the entire world (Bachelard, 1964, xviii-xix and 183-210).
Landscapes also have this capacity to generate reverberations of immensity and an
appreciation of human existence. The English landscape poet William Wordsworth wrote in
the last decade of the 18th century of his recollections of the bucolic rural scenery of the
Wye Valley on the border of England and Wales (where I lived as a child): “It has not been to
me as is a landscape to a blind man’s eye” but instead offers “…a gift in which the heavy and
weary weight of all this unintelligible world is lightened...For I have learned to look on
nature not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of
humanity, nor harsh, nor grating, but with ample power to chasten and subdue”
(Wordsworth, 1798, lines 25, 39-40, 89-91). Eric Dardel offered a similar but more prosaic
version of this. “Landscape is not, in its essence, made to be looked at,” he wrote (1952, 44),
“but rather is an insertion of man into the world, a place of life’s struggles, a manifestation
of being.”
Such reverberations sometimes have spiritual force. In The Varieties of Religious
Experience the philosopher William James (1961, 71) quotes an account of someone’s
experience on the summit of a high mountain: “I looked over a gashed and corrugated

21
landscape extending to a long convex of ocean that ascended to the horizon…What I felt was
a temporary loss of my identity that was accompanied by an illumination of deeper
significance than I had previously attached to life. It is in this that I can say that I have
enjoyed communion with God.”
Experiences such as this, in which an encounter with the totality of a particular landscape
expands into a sense of the meaning of the world or spiritual revelation, are both deeply
personal and yet intersubjective. Their depth and strength of meaning can be recognized
and appreciated by others, even those who pay little attention to the world around them
and may never have had anything more than hints of such revelations. Or perhaps it is the
case that it is only when a poet or philosopher provides appropriate words that we are able
to recognize that something similar has happened to us in our own experiences of
landscape.

Seeing and Thinking Carefully and Critically

Phenomenological accounts usually emphasize pre-reflective experiences that precede the

development of concepts. Yet forming concepts and thinking explicitly about how we
perceive landscape are themselves aspects of landscape experience. For example, a
deliberate, self-conscious effort to see and sense landscapes as clearly as possible, even
though this cannot be considered pre-reflective, can contribute enormously to clarity of
perception and understanding. When Goethe left Weimar in 1786 for a European tour he
was explicit that he hoped to efface old mental habits and to see with what he referred to as
“clear, fresh eyes.” The journal he kept of his trip suggests that he fulfilled these hopes
because he wrote about everything he saw – the rocks and flowers, mountains, the dress
and customs of people he encountered, the weather, Palladio’s buildings, and the ordure in
the portico of the grand houses of Verona (Goethe, 1970).
The 19th century English art and social critic John Ruskin aimed to achieve a similar
clarity of seeing. He had deep, lifelong enthusiasm for studying and understanding
landscape. To see landscapes clearly and critically, he claimed, requires what he called “a
curiously balanced condition of the powers of the mind;” they have to be observed carefully,
appreciated aesthetically and yet understood for what they reveal of social conditions
(Ruskin, 1853, 5, 357). He wrote, for instance, of a scene that he came upon in the Highlands
of Scotland: “Lower down the stream I can just see over a hill the green and damp turf roofs
of four or five hovels…and at the turn of the brook I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog
– a picturesque and pretty group certainly, if they had not been there all day starving”
(Ruskin, 1860, 7, 269).
His point, with which I could not agree more, is that while it valuable to try to see
the totality of landscapes carefully and clearly, and to do this through eyes that are not
clouded by habit or theory, it is also necessary to exercise what he called “a sort of farther
vision” that looks behind and beyond the aesthetic particularities of a landscape in order to
consider economic conditions, social forces and injustices that have given rise to its
appearance. The monuments of Rome are simultaneously exceptional magnificent works of
art and architecture, and records of the megalomania of its emperors and popes. All
constructed landscapes, no matter how humble or ruined, involved investments of time,
effort and money. For this reason, they are explicit expressions of what societies actually do

22
and value, rather than what politicians, academic theorists, business people or anyone else
may claim. Our everyday experiences of landscape are filled with intimations of wealth,
well-being, poverty, carelessness and power that offer possibilities of making sense for
ourselves of what has actually gone on and is going on in the world.

Landscape and Place

Landscape is the context of places. Landscapes are expansive and diffuse, while places are
focused, particular concentrations of meaning and experience within those landscapes. A
place, in effect, gathers the landscape around it. This is sometimes very apparent. For
instance, a walled town such as Carcassonne in southern France stands at the heart of the
territory around it and simultaneously appears to dominate that territory. Skyscrapers at
the center of a modern city such as Toronto appear to draw the surrounding city inwards
even though the city spreads outwards.
In his essay “Building Dwelling Thinking” Martin Heidegger (1971, 154) wrote that
spaces receive their being from places. In other words, he regarded places as
phenomenologically prior to lived-spaces and landscapes, and used the example of an old
bridges to argue this. “The bridge does not just connect banks that are already there,” he
explained. “With the banks, the bridge brings to the stream the one and the other expanse of
the landscape lying behind them. The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the
stream…The bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals.”
(Heidegger, 1971,152-3, italics in the original).
This is, however, not always the case. For example, landscapes that consist mainly of
oceans and mountains, such as the view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca that is so familiar to
me, have no apparent places that gather earth and sky in the way a bridge might. It consists
of ambient smells of the ocean, sounds of waves and seagulls, and bands of sky and
mountain and sea in various shades of blue and grey reaching to a misty horizon. If
anything, this particular landscape experience excludes place.
Existentially place may be more fundamental than landscape, yet the relationship
between the two is neither unequivocal nor entirely one directional. Landscape is always
the context and setting of place. Place gathers landscape to itself, while landscape extends
place to the horizon and beyond that to the world.

Inconspicuous Landscape and the World

I have suggested that landscapes can, through their reverberations and by the exercise of
clear thinking, act as windows to the world. This raises the question of what is meant by
“the world,” a question that Martin Heidegger addressed in Being and Time (1962, 91-93).
He wrote: “What can be meant by describing ‘the world’ as a phenomenon? The first step is
to enumerate the things that are in the world, the houses, trees, people, mountains,
stars…We can depict the way such entities look…however, this is obviously a pre-
phenomenological business – not a revelation of Being.” A phenomenological description of
the world, he suggested (1962, 137, italics in the original), exhibits the being of things that
are “ready-to-hand” and have “the character of inconspicuous familiarity” because we know
their meanings and purpose without having to reflect on them. We recognize them,

23
understand them, and know how to use them without thinking about their purpose. I have
argued here that landscape understood as an assemblage has this quality of inconspicuous
familiarity.
The German word for the realm of what is inconspicuously familiar is Umwelt –
literally the surrounding or lived-world, the world in which we conduct our daily existence.
The Spanish medio ambiente has similar connotations. Both terms are frequently translated
as “environment” but I think they both imply a phenomenological understanding and
engagement with our surroundings that the word environment does not, especially in its
current scientific usages. Landscape in its inconspicuous familiarity is the constant context
of where we are, and also the remembered settings of our childhood and the imagined
scenes of places we hope to visit. Landscape is present wherever we are, always elusive yet
always reverberating with meanings.

Inconspicuous Landscape, Technological Change and Augmented Reality

Phenomenology is the philosophical equivalent of the slow food and slow city movements.
All three emphasize the importance of the quality of experience inherent in a return to the
things themselves, are contemplative, and are disenchanted with the haste of modern life.
While this phenomenological account of the inconspicuous familiarity of landscape is, I
think, accurate as far as it goes, like many phenomenological accounts it pays little attention
to present-day experiences of landscapes that are mediated by cars, air travel, the internet
and other technological paraphernalia that facilitate speed. Landscape experience is not
immune from technological change.
For most of human history people walked everywhere, nobody moved faster than a
horse or camel could carry them, and messages traveled no faster than the messenger. In
the mid-nineteenth century this slow experience of the world changed dramatically with the
almost simultaneous inventions of rail travel and the telegraph. These were not to
everyone’s delight. “There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they
ever so slowly. They will see it no better for going fast,” exclaimed John Ruskin (1856,
5.369) in his discussion of “The Moral of Landscape” written in the 1850s. And he
continued: “A fool wants to shorten space and time: a wise man, first to gain them, then to
animate them. Your railroad…is only a device for making the world smaller; and as for being
able to talk from place to place…suppose you have, originally, nothing to say.” Powerful
opinions well expressed, but there was no going back. Technological innovation does not
get reversed. A century later, which is to say after a host of additional technological
innovations that included telephones, automobiles, radio, television, popular air travel, and
the first computers, Heidegger (1966, 45) echoed Ruskin’s concerns: “Nowadays we take in
everything in the quickest and cheapest way,” he suggested, “only to forget it just as
quickly.”
There is no doubt that the faster we go the less we see, but it is also the case that
faster makes it possible to experience more of the world. In effect, speed allows us to
substitute breadth of experience for depth of experience. Traveling to many different places
and their landscapes, even if they are crowded world heritage sites or all-inclusive resorts,
has the considerable merit of exposing us to unfamiliar scenes and lifting us out of the

24
habits of seeing that make familiar landscapes inconspicuous. In the process it may promote
appreciation of and tolerance for different cultures and ways of doing things.
On the other hand, technological changes have reinforced aspects of the
inconspicuousness of landscape because this seems to have been deliberately built into
many landscapes that support mobility. Marc Augé (1995) uses the term “non-places” to
refer to the interstitial mobility zones of airports, expressways, service stations,
supermarkets, chain hotels, and hospitals, most of which are characterized by self-effacing
impersonality. Non-places demand no commitment from us because in them we are little
more than temporary clients or customers. Almost everything about them seems to have
been designed to be inconspicuously functional and familiar in order to facilitate our
passage to somewhere else. In addition, new communications technologies, whether
automobiles, cell phones, or passenger aircraft flying at 35,000 feet, distance us from our
surroundings. The technologies of virtual reality are the most recent manifestation of this
detachment. While they provide opportunities for remarkable experiences of simulated
situations and settings, virtual reality goggles literally make their wearers blind to what is
actually around them.
Augmented reality, in contrast, seems to have some potential for reversing
technological detachment from landscapes and facilitating what might be considered an
updated version of the farther vision practiced by John Ruskin in an altogether slower
world. There is little question that for many people who use hand-held devices in public
spaces their immediate surroundings are often incidental to the paramount connection with
someone who is somewhere else. And even though wearable devices such as glasses may
reduce this distraction, it would be naïve to assume that augmented reality when applied to
landscapes is not without problems. Just as the Internet and social media have not turned
out to be the models of civic integrity, cooperation and freely shared information that their
inventors apparently expected, so augmented reality could well be used as means to overlay
advertising, half-truths and propaganda onto landscapes. Nevertheless, those same devices
can be used in other ways to overlay valuable positive digital information onto actual,
immediate experiences of specific places and landscapes. This might take many different
forms: the introduction of virtual characters into actual settings; maps of nearby amenities;
environmental information about geology or watercourses that have been buried; archival
footage of events that happened right in this location; demographic and social information
about the lives of those who occupy buildings.
Much like the walls of houses, landscapes are surfaces that hide as well as reveal.
Augmented reality offers immediate ways to probe behind those surfaces to reveal the
pollution, accomplishments, poverty, wealth and injustices that would otherwise be largely
invisible or discernible only by research in some remote library. In short, by providing
digital information about landscapes as we are experiencing them, augmented reality can
make familiar landscapes conspicuous and perhaps enhance critical understanding of our
relationships to the everyday world.

25
References

Augé, Marc, 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to the Anthropology of Supermodernity. London:

Verso.
Bachelard, Gaston, 1969. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press.
Dardel, Eric, 1952. L’Homme et La Terre: Nature de la Réalité Géographique. Paris: Presses
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Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1970. Italian Journey: 1786-1788. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Heidegger, Martin, 1971. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” In Poetry, Language, Thought. New
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Heidegger, Martin, 1962. Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row.
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James, William, 1961. The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Collier Macmillan.
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Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1958. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wordsworth, William, 1798. “Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey.” In
Selections from Wordsworth, edited by D. C. Somervell 1920, 65-70. London: J. M.
Dent.

26
Landscape Archaeology in Skyrim VR

Andrew Reinhard

Introduction

Landscapes can be either natural or synthetic. As an archaeologist, I was curious to see if

I could conduct landscape archaeology in the game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but do it in

the immersive world of the virtual reality (VR) edition of the game (Bethesda Game

Studios, 2017). This experimental case study combines archaeology, phenomenology,

psychogeography, and mapping/GIS in a VR wrapper. Skyrim is an open world game

featuring photorealistic, immersive landscapes dotted with hundreds of places to discover

and explore, offering potentially thousands of hours of play, which includes a great deal

of overland travel by foot or by horse.

This write-up is presented in a few sections. It begins with a description of

planned walks from the countryside into a small village. Next comes a description and

commentary on the synthetic landscape’s materiality. I address Tilley and Cameron-

Daum (2017) to engage with their definitions of landscape, using them to define my

experiences within a very small geographical space within the game. I conclude with a

post-script on conducting archaeology in synthetic worlds and what this case study means

within a wider, future context of digital archaeology, which includes practical

applications of photography, videography, photogrammetry, and GIS. But first, a note on

phenomenology, virtual reality, and synthetic landscapes.

35
Phenomenology, Virtual Reality, and Synthetic Landscapes

As seen in earlier articles in this volume, landscape phenomenology is nothing new. One

need only reference the works of Merleau-Ponty (Carman and Hansen, 2004), Heidegger

(Heidegger 1996), Husserl (Husserl, 1990, Books 1-3), Tilley (Tilley, 1994) and Ingold

(Ingold 2000) to see that landscape is to be observed and perceived, that it affects action

in both human and non-human agents, and that these agents in turn impact the landscape

to affect both conscious and unconscious change. Their thinking is advanced by Barad

(Barad, 2003, 801-31) and Haraway (Haraway 2016) who no longer place people at the

center of the landscape and its formation processes, but move them off-center as one of

many agents of activity that intersect with space, focusing instead on materials and the

interactions between materials, human-human, human-nonhuman, and nonhuman-

nonhuman relations and reactions.

The focus on the interaction of materials and agents, where landscape itself is an

agent allows us to consider alternative landscapes, what they are, how they work, and

how they can be observed as phenomena. These elements are present in the digital as they

are in the natural, either as simulacra (pixels masquerading as earthly materials), or as

code-based agents and even other, digitally realized human beings. Archaeologists can

engage with the phenomenon of a landscape through direct, bodily observation, throwing

themselves into the environment in an attempt to experience the world from a potentially

ancient, experiential, sensual point-of-view.

This bodily approach to the phenomenology of landscape only goes so far, and

does not utilize modern technology to support those observations. Stuart Eve’s PhD

thesis for University College London, Dead Men’s Eyes: Embodied GIS, Mixed Reality,

36
and Landscape Archaeology, (Eve, 2012a) and his 2012 article for the Journal of

Archaeological Method and Theory, “Augmenting Phenomenology: Using Augmented

Reality to Aid Archaeological Phenomenology in the Landscape” (Eve, 2012b) focused

on something he calls “embodied GIS.” i By first mapping and adding data in GIS and

then making it available to fieldwalkers, one can simultaneously experience a landscape

while constantly being fed location-based data on everything from history to deposits of

natural resources, and, in an ideal system, one could update that data in real-time with

observations made on the ground, coordinating those findings with other surveyors in

different locations.

Eve’s work provided the necessary framework for me to undertake my Skyrim

explorations, this time in Virtual Reality. I wanted to follow his methodology of using

one’s senses and the landscape to navigate towards a small village. I was curious to see if

I could hear things going on in the town before I could see the town, and if my proximity

to the town would trigger events that I could observe and perhaps reproduce. This marked

the beginning of an intensely rich investigation of the landscape, and it was my hope to

see if his methods would transfer to a synthetic open world, “open world” being the video

game term for a landscape that a player can explore freely without following set paths or

narratives.

Going one step further, I wanted to see what it felt like to experience a synthetic

landscape through virtual reality, and if I could both extract and share data with others so

that they could share my perception of that synthetic VR space via digital output of

photos and VR video, as well as GIS maps and even 3D meshes of artifacts found in-

world. Would I conduct a survey of the synthetic landscape the same way I would in the

37
natural world? The results obtained within Skyrim VR were quite similar to those I might

have gotten surveying in Iceland or elsewhere, a literal uncanny valley.

Figure 13.1: The Village of Rorikstead (source: screenshot by author)

Walking into Rorikstead

The village of Rorikstead (Figure 13.1) is situated at the western end of a valley near the

center of Skyrim. It backs up against foothills and commands a view of the valley and the

ring of mountains beyond. There is one cobblestone thoroughfare passing just to the east

of the village, winding its way into the mountains to the west and into the valley to the

north and east, the eastern part of the road featuring crumbling stone walls to either side

for a short distance.

Rorikstead itself consists of two farms, a manor house, and an inn, all built of

river stone with thatched, peaked roofs. A fire burns constantly outside the inn warming a

pot of mountain flower tea. Two shaggy cows stand nearby. The farms grow the Skyrim

equivalent of wheat, potatoes, leeks, and cabbages, tended by three farmers. A stone

gristmill stands in each of the yards of the farms. The town is quiet, the only sounds

coming from the farm tools working the earth, from occasional conversation between

residents, and from two young sisters who play at tag during daylight hours. Visiting the

farms, inn, and manor house allowed me to create an inventory of plants and animals

found in the landscape, and also at the market in the capital city. There was evidence of

trade, and also for living off the land.

INSERT HERE Fig13.2-Valley and Ruined Fort (source: screenshot by author)

38
 An approximately two-minute walk from town to the northeast brings one to a

small river (Figure 13.2). To the north at about the same distance is a camp for a giant

and his mammoth. To the southeast are foothills leading up to a Forsworn bandit camp

and a dramatic overlook towards a ruined fort, and to the south is Lund’s house, a hermit

who lives just outside of the village proper. In Skyrim, at least one feature or element of

built heritage is within the viewshed (the environment visible from one or more viewing

points) at any given time from any given place, and these include small shrines and

abandoned monuments that do not appear on the player map or on the compass display

during travel. Note that the presence of augmented reality (AR) data (annotated compass

and other data windows) in a virtual reality (VR) space creates something I call

“augmented virtual reality” or AVR. Players accessing a synthetic world via VR

hardware receive various notifications through their head-up displays (HUDs), much like

Eve describes when fieldwalkers in the natural world access data through technology in

real-time during their surveys.

Compare walks between villages as shown on the game’s map, and how the

landscape encourages certain routes of travel, affecting time and distance as well as

facilitating encounters to advance the action of the game, to give players something to do,

to learn, something else to engage with. Skyrim’s landscape is one of play, purpose-built

to funnel the adventurer from place to place, opening up the world. In the natural world,

the landscape merely is. It is amoral and agnostic, posing no intentional hazards or

rewards to humans, but rather existing as a space that happens to be occupied and

exploited by people, animals, plants, weather. The landscape changes over time thanks to

formation processes caused by the above forces. Landscapes in games such as Skyrim,

39
however, never (or at least not yet) erode, flood, erupt, crack, or catch fire unless

explicitly told to do so by the developer.

My repeated trips to my personal Skyrim house wear no trail. The infinite game

of tag by the sisters in Rorikstead makes no circular track. The land would appear to be

the same without the presence of NPCs (Non-Playing Characters). Their rapture would

leave no trace, just like my own adventures do not impact the space. I advance the plot

but do not change the world. Although these digital environments are classed as “open”

by the game-playing/developing community, that openness at first look appears to be

restricted to movement within a bound space, but by ghosts who leave no trace of their

having being somewhere. This behavior is, however, native to digital landscapes, which

do not necessarily behave as their natural counterparts. It is perhaps dangerous to attempt

to apply the rules of the natural atop those of the digital.

The archaeologist can learn a few things from engaging with Skyrim’s landscape.

First, the environment can be used for training and discussion, answering questions about

why things appear where they do, and how the landscape influences movement and

migration of NPCs and animals. Judging from the observation of the residents of

Rorikstead, however, it is clear that they have programmed behavior, a force field

trapping them in town. It is the player then that has full freedom of movement, albeit

constricted by deadly drops and sheer cliffs, much like the natural world. We cannot go

everywhere. But one final break-in-presence brings the VR player back to reality: one can

walk to the edge of the world on a road at which point the game informs you: “You

cannot go that way.”

40
 All of this exploration of the landscape was enabled through design. When

reviewing Eve’s thesis case study, his team was able to determine a reason for why their

selected village was situated the way it was, and why the dwellings were placed just so: a

commanding view of the plain below, and proximity to natural resources to be used for

commerce. The residents settled in an area where they could both sustain and protect

themselves, exploiting their environment to their benefit. The landscape existed long

before the arrival of the villagers, and human ingenuity and common sense led to the

foundation of the settlement.

Similar forces might be at work within Skyrim, but one must ask if Rorikstead

was placed as the landscape was designed, or if the landscape existed and the developers

decided that the eastern end of the valley would be a perfect place to put a small town.

The designers must have followed other rules in placing villages, cities, and other points

of interest, making sure that towns were spread evenly throughout the landscape, and that

one could see something else to explore no matter where one is on the map. Skyrim’s map

designer, Noah Berry, gave an interview about his design process, which indicated the

combination of randomness and logic he uses to make believable environments. ii Berry

stated that the map design must serve the goals of the game and its narrative arc(s). When

one examines the world map with all of its locations revealed, one sees how faithful its

design is to the underlying mandate. There is flexibility in the map, but that flexibility

plays within the rules.

So what can the archaeologist learn from such in-game explorations in VR? It

should be possible to conduct similar exercises in the VR version of Google Earth, which

features topography and 3D crenelated landscapes accessible via Oculus Rift, Vive, and

41
Google Cardboard. Even if we cannot physically visit a space, using VR hardware would

enable archaeologists to walk through landscapes they would otherwise be unable to visit.

One can import Google Earth KML files into a GIS program (such as the open source

QGIS) in order to add data, which one could then reference as one walked, the data

changing depending on the walker’s location. This would realize the dream of Eve’s

embodied GIS, but instead of bringing VR/AR to the field, one brings the field to the

researcher’s own home or office for study. When dealing with synthetic worlds, it is

possible to import a scanned image of a map into QGIS at which point it can be tagged

with either GPS or Cartesian coordinates. It might be possible to then add elevations

based on the VR world map to create a 3D GIS map that can then be tagged with data.

This will become quite useful when creating GIS maps of procedurally generated

environments that have never before been seen, much less mapped. These 3D VR maps

can then be used to answer any number of research questions once the investigators are

back from the field, querying, editing, and adding data on-the-fly. With VR, one need not

necessarily physically occupy an actual space in order to answer questions of landscape

archaeology.

A Note on Time and Distance in Skyrim

Like other open world games, distances in Skyrim are compressed and do not reflect

actual distance in the natural world, and affects the player’s experience of that space.

Time in the game is also accelerated when compared to the real-time experienced by the

player. Based on data from the Creation Kit wiki for creating mods for Bethesda games, iii

Skyrim, Oblivion, and the Fallout games use the same exterior cell size, which is a square

192 feet on a side. Skyrim's game world is a rectangle composed of 119 cells across by 94

42
cells high, which translates to 4.32 miles (6.95 km) across by 3.42 miles (5.5 km) high, or

14.8 square miles (23.82 km). The game-size translates to a scale of 1:10, which makes

more sense when players activate NPCs through their presence. What appeared for me in

30 game-meters would have actually been triggered in the natural world by a more

realistic distance of 300 m.

Time also factors in to travel across Skyrim. The game’s internal clock is set so

that one minute of actual time translates to 20 minutes of game-time, which means that

24 hours in the game pass for the player over the course of one hour and twelve actual

minutes. A walk that might take a player two minutes—my walk down from a hilltop tree

into Rorikstead—would take 40 in the natural world. Assuming a rate of 3 mph (5 kph)

walking downhill, this becomes a distance of two miles, again something reasonable

when considering how things appear from that distance. This condensation assists in

advancing player access to the game’s many narratives, which occur for the player in

real-time.

Engaging with Anthropology of Landscape: The Extraordinary in the Ordinary

by Christopher Tilley and Kate Cameron-Daum, UCL Press (2017).

Twenty-three years following the publication of his seminal book A Phenomenology of

Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments, Christopher Tilley returned with co-author

Kate Cameron-Daum to revisit contemporary landscape archaeology on a small scale in a

region of Cornwall (Tilley and Cameron-Daum, 2017), In their 2017 book Anthropology

of Landscape: The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, they define a number of layers to

understanding a landscape and all of its relationships, which include biography, place,

motility, mediation, agency / aesthetics / well-being, conflict and contestation, nature and

43
culture, and scene. What follows are Tilley and Cameron-Daum’s definitions followed by

my application of them to Skyrim’s Rorikstead valley based on my time there in VR.

Biography: We examine the biographies of persons and the manner in

which the landscape becomes part of whom they are, what they do and

how they feel.

There are only nine permanent NPC residents in western Whiterun Hold, all

living in the village of Rorikstead, and some have been programmed to talk about where

they live. Their speech reflects what one might hear from human settlers on a similar

frontier, and the player experiences the phenomena of automatons imbued with a sense of

memory, even though that memory is fabricated. Taking as an example the town’s

namesake, the Nord Rorik, he has the following to say about his feelings for where he

lives:

“Look around you. Most of the lands you see are mine. Most of this I

purchased while my comrades were fighting in the south, helping the

Empire against the Aldmeri Dominion. Back then, nothing would grow

here and so the land was worthless. Now, thanks to hard work and the

gods’ blessings, our farms prosper.”

Place: We discuss the manner in which different individuals are involved

in place-making activities, that is to say how they name places, sometimes

not places on any Ordnance Survey topographic map, the places they like

or dislike. In this respect we consider landscape as being a set of

relationships between places in which meaning is grounded in existential

44
 consciousness, event, history and association.

For Rorikstead, we return to a conversation the player has with Rorik as to how

the village was named:

“Most of the lands you see are mine. Most of this I purchased while my

comrades were fighting in the south, helping the Empire against the

Aldmeri Dominion.”

The history of the village of Rorikstead, the construction of its buildings, and the

arrival of the other residents is unknown, but the current hamlet likely occupies the space

of a much older settlement. In the lorebook Holdings of Jarl Gjalund (which can be

found and read in the game), it mentions a town called Rorik’s Steading, which might

pre-date the First Era (1E 0–1E 2920). The current town of Rorikstead was founded in the

Fourth Era (4E 0–4E 201), some 4,000 years after the initial settlement. There are no

signs of continuous, permanent settlement here, however, and it is puzzling how the name

Rorik would be shared across millennia in a seemingly accidental way. The other

residents are new and have little or no ties to western Whiterun prior to moving to

Rorikstead.

Motility: We discuss the manner in which persons and groups move across

the heathland landscape: the paths that they follow and the manner in

which they move, on their own or accompanied by others. The temporality

of movement and the sequences in which persons encounter places along

the way may be fundamental to how people experience landscapes and

thus feel about them.

45
 One of Skyrim’s main roads passes through the center of the village, winding its

way through Whiterun Hold into the Reach and Hammerfell beyond. Well-worn

footpaths lead up the hill to the east of the village, up to a camp, and also to a hut. The

footpaths are clear desire lines, and follow the landscape’s natural switchbacks all leading

down to the main road. This highway indicates a major desire/need to travel between

cantons and regions, yet rarely features travelers. When it does, the road is traveled by

foot with no evidence of horses or wagons. The road runs from Rorikstead to the

southeast to Fort Sungard, then northeast to Fort Greymoor, and then east to Whiterun

itself, while connecting with other roads along the way.

If anything, the road was created to connect the capital with Whiterun’s

fortifications, something that required sturdy road construction to support movement of

troops and materiel. The region then benefited from the roads built for that need. In

viewing the main road on a topographic map and ground-truthing it in the game, the

highway follows the path of least resistance through the landscape, making for easy, fast

travel, and presumably cutting down on its initial cost of construction. From a

phenomenological perspective, however, traveling over roads or tundra feels no different

in the game.

Mediation: We discuss how the manner in which the heathland is

encountered and understood alters according to whether people walk

across it (and the manner in which they walk) or whether their encounter

is technologically mediated – by modes of transport such as cycling; by

activities involving tools such as fishing, flying model aircraft or holding a

46
 rifle; by riding across it on a horse; or by being accompanied by a dog.

In exploring Rorikstead and the valley it occupies, I traveled mostly on foot, but

also tried transecting it by horse. My horseback travels set me about four “feet” higher

than I normally am when I walk, and gave me a better vantage point from which to

survey my surroundings. I found myself more willing to just plunge down a hill over

rocks and trees while riding my horse, and was more perceptive of the rolling topography

as I continuously went up and down hills at speed. As flat as the valley appears on the

map and to the eye from an elevated overlook, the actual ground undulates and is

populated by divots, depressions, cairns, small tors, rises and ridges. The road mediates

faster travel over more level surfaces, but the landscape encourages wild exploration, the

explorer drawn to non-natural features in the landscape such as towers, shrines, ruins, and

bonfires.

Walking across the Rorikstead valley is relatively easy, but one must pick one’s

way around boulders and fallen trees, hopping over creeks and rivulets, and negotiating

past potentially hostile wildlife. Being in the landscape makes one forget about the

overviews seen from the foothills above as travel is relatively slow and requires attention

to present motion through the material landscape that is actually there with each stride.

Rorikstead’s NPC inhabitants venture on the road in town, but largely keep to their farms

and houses. They have what they need and have little reason to venture out. Occasional

travelers pass through and use the main road, but do not stop in town to use the inn.

Agency, aesthetics, and well-being: We consider what the landscape, as a

sensuously encountered material form, does for people and in reciprocal

47
 relationship what it does for them.

The village of Rorikstead is itself unremarkable. Its setting, however, is nothing

short of spectacular, with views to the east of craggy mountains. Sunrises and sunsets as

seen from the village are warm and beautiful (when it is not raining). Pre-dawn mist hugs

the valley floor giving it a mysterious, primordial quality. The valley encourages

movement from the village to structures or farther on to the Hjaal River for fresh water

and fish, and the mountains draw one in, ultimately leading to footpaths up and in to their

snowy bastions. One travels the landscape logically, or at least as one would if traveling

on foot through a similar space in Colorado.

In VR, the materiality of the landscape is always experienced, and I forgot that I

was wearing a headset while I was focused on getting around in the valley. The landscape

enticed me with opportunities for exploration, these things never being more than 30

seconds away in real-time. The weather changed frequently from sun to rain, from blues

to grays, not unlike a walk in Scotland.

None of the villagers spoke about the beauty of the place, but only of its practical

use for farming, or the near-universal lament that small, backwater towns are good places

from which to escape.

Conflict and contestation: We discuss the ways in which differing

attitudes and values to landscape relate to different modes of encounter

and priorities: the politics of landscape.

At first glance, politics and conflict do not appear to weigh on Rorikstead. The

village is peaceful, has two full-time Nord guards who patrol the streets (although they

have no official residence and perhaps sleep at the inn), and serves as a retirement home

48
for two war veterans of the Great War. That being said, the village occupies a strategic

location at a pass between Whiterun Hold and the Reach and the region of Hammerfell.

Potential enemies could enter the valley on their way to Whiterun with a relatively clear

and easy route to the objective keeping south of the Hjall River and mountains, taking the

capital and by proxy the whole of Skyrim. That would be true were it not for Fort

Sungard to the southeast and Fort Greymoor to the east with clear views to Rorikstead,

the main road, and the pass between Whiterun Hold and the Reach.

Enemies could be spotted immediately from either tower resulting in a relatively

quick muster of reinforcements from Whiterun itself. The river and mountains to the

north provide natural fortifications, forcing invaders into the valley. Without any natural

cover, opposing forces remain exposed all the way from Rorikstead to Whiterun. Perhaps

Rorikstead remains uncontested because of its protections further up the valley, although

in contemporary Skyrim Fort Greymoor is abandoned, now occupied by bandits. Perhaps

foreign intelligence has not yet discovered this hole in Whiterun’s defenses.

Nature and culture: What do these terms mean to people in the context of

this landscape? Nature is to others an invaluable term informing their

environmental ethics and politics and their encounters with the world. To

strip a concept of nature away may thus have unintended and

disempowering social and political effects in terms of a rapidly developing

global crisis in which humanity is destroying the environment on which it

depends. A stress on the materiality of landscape means that the

anthropologist/researcher needs to be there, to experience the landscape

through the sensual and sensing body, through his or her corporeal body.

49
 The body becomes a primary research tool. Such an emphasis on being

there and observing and interacting with others stresses performativity.

The culture of Rorikstead is presumably a shared one based on the racial mix of

its nine residents, but there are no apparent artifacts or art that is specifically Redguard,

Altmer, or Breton. The foodstuffs found in houses, in the fields, and in the valley are all

Nord, as is the architecture, furniture, and home decoration. Up the hill behind Rorik’s

Manor lies a modest set of ruins, which are no more than a collection of incised boulders.

Beside these rocks is a shrine to Akatosh, one of the three major gods of Tamriel, the

continent of which Skyrim is a region. Natural resources in the valley are unremarkable

when viewed at commercially, yet provide for the “human” and “non-human” actors

within that landscape.

Digital landscapes can be experienced bodily and encourage not only movement

but also stationary contemplation. Through movement I was able to find an overlook, and

by remaining still, I could watch the living valley below change as day turned to night,

and as deer and moose emerged to forage in the twilight. The town of Rorikstead grows

quiet as the villagers retire, warm light escaping from the windows of the cottages,

manor, and inn. The emotions I feel at twilight in the natural world are the same as those

I experience in the synthetic through VR.

Scene: The landscape may be regarded in various ways as nature, habitat,

artefact, system, a problem, as a source of wealth, as ideology, history and

so on. Why the people might describe it in these very different ways

relates to their point of view and their interests and values, so inevitably

the landscape seen from the ‘beholding eye’ means something radically

50
 different for a property developer, a local historian, an earth scientist, an

artist and so on. Ten versions of the same thing is obviously an arbitrary

number: there could be many more or less. The general point though is

that political, economic, moral and aesthetic interests and values colour

what people see and may inevitably lead to radically different attitudes.

Landscapes are thus inevitably contested.

Regarding the Rorikstead Valley

Nature Valley wilderness meets village domestication and cultivation

Habitat Mild weather and peaceful neighbors lead to a peaceful village

Artefact Likely the result of a receding glacier

System People and land co-exist for non-exploitive subsistence

Problem Remoteness leads to personal and provincial isolation

Source of Wealth There is enough to survive on, but nothing to advance wealth

Ideology Local shrine to Akatosh and valley shrines to Talos and Zenithar

History Recent, Fourth Era village atop possible prehistoric settlement

Tilley and Cameron-Daum wrote, “people are materially entangled and entwined

with landscape and precisely because of that they are emotionally bound up with its past,

present and future.” When the authors use the term “people”, they do not write

exclusively about a landscape’s permanent residents, but rather anyone who comes in

direct contact with a place. This includes the visiting archaeologists who also become

materially entangled and entwined, bound to the landscape’s past, present, and future.

51
Digital Post-Script

Everything noted above transpired within a 100% designed open world video game

experienced through a VR headset and two handheld motion controllers observed by a

PlayStation stereo camera, which translated the signals of my body into real-time motion

and direction within that synthetic space. My in-game archaeological and emotional

experiences were mediated by this hardware that granted me both access and agency

within that space.

Donning the VR rig is little different to putting on my hardhat, Class II high-visibility

vest, Carharts, eye protection, and steel-toed boots in order to conduct archaeological

fieldwork safely. I outfit myself for my work. If I do not have climbing hardware, I

cannot gain access to the mountain. If I do not have my safety gear, I will not gain access

to the site of excavation. My gear enables my archaeological performance. When I wear

the VR rig, I am suiting up to conduct actual archaeological investigation within a

synthetic space. My questions and methods are similar to my colleagues in the natural

world. My tools are a little different, but my intent and actions in that archaeological

space are the same.

I realize that the region of Skyrim is a designed play-space with the express intent

of encouraging open, wilderness travel, while providing traditional infrastructure (roads).

The map feels naturally organic and behaves like the natural world in everything from

terrain to flora and fauna to how the landscape and these “human” and “non-human”

agents co-exist in that space. Non-natural features in the landscape draw players ever

onward and in to the world on purpose, the underlying logic in giving players places to

visit and objectives to achieve.

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 Performing as an actual archaeologist in this kind of space still yielded results and

information about the designed space, a critique of its construction, but also creating an

understanding of the machinery of the world. It is an alien space, and I am a human

visitor in it. All of the agents in the game regard me in a reactionary way based on my

proxemics. Actions happen the closer I get to something. Yet, the game being as complex

as it is, will continue to operate even if I am standing still. The world turns when I am in

it, and it continues with or without me.

I record my observations with screen- and video-capture, and can translate those

to 360-degree panoramic images and immersive 3D video to share. I can conduct

photogrammetry of objects found in the game, exporting them as a 3D mesh for future

printing, making real something that was once synthetic. I can create a 2D map of a

region, tag its features, and then convert it for use in GIS software.

The tools and methods I learned how to use within Skyrim can be applied to other

synthetic spaces, but can also be used for sites and landscapes in the natural world. Maps

are maps, and landscapes are landscapes, digital or otherwise. Photography and

videography work the same way no matter what; it’s up to the archaeologist to determine

when, where, how, and why to deploy them. The landscape has a say in those decisions

no matter where you find yourself.

Conducting landscape archaeology on a small village and its environs within

Skyrim lends itself to adapting this way of doing things to future investigations of other

synthetic worlds, especially those future worlds that will be procedurally generated,

designed games that then delegate world-creation to algorithms. Archaeologists must be

prepared to explore and document these new spaces, which will be inhabited by both

53
new, digital entities, as well as human visitors who will interact with each other and with

these new digital built environments. Skyrim archaeology is therefore a case study, a

testbed for ideas of archaeology in any synthetic world.

References

Barad, K. 2003. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter

Comes to Matter.” Signs 28(3): 801–31.

Carman, T. and M. B. N. Hansen, 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty.

Cambridge University Press.

Eve, S. 2012a. Dead Men’s Eyes: Embodied GIS, Mixed Reality, and Landscape

Archaeology. UCL PhD thesis.

Eve, S. 2012b. “Augmenting Phenomenology: Using Augmented Reality to Aid

Archaeological Phenomenology in the Landscape.” Journal of Archaeological

Method and Theory 19(4): 582–600.

Haraway, D. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke

University Press

Heidegger, M. 1996. Being and Time (trans. by Joan Stambaugh). SUNY Press.

Husserl, E., 1990. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological

Society (Books 1–3).

Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling,

and Skill. Routledge.

Tilley, C. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments. Berg.

Tilley, C. and K. Cameron-Daum, 2017. Anthropology of Landscape: The Extraordinary

in the Ordinary. UCL Press.

54
i
Eve (2012a) defines embodied GIS as merging GIS analysis with phenomenological approaches

to the landscape using augmented reality (p. 70).

ii
https://80.lv/articles/skyrim-designer-on-building-virtual-worlds/ (accessed January 30, 2018).
iii
https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Main_Page (accessed January 30, 2018).

55
The Efficacy of Phenomenology for Investigating Place with Locative
Media

Leighton Evans

That our human senses, of which all media are extensions are also fixed charges on our
personal energies, and that they also configure the awareness and experience of each one of
us… (McLuhan, 1964, 10)

The notion that media makes our world is a fundamental notion of the discipline of media studies.
From that start point, it is a surprising yet plausible argument that much of what the discipline has to
say about the world (and particularly place) is characterized by a distance from the human in the
world and a retreat to the view from above that characterizes a scientific worldview of the world.
Maybe this should be of no surprise; the need for rigor and an empirical certainty about the effects
of the media on people demands a quasi-scientific method of studying the media that reinforces a
subject-object view of the relationship between people and media. Such a position is informed by
critical theory that reinforces the subject-object distinction such as political economy, behaviorism
and social learning in the case of media effects or semiotic theory in the analysis of representation
through the media.

Given the ‘spatial turn’ in the social theory as exemplified by Gaston Bachelard (1964),
Michel de Certeau (1984), Henri Lefebvre (1991), Edward Soja (1996), David Harvey (2001) and of
course Michel Foucault (1986) to name a few, one might expect the increased attention to the
spatial aspects of media. However, closer attention to the nature of the research in locative media
(as an indicative example of spatial media) indicates that attention paid to place, as opposed to
space, is limited.

This chapter details an attempt to integrate a phenomenological approach to the

understanding of place and the understanding of place that people gain when using locative media
in a traditional media studies research project. Any call for more attention to the phenomenology of
place in Media Studies is recognition of an identified need to pay greater attention to how media
attunes users to place (Coyne, 2010) as opposed to analyzing representation or structural aspects of
space.

A phenomenology informed approach to place – attending to lived-in experience, everyday

being-with media and the importance of orientation and mood of being-with technology and the
effect on placehood of that being with – informed this research project. In a phenomenological view
of place, place is not undifferentiated matter (or space), but is filled with things that provide
meaning and a sense of differentiated place (Relph, 1976, 43) rather than undifferentiated space.
Place is therefore lived in (Elden, 2004, 187) rather than observed from outside, and the top-down
approach to the analysis of media as an object rather than an environment that is occupied will
encounter difficulties when the phenomenological experience of place is not addressed in media
that actively remake and make new places. The efficacy of that approach and what media studies as
a discipline might take from such an approach is the focus of this chapter.

56
Locative media

Locative media can be understood as media that are bound to or related to a particular location, but
which are not physically bound to the location that the content of the media refers to in use. That
may sound confusing, but as an example take Google Maps. By unlocking my phone and activating
the application I can explore the layout of streets, town or cities anywhere in the world from the
place I am in at this time. Locative media is therefore concerned with location and requires
information about location. In most devices today, Global Positioning Technology (GPS) will allow
the device to be located and for location-specific data and information to be provided for the user of
that device. Locative media therefore has a dual articulation: locative media can provide information
about locations anywhere in the world (providing there is data available about that location) and can
provide context- and locale-specific information about the place the device is being used in too.

The specific example of locative media that was investigated using a phenomenological
approach was the Location-based Social Network (LBSN) Foursquare. Foursquare is an example of a
location-based service that builds a database of places by users creating "spots" and "checking-in" at
those spots. Foursquare launched on March 13th 2009, and had 50 million registered users by May
2014. On Foursquare, users were (prior to an application redesign in August 2014 that saw the check
in function delegated to a new application called Swarm) rewarded in points-based systems for the
creation of and checking-in to spots, and from this a game environment is created where users are
encouraged to compete with friends for high scores over periods of time.

Users were also rewarded with badges and titles for check-ins and creating spots:
Foursquare did convey the status of "mayor" on users who had the most check-ins at a spot. Users
can still leave comments about spots they check-in at (and as many of these spots are services like
restaurants or shops, this can be seen as a form of free advertising or user-review of the service) and
photographs of the place. Links with other social networks, with Facebook and Twitter being
ubiquitous options, helps to find ‘friends’ and to post real-time updates to potentially larger
audiences - all while promoting the application itself across other platforms. (Evans, 2015, 37-38).
When checking-in to a place, a list of nearby venues and places is automatically generated, providing
the user with further information on their location and their relative position to other places and
services. This is the basis for the locational search function that was central to the mission and use of
Foursquare since the initial excitement of its use in the early 2010s.

While the use of Foursquare has curtailed in recent years, the application’s key features can
now be found in all the major social networks, such as with Facebook’s places feature or the
location-specific features on Twitter. Foursquare has been described as an example of ‘zombie
media’ (Evans and Saker, 2017, 69). These ‘zombie’ media ‘haunt’ new and developing media
platforms and forms, informing and helping to shape new technologies.

The impetus to study this form of media, and the reason it is still of interest, is in how the
locational search facility allowed users to go beyond a representational understanding of space into
a meaningful understanding of place. My initial thoughts as a user (and I was part of the research in
an auto-ethnographic manner) was that I could find out much more about places I was visiting – and
indeed, places I was already familiar with or so I thought – through the social gazetteers left by other
users. These went beyond just recommendations on where to eat or not to eat; social history,
personal preferences and detailed thoughts on venues were encoded into many user-generated
gazetteers that gave me an understanding of the nuances of venues that went beyond locating that
venue. The feeling of understanding and affinity through the use of other people’s opinions was

57
bringing forth a feeling of place in the phenomenological sense outlined earlier. At other times
though, I would just open the application and check-in to get some points especially if I saw the
location as high status. The project undertaken, and critiqued here, looked to use phenomenological
theory to understand this feeling of place as a mood on the part of the person using the application,
to assess whether phenomenological theory could provide an understanding of this feeling where
other explanations of locative-media use that could explain these different usages and intentions of
use, placing the person using locative media and their experience at the centre of the theoretical
explanation.

Given the ubiquity of smartphone hardware and location-able software that can achieve
these effects, a large body of research has emerged in Media Studies that is concerned with how
usage of locative media affects understandings of place and space which foregrounded, informed
and developed during the project in question. Wilken (2012, 243) identifies the major themes as
research directed towards analyzing how locative technologies mediate the relationship between
technology use and physical or digital spaces (see de Souza e Silva and Frith, 2010; de Souza e Silva
and Sutko, 2011; Wilken, 2008; Wilken and Goggin, 2012), discussions of power and politics in
location-based services (see Elmer, 2010), and assessments and discussions on the nature of the
representation of space that emerge through locative media (Gazzard, 2011).

In addition, the area of privacy has been a major area of interest (See Michael and Michael,
2009). A substantial body of research has developed on location-based applications (see Crawford
and Goggin, 2009; de Souza e Silva and Gordon, 2011; Evans, 2015a; Humphreys and Liao, 2013;
Wilken and Goggin, 2012) that has explored how locative media are used to communicate and
coordinate social interactions in public space (Campbell and Kwak, 2011), leading to a persistent
sense of co-presence (Licoppe, 2004; Ling and Horst, 2011; Rainie and Wellman, 2012), affecting
how people approach physical space (Martin, 2014), turning ordinary life ‘into a game’ (Frith, 2013;
Hjorth and Richardson, 2009; Licoppe and Inada, 2008), and pointedly altering how mobile media is
understood (Farman, 2012). Research has also investigated the idea that the use of mobile media
alters the way that users relate to physical space in a convergence of location, digital networks and
location-specific information that mediates geographic places (Martin, 2014, 180; Campbell and
Ling, 2008).

This body of work is concerned with space as something approached by media users, rather
than lived-in place – concerns of how software mediate spaces lived in by users have do not have a
phenomenologically-influenced stance generally. The dominant mode of explanation in this work is
from a critical geography perspective where the making and remaking of space (following Thrift and
French, 2002, and Dodge and Kitchin, 2011) that creates new spatialities is the dominant paradigm.
While this approach is valuable, the lack of attention to the feeling of place as a mood meant that
this project at hand on Foursquare had to look to phenomenology to explain this potential feature.
There is some indication that a phenomenologically-informed appreciation of place is apparent in
some of the work in this area though.

For example, in de Souza e Silva e Silva and Gordon's (2011) Net Locality that assesses
location-based services as technologies that open up hybrid realities between location and
technology. A hybrid situation in this view is one where the local and the remote cannot be clearly
defined as the mobile technology pulls in remote information to inform the situated actor in the
local context. The presence, and more importantly use, of this information in local contexts has a
transformative effect on the experience of space for the user. In short, the presence of the software

58
transforms the experience of place in terms of performance, experience and conceptualization –
foundational ideas for the approach undertaken in this project.

Furthering the phenomenological theme, Frith (2012) states that location based services
give the possibility of a ‘personal database city’ where the subjective experience of places is both
coded into databases and fed back to users, making the device and location based service a central
aspect of the subjective experience of place. Embodiment plays a role in this, as a means of
accessing information in the taken-for-granted processes and behaviors of using mobile devices. If
embodiment can be understood as not limited by the body itself (Richardson, 2005; Ihde, 1993;
Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 1968) but rather open to alteration by the various technologies we employ as
prosthesis then the use of smartphones to discover information on spaces and places may be
considered an embodied activity.

Jason Farman’s work moves beyond the phenomenologically-influenced towards a more

explicitly phenomenological research paradigm (2012), exemplifying an approach to understanding
the use of locative media where the relationship between user and mobile computational device is
understood through the prism of embedded cognition where embodiment and space are co-
constitutive. Farman’s approach positions mobile computational devices as things that can
reconfigure the way that users can embody that space of which they are co-constitutive. As such,
this was a major inspiration to the project as the use and embodied practices of use of LBSN on the
part of the person using the application is posited as central to how an understanding of place as
place (as a meaningful existential locale rather than geometric space) is created.

An Explicitly Phenomenological Media Studies of Place

As the project aimed to understand experiences of place as constructed through use of objects and
things such as locative media, rather than being predetermined (Soja 1996; Lefebvre, 1991), then a
phenomenological approach to the experiencing of feeling of place was arguably ideal.
Phenomenology, particularly in the work of Heidegger and post-phenomenologists such as Ihde
(1993), offered a theoretical basis for the use of objects in everyday understanding of the world and
an explanatory framework for modes of understanding that can be achieved through the use of
particular objects or things in places in order to understand place as place.

The project was based on an explicitly phenomenological understanding of how the

understanding of places may be affected by the use of mobile computational devices, locative media
and the potential for interpreting such an understanding as either as place or ‘technological’ space.
The project therefore theoretically relied on the key Heideggerian concepts of care (as in taking
digital media devices into care in everyday life), attunement and dwelling-with technology.

The project took the form of an ethnographic study – conducted in 2011 and 2012 using
mixed methods including online surveys, face-to-face interviews, Skype interviews and email
interviews – of 65 users of the LBSN Foursquare. There was a dual purpose for this ethnography:
firstly, to investigate what Foursquare was being used for, that is what were the practices of use that
users were actually engaging in; secondly, what effect on the understanding of place did the
practices of use of Foursquare have for the users, and how could this be conceptually related to and
analysed through a phenomenological framework.

A hermeneutic phenomenological analysis (Van Manen, 1997) as a derivative analytic

method from critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) was employed to analyse the data with
regards to how usage affected an understanding of place for the user. Following a macro reading of
59
the material collected, the data was coded using conceptual codes derived from the Heideggerian
phenomenological theory. The codes world, care, place as resource, dwelling, dependent on LBSN,
management of self and understanding of place were identified following the macro reading as key
themes in the data, and were appropriate in associating the data once coded with the two
understandings of world (the poetic/computational and the technological) derived from a
Heideggerian phenomenological position.

The project aimed to avoid ahistorical criticisms through acknowledging the importance in
computational code in the poetic revealing of place as well as its role as an ordering in a
technological revealing. In doing this, the project was clearly aligned to a software studies/digital
media agenda. This approach also tried to avoid Feenberg’s (2003) critique of Heideggerian
philosophy of technology as one-dimensional.

Heidegger was happy to forego discussions on specific technologies, as the essence of

modern technology would necessarily be the same no matter what form or function that technology
took. This project argued that computational devices through their use of code can order and
arrange information and practices that provide the sufficient conditions for a revealing of place.
Allied to a mood or orientation to the world that seeks an understanding of place rather than space,
the revealing of place is achievable through using locative media in the marginal practices of
disclosing location and place as a product of taking the device into care. If this is the case, the world
will not be revealed technologically, and an understanding of place will be one that takes things into
care and reveals through the equipmental spatiality that allows for a revealing of place as a
referential totality of things that is meaningful through the orientation of Dasein to those things in a
non-enframed attunement to place.

The interpretation of evidence from users of Foursquare in the project indicated that there is
the possibility of a revealing of place as a meaningful existential locale if there is an appropriate
orientation to the world that is rooted in a taking of computational devices into everyday activity
and a mood or desire to understand place as a locale with deeper meaning than mere co-ordinate to
be used in the execution of goals.

It was found that from the responses by people that used that application that usage does
not neatly fall into poetic/computational or technological understandings of place; people move
between these understandings, and the ethnographic analysis concentrated upon what factors
affected this movement in understanding. The two world disclosures – the computational/poetic
and the technological – were linked to different practices in usage of Foursquare and it is these focal
practices of use that are indicative of the different world disclosures and understandings of place
when using LBSN (Evans, 2015b, 854).

These world disclosures are explicitly linked to the taking into care of the computational
device in using the LBSN; the use of the device as a tool or thing can lead to a computational or
poetic/computational revealing of place, while the use of the device as an object in the world leads
to a technological understanding of place as a resource. A mood of use of LBSN that is concerned
with the accrual of social capital (from checking-in to high status places or modifying use to present
a particular image of self, a la Lefebvre, 1964) is indicative of a technological revealing of place.

Places were revealed as resources and the practices of usage that emerge from these
orientations to the device lead to this technological understanding without an understanding of
place positioning of location as something to be used as resource. The revealing of place as place is
indicative of a being-towards the world that brings the computational device into care, rather than
60
just being influenced by information mediated computationally. The practices of trying to
understand novel places through the social gazetteers of others found via locative media and sharing
location with others in a manner that allows for further interaction are the practices (from the
towards-which of Dasein in engaging with locative media) that can facilitate the phenomenological
effect of dwelling-with locative media, or revealing place.

In the framework used to assess the use of Foursquare then, the orientation of the person
(or Dasein) to that location and the locative media being used in that location are crucial to how a
phenomenal, lived-in place is differentiated from pure physical space. The orientation to place is
two-fold, in that it is not only a doing-with tools that allows place to be understood, but also the pre-
interaction towards-which (or mood) that is important for an understanding of place. This stood in
contrast to the orientation towards accruing social capital (the ‘I am here! Look at me!’ element of
sharing location across social media) and the game elements of locative media that were identified
as part of the technological revealing of space when using locative media.

When contextualizing these findings further in Heidegger’s phenomenological thought, the

idea of using Foursquare as a ‘thing’ (with the device and software taken as an assemblage at the
time of use rather than different objects or things) that is involved in a moment of revealing of place
was adapted as this can help explain how the functioning of the locative media and the mood of the
person using that media contributes to the feeling of placehood. The focal practice of using locative
media was identified as part of the event of revealing place – but this is not the entire event and the
‘thing’ as understood through the concept of the ‘fourfold’ can help explain how mood and media
work to allow an understanding of place.

The user experiences an attunement to place is the product of the gathering of the ‘thing’
that depends on the orientation to the device and practice of use. Place is the local world or
existential locale that comes from the engagement with things; this is not a product of man’s (or
Dasein’s) projection of meaning onto regions of space, but is explicitly a phenomenon that arises
from the towards-which of Dasein (the mood), the taking of a thing into care, the “thinging” of the
thing (the gathering of the person, practices and mood of the user) (Heidegger, 2008, 243) and the
event of world disclosure that reveals place as place to the user of the thing.

The “thinging” of the thing makes the local world possible, but this is contingent upon mood
and orientation of Dasein and the manner of engagement of Dasein with the thing. Here, the
(locative) media is thing that ‘things’, drawing in orientation and functioning to allow for the
revealing of place and understanding of world as world (in these specific circumstances). Locative
media does not always ‘thing’ though – the possibility of ‘thinging’ is contingent on the mood of the
person (or Dasein).

Without sounding redundant, the ‘thing’ only ‘things’ if the person is comported towards
understanding location as place. In essence, this was the key contribution to Media Theory in the
project. When a person uses Foursquare to understand the place around them, they encounter both
the application and the location itself in a mood that is open to the possibility of an understanding of
place. At other times, they may just use the application to score points or mark territory –
understanding location as space.

Evaluating the project as a contribution to Media Studies

The project described here realized a certain amount of utility in a brutal, instrumental sense: a PhD
dissertation, monograph (Evans, 2015a), a major contribution to a co-written book (Evans and Saker,
61
2017), and several papers (Evans 2011, 2015b; Saker and Evans 2016a, 2016b, 2016c). Given all this
material passed through peer review, one can argue that the validity of the project has been
established – although that instrumentalist view would be at odds itself with the position on mood
and phenomenology as being important in understanding meaning (in location), and so a deeper
evaluation is called for in this case.

An important consideration in evaluating the project is whether it can offer commentary on

or extend previous work in the field. de Souza e Silva and Gordon's (2011) Net Locality argues that
presence, and more importantly, use of this information in local context has a transformative effect
on the experience of space for the user. In short, the presence of the software transforms the
experience of place in terms of performance, experience and conceptualization. The project made a
similar argument – the use of locative media, which provides hyper-localized information on
location, allied to a particular orientation on the part of the user can change the qualitative,
subjective experience of a locale to a feeling of place.

That emphasis on mood can be read as a contribution of a phenomenological nature of the

ongoing work on locative media (linking in particular with Farman, 2012) which allows it to be read
as a continuation and development in a new direction of such work. Fitting into the existing body of
work indicates that the project was not necessarily revolutionary and that the explicitly
phenomenological can have some level of ‘fit’ with work that is implicitly phenomenological or
informed by phenomenology.

As such, the project adds a new dimension with the focus on the mood of the user (albeit
this has been considered without the explicit phenomenology in Hjorth’s (2011) ethnography of
mobile media users in Seoul). However, Vollrath (2016) in reviewing the monograph Locative Social
Media: Place in the Digital Age that derived from this project, makes two pertinent critical points
that indicate some of the issues that such a project has in relating to the wider discipline and
questions both the validity and efficacy of that addition. The first is that “judgments about how place
is revealed for Foursquare users are ultimately [the authors] own” (Vollrath, 2016, 1049).

This is a criticism of the inherent subjectivity in analysis when undertaking an interpretive

phenomenological analysis such as the one in this project. This can be read as a repetition of a
criticism already made in the conclusion of the project, in that the criticism indicates that the
judgements made reflect an unresolved recursion (although this could be read as a hermeneutic
circularity) where mood or orientation presupposes rather than co-creates a meaningful existential
locale or place.

That criticism is rooted in the highly subjective nature of the hermeneutic phenomenological
analysis (although this may be applied to any number of discourse analyses, even those with co-
researcher internal validity of analysis), and the lack of apparent empirical rigor of the approach.
Secondly, the highly interpretive approach and reading of evidence lacks empirical rigor – the
subjectivity means another theorist would treat the findings completely differently as they are only
interpretive.

There is some validity to this criticism, but the solution to this is also problematic. The
problem can be read as one of translation, where the content of participant reported experiences is
translated or mapped onto existing categories of analysis. Indeed, the operationalization of concepts
derived from Heidegger into variables in an empirical project may strike some as a form of scientism
that Heidegger was explicitly critical of in his work. An alternative to this would be to conduct a non-
phenomenologically (or any other theory) informed empirical stage of research, and ‘let the research
62
speak for itself’ which would be open to a lack of theoretical relevance or applicability. Any number
of approaches from critical geography could be applied to this work, but such work may not engage
with the mood of the user directly, which would necessitate another approach to mood and
orientation that does not necessarily have the affordances of the phenomenological approach.
Addressing this was both the aim of the project and stands as the most salient contribution to the
discipline from the project, and as such to weaken that focus would be counter-intuitive in some
ways. The phenomenological approach is, of course, neither the optimal nor only way of
approaching this topic, but should be considered an addition to other research approaches and
methods.

The second criticism is that “[the author’s] book fixates too strictly on the phenomenological
(to the detriment of an investigation of the background within which experience takes place)”
(Vollrath, 2016, 1052). Again, this critique refers to the other approaches already available, being
used or being developed that do not focus on the ‘feeling’ of place or the context of experience. The
investigation of the background within which experience takes place may refer to any number of
other factors that could form part of the agenda of urban studies, critical geography or a number of
other disciplines.

The call in this criticism is to broaden; however, part of the relationship that the project has
with other work is to add contours and new reflections to that research. While a wider focus was
one of the reasons why a phenomenological approach was taken in the first instance, one of the
limitations of the approach is that (necessarily one might argue) other approaches are not focused
upon.

The criticism may be read as a call to integrate phenomenology with these approaches and
methods to consolidate the phenomenological approach within a more recognizable media studies
milieu. Jason Farman’s (2012) work arguably achieves this in having an approach to embodiment
heavily informed by phenomenology but refined towards the use of smartphones. Given the critique
of this project, a phenomenologically-influenced or -informed analysis of place in Media Studies may
be better received than explicitly phenomenological analyses with narrow focus and subjective
interpretation. This is not an unreasonable position; it indeed describes much of the work
mentioned in the early part of this chapter. The difficulty in operationalizing phenomenological
concepts in the project described and the reasonable criticism of subjectivity in interpretation make
phenomenological analyses both challenging and outside the received ‘way of doing’ in the
discipline.

However, if phenomenology only informs analyses of place in media studies, it is reasonable

to question what kind of phenomenology is actually at play in the discipline. A ‘phenomenology-lite’
approach to place may provide a better fit with the discipline as less subjective research methods
are analytically informed by phenomenological theory. However, with the advent of Augmented
Reality – the overlaying of digital information and images onto the physical world with the use of a
lens or device – and the return of Virtual Reality (VR) as a commercial, educational and consumer
medium that aims for the creation of an artificial, immersive world of experience then a theoretical
position which addresses direct experience and mood may prove to be a valuable addition to the
discipline.

For example, the emphasis on orientation and attunement as key phenomenological

concepts that explain placehood in virtual spaces has important implications for emerging new
media such as augmented reality and virtual reality, particularly in the case of VR where immersion

63
in digitally-created place will be a key objective of programmers, developers and producers. How,
why and with what digital objects users feel at home with in VR will be key questions in
understanding user experience in such media. The criticisms of subjectivity and empirical validity
may always be levelled when research is attempting to understand phenomenological orientation
and mood towards media. These criticisms do not mean that attempts to understand these
important aspects of the experience of using media are not important to answer, and that the
answers derived are not of value to the development of theory and understanding around media.

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Postphenomenology and “Places’

Don Ihde

Historically there have been variations on “phenomenology.’ G.W. F. Hegel had early

coined the “Phenomenology of Spirit” which was a focal discussion juncture for the 19th

century. Then Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology launched what was to be the primary

phenomenology movement of the 20th century. And while he held phenomenology

necessarily to be transcendental and called for an army of investigators to carry out its

programs, his wish did not hold sway. In his own times, he, colleagues and students did

investigations and there was a sort of “school”, in Göttingen but it remained for a

generation of readers later in the century to vary from transcendentality: Early were the

existential versions, often attributed differently by different interpreters to Jean Paul

Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and for some early interpretations to, Martin Heidegger.

But closely related were the hermeneutic phenomenologists, more generally Heidegger,

Hans Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur.

Then there is, particularly now, postphenomenology. I did not invent this term,

although the deliberate modifications upon “classical’ phenomenologies are most often

associated with my late 20th century work which I do call postphenomenological. I

suspect the first uses of postphenomenology were simply applications to anything past

beginnings, roughly post-Husserlian phenomenology. Then there is a small, Australian

based “postphenomenology’ associated with Cornelius Castoriadis as interpreted by Suzi

Adams and sometimes loosely affiliated with critical theory and the Frankfort School.

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My own use of the term, which actually harks back to “non-foundational

phenomenology’ in the mid-80s, became deliberately postphenomenology with

Postphenomenology: Essays in the Postmodern Context (1993). As most readers know,

this was a deliberate blending of American pragmatism, particularly as widely discussed

via Richard Rorty’s non-foundationalism of the times, and my own felt needs for doing

analyses of technology and science, or technoscience. I repeatedly made the case that

classical phenomenology, to address the technoscientific phenomena of the twentieth and

twenty-first centuries must undergo modifications. I shall again discuss these

modifications in relation to the renewed interest in Place.

Discussions of place, of course, originate in classical phenomenology early on in

all the most important thinkers: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger, as well as

references to be found in Sartre, Marcel, Jaspers and others. And its current revival owes

much to my colleague, Edward Casey. Briefly put, classical phenomenology rejects the

primacy of a Cartesian spatial analysis. Cartesian spatiality is abstract, empty, and one

could say absolute—it is also Newtonian, and this strand is picked up by Immanuel Kant.

I shall call this early modern spatiality. This is largely Husserl’s assumed framework of

the early 20th century, which he attacked. Classical phenomenology counters that this is

not the way we humans experience spatiality. Our experience of spatiality is, to use late

20th century terminology, situated, embodied, specific, and fully signifying.

I, postphenomenologically, would add that we do not experience spatiality

singularly at all, our spatiality is space-time and relativistic—and multistable.

Multistability, now common to many sciences, is a phenomenon by which many entities

self-organize into different shapes and arrangements. And this points to another

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difference which I see from classical phenomenology—the embodied multistability of

places. To show this, I shall take a digression into part of the pathway to

postphenomenology.

Classical phenomenology is focally, and often thoroughly first-person

experiential. Husserl’s version was the most complex. His methodology entailed a

complex set of reductions. Epoche, which sets aside what he calls the “natural attitude’ is

aimed at phenomena, or what we experience as we experience it (without what we could

call the taken-for-granted “Cartesian’ beliefs concerning “reality,’ “objectivity’, “out-

thereness’, etcetera.) Other reductions refine further to what eventually is the realm of

transcendental subjectivity, where the phenomena themselves are purely described. And,

particularly for the early Husserl, this could be said to remove what I shall call

materiality from phenomenology.

In part, I think Husserl assumes that materiality is part of the natural attitude—

this, I hold, is a mistake. And it is a crucial vector differentiating classical from

postphenomenology. Indeed, my most recent book, Husserl’s Missing Technologies

(Lexington, 2016) is a thorough critique of Husserl’s anti-materiality. From the

beginning, by taking technologies into intentionality itself, postphenomenology

recognized how materiality plays a crucial role in all science practice.

But if so, it is a mistake which does not show up until the kinds of problems

which emerge from contemporary technoscience begin to take place. Distinct anti-

Cartesian “places” occur in most post-Husserlian phenomenology, too. Merleau-Ponty’s

situating all intelligent human behavior in bodily motility has turned out to be

revolutionary for the new “plasticity” thinking of neurology; Heidegger’s Dasein is

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contrasted with the Cartesian body throughout Being and Time; and Sartre’s description

of the voyeur discovered as himself “being seen” are all classical examples. Note that in

all cases bodily self-perception is involved.

In my own thinking, a particular kind of materiality emerges from technoscience.

Early, for example in my Technics and Praxis: A Philosophy of Technology (1979), I

implicitly took as my historical fulcrum the standard chronology of early modern science,

i.e., the 17th century. My focal examples were often scientific instruments, which for

early modern science were frequently optical. Galileo, retrospectively, became the

founding figure and his own move from Ptolemaic to Copernican systems revolved

around the new optics. As a craftsman, Galileo was a skilled lens grinder and the builder

of many telescopes and microscopes. Such instruments are, of course, science’s

technologies and they are material items. I argued then that all science is technologically

embodied.

What I tried to do in Technics and Praxis, (1979) however, was to do a “phenomenology

of instrument use.’ In my later Technology and the Lifeworld (1990) I revisited the

phenomenology of technics and refined it, but again by doing a phenomenology of

instrument use as performed in practices. It was from this analysis that both materiality

and a style of in-use experience emerged. In a parallel fashion, my earlier work in

auditory-acoustic dimensions of experience played an enriching, counterpart role.

Listening and Voice: A Phenomenology of Sound (Ohio, 1976) and its expanded 2nd

edition, Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound (SUNY, 2007) and an update

dealing with contemporary acoustic technologies, Acoustic Techics (Lexington, 2015)

move sonification into animal studies, science, and even medical diagnosis. All of this,

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although I interpret it postphenomenologically, follows phenomenology’s bodily-

perceptual trajectory, albeit mediated via instrumental technologies. As

postphenomenology began to be recognized as a distinct mode of STS (science-

technology studies) this enhanced role of materiality was also recognized.

Yet, in so long following these developments, I have become aware of what I

think is a subterranean sub-theme. My suspicion is that there remains an affinity for

classical phenomenology to remain subterraneanly “Newtonian”, or at least to hold that

science remains “Newtonian” whereas most sciences today are thoroughly evolutionary

and relativistic-quantum oriented. Part of what I want to emphasize here are the ways in

which science itself has increasingly abandoned the Newtonian spatial abstraction.

Postphenomenology has an affinity for this latter stance. And while here I shall direct my

comments towards the implication of places, I want to include indirect evidence that the

classical/postphenomenology affinities are as I have indicated.

I want to take a short detour into postphenomenology and contemporary physics

(that is, relativity and quantum physics) Albert Borgmann was the first to provide the

most sustained and in-depth connection between postphenomenology and contemporary

physics in his contribution to Evan Selinger’s Postphenomenology: Critical Companion

to Ihde (SUNY, 2006), “Mediating Between Science and Technology”, pp. 247-255.

“One way of bringing Ihde’s mediations into relief is to set them in between two of the

outstanding perhaps the outstanding intellectual challenge of the early twenty-first

century…. More specifically it is the reconciliation of the inconsistent twin pillars of

contemporary physics—relativity theory and quantum theory” (1). Borgmann is himself

trained as a physicist. He later points out that “Ihde uses multiperspectivalism and

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multistability as roughly subjective and objective correlates, both coming into relief

through his variational method” (2). Postphenomenology accepts, and enhances,

Husserl’s use of variational method. And while I quarrel with Borgman’s use of

“subjective’ and “objective,’ variational method bringing forth multiperspectival and

multistable dimensions is indeed the heart of postphenomenology.

If Borgmann was the first to grasp this role for postphenomenology, there have

been a trail of others who have also communicated to me their appreciation of

multiperspetivalism and multistability, especially for relativity and quantum phenomena

over the years. These have included mostly mathematicians and astro-physicists. Most

recently in an extended interview by Robin Engelhardt, a Danish micro-chemist and

interviewer in Copenhagen, 2012, we explored the discovery by many sciences of

multistability largely a decade later than its appearance in Experimental Phenomenology

in 1977 (as noted by Borgmann, (3)). Now, however, it is time to return to Places.

Variations: Modernist Science—by which I mean from early modern science

(17th century) through the Newtonian Revolution –raises space and time, made highly

abstract and absolute to primacy. Place, as phenomenologically conceived by Casey,

arrives later in his analysis and is more concrete, but this inverts what we now see as the

attainment of modernity. Experientially, developmentally, “places’ come first

experientially and are “homey’ as experienced by the young. We need to begin with the

postmodern recognition that humans are not exceptional. It is almost a given that early

modern authors simply assume human exceptionality and the notion that whatever is

human is vastly different than any animal counterpart. Dewey, following Darwin,

doubted that as does pragmatically infused postphenomenology. As an avid follower of

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animal studies in recent decades, I have become increasingly skeptical of human

exceptionalism—and this pertains to places as well. I will begin here with biological

places, lower on the biological scale than usual: eggs. Of all the animals with which we

share a world: fish, reptiles, a few mammal-like beings (platypus for example) produce

eggs within which the fetuses, the young develop. Eggs are biological “places...” and I

presume are experienced as such by their inhabitants. Pre-modern notions of eggs largely

regarded these simply as fixed shells protecting the young. They are biological “places”,

first “dwellings” for hatchlings, although not constructed nor designed.

Post-modern science is beginning to realize that shells are also not merely

passive, but actually often serve to mediate phenomena from the wider world to the fetus.

Of course, humans have long realized that eggs come in an amazing variety of shapes—

very round, to elliptical to even more elongated. And only recently has it come to light

that egg shapes with birds correlate with flying ability, roughly, the more elongated the

egg, the better the flyer. Albatross eggs are very elongated (a 12-foot wingspan for

adults), whereas the non-flier, Ostrich, has a round egg (4).

But even more astonishing is the discovery that mother Zebra Finches actually

acoustically communicate through the eggshell. These communications provide

information about rising ambient temperatures which in turn allow fetus development to

be better prepared for hotter hatching times. In short, climate change information is

communicated to the fetus. (5) I suspect hard core human exceptionalists will object to

taking eggs as “places” because eggs are neither designed nor “technological.” But if the

egg is a biological “place” for development, nests, “buildings”, and other structures are

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found among an even more profuse spectrum of animal architecture. Again, as with eggs,

fish, reptiles, social insects, and birds produce a profusion of such constructed places.

Fish nests or predator protection places are often minimal, although at least one

species of male fish hide baby fish in their mouths in time of danger. (6). Bird nests take

many shapes with weaver birds reaching elaborate hanging basket shapes. Social insects,

from bees with their hexagon shaped cells for nurseries to termite’s elaborate

constructions which have air-conditioning passages, neither of which species has any

executive designer insects remain mysterious and complex. Primates, oddly, usually have

very simple branch nests in trees, but sometimes these are attacked after use by rivals.

(7).

By the time we get to humans, the variety of homes becomes staggering but also

clearly related to climate and weather phenomena. As Mircea Eliade and the structural

anthropologists (Levi Strauss) have pointed out (8.), village shapes have long and often

been designed around an “omphalos” or “belly button” of the world design. The village

center is defined by a hole with a post, and all buildings are located in a pre-determined

position around this omphalos. We once visited a reconstructed Zulu village in Africa,

the chief’s round house was surrounded by a circle of round houses for his many wives,

all round with hard, shiny black floors looking like plastic, very shiny and hard. When

asked about the composition, the answer was, “anthill and cow dung.” Many cultures

prefer round houses; others square or rectangle, as in Europe, and those in wetlands or

sea areas, houses on raised poles, boats tied below. Many nomads have portable tent or

re-constructible dwellings (yurts as one example.) Once with the agricultural-city

revolution, multi-story dwellings were made, including Hopi dwellings in the US

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Southwest, with 3-4 stories, and in industrial modernity, high-rises seem to know no clear

limits [I live on the 14th floor of a high-rise in Manhattan. Those in “millionaire’s mile on

57th St. occupy up to 59 floors. I can see this often cloud shrouded building from my

study.]

I hold that dwellings, from our animal relations, through human cultures and

histories, are wildly multistable, although most offer environmental shelter whether

underground tunnels as with mole-rats or Simeon Stylites (4th c. AD) perched on his

monk’s pole. Many are designed or constructed (without designers) to protect against

enemies (in many human dwellings doorways are designed to make entrants enter only

by bowing.) I have visited cave dwellings in Turkey which have large rolling stone doors

which can be closed if under attack; and recently dug-out houses in Alaska which have

long entrances which can be closed off to invading bears.

My colleague, Edward S. Casey, has done as much as any phenomenological

philosopher to remind us of the importance of place. He recognizes this in his “How to

get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time: phenomenological prolegomena.”

(9) He rightfully reminds us that it is in the birth of an early, modern scientific point of

view—Galileo, Descartes, and especially Kant—that abstract and absolute or geometric

space effectively replaces the pre-modern experientiality of place. His analysis in this

piece reminds us of how phenomenology—Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty –reminds

us of the concreteness, perceivability and experientiality of place remains of importance

in phenomenology.

Postphenomenology, also influenced by Rortean and Deweyan pragmatism sides

with this rejection of modernity’s primacy of space. Or, as I shall put it here, the

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“foundationalism” of precisely the Galileo, Descartes, Kant spectrum. What Casey, to my

mind, does not realize is that this could be interpreted as a rejection of a “Newtonian”

science. My twist will be to draw particularly from an Einsteinian relativistic science

which does not elevate space over place. I am implying that contemporary science

downplays the no-one’s perspective of the Newtonian past.

Peter Galison’s, Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps (W.W. Norton, Co.,

2003) is a brilliant inversion of the usual mythology about Einstein and his job at the

Swiss Patent Office which happens to open the way to a postphenomenological relativity

regarding places. (10) The standard narrative is fully Cartesian and Newtonian: Einstein,

the brilliant brain in a body, sits in the Patent Office purely thinking theory, while with

his left hand, as it were, working on patents which happen to deal with time schedules,

trains, synchronization—and above all the speed of light as a message time. Galison,

taking the actual patents into account, realizes that Einstein’s conception of time includes

materiality, concreteness and speed of messaging.

To talk about time, about simultaneity at a distance, you have to synchronize you

clocks and if you want to synchronize two clocks, you have to start with one,

flash a signal to the other, and adjust for the time that the flash takes to arrive.

What could be simpler? Yet with this procedural definition of time, the last piece

of the relativity puzzle fell into place, changing physics forever. (10).

Galison, by bringing together theory, implicitly holds that bodies [all Einstein’s

“Gedankenexperimenten” implicate bodies in motion. And Einstein at age sixteen,

imagined riding a light beam trying to catch it at light speed, and technologies shows how

Einstein contra Newton has a very concrete, place, perspective on time, and unlike

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Newton has a time which is “platonic’ pure and uniform. In short, in this context, place as

it were takes priority over space. Or, if we accept the revolutionary character of relativity,

science now has a totally different perspective upon what now is space-time, concrete and

relativistic. But if this is so, then science should no longer remain captive to its pre-

postmodern concreteness. And if my echo is correct, then, too, classical

phenomenologists should fully abandon their nostalgic Newtonianism.

Conclusion: Femto Photography

From 1958-1964, while an M.Div and then a Ph.D. student, I was at MIT where I met

“Doc Egerton” the always friendly inventor of stroboscopic photography, which could

capture bullets as they tore through an apple. Back then, this was the fastest photography

extant, able to take images at fractions of a second. But today Femto Photography, also

perfected at MIT’s Media Lab, can image a single photon of light at 0.2 trillionths of a

second, (we approach here Einstein’s catching of a light ray thought experiment), billions

of times faster than stroboscopic photography. Here is truly relativistic or even quantum

photography—which can image objects around corners!

The process is obviously very fast, but also very narrow and entails laser light

connected to computer tomography, technologies used in much nano-scaled, new

technologies often associated with virtuality. I have chosen this technology, in part,

because it, too echoes Einstein’s childhood thought experiment and is part of a growing

quantum sized frontier of developing technologies. Quantum dot computation, not yet

perfected, has over two hundred US and over three hundred Chinese patent applications.

Indeed, nano-sized phenomena play a role in most of today’s frontier technologies. I have

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chosen Femto Photography only because it is extant from among many other projected

quantum phenomena technologies.

While I shall forego a deeply technical discussion, I do want to point up how

Femto Photography makes round-the-corner images. If light, in the form of photons, can

spread out, around corners and bouncing off all sorts of objects, then a certain number of

photons “bounce back’ toward the source and these can “image’ an object off which the

bounce comes. I am implying, here of course, that this is a relativistic and (nano-scaled)

effect, an ante-jumping extension from Einstein. It is also an affect which is new and I

would call it postmodern. An addition for “places.’ Our experience of space-time is

transformed. If I am right, then once again we are at the innovative edge of technoscience

and the construction of newly experienceable places.

Endnotes

1. Albert Borgmann, “Mediating Between Science and Technology,” in Evan

Selinger (ed.) Postphenomenology: Critical Companion to Ihde (SUNY Press,

2003), p. 274.

2. Ibid,. p. 251.

3. Ibid., p. 247.

4. Science, Claire N. Spottiswoode, “The Most Perfect thing explained,” 23 June

2017. Vol 356, No. 6344, pp. 1234-1235.

5. [originally reported in Science]

https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/18/12490292/zebra-finch-climate-change-

call-heat-warning

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 6. Seahorses and goby fish males retain eggs in their mouths until hatching.

7. Frans De Waal, Are We Smart Enough to know how smart animals are?

(W.W. Norton and Co., 2016).

8. Structural anthropology, often led by Claude Lev-Strauss, and a similar

religious anthropology by Mircea Eliade was popular in the ‘70’s.

9. Edward. S. Casey, “How to get from Space to Place in a fairly short stretch of

Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena.” pp.13-52.

10. Peter Galison, Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps; Empires of Time (W.W.

Norton and Co., 2003). Pp. 13-14.

References

Borgmann, Albert. 2003. "Mediating between science. and technology." In

Postphenomenology: A Critical Companion to Ihde, edited by Evan Selinger, 247-

255. New York, USA: State University of New York Press.

Casey, Edward S. 1996. "How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time:

Phenomenological prolegomena." In Senses of place, edited by Steven Feld and

Keith H. Basso, 13-52. Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA: School of American Research

Press.

Chen, Angela. 2016. "Zebra finches sing to eggs to prepare babies for global warming."

Last Modified 18 August 2016, accessed 1 June 2018.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/18/12490292/zebra-finch-climate-change-call-

heat-warning.

87
De Waal, Frans. 2016. Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? New York,

USA: W. W. Norton & Company.

Galison, Peter. 2003. Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time. New York,

USA: W.W. Norton.

Ihde, Don. 1990. Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to earth. Bloomington,

USA: Indiana University Press.

Ihde, Don. 2012. Technics and praxis: A philosophy of technology. Vol. 24. Dordrecht,

the Netherlands: Springer Science & Business Media.

Morell, Virginia 2016. "Video: Zebra finch call prepares their eggs for climate change ".

Science Mag, Last Modified 18 August 2016, accessed 13 Februrary 2018.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/video-zebra-finch-call-prepares-their-

eggs-climate-change.

Selinger, Evan, ed. 2012. Postphenomenology: A critical companion to Ihde. New York,

USA: SUNY Press.

Spottiswoode, Claire N. 2017. "The most perfect thing, explained." Science, 356

(6344):1234-1235. doi: 10.1126/science.aan2517.

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Virtual Place and Virtualized Place

Bruce B. Janz

The virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual i

One of the most common ways of understanding virtual reality is as a reflection of “real” reality,

or material existence. The most common images we have of virtual place are immersive digital

experiences in which material places are simulated and imagined places are modelled. These

models might be wholly separate from their material originals, or in augmented reality they

might be layered on the originals. They might be imaginative extrapolations which do not have

any relationship to material originals, but still use elements of sensation to model other (utopian,

dystopian, alternate) spaces. We encounter them using the cognitive skills we have learned in our

embodied existence.

This is of course a simplified caricature of virtual digital place. And yet, even in the 44

chapters of The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality ii, the overwhelming understanding of most

(although not all) of the contributors is that virtuality, especially in relation to place, is a kind of

representation of reality, what I will call “virtualization” rather than virtuality. Many, such as

Bruce Damer and Randy Hinrichs, use Michael Heim’s definition: “Virtual reality is a

technology that convinces the participant that he or she is actually in another place by

substituting the primary sensory input with data received produced by a computer . . . when the

virtual world becomes a workspace and the user identifies with the virtual body and feels a sense

of belonging to a virtual community.” iii They go on to agree with László Ropolyi and add a

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component of “worldliness” to virtual reality: “Worldliness would require, for instance, that in

order for any representation to be internalized as an embodiment of a person, other users’

representations must also be present and engaged in explicit shared activities. Virtuality seeks to

create a synthetic view of reality but also to imbue it with this concept of worldliness.” iv Even if,

as Tom Boellstorff says in his Afterword, this representation does not map onto the distinction

between the real and the unreal, there is still an ongoing assumption that virtuality will have

something to do with a representation of the real, or a construction of a new space which depends

on elements of the real.

Virtuality itself, on the other hand, without specifying virtual place, has a much wider

provenance. Representation does not play a central part, for instance, in N. Katherine Hayles’

definition: “Virtuality is the cultural perception that material objects are interpenetrated by

information patterns.” v Her definition is a strategic one, “because it seeks to connect virtual

technologies with the sense, pervasive in the late twentieth century, that all material objects are

interpenetrated by flows of information, from DNA code to the global reach of the World Wide

Web.” vi She is more interested in the relationships between pattern and randomness, the nature of

information, and mutation, than in representation. vii

As Hayles points out elsewhere, many artists are “critical of the tendency in military and

corporate VR to move toward greater realism.” viii (Hayles 2002: 317). In other words, the

assumption that the greatest virtue of virtuality is resemblance to external reality might, in fact,

only be linked to some of those with particular goals within virtual reality. The alternative that

these artists envision entails a break with realistic representation of place or of the body/avatar

that moves through place, and a move toward a more abstracted, geometric imagery.

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The skepticism toward resemblance as a virtue in virtuality, and seeing it as tied to an agenda of

domination, conquest, or persuasion, is significant, in that it suggests that this specific form of

representation comes with a particular set of narratives. Does “military and corporate VR”

suggest these narratives, and more specifically, is it the verisimilitude of representation that

carries the narrative of domination or persuasion? Perhaps – but to address that, we would need

to follow Hayles’ concept of the posthuman further than this space will allow. I raise it here

because I want to point to a range of senses of virtuality. And, despite the sense that Hayles’

posthuman version of virtuality is a response to representational versions of virtuality, simply

moving to a more abstract, less literal set of images does not in itself move us away from the

dependence on representation. Hayles knows this – her later work, particularly her most recent ix

does not explicitly address virtuality, but it does delve into forms of cognition which are relevant

to the posthuman trope from her earlier work.

This chapter’s goal will be to follow up questions of cognition in virtuality, particularly as it

relates to place. First, I will distinguish virtual place from virtualized place. Second, I will

consider a range of philosophers who have worked on play, and argue that both place and

virtuality (but not virtualization) are made possible by play. Third and finally, I will turn back to

digital place, and consider the ways in which this understanding of play as virtuality might help

to rejuvenate our understanding of digital virtualized place.

Virtualized and Virtual Place

The distinction between the virtualized and the virtual starts with the distinction between

representation of place and creation of place. We could make some contrasts between the

virtualized and the virtual. A virtualization encodes all possibilities, while virtuality remains

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open to unanticipated potentiality. A virtualization is the digital - discrete, disconnected,

codeable, iterable, while a virtuality is the analog - continuous, connected, unique. Virtualization

tends to be accomplished all at once, if it is accomplished at all, whereas the virtual unfolds

potentialities which themselves have stability and their own potentials. A virtualization is

ultimately an abstraction, whereas the virtual always remains tied to the concrete. x

Brian Massumi illustrates the nature of the virtual with the example of optical illusions. xi

The illusions he discusses are simple and well-known ones, such as the Kanizsa triangle, in

which three circles with angular bites out of them are placed in relation in such a way that the

bites look like they define a triangle, without the lines of the triangle ever existing. What is

important here is not that we see the triangle, but that we cannot not see it. It is compelling,

although it does not “exist”. It is not “subjective” in the sense that it springs from each

individual’s consciousness - it is there for almost everyone. It is a cognitive potentiality brought

about by an external relation between objects.

The optical illusion is not a representation of reality, but rather the creation of a reality

out of the relationships between elements. Those elements must include the viewer, and the

cognitive system which the viewer brings to the cut-out circles. Our cognitive systems, with their

histories, their extended nature, their evolutionary pasts, are a part of the activation of this

potentiality. We tend to think of optical illusions in terms of contradictions between what we

experience and what we know must be true. There can’t be lines there, yet we see a triangle. If,

though, we introduce the idea that it is our cognitive system that is essential to optical illusions,

we quickly realize that much of the rest of our experience may well have a similar character. A

recent popular internet meme suggested that magenta does not exist as a color, since it combines

wavelengths on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Yet we perceive it - of course it exists.

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Magenta, along with every other color, exists only because of the engagement of our cognitive

systems with the world.

At this level, every virtualization is a virtuality, for every digitized experience depends on the

cognitive systems brought to bear on them. We view pixels and frame rates as if they have

motion, color, and form - each of these experiences occur because of the intersection of elements

of the world with cognitive systems able to process them to reliably activate a virtuality.

But when we think about virtual place, we are usually not thinking at this level. We are often

thinking of place at the meso level, the places between the very small and the very large, the very

fast and the very slow, the very short and the very long. These are the places attuned to specific

kinds of human action. These places, we tend to think, are populated by stable and unambiguous

entities, for the most part, and we like to think that this stability can be modelled. This is the

basis of our sense that virtuality is really the same as virtualizability.

“Virtual reality” is for most people a representation of reality usually generated by digital

technology which strives to be convincing, that is, which strives to present a computer-generated

space in which we believe that we could exist and that meaningful (inter-)action could happen.

And so, what is relevant is not necessarily the photorealistic nature of the virtual space, but

simply the fact that it accomplishes the task of convincing the participant that meaningful action

of some sort could happen. That action might be a first-person shooter game, it might be the

exploration of a world, or it might be the acquisition of knowledge and experience. xii

“Virtual” in philosophy is more than this. In part, it resembles the use of the term in particle

physics – virtuality refers to the ephemeral existence of particles after a collision. A virtual

particle is transient, and its existence according to quantum theory is in contrast to “real”

particles, which have permanence or which are not as easily susceptible to quantum uncertainty.

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But the term in philosophy suggests more than just ephemerality. For writers such as Deleuze

and Guattari, virtuality brings about the real. It is not potentiality, but the existence of a structure

that supports becoming. Todd May uses the example of the genetic code:

Think of genetic information. Our genes store information about us. They contribute that

information in the process of our growth. But the information itself is not in the genes in any

actual way. One cannot look at someone’s genes under a microscope and find it lying there on

the slide, available to vision. As the genes unfold, the information becomes apparent in the actual

world; the person becomes what the information formatted that person to become. But the

information itself, even though it exists, does not exist in actuality. It exists virtually in the

structure of the genes. xiii

Why is this important? It is important because “virtual reality” may or may not be virtual in a

philosophical sense. Furthermore, to the extent that it is virtual, there might be challenges for

phenomenology to actually understand what is going on. Deleuze was well known for being

skeptical, and indeed dismissive, of phenomenology’s ability to address what he thought was

crucial, which was becoming. And, at least for some versions of phenomenology, he is probably

correct. But it is too easy to simply create a contrast between Deleuze and phenomenology on the

question of virtual reality and virtual experience in the digital sense. One strategy for thinking

virtuality in distinction from virtualization using elements of phenomenology and materialists

like Deleuze is in the concept of play.

Play, Virtuality, and Place

A great deal of philosophical attention has been given to play over the past hundred or so years,

much of it in phenomenology but not solely there. Understanding play will help clarify the

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creative moment in the virtual, and help to understand the possible lines of flight that virtual

place might take, beyond simply representing material or imagined space.

We will briefly look at several philosophical approaches to play to help distinguish between

virtualization and virtuality: Thomas Pfau on Kant’s connection between play and cognition,

Eugen Fink’s emphasis on play as world-building, Thorsten Botz-Bornstein’s discussion of play

and dreaming in Gadamer, Françoise Dastur’s discussion of surprise, and Brett Buchanan’s

discussion of Deleuze and Guattari’s “animal-stalks-at-five-o’clock”. These concepts assemble

into a version of play that leads us to a non-representational version of the virtuality of place.

Thomas Pfau xiv argues that play is a kind of virtual rationality. He unpacks the history of the

concept of Stimmung, particularly in Kant, to account for how the knowing subject can be

attuned to the world. But it is not just a subjective experience or the world; it rather “establishes

a virtual zone wherein the “attunement” of mind and world can, literally, “play itself out.”” xv It is

not, therefore, an inner state, but a mood, an affect that establishes a manner of engagement in

the world. Pfau summarizes play in eight observations xvi: 1. “Play constitutes an event (Ereignis)

rather than a type of experience (Erfahrung)”; 2. “Play belongs not to the sphere of thought and

representation but to that of “action” and “practice””; 3. “Play is recursive in that it amounts to a

structured and internally differentiated process.”; 4. “Play involves risk.”; 5. “Play is

“progressive””; 6. “Play is “contingent””; 7. “Play is “provisional””; 8. “Play is “experimental”

in that it continually probes the strength and malleability of its form.”

Pfau’s outline of play prefigures some of what we see in the phenomenological tradition’s

treatment of play. His point, though is that “all the criteria just elaborated point to a deep-

structural affinity between play and cognition, between the ludic and the rational.” xvii There is a

sense of the virtual here, specifically the provisional, experimental, and transitory. While we

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might suspect a teleology of reason here, a set of playful experiments which hone rationality into

something like an Enlightenment ideal, this need not be taken that way, and later thinkers such as

Fink do not take play that way. Play is not just skill practice, nor is it education in the sense of

giving someone the tools that adults have to cope with a complex world. It is much more than

that. Pfau sees this version of play as the discovery rather than the invention of meaning (thus

keeping play firmly within a hermeneutical space), but for the purposes of our questions about

virtual place, we might think of play as more related to creativity than discovery. Kant does not

yet have the language of embedded, extended and enactive cognition (and would have himself

been skeptical of framing cognition in these terms), but this is the direction Pfau points us to.

Eugen Fink is the phenomenologist best known for his work on play. Of his extensive writing,

our interest here will be in the way he connects play to world-building. The pleasure of play, for

Fink, takes place “in an imaginary dimension”, one in which there is pleasure in play, not just at

play. xviii There is, in other words, an affective dimension to play which is represented by him as a

space, a sphere. It is a sense-creating space. That sense is not created individually – it can only

happen in a social existence. The community of play need not consist of a number of real

persons. However, there must be at least one real, actual player, when it is a matter of actual and

not merely purported play. xix

Most versions of Fink present him as a transcendental thinker. Dermot Moran points out

that he may be “the most thoroughgoing transcendentalist of all.” xx He brings Kant close to

Heidegger at times. If we take this version of Fink (and it is, it should be said, accurate to much

of his work), we can easily end up with a version of play which is inevitably representational.

Play might simply serve to show forth a potentiality of a transcendent ontology which already

exists, rather than creating something anew.

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However, elements of Fink can be taken in a manner more conducive to a Deleuzean idea of

creativity. Deleuze himself engaged with Fink’s notion of “planetary thought”, as mediated by

Kostas Axelos. This is a version of the world which emphasizes the rhythms and the unlimited

creativity of play. “Axelos declares that there is a ‘game of thought’ proper to our ‘planetary

era’”. xxi It is a game that evolves with Deleuze to be a place of consistency. Fink’s transcendental

world becomes for Deleuze an actual and material planet, and Fink’s play can then explore

openings available in that planet at particular times, given particular conditions.

For Fink, play is “creative bringing-forth, it is a production. The product is the playworld

… We move about in it while we play, we live in it – certainly sometimes lightly and airily as in

a dream world, but at other times also full of ardent devotion and immersion.” xxii The world that

is built is not just an imaginary castle in the sky. Since play is fundamental to human existence

for Fink, and not just a pastime for children, we are always playing, and in so doing always

creating reality.

We can think of play as creating a world in a limited sense – a set of rules in a game or

sport creates the kinds of action possible within the game. So, in basketball the goal is not simply

to put the ball through the hoop more than the opposition, but to do so in observance of both the

written rules and the tacit patterns of action. Dunks and layups count; baskets achieved by

players wearing body armor and carrying weapons do not. But this simply defines the world of

the game in terms of a set of limits that differentiate it from life outside the game.

Fink wants to go well beyond an account like this. He wants a world-building that is very

much rooted in the particulars in the world, and which respects the unpredictability of the world.

Humans are embedded in the world, not exactly like other things, but implicated by them. Play,

then, must recognize this complex place. As he puts it,

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 We are in the midst of things, are moved in diverse ways like they are, have been taken

along for our planet’s ride, taken along by the vegetative life processes—and yet do not

exist like the plant and animal do. We act from freedom, work, and are political: we

produce things that are not given by nature; we fabricate in a finite and fragile manner;

we bring about and effect artificial things, in alien matter and in ourselves; we

manufacture technical constructs and states. Human labor overruns the globe with its

traces, and the struggle for rule rages through cities and empires. xxiii

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein locates a hermeneutics of place in Gadamer’s comments about play. xxiv

Gadamer, Botz-Bornstein argues, has a less generalized theory of play than either Heidegger or

Fink. In other words, it is not simply the “play of the world” that Heidegger and Fink are

interested in, but a specific kind of Spielraum that enables the interpretation of experience. Botz-

Bornstein is certainly correct in drawing this distinction, but for our purposes in thinking through

the virtual, the play of the world remains of interest. In other words, the virtual is not just a space

of interpretation, but of world creation. And yet, while Heidegger and Fink remain of use,

Gadamer also contributes something to our analysis of the virtual. Botz-Bornstein introduces

dreams to the discussion, via Gadamer, Italo Calvino, and Walter Benjamin. Play is, in fact,

dreamlike, with its disconnectedness, allegorical nature, and potentially absurd rules. Botz-

Bornstein makes the connections as follows:

The overlap of space and dream depends on the parallels between play (that is, the

flâneur’s random way of walking through the city) and dream. When this parallel is

strong, the arcade becomes an “allegory of the dream.” xxv

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The importance of this to the concept of the virtual lies not in the tie to hermeneutics, but the tie

to creativity and the unexpected. What emerges in play is not just a well-worn, long-practiced set

of behaviours, despite the fact that we can identify patterns after the fact, and use patterns as

strategy in play. Play as dream calls us to abandon the normal subjectivizing-objectivizing way

of dealing with reality.

Françoise Dastur xxvi adds another element to this to virtuality, and in doing so suggests another

element of play. In virtual place, there is the possibility of surprise. This is not simply narrative

surprise, the twist of the plot or the change in a character’s real motivations. That kind of

surprise is, after all, an established trope of fiction, and in some cases can be expected by the

conventions of a genre. It is, rather, the kind of surprise that unseats the ego’s engagement in the

virtualized space, in which something new is made available which questions both the

construction of the space itself, and the ego’s sense of purpose in engaging in it. This surprise is

a new line of flight.

Surprise, in this sense, parallels awe, in the sense that there is more than what we usually think

when we think of awe. Many virtualized places, like the movie dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, elicit

a kind of awe on first viewing. This is the awe of verisimilitude – the place, like the dinosaurs

“looks just like” the real thing. And yet, like the dinosaurs, the place is not so much authentic as

convincing. The awe comes in the faithfulness that the experience has with our preconceptions,

even those which are not consciously accessible but which are nevertheless determinative. No

one had ever seen dinosaurs, and so any claim to faithfulness was a claim to familiarity, with the

movements and affects of existing animals. Likewise, the virtualized places accord with what we

expect of place, what we hope for or fear. They make real our expectations of place – they real-

ize place.

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Finally, there is a kind of immediacy that Brett Buchanan points out xxvii when Deleuze and

Guattari talk about the “animal-stalks-at-five-o’clock” in A Thousand Plateaus. xxviii There is a

concreteness about becoming-animal which they identify here, a point in place and time but also

a trajectory, a set of potentials activated not just by the animal itself, but by the animal doing

this, at this time and place, in these circumstances, with all the interventions of biology,

geography, climate, and a host of other things. In that moment, and at each moment, that animal

creates what it is, not just as an expression of its original genetic code or socialization, but as an

encounter between a range of learned practices and improvisational skills. It thinks and acts

transversally, in relation to intersecting networks of ecosystems, geology, human activity, and

many others. Sometimes, those encounters might lead to something momentous (and, it should

be said, the animal stands in for any individual, and we might include flocks, weather systems,

economies, and other things as individuals, not just biological entities); more often than not, they

simply fall into a pattern recognizable after the fact.

When we think of virtual place, we tend to think of those places as individuals in the classic

sense. They are things that have a name and identity, that are produced by someone. In the case

of virtual places, there is even coding, and so therefore an author. We judge them as individuals

against each other, and limit the questions of interaction to things like “user experience”, “server

uptime”, “scholarly impact”, “sales” and so forth. But these measures do not get at the virtual

qua virtual, in the sense I have been sketching it here. It deals in virtualized places, which can be

measured by these external factors. What we do not see is the possible life that might be

engendered by these virtual places, as they stalk-at-five-o’clock.

In all five of these components of the assembly of play, then, we have a picture of play that leads

us to a more robust version of the virtual. The places that we have learned to move through

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simultaneously function as objects and “platforms” of action. As objects, we name them and

compare them to each other. New York is better than Tokyo; I like this house more than that one.

But not far below the surface of that object-status is the platform, the space that allows action,

but more than that which affords stalking-at-five-o’clock. And, which not only affords this, but is

in fact created by it. These places are events, they are virtualities even as they become ossified,

labelled, and treated as objects. That which breaks through the ossification is surprise. Play, at

least the kind of play that is not just rote and practiced action, always shows forth a new way,

and in so doing makes a new set of possibilities available. Play has a dream-like quality, which is

seen in the cognitive position of highly skilled engagement in an activity, the kind that Nietzsche

alluded to when he gave his well-known definition of the maturity of humans – to have the

seriousness of a child at play. Through this form of cognition, these moments of surprise, and

this dream, worlds are built, not as imaginative structures, but as new vectors that become

apparent under the right conditions.

Virtual place as play means opening a space for thinking. “Thinking” does not mean “problem-

solving”, or “learning”, or “being exposed to new ideas.” In mass-market games, serious games,

or digital humanities virtual environments, thinking is understood through one of these lenses. It

is what is funded by federal agencies and foundations – a new way of interesting students in

material or a new way of teaching skills, something which can be measured with metrics.

Thinking actually is, though, what is implied by Spielraum, the space or room for place, which is

the room for invention and creation. Thinking happens in that space, and that space is itself

virtual, that is, the event of invention. It is in schole, or leisure-space, that the connection

between play and learning happen.

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If virtual place is play, we are faced with a different criterion for the nature of virtual place. To

the extent that a virtual place is a conduit for education, or a new tool to accomplish the transfer

of knowledge, we have virtualized place, not virtual place. This is not to say that learning is not

possible, but that it is not programmable.

The play of virtual place exists in a world that is real but virtual. In other words, it is not the

virtualized, set against the real as a mirror image, but a potential that can be actualized, but is not

yet. It is what sits on our peripheral vision, organized by what we focus on but not itself

organizing anything. It could organize – it exists virtually, and therefore could be a vector of

coherence within the space of play – but it has not (yet).

The play of virtual place is similar to any other virtuality. We can look at other examples of

complex systems and the ways in which virtuality plays a part. In evolution, for instance, the

longstanding scientific account has focused on the inheritance of genetic structures from parent

to child within a species, the mutations that are passed down, and the speciation that results from

different modes of adaptation to environments. This kind of account gives an excellent view of

the past – we can see in past examples how causes led to effects. But we cannot extend this into

our future, that is, we cannot predict the course of the development of new species with any

degree of reliability. Why not? Because there are far too many possible intervening variables.

We do not know all the environmental conditions. Our predictive foresight decays rapidly. But

more than that, in this kind of account we only focus on one level of cause-effect relationship.

There are others. In recent years, what was once seen as “junk DNA” has become seen as part of

the structures within DNA that trigger the expression of proteins. In other words, the dream of a

single gene causing a single expression is rarely realized. But more than that, we have come to

realize the importance of the bacterial and viral ecosystem with which we interact. It is not that

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an organism interacts with an environment, and succeeds in that interaction because of specific

genetic traits – the environment is always with us, inside of us, and the life of an organism is the

actualization of the virtuality produced by the interaction between all these different

environments at the same time.

We could sketch out a similar structure at the level of consciousness and cognition. We could do

the same at the level of societies, and economies, and political structures. Every one of these

structures is the actualization of virtualities, that is, decisions and reactions made in the moment

to ecological systems, which at each point produce a new way of being. In each of these there are

many non-linear feedback relations, which open up the space for the expression of new

phenomena.

Virtual Place

It seems in one sense that so much of virtual place is tied up with play. We construct worlds in

which battles can happen, or which can be explored. If we say the word “game” to most

university students today, what will likely come to mind first will be online role-play or shooter

games.

We should, though, be careful about using “play” and “game” as synonyms. Games might not

involve much play in the sense that has been sketched out to this point, and play might happen

when there are no games to be found. More importantly, I want to look beyond the idea that the

exemplar of virtual place is the online or platform-based digital game. These are, in fact,

virtualized places, and they may or may not involve play in the sense described here. But virtual

place always involves play.

Virtual place might refer to the coming-into-presence of place as mediated by visual and other

stimuli. This might not depend on verisimilitude, as we often assume in the virtualization of

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place. It might, rather, depend on the ability of the stimulus to evoke the “unconscious” of

place. xxix What does this mean? Place itself stands not as an external thing, but is a virtuality, a

potentiality that comes into actuality by the presence of one or more people. These people

engage the materiality around them in a range of ways, from biological to cognitive to social to

cultural. All this comes together in what we think of as “sense of place”. This is often understood

as a somewhat vague or subjective category, lacking analytic ability, but we might also see it as

indicating a sense of a virtuality which is difficult to analyze or bring into focus or universalize.
xxx

Phenomenologically, sense of place is not an opinion about place, but a shared sensibility or

apprehension of the relationship between place and specific kinds of human existence. It is

“specific kinds” because senses of place can vary, even in the same material location, or they can

have a remarkable amount of commonality across different people and groups. So, in this sense,

place itself is a virtuality. It is a coming into being based on the encounter between material

location and human modes of individual and shared of existence.

Which places are we interested in thinking virtually? It would be the kinds of places that take us

to the edge of phenomenology’s capacity. I have written recently about the awe and wonder

experienced by astronauts while in space. xxxi We can, of course, virtualize space – everything

from Star Wars and Star Trek to Interstellar has done this. We are invited to perceive through a

protagonist’s senses, what a filmmaker imagines space to be like. But as we saw in the

discussion of play earlier, none of this imagination necessarily brings us closer to virtual place.

We might call this creative, but it might just be imaginative. Being creative would require a

relation, or rather, what is made possible by a relation. Creating something digitally does not in

itself guarantee that there is virtuality, just that there is virtualization. The virtuality happens

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when there is a sustained relation that creates something new, and this could happen in material

space just as it could in digitally represented space. The digital, though, affords options for

virtuality different from the material.

We can see this easily in media culture. Popular series, such as Harry Potter or Star Trek or the

Marvel Cinematic Universe, have been virtualized in a range of ways, including in text, film,

game space, and so forth. But that virtualization has led to a new life, a set of possibilities that

became available when many people took on that virtualization and made it into a virtuality, that

is, made it into a sustained space for the creation of new life. This is why we have fan culture –

not simply so people can follow whatever is dealt out by official creators of content, but so that

they themselves can create content. And not only that, but so that they can adjudicate content.

This is why canon is important in this virtuality – it is an expression of the sustained equilibrium

of content which has been achieved. And that equilibrium is never static – it only remains as

equilibrium as it is built upon, as it moves in new directions.

And so, in fan fiction, we see a great deal of experimentation. Much of this experimentation is

simply part of the jouissance of the virtuality. Who would win in a battle between the Hulk and

Superman? Would Star Trek’s Borg beat Star Wars’ Empire? These speculations are far from

canon, and could never be canon (despite a history of Marvel and DC Comics having crossover

issues), since they are transgressions – and yet, there is some excitement from this kind of

engagement. The virtuality is sustained, because the imagination exhibited is not simply about

developing canonical structures within the canon (what Deleuze might call a “despotic system”,

or a molar structure), but in writing against the canon.

Virtual place must have these things. It must have jouissance, it must have experimentation

within an equilibrium. It must be able to write a minoritarian literature which makes the virtual

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place alive. As it stands at present, few places that have been rendered digitally can accomplish

this. Few allow Dastur’s surprise, Deleuze’s “animal-stalks-at-five-o’clock”, or any real form of

jouissance, that is, any sense of surprising joy with an element of transgression of the sort just

outlined. This might be a feature of the neoliberal production models in which many of these

virtualized places are produced, but even those created in digital humanities settings rarely

achieve this vision of virtual place (and, of course, that too may be because of production models

within universities).

We might go a step further, and say that virtuality is itself a property of place. As Jeff Malpas

argues, Heidegger’s Geviert, the four-fold of earth and sky, gods and mortals, defines place, and

is the Ereignis, or event of place. xxxii Place itself is event. It is not a static backdrop to action, it is

not simply an inert node activated by threads of connection between nodes. It would be a mistake

to read later (e.g., Deleuzian) versions of virtuality onto a Heideggerian version of event in a

straightforward manner, but we can at least point to the creative moment embodied by each.

Heidegger’s version of creation (showing forth the possibilities of Dasein) is not the same as

Deleuze’s (the lines of flight resulting from intensities within and between assemblages).

Nevertheless, both strive to capture the potentiality of place. Deleuze rarely uses the concept of

place directly, but the deterritorialization and reterritorialization that happens as the animal-

stalks-at-five-o’clock create place nonetheless.

What does this mean for what we usually think of as virtual place, that is, digital creations and

platforms? Just because it is actually virtualized place, does not in itself mean that it could not be

virtual place. It becomes a problem when we stop with virtualized place, when we think that all

we have to do is simulate the physical parameters and the patterns of action or behavior in a

place, and we have achieved the placeness of place. We have only the first step.

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Digital Virtual Places

All this is relevant to what we often think of as virtual places, that is, the digital places we

generate through coding. Those places are less interesting if they are only virtualized, because

then the only question we are asking is whether they measure up to some external model of the

place. They are mirrors of place, even when they are utopian or dystopian. They can be mirrors

of our desires and fears. Most roleplay games end up having these limitations (even if the spaces

they model are fantasy spaces), and even digital historical recreations can be limited in this

manner if they do not have a way of modeling how creativity and evolution of place happened

within a space. This is, of course, very difficult to achieve.

It is clear that digital place cannot be modelled, if that means coding in all the possible variations

of emergence that might happen. It is not only not possible (as with chess or go, the permutations

quickly become unfeasible), it is probably also not desirable, as most digital places are produced

for a specific purpose. A digital immersive game that presented the player with real-world

environments in all their variability (even if we allow that a game designer could predict that

variability, which is not possible) would be all but unplayable. A virtual space that is intended as

a cultural heritage space will inevitably capture that culture in something analogous to a

snapshot, a slice of the culture’s experience which we will be asked to extend to the culture as a

whole.

In other words, virtualization of place will always have its limits and will always be related to the

desired goal in producing the virtualization in the first place. This is the root of the criticism that

verisimilitude is closely tied to commercial or military interests – possible lines of action will be

limited by the imaginations and agendas of those who fund the production of the virtualization.

There is little point in pretending that these virtualization will be more than this.

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So, where might the virtual be relevant in these places? Fink’s notion of play suggests a different

possibility for digital virtual place. It is not the suggestion that digital virtual place is just

gamespace, either literally or figuratively. It is a creative moment.

Digital virtual places are material. They are vectors of experience, which exist in the material

space of other vectors we engage in. They are not apart from that materiality, they do not simply

represent it, although they do produce images. Their materiality means that the images are linked

to and change the material forms they imagine. They draw upon the affordances of bodily

existence in material space, or (in the case of fantasy spaces) change those affordances usually

based on specific rules (e.g., a flying or teleporting avatar in virtual space still obeys other rules

of physics).

Digital virtual places are not single representations of external reality. They participate in the

history of other digital spaces, and contribute to new ones. They train users in haptic and

cognitive skills. They build a vocabulary and semantics of engagement that transports across

seemingly unrelated digital places. Like the bacterial biome that links organisms horizontally,

forms of engagement with digital virtual space draws on habits and forms of play developed in

other digital places, and in other kinds of places entirely.

Digital virtual places furthermore engage in the political, social, racial, and gendered world, and

do so in a manner that blurs the boundaries of the digital and the physical space. The promise at

the beginning of the internet, as we are all well aware, was that it would be a liberatory space for

all those who engaged in it. Geographical location, gender, race, and level of ability or disability

was not supposed to be an issue in digital places. Of course, it did not turn out that way – all of

these things still matter, and they matter beyond questions about the “digital divide”. They matter

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precisely because we bring our affordances with us, and bring our cognitive habits, and we add

to those things a changed landscape of moral responsibility and identity production.

Conclusion

The argument in this chapter has been that we need to distinguish between virtualized and virtual

places. Virtualization is fundamentally representational. It is a necessary aspect of our thinking

place and thinking of the digital, but it is not sufficient in itself. We also need virtuality.

Virtuality is best understood through play, as long as we see play in a rich manner. Once we do,

we can see that virtualized place is limited without its relations, without surprise and

concreteness and jouissance. We construct representations of worlds, but we do not construct

worlds.

It should be clear by now that the contrast between “real” and “virtual” place does not take us

very far, and is in fact misleading. As Deleuze said, the virtual is fully real in so far as it is

virtual. They are places of play. People sometimes decry the way that the virtual takes people

away from the real world. What they bemoan is not that people prefer to spend time in the

virtual, but that their “real” world has lost its virtuality. The forces are beyond their control.

There is no more play, not that they can see. There are no lines of flight, to use Deleuze’s terms.

At least in gamespace or social media or some other digital construct, people feel like they have

some control over the world they build, and play is still possible.

Our digitally constructed worlds have a task before them. The task is not to harness the play that

already exists there – that simply destroys it. The value of the digital has largely been created

through play. The key is to understand how true play works, and make possible the surprising

vectors that allow for new creation to happen.

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Fink, Eugen. 2016. "Oasis of Happiness: Thoughts Toward an Ontology of Play." In Play as

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Gallagher, Shaun, Lauren Reinerman, Bruce Janz, Jörg Trempler, and Patricia Bockelman. 2015.

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Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. "The Condition of Virtuality." In The digital dialectic: New essays

on new media, edited by Peter Lunenfeld, 68-94. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.

Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,

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edited by Mark Grimshaw, 111-125. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.

Janz, Bruce. 2017. "Unprecedented Experience and Levinas’s Heideggerian Idolatry of Place." In

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Kerslake, Christian. 2009. Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh

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Malpas, Jeff. 2008. Heidegger's topology: being, place, world. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT

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Massumi, Brian. 2014. "Envisioning the Virtual." In The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, edited

by Mark Grimshaw, 55-70. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.

May, Todd. 2005. Gilles Deleuze: an introduction: Cambridge University Press.

Moran, Dermot. 2007. "Fink's speculative phenomenology: Between constitution and

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10.1163/156916407X169799.

Pfau, Thomas. 2011. "The Appearance of Stimmung: Play (Spiel) as Virtual Rationality." In

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Katharina Gisbertz, 95-111. Paderborn, Germany: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.

Smith, Shawn Michelle, and Sharon Sliwinski, eds. 2017. Photography and the Optical

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i
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 208.
ii
Grimshaw, The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality.
iii
Damer & Hinrichs, “The Virtuality and Reality of Avatar Cyberspace”.
iv
Damer & Hinrichs, “The Virtuality and Reality of Avatar Cyberspace,” 17-18.
v
Hayles, “The Condition of Virtuality,” 69; Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, 13-14.
vi
Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, 14.

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vii
Hayles, “The Condition of Virtuality,” 79-80.
viii
Hayles, “Flesh and Metal,” 317.
ix
Hayles, Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious.
x
Massumi, “Envisioning the Virtual,” 56.
xi
Massumi, “Envisioning the Virtual,” 57.
xii
For a more complete history of the use of the concept of the virtual, see Heim, “The Paradox of

Virtuality,” 111-125.
xiii
May, Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction, 48.
xiv
Pfau, “The Appearance of Stimmung,” 95-111.
xv
Pfau, “The Appearance of Stimmung,” 103.
xvi
Pfau, “The Appearance of Stimmung,” 106-109.
xvii
Pfau, “The Appearance of Stimmung,” 110.
xviii
Fink. “Oasis of Happiness,” 22.
xix
Fink. “Oasis of Happiness,” 23.
xx
Moran, “Fink’s Speculative Phenomenology,” 22.
xxi
Kerslake, Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy,” 250.
xxii
Fink, “Oasis of Happiness,” 28.
xxiii
Fink, “Play as Symbol of the World,” 143.
xxiv
Botz-Bornstein, “Hermeneutics of Play – Hermeneutics of Place,” 108ff.
xxv
Botz-Bornstein, “Hermeneutics of Play – Hermeneutics of Place,” 110.
xxvi
Dastur, “Phenomenology of the Event,” 116-126.

xxvii
Buchanan, Onto-Ethologies, 182-183.
xxviii
Deleuze & Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus, 321.
xxix
For ways to think about this in relation to photography, see Smith & Sliwinski, Photography and the

Optical Unconscious.
113
xxx
See, for instance, this interview with Will Wright about “possibility spaces” for a sense of how the

virtualized might look virtual in game design. Baker, “Will Wright Wants To Make A Game Out Of

Life Itself”
xxxi
Janz, “Unprecedented Experience and Levinas’s Heideggerian Idolatry of Place,” 281-295; Gallagher

et al., A Neurophenomenology of Awe and Wonder.

xxxii
Malpas, Heidegger’s Topology, 219ff.

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Transactions in virtual places: Sharing and excess in blockchain
worlds

Richard Coyne

Phenomenology investigates space and time as lived, according to Merleau-Ponty, rather than the
world abstracted and codified (Merleau-Ponty 1962). Certain scholars who associate with
phenomenology distance themselves from computing, digital networks and consumer culture. They
think digital technology associates too readily with rule bound, reductive and mass-produced
simulations and substitutes for authentic lived experience. As advocate for a phenomenology of
place, Alberto Perez-Gomez supports an architecture that encourages us to be in tune with the
lifeworld: embodied, engaged and of the moment (Perez-Gomez 2016). Smartphones, social media
channels, phone calls, video games and email seem to take people out of the moment. He adopts
Martin Heidegger’s concept of attunement (Heidegger 1962, 172) that challenges “the present-day
ubiquity of telecommunications and its supposedly public spaces” (Perez-Gomez 2016, 18). For
Perez-Gomez, well-tuned places are “always intertwined with temporality; they are never ‘outside’
time” (Perez-Gomez 2016, 18). For him, authentic, connected, architectural places can act as
palliatives against a world “increasingly consumed by its obsessions for iPhones and computer
screens” (p.18). He does not here reference virtual reality (VR), but from a phenomenological
position what could be more alienating than digitally constructed virtual spaces designed to
engender something of the character of place? Phenomenology pits itself against VR’s instrumental
conceits.

Contrary to this sentiment, some of the most enthusiastic advocates of phenomenology

work in the area of human-computer interaction (HCI) design (Dourish 2001, Kozel 2008).
Phenomenology provides insights into how to make computer systems and networks more human
centered, engaged with everyday human practices, embodied, and even invisible. Such developers,
producers, scholars and performers take their lead from early work on ubiquitous computing -- the
idea that computer systems might blend seamlessly into everyday life, taking into account the
particularities of the human body. In an influential article in the early 1990s PARC Xerox researcher
Mark Weiser advocated for such an embodied approach to HCI, though he was skeptical about
virtual reality.

“Perhaps most diametrically opposed to our vision is the notion of virtual reality, which
attempts to make a world inside the computer. Users don special goggles that project an
artificial scene onto their eyes; they wear gloves or even bodysuits that sense their motions
and gestures so that they can move about and manipulate virtual objects” (Weiser 1991,
94).

He conceded that VR might have its uses in exploring exotic and inaccessible information
spaces, e.g. the surfaces of planets, cell structures, and databases, but VR inevitably

“excludes desks, offices, other people not wearing goggles and bodysuits, weather, trees,
walks, chance encounters and, in general, the richness of the universe. Virtual reality focuses
an enormous apparatus on simulating the world rather than on invisibly enhancing the
world that already exists” (Weiser 1991, 94).

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 The concept of virtual places now includes many modes of interaction that do not rely on
the cumbersome VR apparatus Weiser describes. Virtual places might include a range of hybrid, data
rich, digitally augmented, sensor-filled and responsive devices and environments, i.e. ubiquitous
computing. Virtual spaces might include any digitally-managed and mediated environment, as
delivered via social media, and platforms that support online shopping and systems for managing
financial transactions, including those that support the so-called “sharing economy” (Sundararajan
2016) to be explored further in what follows. But VR, in presenting immersive technologically
constructed worlds, brings many of the challenges of virtual places into sharp relief. In any case, in
spite of Weiser’s caution against VR, the ensuing years have seen a growth in immersive 3D
computer gaming, the development of MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games)
such as World of Warcraft and the more socially oriented Second Life, as well as Google Street View,
360 video cameras and playback apparatus, and the introduction of inexpensive consumer-level
head-mounted displays (HMDs), augmented reality (AR) systems on smartphones, mainstream 3D
cinema, and 3D viewers. As I will explore below, there is clearly a commercial aspect to these media,
tools and platforms, not least in the way they incorporate advertising, product placement, and
opportunities of in-game purchases and transactions amongst players and participants. In what
follows I adopt a phenomenological position that acknowledges the role of digital technologies in
contemporary configurations of place.

Tactics in phenomenology

In this chapter I assume that any technology can be studied and analyzed from a phenomenological
stance, especially when positioned within the context of embodied human practices. I devoted two
books to Heidegger’s concept of attunement as a theme relevant to the digital realm (Coyne 2010,
2016). In the case of VR, a phenomenological approach might consider the practicalities of the VR
experience, what it does to the human body, how VR frames our view of the world, the differences it
brings to light, and the narratives that it engenders and that sustain it, as well as the commercial and
political motivations for such developments. In Weiser’s terms, such study needs to take account of
the desks, offices, bedrooms, and other environments in which people use VR. As VR users know,
they are rarely transported seamlessly into another world and rendered oblivious to the physical
environment of HMD, controllers, and whether they are seated, reclining or standing.

Drawing insights from phenomenology, Hubert Dreyfus offers a critical account of VR,
though he assumes that the experience is always, or will soon be, entirely convincing, as if the VR
user really does enter into alternative worlds, like the fictional “holodeck” in Star Trek (Dreyfus
2009). In my experience, much of VR registers as inconvenient and cumbersome, and most people
can endure such putatively immersive experiences for only limited periods. A phenomenology of VR
would recognize the embodied aspect of such experiences, rather than assume or seek a complete
and effective simulation of embodied experience.

I take the ambit of phenomenological study to include sensitive, embodied and life-
enhancing systems and interactions, with a view perhaps to improved virtual environments and
interaction design. But I also subsume within the orbit of phenomenological study any technological
intervention, no matter how alien, alienating or controversial. This includes platforms for financial
transactions, as well as commercialized, consumer-oriented, even questionable systems, procedures
and platforms, such as cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. In this I echo the sentiment of
philosopher of technology Gilbert Simondon, who states, “in technical reality there is a human
reality, and that, if it is fully to play its role, culture must come to terms with technical entities as
part of its body of knowledge and values” (Simondon 1980, 1, Teal 2018). My strong claim is that a

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phenomenological critique, imbued as it is with questions of quality and value, can be applied to any
phenomena in the world. After all, ethos, a way of living, is central to the phenomenological project.
On the topic of ethics, Hans-Georg Gadamer affirms that “man [sic] becomes what he is through
what he does and how he behaves” (Gadamer 1975, 279). Ethics is a practical matter, and our
practices include systems, technologies and devices of whatever merit.

A primary (first) phenomenological tactic is to examine how the phenomenon under study
supports, encourages or resists embodied interaction. The world in which exchange of goods for
money takes place involves human bodies interacting with one another and machines in places: in
front of a computer terminal, clutching smartphones, scanning bar codes in the supermarket,
talking, collecting, waiting in line, and looking out for the arrival of the post. In so far as VR platforms
support monetary transactions, there are bodies sitting at computers manipulating avatars,
browsing, communicating, and clicking buttons.

A second tactic in phenomenology is to alert the reader to how the technology under study
enframes and exerts influence on the world outside of the technology. Weiser hinted at this when
he suggested that VR “excludes desks, offices, other people not wearing goggles and bodysuits”
(Weiser 1991, 94). We need to bring those ordinary environments in which the digital encounter
takes place back into the discussion. The world outside of the VR experience may be excluded from
the experience, but it is subject to its influences. As an extreme example, think of the influence of VR
and its representation in science fiction novels and film in how people think about the world, what
we might or could achieve through technology, the future, conspiracy stories and reality.

According to some popular narratives, we may now be living in a simulated reality

constructed by our descendants. In fact, this proposition started as an interesting philosophical
thought experiment (Bostrom 2003) that we might already be living in a VR experience, and has
since expanded to a belief system that accounts for the world’s problems as bugs in a simulation
(Solon 2016). Taken to extremes, VR supports such solipsistic, technology-driven, disembodied
idealism (Coyne 1999), the questioning of reality, and concepts of a supposed era of post-truth
politics (Bacon 2016).

The concept of metaphor provides another way to think of this technological enframing
from a phenomenological point of view. Technologies suggest metaphors, which are powerful in the
way we see the world (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff 2008). It is well known that Heidegger the
phenomenologist claimed he did not speak metaphorically, but I think metaphor has more traction
in the realms of design and creativity, and carries fewer negative entailments, than enframing.
Metaphors can also be recognized, identified and marshalled in moves by designers to bring about
transformations of some kind. To embrace the power of metaphor is to adopt a designerly view of
the world (Coyne 1995). We can ask of any technology, such as VR, or the contentious world of e-
finance and digital currency, what impacts these have on thinking, outside of their immediate
domains of influence. In combination, such technologies, platforms and ideas indeed present
powerful metaphors that seep into the collective human psyche (Coyne and Onabolu 2018).

A third tactic in a phenomenological approach is to look behind the technology and its claims
to some basic understanding that pre-dates, is “prior to” or “primordial” (Heidegger 1962, 379) with
respect to the highly technologized and instrumentalized phenomenon under discussion. The
phenomenological scholar has to persuade the reader that there is really something ordinary and
every-day to be recovered behind complex, theory-laden and technology-driven encounters. For
example, Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger (Heidegger 1962) both asserted that before the
abstract notion of time there is the everyday perception of temporality, our experience of

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expectation, duration, sequence, memory and history. For Heidegger, before the abstract
understanding of physical objects in the world -- their geometrical and other properties as separate
from the human subject -- resides the everyday activity of unselfconscious engagement with a
practical task (Heidegger 1962).

For the carpenter constructing an item of furniture, the hammer comes into being as an
object in the event of some kind of deviation from concernful practice, as when the hammer is not
up to the task. For Heidegger, practical engagement comes first. Things reveal themselves
secondarily in the event of breakdown, pointing out, or formal analysis. As another example, behind
the instrumental concerns about the housing shortage, Heidegger drew attention to the more
primordial question of dwelling (Heidegger 1971). What is it to really dwell? Again, for Heidegger,
before we can understand technology, we must come to terms with the technological kind of
thinking that pervades our being and from which we cannot now escape (Heidegger 1977).

In the discussion below I will follow the lead of certain social economists in taking the idea of
the society of the gift as a precursor to understanding online commercial exchange (Mauss 1990,
Godbout 1998, Coyne 2005). The society of the gift is prior to e-commerce. That is not to say that
the gift is a solid or benign foundation to commerce. For critical writers such as Georges Batailles the
phenomenon of the gift is fraught, particularly as expressed in the self-destructive operations of the
potlatch, the generation of waste and surplus, and giving until it hurts (Bataille 1985).

Shared immersive 3D platforms

I will investigate VR and digital finance, before offering a phenomenological addendum through the
primordial notion of the gift. First, I will review two MMORPG platforms, one that has been around
since 2003; the second is at an early stage of development.

Second Life (secondlife.com) was launched in 2003, and was taken up with some enthusiasm by
universities, amongst others, as providing a virtual world suitable for social interaction and distance
learning. Second Life is not a game environment, but users assume the role of players, as
“residents,” and create avatars of themselves adapted from standard templates. You see your avatar
in front of you when you log on to the platform (as in a third person game). As a resident, you can
move around the 3D world, create objects, clothing, buildings and spaces. The world persists when
you log out. Other residents can visit the places you have created and can meet and interact with
one another and objects in this virtual environment.

Already, I have assumed the language of VR in describing the Second Life platform. It is more
the case that the operations of Second Life exist as transformations on 3D coordinates of points,
lines and planes in a shared database and are delivered as a perspective projection of colored pixels
in close-to-real-time onto the display screen of your computer, mobile device, or HMD. The language
we use as if talking about the everyday lifeworld (place, space, location, movement) is such an
example of enframing following the basic “as” structure of metaphor (Ricoeur 1977): database and
display screen as viewport into a virtual world.

Along with many others, I was an enthusiastic user of Second Life in its early days (Coyne et
al. 2009). We treated it as a platform for observing and creating strange and unlikely environments.
We had our own promontory on the fringes of the University of Edinburgh’s own island in Second
Life. One of our experiments involved altering the appearance of objects by transmitting mobile
phone messages from the world outside Second Life into our own virtual enclosures, loosely
modelled on our physical work environment in the university. You could change texture maps and

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even transmit photographs from your mobile phone into Second Life (Wright et al. 2008). So, there
was an attempt to link the everyday world to the world inside Second Life.

As with many such forays into virtual worlds, the research reinforced the view that the world
we inhabit is richer than can ever be described on such VR platforms. As with many play
environments, its persuasive capability and sense of engagement derives as much from the power of
the human imagination as the quasi-realism of the modelled worlds. You put yourself into such
worlds as you might enter the settings of an engaging film or novel. Of course, Second Life
developed from the outset as a site for interaction and socializing, with academic research taking at
best a distant second place. Second Life is now regarded largely as an “adult site” (Dreyfus 2009).

As researchers, our experience with the virtual platform of Second Life adjusted our
understanding not only of the digital platform, its strengths and limits, but of the world outside.
What is it that people want from their fantasies? What is it that the world of lived experience does
not supply? How rich is a world unmediated by the digital? Notions of the “post-digital” (Cramer
2015) have emerged arguably as a by-product of such reflections in a world saturated with digital
devices, networks and virtual objects.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Second Life platform was its support for
commerce and exchange. It has its own currency (Linden dollars); you can import, make and sell
assets, such as parcels of virtual land, buildings, accessories, sound files, images, and dance moves.
You can then exchange the currency for real (fiat) money. There were stories of entrepreneurial
residents becoming Second Life millionaires (Olson 2006). The commerce operated under the
control of the platform’s inventors and managers, Linden Labs. In so far as it bears any resemblance
to social or political life off line, Second Life presents as a benign dictatorship with the consent of the
people who use the platform. Hopefully it is at worst a limited and consensual autocracy. Like a
private club or casino, members (residents) submit to being monitored, they can be evicted for
breaking the rules, and any monetary transactions pass through the house cashier.

Second Life is still active, though abandoned as a virtual learning environment by most
academies, and other 3D platforms have entered the virtual arena, such as Sansar
(atlas.sansar.com), Edorble (www.edorble.com) and Minecraft (minecraft.net). Decentraland
(decentraland.org) is a VR platform that purports to represent a new generation of MMORPGs.
Unlike Second Life’s corporate management ethos, Decentraland claims to offer something more
like a cooperative than a corporation. The developers claim: “This is the very first virtual platform
that is decentralized, built on the blockchain and owned by its users, making it stand out from the
crowd” (Dale 2017). At the time of writing, I cannot yet enter the modelled world of Decentraland,
but the developer’s financing and marketing strategy based on ideas about the sharing economy and
digital currency (“blockchain”) are already active. Whether or not, and how, the platform impacts on
the world of VR, the idea and the claims are worth pursuing in so far as they extend and test the
world’s trajectory into virtual places, and analysis from a phenomenological perspective.

In order to raise funds for projects such as the Decentraland platform, developers can raise
investment capital, ask for donations as in a crowd sourced project, and sell “speculative stocks” to
risk-taking investors. But they can also sell non-existent digital assets. Decentraland sells plots of
virtual land, i.e. portions of its gridded 3D land model. This approach borrows from the practice in
the real-estate business of raising funds by selling apartments “off plan” before they are built.

Raising funds from the sale of intangible assets is also popular in the case of
cryptocurrencies and blockchain platforms (to be discussed further below). In buying a digital

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commodity, backers are effectively investing in a product that may increase in value once the project
is completed and demand is higher. The practice is also open to speculation, where stakes in the
enterprise are sold and resold even before there is any product. This online economy invites
speculation in virtual space. It is also arguably egalitarian, or perhaps lawless like the “Wild West,”
perpetuating the ideal of person-to-person transactions independent of external monitoring and
control: “Users can purchase land using the Ethereum blockchain, which proves their ownership in a
way that no one can argue with. … The biggest difference between Decentraland and existing VR
platforms is ownership; instead of a single corporation, users own Decentraland,” supported by
“open standards, so no central organization imposes their agenda” (Dale 2017).

The Decentraland developers call their currency MANA (evoking “manna from heaven”) with
which you initially buy plots of virtual land 10 square meters. You purchase MANA from a
cryptocurrency exchange, and store the currency in a cryptocurrency “wallet” (e.g.
blockchain.info/wallet) accessed through a web browser or app on a smartphone. The developers
claim, “Its ability to combine VR with cryptography allows for a decentralized virtual reality, without
any limits put in place by a controlling organization.” The platform will allow landowners to charge
people who enter their virtual premises “without a middleman taking a cut” (Dale 2017).

I hope that by now I have established the link between virtual environments and commercial
transactions, exemplified not least via the Second Life and Decentraland platforms. In the case of the
latter we have the prospect of individuals (residents) acting as if they can move through virtual
environments and trade with one another in ways that are secure but unregulated, as if exchanging
virtual goods (models, virtual land, procedures, files) for cash.

It would not be too extreme to suggest that such an environment draws on the myth of
tribal society, where people trust one another, trade and barter without institutional oversight, and
transact according to kinship ties and norms. But the trust relationships are enabled by the
ubiquitous blockchain platform. Such platforms add methods by which producers of virtual assets
can encode how assets get passed on, i.e. assert and restrict copying rights, and track what happens
to virtual assets as they get copied, sold, resold and gifted to others. As I will show subsequently, to
the extent that commercial transactions are underpinned by the phenomenology of the gift, so are
exchanges in virtual worlds.

Cryptocurrency

The idea of sharing and transacting virtual assets on a 3D immersive platform is relatively new in the
realm of cryptocurrencies (Ehrsam 2017), which deal in peer to peer exchange in the so-called
sharing economy (Sundararajan 2016, Slee 2015). The blockchain is a set of algorithms within digital
platforms that underlie bitcoin (Nakamoto 2008), Ethereum (github.com/ethereum) and other
cryptocurrencies. According to the developers of Decentraland the blockchain provides a means of
managing peer-to-peer, centralized and hybrid market ecologies in virtual environments: “All of this
is possible via Decentraland’s use of the blockchain technology, which proves ownership and cannot
be forged” (Dale 2017). Blockchain platforms facilitate virtual and augmented reality users and
designers to sell virtual assets and media content to one another directly without going through a
mediating asset manager such as a virtual bank or the corporation that owns the VR platform (e.g.
Linden Labs in the case of Second Life).

The blockchain idea is technically fascinating, mysterious and in some respects counter-
intuitive. It depends on cryptography to function, and inherits the fascination many of us have with
cyphers and codes. A blockchain platform such as that used by bitcoin operates by recording

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transactions between individuals onto a digital ledger. Think of a spreadsheet of credit card
transactions, or a printout of the thousands of transactions from all customers your bank might see
in a given day. The difference between a blockchain and a bank is that the ledger is distributed to
and retained by everyone who participates in the blockchain network, or at least the key nodes that
provide access to the network for regular users with bitcoin “wallets” (e.g. bitcoin.info/wallet).

The algorithms of the blockchain keep that data up to date. Every time a transaction, or at
least a block of transactions, has been processed by users on the network, updates are delivered to
all the ledger copies. The fact that the ledger is shared provides one of the means by which data is
secured, and ensures that no single agent is in control of the ledger. If anyone wants to hack or alter
the data then they would have to change all the copies of the distributed ledger.

The data is encrypted to keep it confidential. The content of the transactions in the ledger
are unreadable to the people and computers in the network that have access to it, though the
individuals who made the transaction have their own encryption key and can see the details of their
own transactions. But the main challenge for the platform is to verify blocks of transactions as they
occur, and add them to the shared ledger in a manner that is secure.

This is accomplished by inviting key nodes in the network to use their CPU power to solve a
cryptographic puzzle incorporating the encryption strings of the block being processed (Nakamoto
2008, Lewis 2015). Any node on the network, usually a self-appointed subset of nodes with
adequate computing power, can use the results of this challenge to bed down a set of transactions.
The challenge has the character of a puzzle, and appears trivial, but requires several minutes or
hours-worth of CPU time to iterate through a set of permutations to solve. Lots of independent
nodes will be doing this as the same time, incentivized by a potential financial reward. So, it is a
contest, and a hugely expensive one in terms of escalating demands on power consumption.

As soon as one of these nodes generates a solution (another character string) it broadcasts
the result to all the other nodes that stop trying to solve the puzzle, and quickly verify that the
solution is correct. The solution string of the winning node then gets added to the set of all approved
ledger pages, called a block chain, which is in turn distributed around the network as the approved
set of transactions making up the correct and current state of the ledger. The winning node is
rewarded by being allowed to include a credit of some bitcoin on the ledger. The nodes that
undertake this competitive challenge are called “miners,” as they also over a period of time
gradually add value, i.e. bitcoins, to the bitcoin economy. The bitcoin economy grows to support
growth in its user population and volume of transactions.

These operations are of course automated and invisible to most users of the currency,
though one can inspect the flow of transactions on websites such as blockchain.info/unconfirmed-
transactions. The process is entirely algorithmic, with no human intervention, other than the design
and refinement of the platform, choices about hardware, and access to nodes and bitcoin wallets.
The average user manages their interaction through websites and apps. I have heard of enterprising
students in the early days of bitcoin configuring their desktop computers to act as bitcoin miners and
garnering sufficient transaction fees to pay their tuition fees. Whether true or not, I mention this as
the blockchain circulates narratives as well as digital cash. It feeds myths about the entrepreneurial
spirit and grass roots enterprise.

Decentraland uses a blockchain platform with characteristics similar to bitcoin to process

transactions in its currency, MANA. This platform is in turn built on Ethereum. The Ethereum
(ethereum.org) platform supports peer-to-peer monetary transactions similar to bitcoin, but lines in

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its blockchain ledger can also contain a piece of computer code that links to more elaborate asset
data, such as a parametric VR asset (e.g. a virtual building component) or a set of instructions, rules
or conditions. The code can also indicate how agents deploy, exchange and dispose of such digital
assets, including details about use and reproduction rights. The way blockchain platforms function
sometimes mystify with their abstruse methods and terminology: proof of work, nonce, mining,
cryptographic puzzles, hash strings. It is interesting that something so arcane in the realm of
economics (already mysterious to many) intersects with the practical world of everyday dealings.

I return to the three tactics of phenomenological inquiry introduced above. The first is to
look at embodiment. I will leave it to others to review the kinds of embodied practices that virtual
environments encourage and deny, expecting such analysis to include the experience of the user as
an active embodied agent encountering the apparatus of VR, laptops, bitcoin wallets, and
transacting with others.

The second tactic is to review how any technology enframes our view of the world. One
factor is that it brings the idea of transgression to centre stage. Like a lot of commerce, blockchain
tech also supports and even glamorizes transgressive transactions. Enthusiasm for the technology
emerged from a desire to replicate cash transactions that are beyond the control, scrutiny and
auditing of banks and the Inland Revenue (tax office). Other transgressive aspects of the technology
reside in the strange fact that peer-to-peer blockchain transactions are extravagant to store and to
run -- the race to solve cryptographic puzzles and create more currency.

Competing processors pour yet more CPU power into the network, requiring electricity as
input, generating heat as output and with exorbitant cost to the environment. On the other hand, as
long as it is out of the mainstream, such profligacy at the margins has a certain allure. Blockchain
technology is transgressive in several respects. People speculate on these currencies, and at the time
of writing there are few high street merchants who will accept them, in part as the currencies are
unstable. It can also take half an hour to a day for a transaction to be verified, due to the blockchain
process, and according to the transaction fee you are prepared to pay. Many of the CPU-intensive
mining farms are currently in China, which in 2017 announced a “crackdown on cryptocurrencies”
(Liao 2017). That statement alone seemed to cause a sharp decline in the value of bitcoin.

Cryptocurrencies (built on blockchain platforms) are arguably a response to failing economic

systems in cities. After all, much of the narrative force of bitcoin derives from its appropriation by
black and grey market merchants in cities, particularly in those parts that are failing, or at least that
operate under the radar. Such clandestine commercial tactics enable some urban residents to
survive. Elsewhere, I identify some of the ways that the idea of the blockchain might inform, for
good or ill, notions of the city as a place of secrets, enabled by encryption (Coyne and Onabolu 2018,
Grima 2015, Maxwell, Speed, and Pschetz 2017).

Computing already brings metaphors, as part of the phenomenological toolkit, to bear on how we
think of community and urban living in terms of flows of data, networks, circuits, grids and an
“Internet of things,” as if cities are made up of bits, memories (RAM), sensors, actuators, and with
communication systems, inputs, outputs and operating systems.

The idea of 3D virtual worlds fuels speculation about a merging of the virtual and the “real,”
or at least commerce between the two. The idea of the blockchain adds further dimensions to such
metaphors. It provides analogues with city living, not least as we think of the data intensive “smart
city,” the overlay of integrated and responsive digital infrastructures that draw on big data streams
from mobile apps, sensor networks, social media feeds and transport information, to make buildings

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and transport systems responsive to changing conditions. Blockchain technology supports the ideal
of localized, grassroots, and consumer-oriented dimensions to the smart city.

The society of the gift

I turn to the third phenomenological tactic I described above of appealing to a very human and
everyday phenomenon that underlies the highly instrumentalized understanding of commerce and
VR suggested by the blockchain, namely the gift, and communal sharing. The so-called sharing
economy continues the ideal of grass roots cooperatives. Architecture has a long tradition
supporting cooperative and community-based building projects, along with activism in various guises
(Kaminer 2017).

The technical apparatus of the blockchain makes similar claims to support peer-to-peer
transactions, as if a return to everyday and trusted non-monetary transactions between family
members. The blockchain idea continues a trajectory of practices evident from the early days of the
Internet in the 1980s. Many people were and are still prepared to give away information, expertise,
advice and online content with little or no expectation of immediate monetary return. You can enter
Second Life for free, but if you pay the registration fee then you can acquire virtual land, build, set
up a business and trade. The payoff for suppliers of free goods includes the high value commodity of
consumer profiles and information about individuals for targeted marketing, to influence and to
persuade. In such cases the putative generosity of the agent, mediator, or the information broker
conforms to utilitarian understandings of the market economy. There is something in it for
everyone.

But there is also a strong culture of giving on the net outside of the commercial aspects of
on-line enterprise. Individuals produce and publish personal information on social media in an
exchange of intimate and unsolicited disclosures. But the culture of the gift extends to areas
otherwise the preserve of commerce, particularly amongst computer programmers and enthusiasts,
the Free Software Foundation and the Open-Source community, which some have described as a
contemporary realization of the “gift economy.”

I rehearsed some of the apparent rationale for people’s willingness to gift information for
free online in a previous publication (Coyne 2005). I revisit some of the rationale here.

One can argue that digital information operates differently to other commodities. It is possible to
both give it away and yet still retain it, to be used for commercial gain. On-line altruism could be a
further manifestation of McLuhan’s return to tribal society, in which commerce depends on kinship
ties (McLuhan and Powers 1989).

We are in a digitally-mediated age, where we are able to participate in an immediacy of

communications formerly only enjoyed in the “tribe.” In the global village, we are more prepared to
communicate, to share, and to give than in former times, but on a global scale. Shared VR
environments such as Second Life and Decentraland literalize the idea of the global village. The idea
advanced by advocates of the sharing economy is that platforms for sharing enable us to extend
trust relationships to “strangers” (Sundararajan 2016).

According to certain anthropological study the economic system is parasitic on a primordial

condition, a more basic form of “economics” in which gifting was the most important means of
sharing and transacting goods. By this reading, putative generosity on the Internet is a contemporary
manifestation of the social norm of gift exchange that predates and has survived the pressures of
modern commerce. In fact, commerce could not exist were we not already predisposed towards

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communal sharing and gift giving. Some argue that play predates work practices and the serious
business of commerce (Huizinga 1955), of which VR and MMORPG play spaces are a conspicuous
example. The exchange of gifts is a form of play, involving a to-and-fro movement, the non-serious
business of chance, and a flirtation with risk (Caillois 1961). Gift exchange is the primordial root of
contemporary economics. Economics is subservient to the gift.

The idea of the gift can also present a profound disturbance to the economic order, a point
that resonates with the claims of the Internet, social media, virtual environments and digital
commerce. Cryptocurrencies and platforms that support the sharing economy can be described as
disruptive technologies (Christensen and Bower 1995). The limits inherent in a society based on
commercial transaction are well known, but giving is also a fraught enterprise, on the Internet as
elsewhere. The gift can be a means of coercion, graft, and deception. As well as play, the symptoms
of the gift are perilously close to those of crime, terror and the worst of mercantile excess. From this
point of view the gift amplifies the role of transgression in social relations, on the Internet and
elsewhere. The gift is not innocent; neither is commerce that is conducted on the blockchain.

Cultural theorists and philosophers have subjected the gift to substantial scrutiny, the
terminology and definition of which was established through the seminal book of the 1920s by the
anthropologist Marcel Mauss, The Gift (Mauss 1990). For Mauss the principles underlying the
exchange of gifts predate and underlie modern commerce. According to Mauss the gift has its seeds
in concepts of the festival, and extraordinary events. As neighboring communities would negotiate
the fine line between conflict and alliance, isolation and trade, they move to excesses either of
spectacular generosity or irrational destruction.

For Mauss, in tribal societies the gift seems to be the norm and expected. Gifts are often
useless trinkets, in archaic societies as in our own. They represent a surplus, something not really
needed. The festive occasion of their giving is also characterized by exuberance, demonstration,
squandering and other trappings of excess. The giving of gifts also promotes unequal relations
between members of the group.

Potlatch societies

As for other commercial mechanisms, a strong case can be made that blockchain platforms and their
controversies are grounded in the society of the gift. An investigation into gift societies
demonstrates that transactions between individuals are already fraught. Transactions are agonistic.
There is no innocent substrate to our transactions. We do not need to blame all consumer culture’s
faults on abstract, instrumental capitalism. I think this insight helps as we account for how societies
are prepared to accept the profligacy and competitive waste that is the basis by which blocks of
transactions are verified, though this is invisible to the parties engaged in a transaction.

Mauss draws attention to the phenomenon of the potlatch (Mauss 1990), that archaic
custom whereby different groups, villages or communities would attempt to outdo one another in
generosity, often to the point of squandering their own resources, and impoverishing their own
community. Writer Jacques Godbout picks up this aspect of gift societies, “often a bit of squandering
goes along with the gift, a bit of excess, of folly, a superfluity that keeps the object’s utility or
exchange value at arm’s length” (Godbout 1998, 47).

The remarkable feature of the potlatch is that it is a form of giving and self-sacrifice that
might be carried through to self-destruction, where the community’s own “slaves are put to death,
precious oils burnt, copper objects cast into the sea, and even the houses of princes set on fire”
(Mauss 1990, 20). By this account the gift is explicable not only in terms of altruism and generosity,

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fellow feeling, public spirit, and wanting to see the lot of the other improved by one’s generosity,
but by competition. The giving is to be excessive and bring one to the verge of one’s own demise,
which in turn indicates one’s strength: If I can withstand all this giving then I am indeed stronger
than you. In utilitarian terms the contest may even bring down the opposition. One gives in excess in
order that the opponent may reach the limit of his or her giving, and be incapacitated or shamed.

Twentieth century cultural commentators have seized on the idea of the potlatch as
accounting for conspicuous consumption, explicable as a diminished form of ritual profligacy by
which one participates in a contest of the squandering of wealth, keeping up with the Joneses. For
economist Kenneth Galbraith it is never enough that one has wealth, but it must be displayed, hence
the advertising of one’s wealth in some quarters through “obtrusively expensive goods” (Galbraith
1998, 74) an unsatisfied craving for the latest model car, fashionable clothing, accessories, and
entertainment, “for the entire modern range of sensuous, edifying and lethal desires” (Galbraith
1998, 115).

Georges Bataille, the twentieth century neo-Marxist essayist emphasizes the potlatch with
this darker aspect of the gift (Botting and Wilson 2001) and hence commerce. For Bataille, the gift
has its origins in this destruction and loss. That someone receives something of benefit through this
process is incidental, and constitutes a later embellishment to the notion of the gift. He associates
pessimistically the potlatch with excretion, death and sadism (Bataille, Botting, and Wilson (eds)
1997, 173).

In so far as such accounts apply to the world of commerce, they assuredly apply to
commercial activity in virtual environments. In the blockchain the propensity for excess and waste is
embedded within the structure of its code. The idea of the potlatch persists in the process by which
nodes in the blockchain network contribute CPU time and effort to solve extremely difficult and
arbitrary cryptographic puzzles, the solution to which gets printed into the blockchain to confirm the
legitimacy of a block of transactions. A hacker would need to expend at least as much energy to
access and change the data, and the task becomes even more difficult as more data gets added to
this chain. The dark contest of the blockchain operates at many levels.

By this reading, waste, inefficiency and redundancy are amongst the tools by which the
struggle to maintain value escalates, demonstrated not least in the profligacy of the blockchain.
Virtual environments of the kind discussed above, Second Life and Decentraland, provide similar
demonstrations if we need it, of sharing and waste in blockchain worlds.

Conclusion

In this chapter I presented a justification for an approach to virtual environments and digital
commerce that I think is consistent with the tenets of phenomenology. I focused on three tactics for
understanding the combination of two audacious platforms: virtual reality platforms and blockchain
platforms for transacting digital currencies. The latter purports to enable people to make financial
transactions peer-to-peer in the everyday lifeworld, but also in virtual environments. It is too early
to say if such facility is needed and how users would engage with it, but there is growing interest in
such platforms. I paid brief attention to the first phenomenological tactic of scrutinizing the place of
the body in relation to VR apparatus.

At the time of writing there is insufficient evidence to assess how people might respond to
the putative freedoms afforded by the blockchain in platforms such as Decentraland. At the very
least, such innovations provoke new thinking about what it is to transact virtual goods, and how
people interact both on and off line. As a second tactic I reviewed some of the ways that such

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technologies enframe our view of the world, particularly through the metaphors they evoke. My
third and main tactic was to focus on underlying phenomena grounded in community and the
everyday, namely the society of the gift. In turn, I adopted the insights of several scholars into the
notion of the potlatch, a peculiar and disruptive aspect of the gift society as difficult, ambiguous and
profligate. This in turn sheds light on the workings of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. In the
process I hope I have shown that commercial and peer-to-peer transactions are an important, varied
and fraught aspect of current and future ubiquitous digital systems requiring critical attention if we
are to understand the phenomenology of virtual places.

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The Kyoto School Philosophy on Place: Nishida and Ueda

By John W.M. Krummel

One of the important concepts that the Japanese Kyoto School (Kyōtogakuha 京都学派) of

philosophy is noted for is that of place or basho (場所). Nishida Kitarō (西田幾多郎) (1870-

1945), the cofounder and central figure of the Kyoto School, once stated that to be is to be

implaced. Nishida’s second-generation Kyoto School descendant and current representative of

the Kyoto School, Ueda Shizuteru (上田閑照) (1926-), further developed this concept to

understand place and implacement in terms of a twofold world or twofold horizon. 1 Nishida

during the late 1920s, in initiating his philosophy of place, understood the self in its

unobjectifiability as a kind of place wherein subject and object correlate. But he eventually came

to see this placial self as itself implaced within a contextualizing place wherein it interacts with

things and with other subjects within the world, a contextual place further implaced ultimately in

an abyssal place of nothing. He develops this understanding of place during the 1930s in terms of

the socio-historical world and ultimately in the 1940s in terms of a creative divinity that negates

itself in kenōsis to make room for the world of many.

Roughly speaking and in a variety of versions, Nishida takes the system of places to

involve the place of beings or objects, the place that is consciousness, the place that is the world

of human interactivity, and, finally, the place of absolute nothing. Taking Nishida’s theory of

place as a foundation, Ueda on the other hand, focuses on the structure of place as involving the

twofold structure of the horizon of experience. We are implaced in the world that in turn is

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implaced in a boundless openness. Our place is twofold in that there is the world of significances

on this side of the horizon and the a-meaning of a nothing beyond the horizon. While Nishida

formulates the system of places in terms of the place of being, the place of relative nothing, and

the place of absolute nothing, Ueda uses the fraction symbol as “world/open expanse” to convey

his idea of “world amidst the open expanse.” In this chapter I will thus explore the Kyoto School

theory of place as Nishida first formulated it and then as developed more recently by Ueda,

before closing with a brief look into its relevance for us today.

The Kyoto School’s understanding of place, as developed from Nishida to Ueda, also

comes into proximity with phenomenological insights. I will thus also discuss Nishida’s and

Ueda’s relationship to phenomenology. Nishida developed his theory of place contemporaneous

to the careers of Husserl and Heidegger. But he was aware of their work only to a limited degree;

and he was critical of the little that he knew of the phenomenology of both thinkers. On the other

hand, Ueda, belonging to a later generation, is quite knowledgeable of the phenomenological

movement, having studied under Nishida’s student, Nishitani Keiji (西谷 啓治), who in turn had

studied under Heidegger. And Ueda himself had studied in Germany. He incorporates the

phenomenological insights of Husserl, Heidegger, Bollnow, Jaspers, Scheler, Merleau-Ponty,

Eliade, and others, in developing his own understanding of place. What both Nishida and Ueda

offer vis-à-vis a phenomenology of place is a sophisticated analysis of the other to being that

place as defined and delimited must assume: what Nishida calls the absolute nothing (zettai mu)

and what Ueda calls the open expanse (kokū).

The philosophy of place as developed by both thinkers, moreover, has relevance for us

today with implications for current issues. What I have in mind are several urgent issues we must

face today in our understanding of place: the world in its rapid “globalization,” humanity’s

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relationship to the natural environment, and the virtualization of our place in terms of

cyberspace. I will thus close the chapter with a brief look into these contemporary issues on the

basis of the philosophy of place as developed by Nishida and Ueda.

Nishida’s Early Theory of Place:

The origination of the concept of place (basho) that is often pointed to as characterizing the

Kyoto School of philosophy begins with Nishida Kitarō’s struggle with subject-object dualism

and its concomitant substantialism belonging to the Western tradition and culminating in Neo-

Kantianism. As an alternative to object-centered (or objectifying) thought—what Nishida called

“object-logic” (taishō ronri 対象論理)—Nishida proposed a series of solutions by way of a

turning away from the object of focus, starting with his maiden work, An Inquiry into the Good

(Zen no kenkyū 『善の研究』) of 1911. 2 Nishida’s question was how dichotomized terms that are

ontologically of distinct kinds can relate. The breakthrough came in the mid-1920s with the

formulation of his theory of place in the essay “Place” (Basho 「場所」), first published as a

journal article in 1926 3 and then inserted in his two-volume book From the Acting to the Seeing

(Hatarakumono kara mirumono e 『働くものから見るものへ』) in 1927. 4 The theory of place

presented here is primarily epistemological but that is not to say that it had no ontological or

ethical significance as well.

Nishida proposes place as a solution to the issue of the oppositions between terms of

ontologically distinct kinds—subject and object, ideal and real, mind and matter, ought and is,

validity and existence, and so on—that problematize their relationships. Simply put he saw place

as the lived and living concrete and dynamic immediacy from out of which such dichotomized

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terms are abstracted. He took the wholeness of that immediacy, logically preceding the terms, as

implacing them and permitting their relationship. The subject-object duality itself then is but an

intellectual abstraction, after-the-fact, of that lived holistic immediacy that earlier in Inquiry into

the Good he had called “pure experience” (junsui keiken 純粋経験). But in 1926 he comes to

understand this in terms of “place” (basho) as what envelops subject and object finding their

place within it.

Although Nishida does not use this term, phenomenologically one may regard it as the horizon

encompassing mental acts and their objects, perspectives of intentionality that would constitute

the world of objects. Not only was this meant to solve the issue of bridging the epistemological

gap, but as he explains in another essay of the same period (1927), “The Issue of Consciousness

that Remains” (Torinokosaretaru ishiki no mondai 「取り残されたる意識の問題」), it was also an

answer to his dissatisfaction with Platonist metaphysics that subordinates “place” or chōra as the

unformed substratum to the ideas providing it with forms. 5 The Neo-Kantians developed this

hylo-morphic 6 dualism in terms of the distinction between ideal and real, validity and existence,

ought and is.

As opposed to values like “truth” that serve as standards for judgment-making, being or

existence belongs to the reality of the sensible matter of judgment. Nishida inherits this

dichotomy from the Neo-Kantians whereby a being “is” (Seiendes ist) and values “are valid”

(Werte gelten) 7 and understands it as one of determined content and determining act. But at the

same time, he reverses the Platonist hierarchy by raising place to a central position that in fact is

active in its formation. In other words, in opposition to Plato’s metaphysical hierarchy whereby

the ideas provide form to the formless chōra as their place of formation, he felt that “place”

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should be ascribed a “logical independence” (Z7 223) and, by implication, ontological

independence whereby it forms itself from out of its formlessness. He thus identifies the

primitive unity that supports the dichotomy, guaranteeing the possibility of cognition, with place

as a self-forming formlessness that forms itself into the terms of subject and object. And in

distinction from the beings that serve as its content, he identifies that place at its most basic level

as a nothing. Nishida thus designates that most basic and foundational place, the most concrete

level of reality-cum-experience prior to their bifurcation, the “place of absolute nothing” (zettai

mu no basho 絶対無の場所) or “place of true nothing” (shin no mu no basho 真の無の場所).

Nishida’s insight here is that place at its most concrete immediacy preceding every and any

thematization or objectification or dichotomization is itself unobjectifiable, indeterminate, and

nondifferentiated; it is an unsayable, unthought, abyssal (un)ground from out of which forms are

formed and opposing terms are differentiated.

Nishida’s recognition of a primal undifferentiatedness that precedes subject and object, as

stated above, had to do with his attempt to surmount “object-logic” (taishō ronri), that is, object-

centered thinking that necessarily objectifies (or “noematizes”) whatever it thematizes. In the

case of modern epistemology, the very issue of the relationship of the two terms arises because

both—not only the object but the subject as well—are treated like distinct “objects,” that is,

determined things. Nishida traces this object-logic to Aristotelian substantialism whereby the

subject specified by predicating properties designates an underlying substance (ousia) that can

never be predicated of something else. It is that which serves as the subject (hypokeimenon) but

never a predicate (Z3 325; Z7 221). 8

Such an ontologically independent substance, however, would transcend any predication

attributed to it and preclude relations in general as something unknowable—what Kant called the

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thing-in-itself. If the substance is transcendent to our knowing and judging acts, how does it

come to be the object of knowledge and the subject of judgment? How does the knowing subject

relate to its object if they are ontologically distinct? What bridges the gap between the for-itself

and the in-itself? Now the same issue of object-centered thinking arises in connection with the

other pole of epistemological duality, namely the subject. In thinking of the cognitive process

involving two determinate terms, we have already objectified not only its content but

consciousness itself as some thing standing in opposition to its object. We thus come to speak of

consciousness itself as the grammatical subject of the judgment, “I think X.”

Nishida takes this to be the hidden premise of modern epistemology: it conceives

cognition as a relationship involving objectified beings (Z7 218). What then is the pre-

objective—hence unobjectifiable—source of this very objectification and concomitant

dichotomization? Nishida looks for the key to unlock its mystery in the direction away from,

other than, the object that nevertheless is concrete and immediate, preceding thematization. He

looks away from the determinate product of objectification that is the grammatical subject

(shugo 主語), in the opposite direction to what he calls, somewhat misleadingly, the determining

“predicate” (jutsugo 述語). He attempts a de-focusing away from constituted, objectified,

beings—the intentional object that becomes the grammatical subject—and while this means

turning in the direction of the determining (objectifying) act, identified with the predicate-pole,

he attempts to do so thoroughly, i.e., without objectifying that act, towards its assumed

unobjectifiable dimension that he calls the “predicate plane” (jutsugomen 述語面).

This predicate plane ultimately designates the above-mentioned holistic situation

assumed by and enveloping—implacing 9 contextualizing—subject and object. Because it cannot

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be objectified as this or that to be treated as the subject in a judgment, Nishida calls it the

transcendental predicate (chōetsuteki jutsugo 超越的述語) (see Z3 471-72; Z7 224). In other

words, he is using the grammatical predicate as a heuristic device to turn our attention away from

the object that is the grammatical subject to its pre-objective context or situation that implaces it

together with its cognitive subject. The point is to turn our focus away from the being qua object

that normally lies in the foreground of our attention and towards its contextual background.

Thus, rather than starting with apparently independent and substantialized terms, Nishida takes

as the starting point the concrete immediacy of that holistic situation relating and encompassing

subject and object. And this is precisely what Nishida means by “place” (basho). The predicate

in this Nishidian sense as place transcends objectification—it cannot be stated as what it is—and

so Nishida characterizes it as “that which becomes the predicate but never the subject,” in

opposition to Aristotle’s formula. In its unsayable indetermination, it is thus a nothing (mu), and

as a place given the logical independence Nishida deemed it worthy of, it is the place of nothing

(mu no basho 無の場所).

Now in-between the object (grammatical subject) and that ultimate context that is the

place of nothing there are several layers or levels, sinking from the surface of objectified beings

towards the abyssal depth of nothing. Consciousness, serving as the field of determining or

predicating acts that Nishida calls the field or site of consciousness (ishiki no ba 意識の場), for

example, in relation to its objects, is a nothing but a relative nothing (sōtai mu 相対無). In terms

of place, it is the place of relative nothing (sōtai mu no bahso 相対無の場所) or the place of

oppositional nothing (tairitsuteki mu no basho 対立的無の場所).

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 The point is that consciousness is a “nothing” that, as place, makes room for those

“beings” it determines as objects (see Z7 222). Judgments that determine grammatical subjects

are moments within that field. Nishida views them to be explications or amplifications,

articulations, in terms of the formal grammatical structure of subject-predicate, of a primal unity

implacing those terms.

Instead of the Cartesian substantial cogito, “I think X,” consciousness is thus better

characterized in Nishida’s view as a predicate, so that “X is what I am conscious of” (or, “X is

discerned by me”). And as such a place, Nishida views consciousness as a “circle” rather than a

“point,” another way of saying that it is a field rather than a substance, a nothing rather than a

being (Z3 469, 504, 545). If we focus upon and thematize that field as the epistemological

subject, however, we can still objectify it to make it into the grammatical subject of “I think X.”

Even so, the ground sustaining its relationship to the object and assumed by that relationship

cannot be objectified. The relationship of the field to its terms, or in epistemic terms, between

subject and object, here still requires a mediation, a further medium, namely a prior place,

contextualizing their relation. That is to say that in its relatedness to its object (noema),

consciousness with its determining act (noesis) is in turn contextualized by—determined upon—

a further, deeper, broader receding background, wherein consciousness itself and the very duality

of subject-object makes sense and have their source.

That ultimate context or place as the ever-implicit horizonal “beyond,” assumed by every

objectifying act or utterance concerning a subject but precluding any further objectification of

itself, as the most undifferentiated and concrete place, is what is “truly nothing” (shin no mu 真の

無), the “absolute nothing” (zettai mu 絶対無) (Z3 424, 432, 467). It is the place of true nothing

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(shin no mu no basho) (Z3 482) that, as the ultimate horizon sinking into an undifferentiated

nothing, serves as the un/ground for all beings and their negations, being and non-being in

general, including the opposition of objects and subject, as its abstract moments (Z3 424).

Prejudicatively and precognitively lived values and meanings that give guidance and

meaning to—and contextualize—our cognitive and other intentional acts arise ultimately from

here. It is “truly nothing” in the sense that it cannot be objectified, cannot be stated as a

grammatical subject, cannot be determined as a being and as such transcends the very dichotomy

of being and its negation, non-being. As the ultimate contextual wherein that itself cannot be

contextualized even as it contextualizes and that must be presupposed by every utterance, it slips

away from any attempt to make it into a subject of judgment; it perpetually recedes to make

room for the things determined within its space.

And yet this negativity of the nothing is simultaneously the positivity of its self-

articulation, self-determination, giving rise to beings within it through its own self-negation (jiko

hitei 自己否定). In The Determination of the Nothing in Self-Awareness (Mu no jikakuteki gentei

『無の自覚的限定』) half a decade after the “Place” essay, Nishida underscores the creativity of

the place of nothing as a consequence of its self-negation. Place is self-determining in that the

implications inherent within its non-duality become articulated within its sphere via self-

negation, the negation of its nothingness (see Z5 72-73, 80-82, 122). Nishida also characterizes

this self-articulating self-negation as a self-mirroring. So, by “true nothing” or “absolute

nothing,”

Nishida does not mean that there ultimately is literally nothing existing. Rather he has in

mind a unobjectifiable formlessness that permits and gives rise to forms—a self-forming

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formlessness—encompassing and contextualizing every opposition such as subject/object,

being/non-being, affirmation/negation, and so on. He qualifies the term “nothing” with

“absolute” (zettai 絶対) to convey the sense that it is free of, in the sense of being cut-off from

(zetsu- 絶-), opposition (tai 対). Thus, undelimited by anything opposing it, it is no-thing.

All oppositions are embraced within it as their place. Nishida’s place of absolute or true nothing

is this environing contextual whole that becomes articulated in the act of objectification to

determine the subject of assertion while remaining irreducible to it. Nishida characterizes this

creativity as the act of “determining itself without a determiner” (genteisurumono nakishite

jikojishin o genteisuru 限定する物無きして自己自身を限定する) (Z5 154, 161). On the basis of

the above Nishida came to generally identify three major levels of place in the works

immediately following the 1926 “Place” essay: 1) The place of beings (yū no basho 有の場所)

identified with the material field constituting the natural world of beings; 2) The place of

oppositional or relative nothing identified with the field of consciousness that objectifies those

beings into objects of cognition in relation to itself; and 3) The place of true or absolute nothing

identified with the pre-theoretically and pre-cognitively lived dimension contextualizing the first

two places that in phenomenological terms might be seen as their ultimate horizon. This

epistemology of place ultimately has ontological significance as expressed in Nishida’s

ontological thesis that “to be” is “to be implaced” (Z3 415). And if to be is to be implaced, the

ultimate place of being would have to be nothing.

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Nishida’s Turn Towards the Concrete World:
Nishida subsequently works out the implications of this epistemology of place as an

undifferentiated holistic situation wherein the implicit becomes explicit and the enfolded unfolds,

especially in an Hegelian inspired dialectical format and in terms of a dialectic of negations, in

his System of Universals in Self-Awareness (Ippansha no jikakuteki taikei『一般者の自覚的体系

』) of 1930 and the aforementioned Determination of the Nothing in Self-Awareness of 1932.

Nishida then continues his broadening and externalization of the significance of “place” to the

“world” (sekai 世界) in the two volume Fundamental Problems of Philosophy （Tetsugaku no

konpon mondai 『哲学の根本問題』） of 1933-34 and the several volumes of Philosophical

Essays (Tetsugaku ronbunshū 『哲学論文集』) through the 1930s to the 40s. But it is also the

charge of an absolutization of the predicate, in its subsumption of the grammatical subject, as an

all-encompassing universal at the expense of individual beings in quasi-Hegelian fashion that led

Nishida—for example in his 1936 “Logic and Life” (Ronri to seimei 「論理と生命」—to open his

notion of place more explicitly towards the world of concrete human life that he called the

“historical world” (rekishiteki sekai 歴史的世界) or “socio-historical world” (shakaiteki

rekishiteki sekai 社会的歴史的世界) as the place wherein we interact and work with one

another and with things.

That is, from the late 1920s to the late 1930s his view to place shifts from an interior look

that plumbs into, and below, the depths of consciousness to an outward view to the happenings

of the socio-historical world. The world as such is still an extension of the dynamic of the self-

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determination of place. It is the place wherein we are born, dwell, and die; but more explicitly

than previously it is also that wherein we partake in its self-formations through our inter-

activities. It provides the concrete context for our interactions with one another and with the

environment, involving the creation of the collectively significant world through thought,

language, and the use of tools and technology that alter our environment, our embodiment, and

so on, in manifold levels.

And while the world for Nishida is the place wherein we find ourselves always already, it

also permits our autonomy as individual beings despite our interdependence. We are not only

affected by the environment but we work and act upon it, re-creating it. Human beings thus take

part in reshaping their environment to assert their independence and autonomy: “Environment

makes man and man makes environment” (Kankyō ga ningen o tsukuri, ningen ga kankyō o

tsukuru 環境が人間を作り、人間が環境を作る) (Z8 162, 314, 329). For example, the land

nourishes us with food, but in turn we alter the land to increase or decrease its productivity,

which again conversely affects our well-being. “Life” (seimei 生命) for Nishida involves the full

dialectic of this intercreativity. And only through such human individuals acting creatively as its

operative elements does the world itself become truly creative (Z8 17-18). The world continues

creating itself not only with the environment’s determination of individuals but also through the

individuals’ determinations of the environment (Z6 83, 107, 178). We, the made, take part in the

world’s own creativity and simultaneously re-make ourselves as makers.

This relationship constitutes a holistic dynamism of whole and part, environment and

individual as mutually creative, whereby the world as a field of interdeterminations is a

dialectical world (benshōhōteki sekai 弁証法的世界) and the historical world as such in its

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logical structure is a dialectical universal (benshōhōteki ippansha 弁証法的一般者) (Z6 159; Z7

136). With this idea Nishida thus underscores the world’s ongoing dialectical unfolding in the

self-negation of the nothing that gives rise to and shapes the manifold of beings, and whereby the

self-determination of the dialectical universal, the self-determination of place, and the self-

determination of the world are all identical (Z6 159).

Such dynamism, according to Nishida, is only possible through a dialectic of mutual self-

negation, whereby each element and the environment attempting to negate its other for the sake

of self-affirmation can only do so, paradoxically, by its own self-negation. Co-relative

determination among individuals requires mediation via mutual self-negation (Z8 19). Otherwise

the elements would be but utterly independent, having nothing to do with each other. Mutual

self-negation inverts independence into interdependence and correlativity (Z8 13), allowing in

turn for self-determination and hence self-affirmation in the first place.

The same goes for the relationship between the life of an organism and its environment,

whereby the environment conditions the individual and the individual conversely acts upon the

environment to alter those conditions. Yet such reciprocal determinations cannot occur without

self-negation. Co-relative determination thus involves mutual self-negation (see Z8 19). Nishida

also calls this movement, “absolute negation” (zettai hitei 絶対否定), a negation of negation that

inverts negation itself into something positive. At the same time this mutual self-negation among

the many on the horizontal plane is the self-negation of the world qua dialectical universal on the

vertical plane.

Nishida works out this dialectic of interdetermination qua mutual self-negation as

involving manifold dimensions: 1) the universal’s self-determination; 2) the universal’s

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determination of individual/s; 3) the individual’s self-determination; 4) the individuals’

reciprocal co-determinations; and 5) the individuals’ reverse determination (gyaku gentei 逆限定

) of the universal. The self-determination of the universal qua world is at the same time the self-

and mutual determination of individuals within the world, each via self-negation. The universal’s

self-determination on the vertical plane that is non-different from the inter-determination of

individuals on the horizontal plane also proves to be the reverse determination (gyaku gentei) of

the universal by the individuals (Z5 274-75, 289-90).

Individual selves, determined by the world, interact with one another and their interaction

conversely determines the very world (Z6 239ff). Each person (“individual”), despite his/her

implacement within the whole (“universal”) is irreplaceably unique in the context of the whole;

while made by society and history, the self has the creative significance of being a maker who

remodels society and shapes history (Z5 278) through self- and co-determinations with other

individual selves. The world as such is not simply a concrete universal—in Hegel’s sense—that

determines itself in individuals but a dialectical universal embracing both the concrete

universal’s determination of individuals and the individuals’ autonomous self- and co-

determinations and reverse determinations of the universal.

This inter-activity and mutual working of human persons coincides with the world’s own

self-determination, which establishes society—what Nishida calls in German, Gemeinschaft)

(see Z6 124; Z7 149; Z8 19, 20). For example, while living under the influence of society, an

individual person also has the capacity to determine herself and conversely remodel her social

surroundings to move history (see Z5 233-34, 277, 278). The vertical dialectic between universal

and individual is thus collapsed into the horizontal plane of diachronic and synchronic

relationships and interactivity (aihataraki 相働き) between individuals.

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 By this same move the world with the dialectical universal as its structure also serves as

the “placial” medium (bashoteki baikaisha 場所的媒介者), forming a continuum, for the

interactivity of discontinuous individuals (Z6 247; Z7 19, 109). But since the world’s dialectic is

one of interdeterminations, its place permitting those determinations has to be under-determined

or indeterminate, hence abyssal. As such the world’s place—its un/ground—is still the place of

absolute nothing, whereby the determination is a “determination of that which is without a

determiner” (genteisurumononakimono no gentei) or a “determination without determiner”

(genteisurumononaki gentei) (see Z6 15, 20-21, 116, 149, 162; Z7 12, 205). The self-

determination of the nothing as the dialectical universal’s un/ground thus parallels its manifold

dialectical determinations. They are its expressions. Thereby the dialectical universal is hence a

“universal of the nothing” (mu no ippansha 無の一般者) (Z6 39).

The concrete immediacy prior to the subject-object split then is not simply reducible to

the individual psyche’s inner world of consciousness but instead that world of manifold inter-

determining and interacting individuals. The world as such is neither of mere matter or objects

nor of mere consciousness or spirit, but a world of activity (kōi 行為) (Z5 209). What is

concretely immediate is our inter-activity in and with that world.

In this way Nishida wanted to counter the charge of idealism or subjectivism made by

critics of his earlier theory of place. He wanted to show that the concrete reality of the absolute

nothing is manifest in the very reality of our interactions with one another and with the world as

embodied beings. So, in the 1930s he deemphasizes the predicate’s primacy vis-à-vis the

grammatical subject to emphasize instead their mediation in the world (sekai) as their medium

(baikaisha 媒介者). Thereby the place of absolute nothing that in 1926 was the place of (the)

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predicate/s (jutsugoteki basho 述語的場所) discovered in the depths of self-awareness now

opens up as a place of mediation (baikaiteki basho 媒介的場所) for human embodied

interactions within and with the world. This shift is not really a rejection of his earlier theory of

place but rather a retrieval of the roots of such implacement whereby one’s self is not merely a

knower but more primordially an actor in the concrete world.

Nishida’s Religious Turn:

If we look further into the 1940s, Nishida’s final decade, we find the terminology of place

(basho) again prevalent in his final essays, especially his 1945 essay, “The Logic of Place and

the Religious Worldview” (Bashoteki ronri to shūkyōteki sekaikan 「場所的論理と宗教的世界

観」) but in connection to the world in its cosmo-religious significance and to the religious motifs

of God or the absolute (zettaisha 絶対者). Nishida here translates the dialectical matrix of

interdetermination he developed in the 1930s into the explicitly religious terms of the

interrelationship between God and man. The vertical plane in the dialectic between universal and

individual now becomes reworked in terms of the inverse correspondence (gyakutaiō 逆対応)

between the absolute negating itself to give birth to the world of the many and the finite self that

must die to its own ego to meet the absolute. That self-negation of the absolute is thus

understood in theological terms as the kenōsis, agape, and grace of God that embraces and

redeems the world. Nishida understands these Christian theological themes and similar Pure

Land Buddhist motifs in his own terms of the self-negating nothing that qua place makes room

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for the world of many. He takes these religious doctrines to be sectarian expressions

acknowledging our existential implacement within a self-inverting non-substantiality.

Inverse correspondence is thus predicated a-symmetrically—in the mutual fit between place and

implaced—upon the absolute’s own nature as a de-substantializing nothing. Religiosity for

Nishida is the very realization of this implacement. To intuit this in one’s own depths—at the

“vanishing point” (shōshitsuten 消失点) of one’s ego—is to be aware of one’s non-substantiality

as the self-realization of the absolute qua nothing from out of which one’s self is constituted. The

mutual fit between place and implaced is also explicated in terms of self-expression. The self is

the microcosmic-monadic focal point through which the macrocosmic whole mirrors and

expresses itself (see Z10 300-01). Each self-expressive point (jiko hyōgenten 自己表現点) of the

cosmic whole is also its point of self-awareness and self-realization (jikakuten 自覚点) (Z10

180). As such the self is also the world’s creative point (sōzōten 創造点) (Z10 107).

Nishida’s Relation to Phenomenology:

There are aspects of Nishida’s philosophy of place that resonate with phenomenology even

though Nishida himself never acknowledges any direct influence of phenomenology on his

theory of place. Nonetheless we might at least mention one thinker closest to phenomenology

whom Nishida had read early on before developing his own theory of pure experience in his

maiden work, Inquiry into the Good of 1911, William James who had also influenced Husserl.

As for Edmund Husserl himself, the founder of the phenomenological movement, it is between

1911 and 1917 that Nishida begins to respond to his philosophy. 10 But Nishida never called

himself a phenomenologist or saw himself as engaging in phenomenology. Instead he explicitly

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regarded his task to construct a metaphysical “logic” (ronri 論理) or Logik in the vein of German

Neo-Kantian and Hegelian philosophy, which eventually became a “logic of place” (basho no

ronri 場所の論理). And yet as may be clear from above, although Nishida himself never used

the phenomenological terminology of a “horizon” (Horizont), his general notion of place or

predicate as what must be presupposed by the object qua grammatical subject, indeed, can be

understood in terms of a “horizon.”

How then did Nishida himself view the phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Martin

Heidegger, contemporaneous to his development of the philosophy of place? Nishida’s early

theory of place during the mid-1920s was developed in response to Neo-Kantian epistemology.

In his place-theory of 1926, Nishida discusses the activity of the transcendental predicate that

renders subjects of discourse intelligible as objects of cognition in Husserl’s terms as noesis or

the noetic determination of the noema. But despite this terminological borrowing, Nishida felt

the need to surmount, along with Neo-Kantian dualism and Aristotelian substantialism, Husserl’s

phenomenology of consciousness.

Husserl’s own attempts to overcome Neo-Kantian dualism proved unsatisfying for

Nishida. He certainly recognized how Husserl looks into the issue of consciousness more directly

than the Neo-Kantians. Nevertheless, he accuses Husserl of objectifying consciousness. In his

1926 “Place” essay, he only briefly discusses Husserl but makes the point that even what Husserl

means by horizon of perception fails to transcend mere conceptual determination to grasp life

that is irreducible to concepts. And in his “Issue of Consciousness that Remains,” dealing more

directly with consciousness per se, he states that the consciousness Husserlian phenomenology

focuses on is still consciousness thematized as object, consciousness that one is conscious of.

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Even while illuminating the structure of consciousness that one is conscious of, it does not take

up as an issue the essence of the consciousness that is conscious of consciousness (Z7 219). The

consciousness it discusses is not yet the consciousness that is conscious, i.e., as act. 11

Even so-called “pure consciousness” is consciousness conceived, determined (Z7 223).

Thus, while positing the opposition between consciousness and its object, not only is the known

objectified but so is the knower, consciousness. In thematizing acts of consciousness, Husserl in

Nishida’s eyes is attempting to reduce the irreducible, objectify the unobjectifiable, without

looking deeper into the contextual underpinnings operative behind consciousness and its

objectifying acts. Presumably that is the sense of what he means by “life” mentioned above.

Even Husserl’s notion of Region in Nishida’s view is an objectified, noematized noesis (see Z4

191). 12 Nishida’s response to Husserl is to take consciousness explicitly as a “predicate,” that is,

as that which cannot be reduced to a grammatical subject to shed light upon its nature that

escapes objectification.

Consciousness as such is the “place” for the objectification of things. And that field of

consciousness as the place of relative nothing vis-à-vis its objects in turn must presuppose a

further place of absolute nothing. Further escaping that consciousness that might be reductively

objectified as the epistemological subject or the grammatical subject of “I think…X,” there lies

the very place allowing for that knower-known, subject-object, relationship. That place of all

self-other interactivity is the contextual world or “life” as a place ultimately delimited by

nothing, enveloping both subjectivity and objectivity. It is clear, however, that Nishida, even as

he himself begins to talk of the “I-thou” relationship and begins to look into the socio-historical

world, was never familiar with Husserl’s later theories on inter-subjectivity or the life-world.

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 Nishida’s response to Heidegger is somewhat similar to his response to Husserl. In his

1932 Determination of the Nothing in Self-Awareness Nishida initially states that both the

intuition of the pure ego in Husserl and the standpoint of understanding (Verstehen) in Heidegger

can be seen as examples of what he calls the determination of the absolute nothing in self-

awareness (mu no jikakuteki gentei 無の自覚的限定) and that phenomenology is thus

established on the basis of the latter (Z5 129, 134). But he also suggests that Heidegger’s notion

of the Verstehen of being nonetheless retains a remnant of subjectivist consciousness and thus

fails to get to the point of “seeing one’s own self-determination by becoming nothing” (Z5 132,

134). Heidegger objectifies Sein (being) vis-à-vis the understanding and fails to present it as bare

“fact” (jijitsu 事実) (Z5 133). Heidegger’s approach therefore is still abstract, not concrete (Z5

134).

Nishida’s critique appears to be based on his reading of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time),

one of the three works of Heidegger found in Nishida’s personal library, 13 and it appears that at

most he only glanced through the work. 14 Following Nishida’s critique of Heidegger, other

important Kyoto School philosophers, including those who had studied with Heidegger like

Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji, have also criticized Heidegger in a similar vein, charging

him for being stuck in the Western metaphysical standpoint of being. Many Kyoto School

thinkers after Nishida, while intrigued and fascinated with Heidegger’s thought, were,

nonetheless, not satisfied with Heidegger’s philosophy of being. But those Kyoto School critics,

at least of the earlier generations, confined their Heidegger readings to the period of Heidegger’s

fundamental ontology of Sein und Zeit and his pre-1930 years. Those of the later generation, who

do refer to Heidegger’s later works, such as Ueda Shizuteru, are more sympathetic to Heidegger.

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 Another phenomenologist that one might juxtapose Nishida’s mature philosophy with is

Maurice Merleau-Ponty although Nishida himself could not have been aware of Merleau-Ponty

as the latter’s philosophical works begin only in the last years of Nishida’s life. What I have in

mind is the world-dialectic in Nishida’s philosophy of the 1930s that in its radical reciprocity

surpasses in content the confines of its Hegelian language so that it becomes comparable to

Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the chiasm in his later years (i.e., The Visible and the Invisible).

The multi-layered crisscrossings of Nishida’s dialectic in the 1930s involves multiple

inversions, albeit with certain irreversible disjunctions that become evident in the 1940s. One

notices this, for example, in Nishida’s notions of the dialectical inter-determination between

individual and environment, of the universal’s determination of the individual and its reverse

determination (gyaku gentei) by this individual, and of the inverse correspondence (gyakutaiō)

between absolute and finite—all as relationships of place and implaced. And I think this

underscores both the strengths and weaknesses in Nishida’s thought vis-à-vis Hegel and

phenomenology.

A general weakness in Nishida’s theory of place is his use of Western metaphysical

concepts and terms in general and Hegelian motifs and terminology in particular, such as his

earlier understanding of place or predicate in terms of Hegel’s concrete universal (konkrete

Allgemeinheit; gutaiteki ippansha 具体的一般者) that differentiates itself in judgment (Z3 331,

347-48, 391, 400, 402, 405, 409, 431, 465, 517, 523), his general use of the motif of the

universal-particular relationship—taken from Western metaphysics—to explain the relationship

between place and implaced and between predicate and subject, and his use of the German

idealist dialectical schema of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or position, negation, and the

negation of negation. All of this from the perspective of post-Hegelian Continental and

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phenomenological developments seem antiquated. In fact, the Hegelian dialectical vocabulary

obscures what Nishida wants to convey.

Taking into consideration that place for Nishida is precisely what recedes to make-room

for its terms as opposed to Hegel’s concept (Begriff) that subsumes its terms into its totalizing

whole, the Hegelian terminology here is not helpful. Thus while Nishida regarded Heidegger as

not yet concrete and still abstract, Heidegger for his part, when questioned what he thought of

Nishida’s philosophy, responded that “Nishida is Western,” presumably in Heidegger’s

pejorative sense that Nishida’s thinking falls under the domain of Western metaphysics that

Heidegger at the time (1950s) was attempting to escape. 15

One might also recall how Heidegger viewed dialectics as veiling. 16 Nishida, as an

intellectual among the early generations of modern Japan that enthusiastically embraced

philosophy when it was being aggressively imported from the West, especially in its German

incarnations, sought to describe what he may have experienced in his Zen practice with the

terminology of Western, in particular German—mostly Kantian and Hegelian—philosophy. Like

his German forebears who sought to erect a logic (Logik) for metaphysics, Nishida looked for a

logic (ronri) that could expound it. Despite his critique of object-logic, Nishida never explicitly

raises the issue of metaphysical language—the kind of language he himself employed—and its

reductive tendency toward object-logic. And so one wonders whether Nishida’s attempt to

construct a “logic of place” harbors what Karatani Kōjin has identified as the “will to

architecture” operative behind Western metaphysics. 17

But it is precisely in that interrelational complexity that exceeds any mere dialectic and

for which Hegelian dialectics is inadequate that we find one possible contribution Nishida’s

philosophy of place might offer vis-à-vis for example Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world.

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The radical reversibility in Nishida’s dialectic of the 1930s, such as with the notion of reverse

determination, allows for individual autonomy despite the individual’s implacement in the

universal. The nothing underlying the dialectical universal in Nishida not only allows for

novelty, contingency, and indeterminacy, but also conversely a creativity on the part of the

individual element of the self-forming world. This sense of individual autonomy and creativity

may be lacking, or at least easily missed, in Heidegger even if it does not necessarily contradict

Heidegger’s notion of releasement (Gelassenheit) whereby the releasement or letting of being

has multiple significances, including being’s releasement of us into our own, letting us be, and

not simply our letting be or letting beings be. What Nishida does is to explicitly underscore the

autonomous creativity of the human individual even while it takes part in the self-formation of

the universal.

There is a further strength, concomitant to that reciprocity that allows for autonomy and

exceeds Hegelian dialectics, in Nishida’s place-philosophy and that can contribute to more recent

phenomenological discussions of place. That would be his thoroughgoing investigation of the

sense of nothingness belonging to the utmost place in its unsayability, penetrating to the

unthought margins—and neither side—of what in phenomenological terms would be the horizon

of intelligibility. For inheriting a Mahāyāna Buddhist mode of conception, Nishida distinguishes

this “true nothing” from the merely relative nothing that is but a negation—logical or

(me)ontological—of being.

The final place contextualizes and environs even what logically and ontologically would

be the ultimate opposition or contradiction between being and non-being. As such its nothingness

would have to transcend both being and its opposite. As it slips from any attempt to make it into

a subject of judgment, one cannot state that it is or is not; it cannot be predicated as being or not

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being (Z3 424, 503). Instead it is that which must be presupposed by any such utterance, giving

opposites their place of opposition (see Z3 415). From the Western philosophical perspective,

this is a novel take on nothingness and radical in the sense of reaching deep into the roots, radix,

of any opposition. Even if Nishida’s description of this sense of nothing as “absolute nothing”

(zettai mu) sounds metaphysical or archaic in English from a contemporary perspective, we need

to remember what it refers to, and that “absolute” (zettai 絶対) signifies being “cut-off” (zetsu-

絶-) from opposition (-tai –対) in general, even that of being and non-being, instead to embrace

or envelop them, on the basis of which Nishida characterizes this fundamental level of place as a

place of contradictory unity, itself “neither identity nor difference, neither being nor non-being”

(Z3 419).

Place as such is truly not an object (Z3 503), whether positively or negatively. In several

of my works I have called this sense of nothing, anontological to distinguish it from both the

ontological and the meontological. 18 It is this aspect of place that Nishida in his “Place” essay

also characterizes in existential terms as the place of “generation-and-extinction” (shōmetsu 消滅

) (Z3 423), that is, as the concrete immediacy of existence wherein life must face its negation,

death, so as to underscore the precariousness of being.

Furthermore, as the most concrete place that makes possible the various opposing

metaphysical standpoints that have been contended throughout the histories of philosophy, East

and West, the place of nothing embraces without being reduced to those dichotomized positions

of materialism or realism on the one hand and of subjectivism or idealism on the other hand. This

notion of a logical space that must be assumed by such oppositional and contradictory

relationships can add a new perspective to a phenomenology of place. A later Kyoto School

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philosopher who develops these positive elements of Nishida’s philosophy of place further and

brings them into the company of phenomenological concepts and terms is Ueda Shizuteru to

whom we now turn.

Ueda’s Philosophy of Place:

Nishida’s Kyoto School descendant—a student of a student of Nishida—Ueda Shizuteru, worked

upon those strengths of Nishida’s philosophy of place, developing it while avoiding Nishida’s

proclivity towards metaphysical language, instead recognizing and incorporating what

phenomenology has to offer to a philosophy of place. Ueda provides a thorough and deep

analysis of Nishida’s work primarily through two books, Reading Nishida Kitarō (Nishida

Kitarō o yomu 『西田幾多郎を読む』) of 1991 and Experience and Self-Awareness (Keiken to

jikaku 『経験と自覚』) of 1994. 19

In these works, he understands Nishida’s early concept of pure experience in terms of a

fundamental event (jijitsu 事実; also fact) that is pre-intellectual and pre-linguistic, preceding the

thought process that would dichotomize experience into subject and object, ideal and real (KJ

10). But as an act itself (katsudō sonomono 活動其物) it is also the source of language, thought,

and reality “dividing and developing from pre-thought to thought” (KJ 129; also see NY 107-

108). That initial event that evokes a pre-intellectual exclamation, “this what!” (kore nanzo! 是れ

何ぞ！), sounding the event, is the tremor opening what in the later Nishida’s terms is the place

of implacement of things (KJ 143).

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 The exclamation is the primal emotive enunciation that speaks without articulation while,

in the process, engendering words (see NY 104-105). Even the possibility of uttering “I”

(watashi 私), according to Ueda, occurs only on the basis of that primeval happening (KJ 6-7).

This leads to a sense of the I that is twofold: the I opposing the object as subject and the I opened

up in the disclosure of a place enveloping subject and object (KJ 114-116). In Ueda’s view this is

what led Nishida in 1926 to reconceive the I as a place or “placial self” (bashoteki jiko 場所的自

己)—a move that Ueda regards as initiating Nishida’s “placial turn” (bashoteki tenkai 場所的展

開) from the late 1920s to the 1930s, whereby Nishida, first reconceiving the self as a place,

turns his focus further upon the self’s own implacement within the broader place that is the

world (sekai 世界) (KJ 28). Ueda explains this broader and deeper sense of place in terms of the

twofoldness of place. The self qua placial self is not-self (ware narazaru われならざる, jiko

narazaru 自己ならざる) in the sense that it cannot be objectified as a grammatical subject or

reduced to the ego (KJ 114-116). But at the same time the self that is placial is itself opened to

the place wherein it is implaced (NY 319). One’s self-awareness that “I am a teacher,” for

example, implies, refers to, the place—context—wherein teacher and students are co-implaced

and coexist (see NY 319).

Place in Ueda’s reading of Nishida is explicitly multi-layered as the horizonal

structuring 20 of semantic and ontological places. It is the predicate-pole encompassing and

determining the grammatical subject, it is the self-enveloping the objects it thinks and knows, it

is the context enveloping the self in interaction with other selves, and it is the world

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encompassing the multiplicity of such contexts providing a comprehensive semantic space. Each

semantic place as concrete is juxtaposed with other places and is multi-layered upon one another

(NY 314-315). On this basis, the multi-layeredness of places within places and the co-being of

multiple places, converge in the world (sekai) as the final comprehensive place (NY 373).

No matter how multi-layered it may be, place as place, however, by definition is

delimited (NY 322) through further implacement. If we are to think of place in the

phenomenological terms of horizon (chihei 地平), as Ueda himself suggests, we see that each

horizon is itself limited and always implies a “beyond” on its other side, constituting the very

condition for its possibility (PSB 38). Thus, in explicating Nishida, Ueda makes explicit use of

the phenomenological notion of the structure of the horizon of experience (die Horizont-Struktur

der Erfahrung, keiken no chihei kōzō 経験の地平構造) as guide (NY 374). He takes what he

calls semantic space (imi kūkan 意味空間) as the world of the horizon of experience, a space

delimited on its hither side by the line of a horizon. And he notes that what is implied in this

metaphor of horizon is the other side beyond that line, constituting the limit of the possibility of

the world. There is thus another side of the horizon (chihei no kanata 地平の彼方) that overlaps

with the world horizon (BN 98). And each “beyond” on that other side of the horizon, as we

attempt to overstep the horizon, implies a further horizon as the limit of its place, and on and on.

There is an endlessness of implacement extending beyond each and every horizon with

no final horizon. All horizons in that sense recede into the dark as their horizonless “place” that

is their indeterminable determining condition, an indeterminateness signified in Nishida’s notion

of the place of absolute nothing (zettai mu no basho). In that sense, the world is implaced in the

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nothing. Here Ueda appropriates the Heideggerian terminology of the open (Offen, hirake 開け)

but describes this as an unlimited, undetermined, or indeterminate open (mugen no hirake 無限の

開け, kagirinai hirake 限りない開け) (KJ 28; NY 322) wherein the world as a comprehensive

semantic space is implaced. It is the marginless and bottomless space (yohaku oyobi sokonaki

gyōkan 余白および底なき行間) (KJ 30) that he also characterizes as an “open expanse” (kokū 虚

空) 21 (BN 106, 139), reminiscent of Heidegger’s notion of the “open expanse” or “free expanse”

(freie Weite) or “open that surrounds us” (das uns umgebende Offene). 22

What then was Ueda’s relationship to phenomenology and phenomenologists like Husserl

and Heidegger? Nishida, despite the obvious resonances between his notion of place and the

phenomenological concept of the horizon, was not necessarily enthusiastic or approving of the

findings of his phenomenological contemporaries, Husserl and Heidegger. Ueda, coming from a

later—the third—generation of the Kyoto School, seems to have a slightly more positive take on

phenomenology. While Nishida himself never had the opportunity to study abroad in Europe,

Nishida’s younger contemporary and co-founder of the Kyoto School Tanabe Hajime had

studied in Germany with both Husserl and Heidegger. And Nishida’s student Nishitani Keiji also

had studied in Germany with Heidegger. Thus, under the tutelage of Tanabe and Nishitani, the

later generations of the Kyoto School seem to have had a greater opportunity to learn of these

phenomenological philosophers. Nishitani was Ueda’s mentor and Ueda himself studied abroad

in Germany. As a third-generation member of the Kyoto School, Ueda certainly shows greater

appreciation for the insights and style of the phenomenological philosophers of Europe, as he

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appropriates and incorporates their thinking together with his development of Nishida’s theory of

place into his own philosophical thought.

The most obvious example is his appropriation of Heideggerian terms and concepts as

seen above, such as the “open” (Offen) and also “disclosedness” (Erschlossenheit) (both as

hirake 開け, the latter also as kaijisei 開示性, kaisei 開性), especially in his explanation that

Nishida’s sense of self-awareness (jikaku) ultimately means to be opened to (and by)

(hirakareteiru 開かれている) the openness that is the place wherein one is and to see oneself

within the opening of that place (NY 322-323). Ueda claims that how Nishida grasps

consciousness qua place or field indeed is akin to what Heidegger means by “the (t)here” (das

Da, gen 現) (KJ 125-126) and that we can explain Nishida’s notion of “place” with Heidegger’s

notion of “(t)here” (Da). He suggests that the two nuances of the German da in Heidegger—

“being present here” (gen ni koko ni 現にここに) and “being opened” (hirakarete 開かれて)—are

recognizable in the twofoldness of place found in Nishida (NY 347).

On this basis Ueda thinks Nishida’s duplicity of place as self and world approaches

Heidegger’s founding of the intentionality of consciousness upon the dis-closedness (die

Erschlossenheit) of being-(t)here (Dasein) as being-in-the-world (KJ 125; NY 347). He finds

Nishida’s position that the self—as a placial self (bashoteki jiko)—is opened to the place wherein

it is implaced, the place that is the “world,” to approach Heidegger’s recognition in Sein und Zeit

that being-(t)here (Dasein) is related to its “world” as being-in-the-world (NY 346). In turn Ueda

suggests that Heidegger’s “being-in” (In-sein) in being-(t)here’s “being-in-the-world” in

Nishida’s terms would mean “being implaced” (oitearu 於いてある) (NY 347). Ueda takes both

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Heideggerian being-in and Nishidian implacement to be equivalent ontological structures (sonzai

seikaku 存在性格) essential to being human (see NY 312) while likewise finding

correspondence in their notions of “world” as that wherein the human being exists.

Ueda, unlike many earlier Kyoto School critics of Heidegger beginning with Nishida, is

also well acquainted with the works of Heidegger after Sein und Zeit and on this basis expresses

greater appreciation for Heidegger’s thinking in general, including the latter’s later works. Just as

the world is founded upon the place of nothing for Nishida, Ueda finds that for Heidegger in his

1929 Was ist Metaphysik? (“What is Metaphysics?”), the world as world (Welt als Welt), the

coherence of beings as a whole, can be such only by being determined, delimited, by the nothing

(mu 無) (BN 50) whereby in being in the world, our “(t)here” is “held-out-into-the-nothing.”

Thus, he notices that the nothing (Nichts) is a decisive issue in Heidegger as well. But

what primordially and directly opens the world qua world, delimited by the nothing, for

Heidegger is anxiety (Angst) (BN 43-44, 53). 23 While understanding (Verstehen) discloses the

world in its meaningfulness, attunement (Befindlichkeit), of which anxiety is the fundamental

mood, discloses the world’s wholeness by exposing the nothingness delimiting it (BN 55-56).

The fundamental mood of anxiety (Angst) simultaneously discloses the nothing in our

thrownness of being-in-the-world and as the background of the foregrounded world into which

the latter’s meaningfulness slips away (BN 44). 24 Man, accustomed to and intimate with the

world as the comprehensive space of relations of significance, in anxiety faces the world as

disclosed by the nothing (NY 349). Ueda’s mentor Nishitani had charged Heidegger for thus

dichotomizing being and nothing in Was ist Metaphysik?, a dichotomization allegedly manifest

in this discussion of Angst in the face of the nothing as the other to being.

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 Ueda, however, points to a passage at the end of Was ist Metaphysik? where Heidegger

suggests that the proper response to anxiety’s disclosure to the nothing would be to release

oneself into the nothing (Sichloslassen in das Nichts) 25 (BN 58-59). Ueda sees this as

anticipating Heidegger’s eventual and “leaping” turn from his earlier to later thinking that

involves a deepening from anxiety (Angst) exposed to the nothing and to releasement

(Gelassenheit) setting one free into the nothing (BN 64). On this basis being and nothing are

seen as really non-distinct. Anxiety’s disclosure of the nothing thus demands a further

conversion to its more originary disclosure as one’s very “(t)here” (BN 54), whereby one enters

without reserve into the nothing, breaking through the mood of anxiety.

This requires a qualitative leap from the understanding (Verstehen) of the inter-worldly

semantic interconnections on this side of the horizon to the other that embraces and exceeds that

interconnectivity. And as the later Heidegger retrospectively comprehends his earlier notion of

being-(t)here as not confined to man’s mode of being but rather more primordially as the

“(t)here” of being itself (das Sein selbst), Ueda notices an analogous further turn in Nishida

whereby the field of consciousness (ishiki no ba) is ultimately opened in the direction of that

which exceeds it as the contextual scene transcending the subject-object relation (KJ 125-126),

and now reconceived and broadened in terms of the place enveloping I and thou (watashi to

nanji 私と汝) and eventually the place enveloping the individual vis-à-vis other individuals, that

is the world as it determines itself through these co-relating individuals—the world as the place

wherein the self is implaced.

Ueda also refers to, and appropriates, the ideas of a number of other phenomenologists

and existentialist philosophers. For example, in discussing how every horizon points to a further

horizon, Ueda refers to Karl Jaspers’ notion of the “encompassing” (or “embracing”) (das

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Umgreifende) 26 that appears in both Jaspers’ 1935 Reason and Existenz and 1937 Philosophy of

Existence. According to Ueda Jaspers proposed this as what transcends and comprehensively

envelops every possible horizon, while always seeming to recede from us, making each relative

horizon possible from yonder (NY 121-122).

Ueda also appropriates Jaspers’ words when he states that while we can never attain total

knowledge (Totalwissen, zentai chi 全体知) of the whole of what lies not only within but beyond

the horizon, in realizing the limits of knowledge a certain unlimitedness of knowledge is opened

up—a non-knowing that is a knowing of this fact, which Jaspers called “fundamental

knowledge” (Grundwissen, konpon chi 根本知) (BN 98-99). In addition to Karl Jaspers, Ueda

makes much use of German phenomenologist Otto Bollnow’s analysis of space in Mensch und

Raum and the loneliness experienced by modern man within its disclosed vastness (BN 94-95)

and the place of dwelling man builds within the open free space (freie Raum) (BN 110ff). Other

concepts of phenomenologists relevant to his analysis of place that Ueda appropriates are the

later Husserl’s notion of the life-world (Lebenswelt), the later Heidegger’s notion of the fourfold

(Geviert), Max Scheler’s notion of the environment (Umwelt), and Mircae Eliade’s notion of the

cosmos as involving a hierophany. 27

By incorporating the phenomenological insights of Husserl, Heidegger, Bollnow, Jaspers,

Husserl, as well as Scheler, Eliade, Merleau-Ponty, and others together with Nishida’s

philosophy of place Ueda develops his own unique understanding of human existence in its

worldly implacement. He expresses his creative standpoint, for example, in Place: Being-in-the-

Twofold-World (Basho: Nijū sekai naisonzai 『場所—二重世界内存在』) of 1992. Here he

recognizes a certain duplicity or twofoldness (nijūsei 二重性) in the wherein and implacement,

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constitutive of our world and of our being, and underscores this aspect of our existence. The

world on the one hand is a relational whole of meaningful connections stretched out over

semantic space, and on the other hand is disclosed upon an underlying and delimiting

nothingness. On the one hand the world is the comprehensive space of meanings or

significances, but on the other hand it is exposed to, and penetrated by, a meaningless excess

beyond the bounds of significance, and in that respect is itself a “nothing.” The wherein of the

world’s implacement is the boundless open (hirake), a hollow space beyond meaning that both

Heidegger and Nishida called the nothing (Nichts, mu 無), transcending and enveloping the

world.

Every place or whole of the meaningfulness of beings—as defined, de-limited—assumes

an exterior, an excess, an outside, beyond its horizon, that is something like an unbounded

openness (die unendliche Offenheit, mugen no hirake) (NY 313-314). The horizon of the world

as the comprehensive semantic space or frame of meanings, wherein we are implaced and

implicated, implies and is overlapped by, its other side that in terms of something is a nothing

beyond being, a boundless open or open expanse that exceeds the bounds of sense/meaning, a

“non-place” (hibasho 非場所) embracing “place” (BN 106, 139).

Ueda names this fundamental state of affairs, the twofold horizon (nijū chihei 二重地平)

(BN 98). While appropriating the phenomenological concept of horizon, Ueda stresses that the

horizon itself is twofold or two-sided, whereby its exterior or beyond is discontinuous with what

is on this side of it, its interior. And this precisely signifies the twofoldness of the world itself

(BN 101). And yet that other from which every horizon emerges and into which it disappears is

forgotten as we turn our gaze inward toward what emerges within the horizon of the world. But

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in fact the open expanse, in enveloping both sides of the horizon, permeates the world whereby

we stand upon an abyss right at our feet (BN 106, 139). To convey this idea of the “world amidst

the open expanse,” Ueda uses the fraction symbol, “world/open expanse (sekai/kokū 世界/虚空

),” but then reverses it with “open expanse/world” to signify that the open expanse is also amidst

the world.

The twofoldness of the world in turn implies for Ueda the twofoldness of human

existence. For Heidegger, our being-(t)here (Dasein) is a “being-in-the-world” that at the same

time, in its “(t)here,” is “held out into the nothing” (BN 50-51). For Nishida, our implacement in

place is at the same time ultimately to be implaced in an indeterminate open implacing that very

place—what Nishida called the place of absolute nothing (NY 313-314). While the self always

finds itself within a specific “world”—the contextual whole of meanings—the world in turn is

located within the limitless open that is a nothing.

According to Ueda, both self and world are thus enveloped by, implaced within, but also

permeated with the nothing. On this basis Ueda provides the formulae: “Being-(t)here is

implaced in the world implaced in the nothing” and “Being-(t)here that is implaced in the world,

by being implaced in the world, is at the same time implaced in the nothing in which the world is

implaced” (BN 51). And elsewhere, he states that, as being-in-the-world, man is implaced in the

world that is in turn implaced in the boundless open or open expanse (NY 374; BN 283). Our

being is thus a being-in-the-twofold-world (nijū sekai naisonzai 二重世界内存在)—both being-

in a “twofold world” and a “twofold being” in-the-world (BN 283).

Human existence is twofold in that it stands simultaneously within the horizon of the

world while also resting upon that empty expanse of the nothing. As place by definition is finite,

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delimited, we are delimited in our being-in-the-world by the horizon, whereby our implacement

is ultimately within the place demarcated by a non-place. Our being as such is twofold, facing-in

and facing-out of the world—inwards to the semantic space constituting the meaningful world

and outwards to the other irreducible to being or meaning, the unknown “other side of the

horizon” (chihei no kanata) constituting and restricting the possibility of the horizon itself (BN

97) and thus assumed by everything constituted within the horizon.

Conclusion: An Assessment of the Kyoto School’s Philosophy of Place:

Nishida pioneered the Kyoto School philosophy of place. To overcome the limitations of modern

epistemology that dichotomizes subject and object, Nishida posits place as the ultimate

situational context always already lived from out of which the judicative elements of

grammatical subject and predicate or the epistemological terms of subject and object are

abstracted out. And to overcome the concomitant metaphysical dualism of form and matter

stemming from Greek metaphysics, he understood place as a self-forming formlessness, a

nothing that forms itself into being.

While his placial approach in many ways resonated with phenomenological methods and

discoveries, and even appropriating certain phenomenological terms like Husserl’s noesis and

noema, he distanced himself from the two major thinkers of phenomenology, Husserl and

Heidegger. Nishida instead incorporated the pre-phenomenological German terminologies of

Hegel and Neo-Kantianism into his own style of writing. On the other hand, Nishida’s grand-

student—his student’s student—Ueda Shizuteru was very much aware of the resonances between

the thinking of certain phenomenologists of Germany and France and Nishida’s philosophy of

place. He further develops Nishida’s insights on place in consonance with phenomenology by

incorporating the latter’s insights concerning the horizon, the world, the open, alterity or the

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other, and so on, without losing or smothering Nishida’s own fundamental contributions to

understanding place, and on that basis constructs his own philosophy of being-in-the-twofold-

world.

What then does the Kyoto School philosophy of place as represented by the founder of

the school, Nishida, and its latest representative, Ueda, have to offer world philosophy today?

The unique contribution the Kyoto School offers in this regard is its recognition and deep

investigation of the underlying alterity to the meaningful world or world of meanings, the

nothing lying beyond the horizon that Nishida called the place of absolute nothing and Ueda

called the open expanse or unbounded open.

Why is this significant for us to today in the age of globalization? Globalization may

take, for example, the route of self-assertion on the part of a specific “social imaginary,” a

cultural or social sphere—whether of a people or a nation or an ideology or a religion—offering

its own set of values and meanings to make sense of the world, at the expense of others in the

universalization of its singular lifeworld. Some may argue that we see this today in the

globalizing spread of the consumer market or have seen it in the violent attempts to import

“democracy” or “communism,” Christianity or Islam.

Another route may be one of mutual humility amongst cultural spheres via an openness

allowing for differences. Nishida spoke of the global world or what he called the “world of

worlds” or “multi-world” (sekaiteki sekai 世界的世界) as a place wherein many distinct cultural

lifeworlds or socio-historical worlds themselves are implaced. What allows us to view the world

in such terms as a place of many is to see the openness beyond the horizon of each place,

imaginary, or world, that is, to recognize the contingency and finitude of each particular horizon,

world, or place. The foundation for the coexisting many can be no universalizing essence that

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would impose its own claim to universality upon the many at the exclusion of those that do not

fit that vision. The foundation would rather have to be a nothing that gives space for co-

existence, a ground that would unground any particular claim to universal essence.

Thus, Nishida took the place of nothing to be the primal spacing for the world of worlds.

Nishida expressed this vision as the world was plunging into World War Two. His thinking is

not entirely irrelevant today as globalization continues its advance. For Nishida, it is the very

non-substantiality of the world as the manifestation of the absolute nothing in its self-

formation—the place of nothing as the place of places—that through its dialectic of self-negation

permits and clears room for the reciprocal and autonomous determination of individuals,

permitting them in turn to act upon the world. The nothing of the world clears room for

autonomy, coexistence, and plurality. With no privileged or dominating center, the globe is thus

spatialized as a place for the co-implacement of regions (Z23 386), a place wherein various

cultures interact and coexist, a nothing wherein various mutual differences are realized (see Z13

19-20).

Within this space of a primal nothing, cultures can interact, each creating its own identity

vis-à-vis others, allowing for both deep-rooted commonality and irreducible diversity. In

recognition of the finitude of each of our being-in-the-world, this also calls for a posture of

reciprocal humility vis-à-vis one’s other/s. In the absence of an absolute ground of universality to

impose upon others, space is thus permitted for un-imposing interactivity between mutual others.

The acknowledgement of that un/grounding alterity that reminds us of our finitude and

contingency, the fragility of our modes of being and epistemic claims, encouraging humility vis-

à-vis one’s other, expands the space of our being-in-the-world as one for co-being and inter-

being. It calls us to bear in mind the indefinite and irreducible expanse wherein we all are in co-

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implacement amidst mutual difference—a space we must share and can co-define. In its call for

such an ethos of humility, we can thus look to Nishida’s philosophy of place.

Ueda’s contribution here is to work upon Nishida’s thinking in explicit conjunction with

phenomenologies of the world and place. For example, Ueda shows how Nishida’s contribution

to Heidegger’s understanding of being-(t)here’s being-opened in and to the world is that this

implies not simply our ecstatic ex-sistence (Existenz, Ek-sistenz) in Heidegger’s sense but our

self-less-ness (jiko-nashi 自己なし), our being without a self in the substantial sense (NY 347).

On this basis Nishida looks into the I-thou relation—which Ueda compares and contrasts with

Martin Buber’s I-thou relationship—and then the mutual relationship between individuals within

the world as sustained upon the broader expanse of the nothing (see NY 358).

Here Ueda finds Nishida’s distinctness from both Heidegger and Buber. For Ueda that

open expanse is where there can be a genuine encounter among mutual others, having escaped

out of their egos—that is, ex-sisting 28 in this new sense (datsuji 脱自, literally “escaping the

ego”) (see NY 194). And on the global scale this also becomes Ueda’s suggested solution to the

issue of what would allow for genuine dialogue and coexistence between distinct cultural-

linguistic worlds that Heidegger called “houses of being,” 29 a space holding the promise of

Nishida’s “world of worlds” (sekaiteki sekai). 30

For one encounters the other in authentic dialogue only by relinquishing the ego. And in

turn Ueda’s own contribution here to is to develop Nishida’s philosophy of place qua world by

eliminating the baggage of metaphysical language that is no longer convincing and incorporating

instead the terms and linguistic style of phenomenological thought that can better satisfy

Nishida’s own desire to overcome object-logic. In addition to his own conceptual contributions

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concerning the twofoldness of the horizon and the world, Ueda makes the insights Nishida tried

to express in his somewhat rough and awkward metaphysically infused style much more

palatable, with terminology inspired and influenced by phenomenology and post-

phenomenological thought. At the same time Ueda, however, corrects the lack of an explicit

ethics in Heidegger’s thought through Nishidian notions of self-lessness—working upon

Nishida’s notion of self-negation but minus the Hegelian dialectics—to clear the space for co-

being among others. In such ways Ueda makes apparent the merits of bringing together Kyoto

School philosophy with Western phenomenology.

To the above points, one might also bring their insights to bear upon further

contemporary issues that are relevant today aside from globalism. For example, in regard to the

issue of our relationship to the natural environment, in the face of ecological crises, the

recognition that we are implaced in a contingent world, the horizon of which is indeterminately

bounded by the other to human constructs, may help counter humanity’s plundering of nature

through the reduction or dissipation of man’s presumption of privilege vis-à-vis that other. In the

face of our world’s embeddedness within an ecological network that does not preclude the

unpredictable—the wild-ness of the wilderness—we have no real choice but to share

responsibility in caring for the environment.

Another pertinent issue today is virtual space. When speaking of co-being we need to call

attention to the variety of modes in which our sociality—across national, geographical, and

traditional cultural borders—is being realized today through social media and other virtual

domains. The formation of cyberspace as such (a) meeting place/s is another kind of formation or

realization of place in Nishida’s sense. The Kyoto School notion of place then does not have to

be confined to merely physical or mental, objective or subjective, or even existential, lived,

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places, but can encompass the virtual sense of place as well, bringing into question the whole

dichotomy between real and unreal or authentic and inauthentic senses of place. And in turn if

one takes Mark Taylor’s definition of the “virtual” as “the elusive matrix through which all

possibility and actuality emerge,” a domain marked and remarked by the uncanny ganz andere,

then Nishida’s place of nothing that implaces places of being within and Ueda’s twofold place or

horizon of the world—the world as horizoned and permeated by the “other side of the horizon,”

the empty expanse—can also be virtual places that as Taylor states have theoretical, practical,

epistemological, ontological, and axiological implications. 31

Certainly, the general Kyoto School recognition of the other to being that nevertheless

permeates being—Nishida’s place of absolute nothing and Ueda’s open expanse—in

underscoring the general finitude, indeterminacy, and contingency of our being and of our world

is an aspect of phenomena that phenomenology had previously not focused upon to the same

degree of thoroughness as the Kyoto School. It shows an aspect that allows for novelty and

alteration, thus loosening any congealed formations or fixed determinations of the world that

would claim eternity through the semblance of an absolute. The nothing (mu) as the

unpredictable and the irreducible is what allows for alterity but also alteration, thus untold

possibilities for the on-going recreation of the world to counter its self-enclosure vis-à-vis its

other/s, including other “worlds.” On the basis of the above, the Kyoto School philosophy of

place has much to contribute to a “phenomenology of place”—place in its multifaceted senses,

including both real and virtual, objective and lived—in the contemporary context.

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1
In this chapter I give all Japanese names in its traditional order of family name first followed by the

personal or given name. Hence Nishida and Ueda are both their family names, Kitarō and Shizuteru

their given names.

2
The Japanese original can be found in the first volume of The Collected Works of Nishida Kitarō

(Nishida Kitarō zenshū 『西田幾多郎全集』) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2003). There are also two

published English translations: An Inquiry into the Good, trans. Masao Abe & Christopher Ives (New

Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1990) and Study of the Good, trans. V.H. Viglielmo (Tokyo:

Japanese Government, 1960). In text references to primary works by Nishida will be given

parenthetically and identified with Z standing for Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Collected Works of Nishida)

followed by the volume number and pagination. The zenshū volumes are of the most recent edition

that started publication in 2000 except for Z18 and Z19 which are both of the 1966 edition. For a

discussion of what exactly is wrong with the subject-object dualism, see chapter 1 of my book,

Nishida Kitarō’s Chiasmati Chorology: Place of Dialectic, Dialectic of Place (Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press, 2015).

3
In Philosophical Investigations (Tetsugaku kenkyū 『哲学研究』), no. 123 (June 1926).

4
The latter book has been republished as Collected Works of Nishida Kitarō vol. 3 (Tokyo: Iwanami,

2003). The English translation of “Place” is published as “Basho” in Nishida Kitarō, Place and

Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō, trans. John W.M. Krummel & Shigenori Nagatomo (NYC:

Oxford University Press, 2011).

5
This essay was published initially in an anthology of essays by different authors, Anthology of Essays in

Commemoration of the Sixtieth Birthday of Dr. Tokuno (Tokuno hakushi kanrekikinen tetsugaku

ronbunshū) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten: 1927), and then was later inserted into Nishida’s own Thinking

and Experience Continued (Zoku shisaku to taiken 『続思索と体験』) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten) in

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 1937. My English translation is published as “The Remaining Issue of Consciousness,” trans. John

W.M. Krummel, Philosophy East and West, vol. 62, Nr. 1 (January 2012), pp. 44-59. Since the

publication of that translation I have to come to believe that “the issue of consciousness that remains”

would be a more accurate translation of the title.

6
Hylo-morphic refers to the form-matter schema that has been dominant throughout much of the

history of Western philosophy, traceable to Plato and Aristotle. Hylē (ὕλη) refers to matter and

morphē (μορφή) refers to form. The juxtaposition of the two in explaining the structure of reality

begins with Aristotle and his interpretation and development of Plato’s juxtaposition of eidos and

chōra.
7
A distinction that the Neo-Kantians inherited from Hermann Lotze, e.g., in his Logik: Drei Bücher. Vom

Denken, Vom Untersuchen, und Vom Erkennen (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1874); English: Logic in Three

Books: Of thought, Of Investigation, and Of Knowledge, trans. Bernard Bosanquet (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1888); and Metaphysik: Drei Bücher der Ontologie, Kosmologie und Psychologie

(Leibpzig: S. Hirzel, 1879); English: Metaphysics in Three Books: Ontology, Cosmology, and

Psychology, 2 vols., trans. Bernard Bosanquet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887). For Heinrich Rickert

on this, see his Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis: Einführung in die Transzendentalphilosophie

(Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1928), pp. ix, 300.

8
Aristotle, Metaphysics 1028b33-37 in Richard McKeon (ed.), The Basic Works of Aristotle (NYC:

Random House, 1941), p. 784-85.

9
I am using the term “implacement” in the sense of “to place in…” or “to be placed in…” In Nishida this

has an ontological and epistemological, and one might say also a phenomenological, significance.

Nishida also emphasizes how the place wherein something is “implaced” also “envelops” that thing.
10
On this see Mitsuhara Takeshi, “Nishida and Husserl Between 1911 and 1917,” Journal of Japanese

Philosophy, vol. 3 (2015), pp. 95-116.

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11
Unfortunately, in English there is no verbal form for “consciousness” (ishiki 意識) as there is in

Japanese, ishikisuru (意識する). Nishida uses both the noun form (ishiki) and the verbal form

(ishikisuru) in explaining this distinction between consciousness thematized and consciousness as the

act behind thematization.

12
On Husserl’s Region, see his Ideen, First Book, Part One, ch.1, §§9-10 in Edmund Husserl, Ideas

Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy First Book, trans. F.

Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub., 1983), pp. 18-23.

13
See Nishida Kitarō zenzōsho mokuroku (Catalogue of Nishida Kitarō’s entire library), edited and

compiled by Yamashita Masao (Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jinbunkeigaku kenkyūjo, 1983) referenced in

Ōhashi Ryōsuke, Nishida tetsugaku to haideggā (“Nishidian Philosophy and Heidegger”) in Nishida

tetsugaku: botsugo gojūnen kinenronbunshū (Nishidian Philosophy: Essays in Commemoration of the

50th anniversary of Nishida’s Death), ed. Ueda Shizuteru, (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1994), pp. 239-264, p.

263.n.2.
14
Nishida received the copy of Sein und Zeit from his student Mutai Risaku in 1927, the same year as its

publication in Germany (see Z18 327; also Z19 600). Z18 and Z19 here both refer to the 1966 edition

of Nishida Kitarō zenshū, not the edition of the 2000s.

15
D. T. Suzuki, “Erinnerung an einen Besuch bei Martin Heidegger” in Hartmut Buchner, Japan und

Heidegger: Gedenkschrift der Stadt Meßkirch zum hundertsten Geburtstag Martin Heideggers

(Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1989), pp. 169-172, 170. This was Heidegger’s response to

Suzuki Daisetsu (鈴木大拙) in a conversation they had in 1953 when Suzuki asked him what he

thought of Nishida’s philosophy. It is doubtful that Heidegger was too familiar with Nishida’s

philosophy and this judgment was probably based on what he heard about Nishida from his Japanese

visitors.

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16
See Martin Heidegger, Seminare (Gesamtausgabe Bund 15) (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005), p.

400; Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell & François Raffoul (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University

Press, 2003), p. 81.

17
See Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, Trans. Sabu Kohso (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).

Nevertheless—to continue with Karatani’s idea of “architecture as metaphor”—the nothing uncovered

in that attempt to erect a foundation, Nishida’s very own place of nothing, would ultimately

destabilize, unground, that construction, that is, metaphysics itself.

18
I use the Greek prefix an- to denote absolute irreducibility not only to the ontological (i.e., beings) but

also to its negation denoted by the Greek prefix me- (i.e., the meontological as non-being). Hence the

an-ontological encompasses both being and its opposite, non-being, both the ontological and the

meontological.
19
Ueda’s works will be identified as follows: BN = Basho: nijū sekainaisonzai (Place: Being-in-Two-

fold-the-World) (Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1992); KJ = Keiken to jikaku (Experience and Self-Awareness)

(Tokyo: Iwanami, 1994); NY = Nishida Kitarō o yomu (Reading Nishida Kitarō) (Tokyo: Iwanami,

1991); and PSB = “Pure Experience, Self-Awareness, Basho,” Etudes phénoménologiques, vol. 18,

1993, pp. 63-86.

20
By “horizontal structuring,” I mean the structuring of a horizon, taking “horizon” in its

phenomenological sense.
21
literally meaning “hollow void” or “vacant sky.”
22
Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens 1910-1976 (Gesamtausgabe Bund 13) (Frankfurt: Vittorio

Klostermann, 1983), p. 47; Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path About Thinking” in

Discourse on Thinking (NYC: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 58-90, p. 66.
23
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993), p. 187.
24
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 186, 343.

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25
Martin Heidegger, Wegmarken (Gesamtausgabe Bund 9) (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 2004, p.

122; Heidegger, Pathmarks, trans. ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1998, p. 96.
26
Karl Jaspers, Reason and Existenz: Five Lectures, trans. William Earle (NYC: Noonday Press, 1955), p.

52.
27
All in BN.
28
The implicit reference here is to Heidegger’s understanding of Existieren (to exist) based on its Latin

source word, existere, literally meaning “to step forth” or “to step out.” The point is that human beings

are not ontologically solipsistic beings. We exist by “stepping forth” into the world wherein we

interact with other beings. And as we do so our mode of being is shaped accordingly.
29
In Heidegger, “Aus einem Gespräch von der Sprache” in Unterwegs zur Sprache (Tübingen: Günther

Neske, 1959); and “Dialogue on Language” in On the Way to Language (NYC: Harper & Row, 1982).
30
Here I am developing what had been suggested by Bret Davis in “Conversing in Emptiness: Rethinking

Cross-Cultural Dialogue with the Kyoto School,” Philosophical Traditions, ed. Anthony O’Hear

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 186-187.

31
Mark C. Taylor, “Refiguring Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 77, no. 1

(March 2009), pp. 105-119, p. 110.

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Phenomenology of Place and Space in our Epoch:

Thinking along Heideggerian Pathways

Nader El-Bizri

Preamble
This chapter aims at investigating the question of the being of place and space from a

phenomenological standpoint that is orientated by selected Heideggerian directives in thinking,

and as these are specifically set against the background of the unfolding of the essence of modern

technology, while also taking into account the existential analytic of Dasein’s being-in-the-world

(In-der-Welt-sein). While I am guided by Heideggerian notions throughout this chapter, my

inquiry is not presented merely as a dense exegetical or hermeneutic interpretation of

Heidegger’s handling of the question of the being of place and space. I rather aim at

extending the phenomenological analysis of place and space beyond the immediate particulars of

Heidegger’s own thoughts by way of evoking selected Heideggerian leitmotifs in my own

reflection on advancements in technology as they unfolded after his era and within our current

21st century epoch. Such endeavor connects the phenomenology of place and space with

architectural thinking about the built and natural environments, including the simulated

conditions under which lived experiences can take place within sensory-enhanced virtual spaces

or through engaged ocular-motor and various perceptual interactions with them. This inquiry

accounts for some of the situated determinants of the embodied lived experience of being-in-the-

flesh, which characterizes the architectonic and topological attributes of dwelling in physical

concretized places, while also extending their application to thinking about immersed

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embodiments within mathematically determined artificial spaces that generate sense-stimuli

parameters through plenoptic projections and haptic sensors etc.

Dwelling and Things

To address the question of the being of place and space from a Heideggerian standpoint, our gaze

turns towards Heidegger’s own meditations on dwelling as set in his Bauen Wohnen Denken:

Building Dwelling Thinking (Heidegger 1954a, 145-162; Heidegger 1975, 145-161; Heidegger

1993, 347-363), and on what he also elucidated in his Das Ding: The Thing, and in his Der

Ursprung des Kunstwerkes: The Origin of the Work of Art (Heidegger 1993, 143-212).

Thinking about the essential nature of place and space is mediated in this context by way

of considering the unfolding of the essence of modern technology (das Wesen der modernen

Technik). This engages in a Heideggerian line of reflection over the phenomenon of en-framing

as Ge-Stell (Heidegger 1954a, 13-44; Heidegger 1993, 311-341), which constricts dwelling as

the event (Ereignis) that poetically gathers the fourfold (Das Geviert) of earth-sky-divinities-

mortals (Erde und Himmel, die Göttlichen und die Sterblichen) into their essential oneness. Four

regions of our being come together in the situated mode of poetic dwelling, and as sine qua non

for being freed in our relationship with modern technology. We are enabled with quietude rather

than harassment to use technological devices at certain times, or opt to be released from them at

other times, or not be hindered by the accidental malfunction or awkwardness in operating them

(Dreyfus and Wrathall, 2002, xv).

The ontological character of dwelling carries a spatial significance (Raumbedeutungen) in

attending to the question of being (Seinsfrage), which transcends the bounds of architectural

design and construction, while at the same time recognizing the merits of architecture per se in

sheltering the possibilities for poetic dwelling on earth. Thinking would therefore aim at tracing

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back the phenomenon of dwelling into that domain to which everything that is belongs; namely

by reflecting on the question of being in a manner that is unlike the quotidian ways of dealing

with everyday existent entities qua beings. To grasp the essence of dwelling amongst things we

ought to think about how they are admitted into the coalescence of the fourfold (Das Geviert) as

an essential singular event that gathers earth-sky-divinities-mortals into a primal oneness.

The gathering of the fourfold shines through things as a clearing (Lichtung) in the un-

concealment of the meaning, truth, and place of being. Such unveiling is worldly in its unfolding

in the midst of things, even though it is not literal in the sense of evoking the physicality of their

concrete thinghood per se; it rather happens in the manner they are thinging things that get

fetched back into their essence by thinking about one’s own being-in-the-world. Joyful,

beautiful, mysterious, and gracious things give us food for thought (Heidegger 1968, 31), and

thanks are owed for such gifts that are sent our way in earthly being. Thanking becomes thusly a

mode of thinking that evokes the νόστος (nostos) of homecoming, of feeling at home on earth.

This requires that we do not frustrate our earthiness with obsessions about what is alien to our

immediate lived situational worldliness, be it in the eschatology of imagining a transcendent

salvific hereafter, or being immersed in simulated artificial environments, or aspiring to colonize

the Moon and Mars, etc. Such contemplations need not compromise our earthly homeliness as

mortals under the heavenly sky-vault, and in how we have been historically attending to the

arrival and flight of the intimations of the signifiers of divinities.

A certain poetic feeling can arise in a given place when we encounter a thing that gathers

meanings rather than being a mere object in the background; like when a family heirloom is

discovered again when searching in a chest-drawer at home. Such prospectively poetizing

moments evoke the memory of those who have passed and are gone, and that make us ponder

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over our own being, or on what it is to be a mortal, and how we may leave a posthumous trace, a

legacy of sorts to posterity. The poetics of such moments are not simply echoes of the past, nor

are they evocative of escapist modes of daydreaming; they are rather openings within the

presencing of what glows through things as a meaning that is not en-framed by instrumentality or

utility in the age of the Ge-Stell. However, the same given thing, or an architectural locale, or an

immediate landscape, which usually inspire in us a certain feel of poetics can still be faced by us

with a sense of indifference in other quotidian occasions within our hurried, busied, hassled

everydayness. Under other circumstances, they instill in us again certain attuned moods that

solicit a meditative poetic gazing upon them, which shines through as an abundance in their

meaningfulness to us.

The particulars of such phenomena were analyzed with intimate and poetizing

phenomenological details in Gaston Bachelard’s Poétique de l’espace. For instance, he notes

that: “L’image poétique n’est pas soumise à une poussée. Elle n’est pas l’écho d’un passé. C’est

plutôt l’inverse : par l’éclat d’une image, le passé lointain résonne d’échos” (The poetic image

is not subjected to a certain thrust). It is not the echo of a past. Rather inversely: it is through the

glow of an image that the distant past resonates with echoes [English translation is mine]). This

evokes images of what is encountered in our corner in the world, as the home, in its drawers,

chests, cupboards, corners, shelves, attics, garden-sheds, etc. In the concrete everydayness

(concrète journalière) some simple observations can take on a sublime sense via a worldly

reverie. “Dès que nous sommes immobiles, nous sommes ailleurs ; nous rêvons dans un monde

immense. L’immensité est le mouvement de l’homme immobile” [As soon as we are immobile, we

are elsewhere; we dream in an immense world. Immensity is the movement of the immobile man

(English translation is mine)]) (Bachelard 1958, 169).

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 When taking the case of immediate perception and of vision in particular, a thing is never

given with immediacy in its wholeness all at once and in each of its perceivable sides. It is rather

disclosed perceptually through a sequence of ocular-motor perspectives that open up as that thing

moves or as an observer turns around it. Its sense of unity as a thing is all along the reference for

the angles and edges under which it is perceived, despite the manifoldness of its unfolding

appearances in space-time. Perceiving is a spatial-temporal process that is given sequentially,

and the inherent unity of a perceived thing structurally underpins all the perceptual instances of

its appearing. In looking at things in the world, we imagine them, remember them, recognize and

discern them as unified entities out of the multiple perspectives we gather of their angles, edges,

and faces in spatial-temporal displacements within the continuum of the manifoldness of their

appearances. This mode of perception is experienced as well within the virtual environment in

terms of how synthetic perceptual fragments are gathered in virtually constituting a synthetically

simulated thing. However, such seeming thinghood is not underpinned by a unified thing per se,

but is an ordered manifoldness of sense-data that sequentially gives the semblance of there being

a thing, while a physical thing does not need a synthesizing process for it to be, rather it is simply

a material hyletic existent that is perceived in the continuum of the unfolding of its perceivable

sides under healthy psycho-physiological conditions of the observer. This is the case given that

psycho-physiological disorders psycho-physiological can result in apperception and associative

visual-spatial agnosia, which cause impairments in recognition due to an incompleteness in the

forming of the whole synthesis of a percept via sight. There are also situations of misperception

as they unfold via hallucinatory experiences. In these various distinct cases of spatial and

oculomotor disorientation, appearances are experienced as being real even if they do not

correlate with present actual things in the world; including blindness to configuration and

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ordering of distinct entities in space, layout of edges, faces, colors (such as achromatopsia,

prosopagnosia, simultagnosia, topographagnosia, along with symptoms of alexia, dyslexia, and

agraphia)

A phenomenological analysis in a Husserlian sense can aid us in this regard by also

meditating on the noetic-noematic correlation in the intentional act via a transcendental turn

towards reflecting on the structure of our own conscious experience, while still calling to be

directed “to the things themselves!” This is non-Heideggerian in orientation, since Heidegger

takes Husserl’s call literally to mean “to the phenomena themselves!” by way of defining

phenomenology in Sein und Zeit as “letting that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very

way in which it shows itself from itself” (Heidegger 1953, §7c). However, in Husserlian terms,

the noetic act is correlatively directed towards a noematic intentionally-held object, whereby the

noetic content is the directional act-process as orientated towards the idealized sense (Sinn) of

what is perceived, judged, described, constituted. Intentionality is grasped in this context as a

directed experiencing of things in the world that is mediated via consciousness. The noseis

(νόησις), as understanding and intellection, designates a concept cum idea that is perceived in the

mind (nous; νοῦς), while the noema (νόημα) is what is thought about, be it an object or the

content of the thought, judgement, or perception. The noetic is a mental judgement while the

noematic is what is intentionally judged, and is as such what fills the judging act with its

intended sense. The act of noetic apprehending has a specific noematic object that is

apprehended, whereby the noema (qua the object-as-intended) has the potential of correlating to

multiple acts of noesis (Husserl 1962, 238).

While phenomenology thinks about such phenomena in connection with worldliness and

situated emplacement in the world, its analytics can also inform the investigation of virtual

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spaces as synthetic artificial domains that extend the experiencing of things by way of

oculomotor simulations via somatosensory systems that enhance the experience of cyber-

immersion. This state of affairs can hold potentials for disclosing the synthetic plasticity of

things beyond what we experience in our situated being-in-the-world-in-the-flesh, while still

soliciting a reflective self-thinking about what it is to be in the world. This also calls for thinking

about what underpins the simulated realm physically qua corporeally as an actual situated

worldliness in presencing in the flesh, which grounds the mere simulated appearing of things

within an experiential virtual space, while at the same time assisting us in investigating the

structure of perception.

Presencing and Embodiment

Living in the flesh (σάρξ; sárx), and experiencing it, is a prototype of being (l’expérience de ma

chair comme prototype de l’être). Thinking about the flesh (la chair) in phenomenological terms

against the background of Heidegger’s existential analytic of Dasein and of being-in-the-world

(In-der-Welt-sein) is a development in thought that is attributed to Merleau-Ponty, which aids

our inquiry concerning embodiment and presencing that characterize my inherence in the world

(Merleau-Ponty 1945, 291; Schürmann, 1997b, 54-63). It is also an experiencing of worldliness

as a realm of nutrition and food (le monde est un ensemble de nourritures) that sustains the life-

mode of existing (Levinas, 1991, 45-46). This turn towards a focus on nutrition and food is an

extension of thinking about being-in-the-world with others as a mode of embodied experiential

being-in-the-flesh that moreover evokes sexuality (être sexué) libido and eros as its attributes.

Such embodied existence carries an ontological priority over the ontic grasping of the world

technically as a system of tools and utilities. However, the topological character of ontology in

thinking about place, situated-being, embodiment, presencing, can potentially extend the worldly

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existential analytics of Dasein into what is existentially experienced within the realm of the

simulated here/there (Da) in the virtual realm as well.

Sein (being) as Anwesen (presencing) is the presence (Anwesenheit) of what presences

(Anwesende), whereby presencing is a situated emplacement in which us and things are gathered

in coming to presence (Malpas, 2007, 2-3, 11, 14-15). Presencing in the virtual realm, through

enhanced somatosensory simulations, is closer to actual perceptions and poignant attestations

than how our imagination constitutes and inhabits literary spaces-times as evoked through

chronotopes, or in being captivated by performative events, such as in theatre plays,

choreography, pantomimes, or in the scenarios of moving-pictures, or by even imagining non-

worldly realms as inspired by the exegesis of religious scriptures with their narrations and

suggested images of inferno, purgatorio, paradiso. Such circumstances call for thinking about

the embodied experience that can take place beyond the realm of being here/there in the flesh.

We can distinguish in this context between the somatic state (σῶμά; sōmá) of animated

embodiment, be it real or artificial cum virtual, and the mode of my being-in-the-world-in-the-

flesh (and I am coining this long hyphenated designation by way of combining Heidegger’s and

Merleau-Ponty’s modes of parlance in thinking about the body and presencing). The notion of

embodiment exceeds my situation of being-in-the-flesh as a living organic being. An animated

physical body can have interrelated kinesthetic parts that generate an experiencing of

embodiment that is not readily correlative with that of being a body-in-the-flesh.

Synthetically-embodied simulations via ordered sense-date can generate a somatic

experience at the interfaces between the physical space-time and the virtual one, which gives a

semblance of motion in the simulated environment with an accompanying parallel mobility in

the physical realm that is mimetically isomorphic with it or not. A movement of a technological

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device with the hands in being-in-the-flesh in the physical space can generate complex simulated

fuller virtual-body motions in the cyber realm (a push with the hand on a game control-device

can generate the simulation of a fuller bodily motion in the virtual environment). A more

advanced form of immersion that uses goggles, gloves, and auditory devices can generate a

closer form of correlation between the actual motions of the body-in-the-flesh and the symmetric

corresponding simulated kinesthetic of the virtual embodiment. This can be experienced with

auto-morphism through avatars or via telepresence when being paired-up with a robot at a

distance, which responds to the bodily gestures in the flesh in terms of robotic motions. Bodily

limbs can potentially find kinesthetic extensions in equipment, even if as simple as driving a

vehicle that involves a sense of extendedness in distance-judgement and proprioception that

increases with dexterity, or the motor bodily engagements in biking, skate-boarding, let alone

having advanced high-technology tools that facilitate quasi-embedded presencing in virtual

spaces.

A psychosomatic awareness can help in the feeling of being a detached and unharmed

observer or actor within the simulated realm, and grasping this as a broadening of perspectives or

of bodily proprioceptive dexterity and choreography beyond what is normally constrictive

physically in being-in-the-flesh. This also allows for controlling impulses via situation-

appropriate responses as mediated through make-belief virtual actions. These give some

distancing from everydayness in virtual zones of proximal reach, which may also stretch our

worldly capabilities without us being harmed (such as simulating the piloting of a plane,

exploring an alien environment, maneuvering in simulated settings of warzones, or being paired-

up with tele-operated robots or drones in out-of-reach or hazardous terrains). Higher modes of

realism in the applications of cyber technology aim at closing the embodiment gap between flesh

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and silicon, whether with Artificial Intelligence, robotics, holographic appearances, or enhanced

virtual space-time interactive immersions via sensorial, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive devices.

Being-in-the-flesh is a worldly emplacement unlike the virtual-embodiment that

generates lived synchronous experiences in simulated synthetic environments. My being-in-the-

world-in-the-flesh always underpins the experiential realm of being in a virtual space-time as

generated via computer-mediated domains of quasi-presencing. The immersion via synthetic

manifold experiences within a virtual space passes by way of lived sensorial, kinesthetic, and

proprioceptive attributes of embodiment; and yet this is so insofar that they are simulations that

give sensations without confusing our awareness that we are actually in the physical world of

being-in-the-flesh that grounds such multisensory simulated performative happenings (Ford

Morie, 2007, 123-138).

Transhumanist futurology can contemplate the idea of transferring human consciousness

into an artificial domain of sentience, which can also assume a synthetic mode of oculomotor and

proprioceptive virtual embodiment with cognitive enhancements. This can resonate with futurist

projections about advancements in biomechanotronics, prosthetic biorobotics, cybernetic

organisms or humanoid/animatronic androids/actroids, or superintelligence A.I. agents capable

of reinforcement-learning through the algorithms of judging via trial and error in acquiring skills

as possibly supported by quantum computing etc. It can also be a form of substitution within the

virtual realm, whereby the experience of presencing becomes immersed in the simulated

environment via a fixation on what is witnessed and handled with proximity within it. What is

experientially substituted by virtual embodiment in the situated presencing in the concrete mode

of being-in-the-flesh, even if the vital/biological state is ever present without always being

mindful of it. It is from the domain of its concretized being that embodiment in the flesh is

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exposed to swings in mood (Stimmung) such as anguish, boredom, guilt, unease, or joy, elation

etc. It is also from the state of being-in-the-flesh that health is the reality of the living body,

which needs to be attended to with care, and through nourishment, physical shelter, etc. An

otherness is assumed as an acting role in the virtual realm without being necessarily who we are

in the world, and yet, despite its occurrence within a cyber-realm, it is still correlative with

intentions that belong to our actual Dasein in being-in-the-world. Whether in the concrete

worldly realm of being-in-the-flesh, or as immersed into a simulated sense of virtual

embodiment, we become attuned to not be ourselves when we let our presencing turn into that

which attends to the mood of what is other than ourselves, as a neuter they-self (Das Man) of the

actual quotidian life or via online quasi-identity-transmutation in the cybernetic realms.

The cyber and tele-communication technological devices are increasingly being

experienced as enhancing-extensions of our bodily senses (haptic, visual, and auditory). These

accompany our daily dealings for most of the waking hours, and engage us in mediated

interactions that do not involve face-to-face encounters in the flesh with others, as well as

altering the etiquette and ease in the flow of our communications and conversations. This state of

affairs involves a sharper separation between the interactive flux of saying (as an actual lived

activity that is accompanied with facial expression and actual bodily gestures that are refracted in

the speech acts) and the sequence of what is said (as a series of set entities that are typed,

recorded, or mediated via the symbolic use of smiley-icons in cyber tele-communication). The

face-to-face is the basis of ethical relations with the other. It affects relationships at work, in the

family, friendship, romance, and involves presencing in a concrete place and real time, as well as

preparedness in attires, attitudes, and bodily dispositions, while genuinely facing the other person

with minimal mediations. This state of affairs is being reconfigured through tele-communication,

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which entails a hiddenness of the face, a disappearance of the voice with its tonalities, the

assuming of quasi-identities that do not authentically emanate from the concreteness of our

being-in-the-world-in-the-flesh.

Dasein
The being which we ourselves are in each case, and that meditates over its possibilities of being

as a mortal, is designated by Heidegger as: “Da-sein”; namely as “being there/here” in a worldly

situated manner that is grasped as “être-là” qua “being-here” or “être-le-là” qua “being-the-

here” (Beaufret, 1973, 51; Beaufret, 1985, 113-115). Addressing the question concerning our

mode of being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein) passes from the perspective of Heidegger’s

fundamental ontology via an existential analytic of Dasein (existenziale Analytik des Daseins).

This is the situational predicament of the mortal who is concerned about its being-

toward-death: Sein-zum-Tode (Heidegger 1953, 12, 61; Heidegger 1996a, 10, 57) with angst

from what annihilates all its existential possibilities from within its own existence (Sartre 1943,

594-595). This evokes being towards a futural (zukünftig) past that is most certain, and yet that is

indeterminate in the circumstances of its occurrence with unfinished quality, whereby one’s

wholeness (Gänze) is only reached at death.

The elucidation of the question of being (Seinsfrage) against the horizon of the

interpretation of time (Zeit) happens by way of the conception of Dasein as temporality

(Zeitlichkeit). As mortals, we reflect on our being-in-the-world as a mode of being-toward-death

when not busied by our hurried and hassled everyday dealings through our responses to the

distracting demands of the public neuter they-self (Das Man). Dasein is my mode of being-in-

the-world in such a way that I am also situated and engaged with immediacy in my worldly lived

affairs, while being also aware of the contingency of such engagement that always depends on

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my being there/here (Da) in the world. This state of affairs points to the in-authenticity in the fall

of Dasein as prey to the being-with (Mitsein) of the impersonal and neuter they-self (Das Man)

of quotidian and escapist public anonymity. In such circumstances, Dasein is oblivious of its

own authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) as a mortal destined toward death. A concern for disclosing the

primal sense of being takes up the question of its meaning, truth, and place as lived issues that

call for care (Sorge). Dasein is always worldly and ever entangled with its worldliness. This state

of affairs points to an ontic-ontological priority that designates what is mine in its ownmost

existential and situated lived essence. Heidegger uses the expression “Dasein” (as an

appropriated German appellation that can generally refer to “existence”) in view of assisting him

in overcoming the language of the substance-subject of classical metaphysics that used terms and

notions such as “soul”, “ego”, “I”, “self”, “subject”, “person”, “human”.

Dasein is always accompanied by an attuned mood, like concern, care, angst, dread,

nausea, ecstasy in its thrownness (Geworfenheit) and projection (Entwurf) unto its possibilities

that are perceivable before it or that are hidden. It is through such possibilities that Dasein

understands itself with foresight in its temporal finite being. Thinking about thought as Dasein’s

self-talk resonates with the oldest of thoughts in the Platonic Θεαίτητος (189e) dialogue,

wherein, Socrates responds to the queries of Theaetetus by defining thought “as the talk which

the soul has with itself about any subjects that it considers”; λόγον ὃν αὐτὴ πρὸς αὑτὴν ἡ ψυχὴ

διεξέρχεται περὶ ὧν ἂν σκοπῇ (Plato 1921, 178).

Dasein grasps its ownmost potentiality-for-being as an indeterminate inevitable death, but

not simply understanding mortality as a fact of bodily perishing; rather seizing every possibility

(Möglichkeit) through a call of conscience (Gewissensruf) to be oneself as individuated by

existential angst. Dasein has resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) in its authentic mode of being by

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taking upon itself its own releasement (Gelassenheit) towards assuming its ultimate possibility as

being a nullity (Nichtigkeit). Dasein is existenziell in grasping all that relates to its own existence

and ontic (ontisch) facts, by taking the world as a totality of things, while being Existenzial is the

ontological (ontologisch) structure of its worldly existence.

Reflecting on our mode of being-in-the-world evokes the phenomenon of the dwelling of

mortals, without this darkening the place of our earthly abode in the flesh, despite being

anguished about our own ending (Heidegger 1993, 352-353) and that of loved ones; since a

mortal is already dying in being-toward-the-end (Heidegger 1953, 254; Heidegger 1996a, 235).

Dwelling is consequently a manner of timing as well as being a mode of spacing in the mortal’s

being-ahead-of-itself towards its bodily perishing. If death “is” you are “not”, and vice versa …

there is an abyss separating the present from death; si tu es, elle n’est pas…si elle est, tu n’es pas

… il y a un abîme entre le présent et la mort (Levinas, 1991, 59, 73). The mortal is prevented

from dying by death itself (empêché de mourir par la mort même), whereby, in embodied living

in the flesh, an external bodily death clashes with an inner mortality (comme si la mort hors de

lui pouvait désormais que se heurter à la mort en lui), and the affirmation of being alive is

opposed by another self-assertion about one’s own death: Je suis vivant … Non, tu es mort!

(Blanchot 2002, 9-11, 15, 17).

Death becomes a horizon of resoluteness for disclosing one’s own dwelling-in-the-world

in an authentic mode of being that does not shrink back in fear from the nothing (Heidegger

1953, 185; Heidegger 1996a, 174). A courage to be transcends soldiery fortitude in wondering

about the meaning, truth and place of one’s own being even in the “loneliness of an anchorite”

(Tillich 1954, 30-31; El-Bizri 2015, 109-114). Authenticity becomes manifest in not falling prey

(Verfallen) to the public domain of the neuter Das Man (they-self) that comforts Dasein about its

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death and let it become lost in everyday preoccupations (Heidegger 1953, 191; Heidegger 1996a,

178). However, the non-worldly character of the nothing in the Heideggerian sense of

worldliness lets an ontological difference emerge between the being of beings (Sein des

Seienden) and beings. This calls for thinking ontologically about what is different from all there

is (Heidegger 1998, 362-363), and specifically as disclosed from the thought that reflects on the

belonging of the nothing to being (Heidegger 1993, 108-110). Such disclosure (Erschlossenheit)

is a happening of truth as un-concealment (Unverborgenheit) qua ἀλήθεια (alêtheia) that

recollects what has been ceded to an abandonment by being (Seinsverlassenheit), and as marked

by our deepened oblivion of being (Seinsvergessenheit) in the age of the Ge-Stell (en-framing) of

modern technology.

Even if major advancements in Artificial-Intelligence, robotics, and computer-generated

quasi-environments take place with greater realism, and that they touch upon the poetics of the

spheres of art (pictorial, plastic, performative), what remains essentially mine is my being-in-the-

world-in-the-flesh as a temporal mortal who is destined in finitude to death. This being the case

due to my own Dasein and its care, angst, and resolve in taking it upon itself to seize its

existential possibilities, whereby “the time that passes” becomes a euphemism for saying

“death”.

Dasein is time (Zeit), in being temporal in its destining towards its most certain and yet

indeterminate existential end (Heidegger 1996, 10-14), and temporality (Zeitlichkeit) is the

horizon of its existential analytic. The dread from the nothing in which we are held as mortals

makes us restless about the time that passes away despite the newness it promises as a future. In

the dreadfulness of experiencing the nihil, a gaping hole opens up in being that swallows the

world and hammers meaning through which language hooks into worldly phenomena. The angst

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that the dread from the workings of the nihil brings about is subsumed in Heidegger’s allusion to

the interpretation of Sein (being) via Nietzsche’s der Wille zur Macht (will to power) and die

Ewige Wiederkunft des Gleichen (eternal recurrence of the same). These projected thoughts

attempt to picture what has independence from the time that passes away and is annihilated. This

state of affairs solicits a sense of revengefulness and repulsion from the passing away of time, by

willing everything to be akin to an eternity of sameness that marks all becoming and allows rest

to happen in motion (and thinking of rest herein in terms of immutability and as such of what is

of the order of universality). Such phenomena are at work within the unfolding of the essence of

industrial technicity as the advent of the age of the rotating mechanical power in the reproduced

recurrence of the same, and in modelling reality via mathematical matrices (Heidegger 1968,

105-108).

Thought becomes remembering-expecting across generations of mortals in the three

modalities of time: of past ancestors that have been, of present contemporaries we live with, and

of future descendants who are yet to come as posterity. Such state of affairs can take an

architectonic sense in terms of the manner traces of mortals are left in stone, in wood, in codices,

and ultimately in the emergence of what we collect in archives of their belongings, and of

edifices they leave behind for us to dwell in as heritage, or that we possibly cede to ruin.

Archiving becomes in itself an art that has its own science, which makes its way into shaping

certain modes of thinking in connection with scholarship in approaching the handed down over

manuscripts and artefacts with a penchant for documentation. Moreover, a commentary becomes

narrowly set in its contextual determinants to the point that it cannot be interpreted

hermeneutically in connection with posterity. The archives become anchors that resist the time

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that passes away, and make room for a depository as a place that receives the traces of ancestors

and contemporaries, and safeguards them posthumously.

Equipment and Technicity

Heidegger makes a distinction between the Vorhandenheit (presence-at-hand), which relates to

the ontic factuality of things and concepts, and refers to disinterestedness in observation, and the

Zuhandenheit as a readiness-to-hand or a handiness of the equipment that is used with dexterity

to accomplish a task in the very act of doing. The aspect of equipmentaility evokes the

distinction between the know-how, as what presences in being ready-at-hand as Zuhandensein

(as the handy thing on/at hand; à-portée-de-la-main), and the know-what as the objectively

present-at-hand Vorhandensein (Heidegger 1953, 42, 69). There might indeed be a technical,

utilitarian, functional, as well as epistemic priority of the Zuhanden over the Vorhanden, wherein

the mastery of handling tools and equipment gives practical knowledge that allows a better grasp

of the physical characteristics of objects (McManus 2012, 190-198). Equimentality and

technicity turn what is set in Vorhandenheit into the handiness of Zuhandenheit, like in handling

a tool (Werkzeug) in the technical sense. The phenomena of Vorhandenheit and Zuhandenheit

cannot characterize Dasein that is always mine in its being (Jemeinigkeit). This is the case even

if the Ge-Stell (en-framing) of the unfolding of the essence of modern technology (das Wesen

der modernen Technik) posits me as standing-reserve (Bestand) that is readied to be ordered

about as a form of functional or utilitarian resources like the das Zeug/equipment (Heidegger

1954a, 23-28).

Being immersed in the cybernetic virtual realm is a form of being framed within what is

technically determined, and this further enhances the potentials of fusing one’s being-in-the-

world with what is operative as an equipment that affects our sense of space-time when we are

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embedded within its workings. Equipment frames worldliness with a ready-at-hand

instrumentality, and yet the world is not a mere assemblage of things under an instrumental

ordering (Malpas 2012, 28). Heidegger sensed a peril (Gefahr) in the planetary dominance of

Ge-Stell; however, he also signalled that from such danger a saving power might still arise, since

Dasein is not a thing that is objectively present for it to be readied to become merely a resource

per se.

Angst from the time that passes away, from what annihilates from within being, also calls

through its essence for safeguarding the time of others in not hindering, obstructing, or

neglecting their existential possibilities. This call of conscience is set against the horizon of the

being of others towards death, to be at peace with each other in our stay amidst things, in

compassion, mercy, dignity, empathy, which unfurl as charity, hospitality, or parenting. This

contrasts with the claims made by Levinas in his critique of Heidegger existential analytic of

Dasein, which he sees as being conducted from the standpoint of the impersonal lonely character

of Dasein (Dasein esseulé) that stands in a relation of side-to-side (côte à côte) with others,

around a common project, theme, or goal, instead of being in a face-to-face relationship with the

other. According to Levinas, this constitutes the meaning of Heidegger’s notion of

Miteinandersein, as being reciprocally with one another: être réciproquement l’un avec l’autre

(Levinas 1991, 18-19, 69, 88-89; El-Bizri, 2006, 293-315). The Heideggerian outlook does

nonetheless call for safeguarding one’s own possibilities, and those of others, while aiming to

shelter and spare them from the finitude of time in not being harassed and ordered about.

However, the eventfulness of certain happenings hold sway upon us in appropriative,

challenging, and ordering manners that are not simply of our own mere doing, and precisely as a

destining that is brought our way via the unfolding of the essence of modern technology in our

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era that is not technological per se: das Wesen der Technick ist nichts Technisches (Heidegger

1993, 311).

This state of affairs holds mastery over the revealing of truth (das Entbergen) by framing

beings through calculative commands that are allotted for them as energies or power reservoirs;

namely as Bestand qua standing-reserve (Heidegger 1993, 322). The en-framing (Ge-Stell) event

overwhelms and subjugates all other possible ways of revealing truth (Wahrheit), whilst

challenging forth, commanding, ordering, and harassing all beings with demands to supply

answers, energies, powers, stockpiles, and in being ever-readied and on-call. It is thusly posited

in itself as a danger (die Gefahr) that potentially effaces the possibilities of dwelling via sheer

manipulability, and belongs through this to a metaphysical history of being (Seinsgeschichte)

that is marked by an oblivion of the question of being (Seinsfrage): “The essence of technology

comes to the light of day only slowly” … “this day is the world’s night rearranged into merely

technological day” (Heidegger 1975, 117). We are not only forgetful of the being of beings in

our distracted handling of beings, but more fundamentally, we are oblivious historically of

remembrance in terms of forgetting our oblivion as well.

Un-concealments via tekhnē and poiēsis correspond with the calling of the artwork upon

us to dwell poetically on earth, and by fetching the artistic phenomenon back home into its

essence. “Where danger is, there grows the saving power too!” (Hölderlin 1943, 190; Heidegger

1975, 118; Heidegger 1993, 333); and saving sets what is to be spared freely into its essence

within the unfolding of its destiny by releasing beings (Gelassenheit) from what holds sway over

the disclosure of their essence (Heidegger 1998, 126-127).

A space of freedom from the hold of the Ge-Stell of modern technicity can be opened-up

as a rift that turns into a leeway or cleared region, which makes-room for potential existential

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possibilities within our en-framed finitude. Dwelling happens in the cleavage (Die Zerklüftung)

as the liminal gap in-between the opposing regions that are held together despite their separation.

Such cleft is not a mere tearing, but rather an intimacy in which opponents belong to each

other in unison, through outline, figure and Gestalt (El-Bizri 2014, 27-38), and outside the hold

of Ge-Stell, by gathering earth-sky-mortals-divinities, and giving them a worldly shelter. As

Walter Benjamin remarked in his Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen

Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction): self-alienation

may have reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic

pleasure of the first order (Benjamin 1976, 612-634; Benjamin 1977); and what came after his

epoch revealed horrific manifestations of such power of destructibility and production of death.

Reflecting on the ontological perils of such penchant towards annihilation is also the

calling of meditations on the work of art, which are not to be determined by sheer aesthetic

mindedness, or by conceptual criticism, or by mere design, craft, or curating. Thinking that lets

what presences comes forth, rather than letting it be appropriated by the manipulability of Ge-

Stell, is a call to bring art into its essence as a setting-upon-itself-into-work of the advent of truth.

This opens a region of dwelling that makes-room for beings to come into appearance by way of

un-concealment through an event (Ereignis) that gathers earth-sky-divinities-mortals into their

oneness.

A thing (Ding) may release earth-sky-divinities-mortals into the freedom of being spared

and coalesced in their primal and simple essential oneness. The “thingly” character of a thing

(l’être-chose d’une chose… sa choséité) manifests its monadic singularity even when it figures

within a series (hors série dans la série), and precisely in spite of a perfected technical

reproducibility (Derrida 1978, 229). What is unique is situated in the place/time wherein it

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happens to be, and as determined by its history of being. This is the aura of authenticity and

originality that is external to the fabric of reproducibility by technicity. This is for instance what

is witnessed with the case of the artwork that is unique despite the aim of framing it by technical

reproducibility, whether in physical making or virtual simulation (Benjamin 1977). An example

figures through reflections on the painting of a peasant’s shoes by Van Gogh as argued in

(Heidegger 1993, 159-160). Heidegger’s claim was interrogated by Derrida in the context of

contrasting it with the views of Meyer Shapiro in terms of interpreting Van Gogh’s painting.

This controversy, which took a political/economic tone, contested the restitution of the

shoes to the painter, to a peasant, or to a proletarian laborer (Derrida 1978, 289). Hinting at an

authenticity that resonates with the experiencing of such aura can be witnessed with the coming

to presence of things that gather the fourfold by way of nature (a water spring), artworks

(painting the shoes by Van Gogh?), architecture (an antique temple), albeit that surpasses in its

ontological sense the ontic corporeality of things through which we dwell. What is thought

provoking about our epoch of the orderings of the Ge-Stell of modern technicity is that we are

not thinking in the most thought-worthy way, since we are only reasoning in a calculative and

instrumental manner. What is thought-worthy calls for thinking about dwelling whereby thoughts

become rooted and are no longer homeless.

Earthiness is the situational happening of dwelling in the gathering of the fourfold. Earthy

experiences in the flesh amidst worldly things, wherein it is rooted in a soil, under the sky, in the

life of mortals, and as an earth-bound openness to a sense of transcendence from within our

worldliness. Earth gives life to me and shelters my flesh as a mortal, and retains my trace and

that of ancestors as a legacy and heritage for posterity. The sky is entwined with earthy life

through the comings and goings of the days and nights, of seasons, which also signal the arrival

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of bounties and providence with spring and harvest, or their retreat with draughts and floods, or

in the bareness and coldness of winter, or the drying heat of summer. Earthy life is opened up to

the heavenly vault, to the sunlight that radiates filtered enlivening energies, to the rain and

richness in the soil, to what brings forth the lifeforms with abundance or takes them away. All as

also admitted in the dedicated patient labor and toil of mortals to bring the joy of bread-earning

and of conquering the wants, with intimations of the arrival or flight of divinities in such earthly

living.

If beings in the age of Ge-Stell belong to the unfolding of the essence of technicity, the

nothing of the annihilation of mortals from within being is not a being, and such state of affairs

escapes therefore from technical en-framing. The being that reflects on its own being as Dasein

is held out into the nothing in being itself a being unlike beings (Heidegger 1993, 101-103).

Dasein thinks with angst about the empty otherness of the nothing of its future as an inevitable

coming absence. Nothingness is not pure privation; rather it presences as a negation within our

being-in-the-world, which is mysteriously experienced as an annihilation from within our

existence, and through which what is most worthy of thought about being gets concealed

(Heidegger 1998, 362). Such nihil in being-toward-death spares the meaning, truth, and place of

being by holding them as what remains thought-provoking (Heidegger 1975, 178-180), and

precisely by way of thinking about what gives being and withdraws it (Heidegger 1993, 261).

The concealment in the withdrawn flight of the “no-longer-present” and in the self-

refusal of “the-not-yet-here” points to a watchful vigilance in remembering what-has-been and

awaiting the yet-to-come (Heidegger1975, 177-178, 183-184). This holds the promise of coming

into presence into the clearing (Lichtung) of being as unveiling (Heidegger 1993, 234, 242),

despite the distress of an abandonment-by-being (Seinsverlassenheit) that nonetheless calls for

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safeguarding the essence of Dasein in letting it reside with quietude and stillness in the gathered

oneness of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (Heidegger 1998, 362). However, when thinking about

dwelling and the gathering of the fourfold, one also ponders over the evocation of divinities and

where it comes from. Is it merely an appeal to what is named as such as a ground for the onto-

theological tradition? Namely, the inherited legacy of the Latinate realm in thought as it received

Greek thought and with it the leitmotifs of the Arabic cum Islamic commentators of the

mediaeval epoch. On the other hand, should it be thought from the standpoint of classical

ontology and the incapacity to grasp the no-thing, the nihil, without which there is no sense in

which we can talk about being-toward-death? What calls for thinking about otherness in an

ontological sense invites thoughts about what annihilates within being as witnessed with the

demise of mortals in such a way that their being-in-the-world is that of being-toward-death. The

otherness of non-being within being is most thought provoking and ever calls for thinking.

Spatiality
Gathering earth-sky-mortals-divinities into a oneness brings them from the remoteness of their

regions into the intimacy of nearness in the locale in which we dwell, which is itself opened up

as a leeway qua Spielraum, and a clearing qua Lichtung (Heidegger 1993, 355-358), without

these always having a concretized architectural sense per se as specific buildings or landscapes,

since what happens by way of mood varies from within the same place and locale, even if it is

one’s own living room. Dwelling is entwined with the play of the energies of life that transcend

mere localization within manufactured enclosures that are established through calculative

methods of the technical production of spatiality in concreto or via the aid of virtual simulations.

Building (as the edifying activity of constructing designed locales in the

architectural/architectonic founding, joining, and organizing of concrete spaces) is worthy of

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thinking in the search anew for dwelling as the ontological plight of mortals (Heidegger 1993,

358-363).

The concrete quotidian reality of lived and situated embodied everyday comportments is

positioned at the isthmuses of interfaces with machines that challenge, command, and

overwhelm us in the multifaceted aspects of our worldly being. Yearnings for the non-ordinary

(the extraordinary) surpass the concrete situational quotidian places in which the rootedness of

our lived experiences (le vécu) finds its place in life on earth, and by way of our existence in the

flesh, here and now, through our physiology and sensorial kinesthetic earthbound lifeworld and

passions (El-Bizri 2004b). This is the case despite the transformative conceptions of embodiment

that are yet to unfold with the advent of Artificial Intelligence, robotic humanoids, and

prospective genetic transmutations of bodily existence in the flesh.

Meditations on the essence of dwelling are intimately connected with ponderings over the

being of place and space as mediated via Dasein’s existential analytic as care, which makes-

room (Einräumen) as leeway (Spielraum) and clearing (Lichtung) for dwelling (El–Bizri 2004a,

95-97). The being of place and space is not the same as that of the res extensa or res cogitans; it

is rather best grasped from the standpoint of reflecting on the spatiality (Räumlichkeit) of being-

in-the-world, which is spatial (räumlich) insofar that it manifests care (Sorge) in the way Dasein

comes across things and handles them. Dasein’s handiness (Zuhandenheit) in making-room

(Einräumen) is not readily reducible to a quantifiable positioning, but rather grants a leeway

(Spielraum) or clearing (Lichtung) in the opened up region of useful and present worldly things,

which are encountered in a directional de-distancing (Ent-fernung). The making-present of these

things lets space itself presence by way of making-room (Heidegger 1953, §4), and with an

ontological equiprimordiality of spatiality and temporality in the being-in-the-world of Dasein

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(Arisaka 1996, 36-46; Arisaka 1995, 455-467). This is best grasped in terms of reflections on the

notion of the Platonic Khôra (ΧΩΡΑ; space/receptacle/matrix) as a third genus besides being and

becoming that is neither intelligible nor sensible (Plato 1999, 48e, 52a-b); namely, a boundless

receptacle qua recipient that receives all becoming entities without taking on the character of

what it contains. Khôra (moulding-stuff; mother; nurse of becoming) is barely perceptible or

amenable to being grasped by way of understanding. It is amorphous and characterless (Plato

1999, 50b-51a), and like the form (εἶδος; eidos), it is everlasting and admits not of destruction

(Plato 1999, 52a-b).

Reflecting on the being of Khôra calls for thinking about the ontological question of

place and space in view of elucidating the question of being (Derrida 1972, 1993, 1996, 1997;

Kristeva 1974, 1980; Sallis 1987, 1997, 1999; Irigaray 1985, 1993; Casey 1997; Benjamin 1990;

Theodorou 1997; Khan 1960; Seligman 1962; El-Bizri 2001, 2002, 2004a, 2004b). As

Heidegger, himself realized, the derivation of spatiality from temporality is untenable (Heidegger

1969, 23); and the fact that space shows itself in the world does not tell us anything about its

kind of being, albeit this is not due to an inadequate knowledge of the factual constitution of

space, but more due to the undifferentiated character of their ontological interpretation

(Heidegger 1953, §24). As a mode of giving-space (Raumgeben), room-making frees things from

their entrapping positional locality and lets them be encountered as inner-worldly (innerweltlich)

beings, and not simply as extended objectively present useful-at-hand entities.

Reawakening the question of being and retrieving it from oblivion passes by an

ontological (ontologisch) reflection on being over and against the ontic (ontisch) description of

beings (Heidegger 2018, §63). This reveals an ontological difference between being and beings,

whereby being is a pre-given presence (Anwesenheit) that is already from the outset along with

209
beings (Heidegger 1998, 179), and wherein place constitutes the possibility of their presencing

(Heidegger 2018, §15; Aristotle 1936, IV.1 208a27-209a30). The ontological difference between

being and beings remains un-thought unless it passes by way of thinking about what allows for

such cleft as difference (Heidegger 1954b, 135; Heidegger 1968, 227), which affirms the spatial

signification (Raumbedeutungen) of the question of being.

The “pain has turned the threshold to stone” (Trakl 1946; Heidegger 1959; Heidegger

1975). The threshold as Limen is the middle in-between (as suggestive of what can be thought

about Khôra) in which outside and inside co-penetrate each other without yielding either way.

What persists as such is a rift (Riss) that separates yet at the same time that gathers back into

itself what it rends as difference (Heidegger 1975, 196, 203-205). This is a primal call to think

the differing that is at work in difference (Heidegger 1975, 205-207), wherein phenomenology as

a kritische Wissenschaft is grounded on the ontological distinction (Unterscheiden) that splits

being apart from beings in an ontical-ontological difference (Heidegger 1982; Heidegger 1997).

Unity is drawn in design as a common outline that is brought forth in the generation of a

work as a Gestalt, and its shape is composed as a rift in terms of being a particular Stellen

(placing) qua thesis that sets itself forth. This reflects the fixing in place of truth in a spatial

figure that is put to use (Heidegger 1993, 188-189). Dasein is the Stätte (site) of the strife

(Streitraum) that Sein requires in order to disclose itself (Heidegger 1973; Heidegger 1983),

since Dasein is the middle (die sich öffnende Mitte) and the in-between (Zwischen) for the

occurrence of the Zeit-Raum relation by what stands here/there in presence as it comes forth into

the unhidden (Heidegger 2003, §190-191). Such topology/chorology of being points to the

manifold regions of entities ready for handling, others given as objects, or being-here/there (Da-

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sein) while being epochal in coming-to-presence as an event (Ereignis) in the world (Schürmann

1997b; Sallis 1999; El-Bizri 2004a).

Elucidating the question of the being of place and space anticipates the future unfolding

of an ontological clarification of being (Sein, Seyn), and such question finds itself renewed by

what calls for questioning as the piety of thought. This is precisely the case in our epoch of

enhanced potentialities of embeddedness within simulated virtual places that have the attributes

of augmented-realities, along with the possibilities of operating within distant spaces that are

only artificially-reachable via robotically-mediated tele-presencing (El-Bizri 2004a; El-Bizri

2004b; El-Bizri 2011; El-Bizri 2015b; El-Bizri 2017).

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Norberg-Schulz: Culture, Presence and a Sense of Virtual Place

Erik Champion

Introduction

In this chapter I will put forward five important questions arising from the major writings of

Norwegian architectural theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926–2000) regarding his

discussion of place as dwelling. These key aspects are: his conflation of dwelling with place;

simplifying to a poetical but confusing extreme the concept of region; his avoidance of the

role of culture in the making and perception of place; the lack of discussion of the body and

embodiment in the appreciation of both architecture and place; and a concentration on

architectural form and typology at the expense of care, change, and erosion.

The second half of the chapter will discuss how virtual places (particularly those that

wish to display and communicate aspects of culture such as history and heritage) need to

consider issues of people, not just as social avatars but also in terms of their “thrown”

embodiment and how they influence and are influenced by material culture as a messy,

accumulative force; social worlds as place-distinguished realms of power and influence, not

simply as topographical or climatic regions; and the enrichment and forgetting of virtual

places through care and neglect. I will argue that these elements (as components of dwelling)

impact on virtually mediated dwelling and inhabitation as well as on virtual presence.

I have chosen the major writings of Norberg-Schulz (Norberg-Schulz 1971, 1980,

1985, 1988) partly because he was a formative influence on architects (Wilken 2013) but I

should note here that his writings also attracted strong criticism. Alberto Pérez-Gómez

(Pérez-Gómez 2009) criticized Norberg-Schulz’s theory of “genius loci”, while Malpas

(Malpas 2013, 2015) and others (Jiven and Larkham 2003) voiced concerns regards Norberg-

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Schulz’s emphasis on architectural dwelling and reading of Heidegger. Cacciari denounced

Norberg-Schulz’s writings for “nostalgia” (Cacciari 1993) and Wilken (Wilken 2013) added

that genius loci was “strongly traditional and nostalgic”.

Despite these criticisms, various writers and architects have drawn on Norberg-Schulz

and have sometimes re-incorporated a Norberg-Schulz reading of Heidegger into a more

formalist architectural theory (Thiis-Evensen 1987), or applied both thinkers to ancient and

modern architecture (Ramzy 2015, Haddad 2010, El-Bizri 2011).

Yet in virtual place design, Norberg-Schulz’s theory of phenomenology has received

scant attention (Saunders et al. 2011), even if concepts like dwelling and a sense of place

(Genius Loci) as well as embodiment (Coyne 1999, Crick 2010) are desirable if elusive goals

in computer games, virtual places and virtual worlds. Are the criticisms of Norberg-Schulz’

theory of genius loci, sense of place, and dwelling valid? And, despite these criticisms, is this

theory of any interest to real-world architecture or to virtual place design?

Dwelling in the World and Genius Loci

Dwelling, according to Norberg-Schulz is synonymous with “existential foothold” and while

I don’t know exactly where this term appears in Heidegger, Norberg-Schulz has definitely

made the term ring forth in architectural theory books (Sharr 2007). What is clear though, is

that dwelling is more than shelter, (Norberg-Schulz 1980, 5), allowing one to orient and

“identify with an environment, or, in short, when he [or she] experiences the environment as

meaningful.” Dwelling also seem to be, for Norberg-Schulz, synonymous with place, but

surely there can be meaningful spaces where one does not dwell, or does dwell purely mean

the attitude when one finds a place meaningful? Can we not find places meaningful for others

but not orient to and identify with them ourselves?

There is a lack of awareness of “other” in this theory. Secondly, there seems to be a

conflation between the design expert and the intended recipient. Must an architect be able to

217
enter the dwelling stage of the plan to design for the client? If the client does not dwell in the

same way as the architect, who is at fault? And this extends to Norberg-Schulz’s concept of

the genius loci, “the spirit of place”:

… the concrete reality man has to face and come to terms with in his daily

life. Architecture means to visualize the genius loci, and the task of the

architect is to create meaningful places, whereby he helps man to dwell.

Here I am challenged by the conflation of the particular with the universal, how can

we all be aware of the spirit of place? What is this concrete reality, is it universal? Does this

theory presuppose or lead to a theory of universal forms (or designs) in architecture that

would indubitably lead us all to experience meaningful places, dwelling, and genius loci, in

other words, successful architecture? And must we always experience all these terms (they

seem to be synonymous) for all forms of architecture?

I don’t find the apparent conflation of all these terms very helpful for understanding

places. And I don’t know how to determine if architecture succeeds or fails based on these

terms. If I don’t experience a sense of even longing for dwelling but someone else does, can

there be a sense of place, of genius loci?

Or must it work equally on everyone? I am concerned that Norberg-Schulz’s theory is

overly rigid and unforgiving. One may defend Norberg-Schulz by arguing that dwelling is

not residing, it is not the same as inhabiting, as feeling a place must belong to me or I to it.

But this does seem to be what he is saying, and as I mentioned earlier, he doesn’t tackle the

issue of cultural relativism, or the issue of f local versus visitor. I have often entered a space

that I did not identify with or that helped me orient myself to it, but I have encountered places

where I could see how it helped the self-orientation and identification of others. Nor am I

convinced that an environment is always a place, don’t animals have environments while

only mortals can experience the Heidegger fourfold and have a sense of mortality (according

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to Norberg-Schulz)? Indeed, Norberg-Schulz’s later work (Norberg-Schulz 1997) seems to

equate the most meaningful form of place with the most Nordic of place.

Although "intention" is a specific term in Husserl’s philosophy of phenomenology,

Norberg-Schulz’s concept of intentions is directly and explicitly derived from Hans Sedlmayr

(Møystad 2012, Norberg-Schulz 1979). Sedlmayr was an Austrian art history professor who

decried modern art as degeneration (Sedlmayr 2007) in “The Chaos of Total Decay”, and

Sedlmayr’s theories did not seem to change from when he enrolled in the Nazi party in 1932

to after the war when he was forbidden from teaching further at his university.

While Heidegger himself famously encountered a similar response to his past

affiliation with the Nazi party, and one may well decide that the historical associations of a

certain philosopher should not preclude discussion and consideration of their theories, there

are still important philosophical questions to ask here regarding how judgement and authority

hold sway in the phenomenological description of place. For who determines what is a place,

and what it might mean to dwell? The question of authority in who determines place and

placeness could be of even more concern in the design of virtual places. It is a problem both

Møystad (2012) and I have some concern over regards the built place theory of Norberg-

Schulz.i

One may also propose that Norberg-Schulz has a particular but not especially well-

grounded interpretation of Heidegger. This particular interpretation is primarily focused on

the built form but not on social or cultural implications of design, on who judges. Jeffrey

Malpas appears to have countered this view, Malpas wrote (Malpas 2014, 21-22 ):

“Contrary to the sorts of reading so often associated with Norberg-Schulz

and others, Heidegger’s focus on dwelling and place does not return us to

some pre-modern utopia in which the uncertainties of modernity can be laid

to rest. Neither does it imply commitment to some form of authoritarian,

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 exclusionary politics. Instead, Heidegger leads us toward a critical

rethinking of the key concepts that are at issue here— a rethinking in which

the idea of place itself plays a crucial role.”

Heidegger has been accused of romanticizing tendencies in his exposition of place

(Sharr and Unwin 2001) but here our focus is on Norberg-Schulz, and one of his last books,

Nightlands-Nordic Building, does seem to be edging towards a mythos of the Nordic region

and meaningful place, it even complains there is no “true” Nordic urban space (Norberg-

Schulz 1997).

Regionalism

Where does a region start and end, what is its boundary? I will make the case that Norberg-

Schulz’s own examples (Norberg-Schulz 1997) appear fixed to his regional Nordic

“sensitivity”, for example:

“The winter evening is obviously a local, nordic phenomenon.”

Is Denmark’s weather closer to Norway’s and Finland’s weather than it is to North

Germany? Where does Iceland (a Nordic country), fit in here? Is western Russia not similar

to the Finnish climate? Indeed, was not forty per cent of Finland annexed by Russia at the

end of World War II? Did its Nordic winter suddenly become a non-Nordic Russian winter?

To take the argument further, Norberg-Schulz has written a book on (Nordic)

Nightlands, but what is “Nordic”? Online dictionaries have defined Nordic as a Germanic

people who are tall, blond, blue-eyed with an elongated head, and Scandinavian

(Dictionary.com Undated); as relating to the North European Scandinavian countries; or

Scandinavia, Finland and Iceland (Collins Undated); or a Nordic commonality in history,

language or culture (Oxford Undated). Originally, the word Nordic was a French word for the

north. This is still not straightforward, in culture history and language even Estonia could lay

a claim to being a Nordic country.

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 Nordic is typically used to imply a shared language, culture, physique, but originally

was geographical: regional (Northern Europe). Here I would like to make a distinction:

Scandinavian means languages (Germanic, which precludes Finland, the majority are

Finnish-speaking), but Nordic implies a region: Denmark (even though it is joined to the

mainland via Germany), Sweden, Norway, Finland) and sometimes a shared culture or politic

allegiance (Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands, but also Iceland).

There is even a geographic (geologically inspired term) called Fennoscandia, based

on its Archaeon granite and gneiss. Here one could raise a difficult question and ask if

Norberg-Schulz would include offshore islands as part of the Nordic family? Possibly he

meant the four mainland Scandinavian countries and Finland (and possibly but probably not

Estonia). Of course, there are non-Scandinavian people in the Nordic countries, who don’t

speak Scandinavian languages (for example the Sami) but my point is already made: the

central term he bases his “phenomenology” on is extremely problematic.

I find Norberg-Schulz’s concept of a local Nordic character, in either light, or climate,

to be tenuous. It could lead to a climate-based sense of an intra-national characteristic; a

concept done away with since the criticism of Heinrich Wölfflin’s theory of aesthetics based

on or distinguished by national or pan-national regional characteristics. And it turns out that

he does refer to Wölfflin in Nightlands, but there Norberg-Schulz tries to avoid the ethnic

connotations of the theory that art is determined by landscape, culture and people.

Kenneth Frampton’s theory of Critical Regionalism has been well cited in the

architectural literature, (Frampton 2014, Eggener 2002, Powell 2012) but it still seems

worthwhile to ask, how big is a region? Perhaps it is defined and demarcated by character?

Norberg-Schulz’s definition of character is confusing; it is atmosphere, it is singular (cities

have one character) yet it is plural, it is how things are, it is how they are made... are places

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really always made? And places are not always created by architectural detail but by the

interaction of surrounds, intentions, activities, and usage.

There is also an apparent conflict between the particular and the universal. For

example, Norberg-Schulz talks of the sky as being timeless and vast, and yet the Nordic

region apparently has its own (Nordic) quality. Where do these timeless and vast spaces and

zones begin and end? Are they timeless and vast in different ways in different countries? Or

are they only timeless and vast in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark? A clearer

understanding of how regions are identified and how we define boundaries is important to

phenomenology and to real places, but also to virtual places (for far too often they neglect to

create atmospheric, vague, evocative experiential place-boundaries).

Place, Culture and Multiple Cultures

Just as places are informed by other places, the evolution of Nordic architecture was itself not

wholly Nordic. A friend and architectural colleague of Norberg-Schulz, Sverre Fehn, was a

central figure in Nordic architecture (Figure 11.1), but he himself (like Utzon, Aalto and

Asplund before him), openly referred to the importance of non-Nordic architecture on his

designs (Fehn 2009, 1952, Fjeld and Fehn 2009).

INSERT HERE Figure 11.1 Hamar Museum, Norway, by Sverre Fehn (source: author)

While Aalto’s Säynätsalo community building was seen by Norberg-Schulz as

particularly Finnish (Pérez-Gómez 2009) when they repaired part of the external walls they

forgot to create a battered appearance on the materials. The workers ignored or were unaware

of the deliberately weathered textures intended and executed by Alvar Aalto’s office in the

original building complex. How can there be a particularly national character if it requires a

single architect?

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 Historically, Finland and many coastal Nordic towns were also collections of various

architectural styles imported from overseas empires and foreign rulers who over the years and

sometimes even centuries traded with or even controlled the ports, regions or even entire

Nordic countries, while many architects, up to the twentieth century studied or interned at

non-Nordic European offices.

In “The spirit of place in a multicultural society”, Norwegian architectural Professor

Ole Møystad (Møystad 2012), criticizes Norberg-Schulz, for exactly these reasons. Today’s

world is multicultural, multi-layered and highly mobile, equating the North with a particular

type of place, and the South with something markedly different, is not going to hold up under

examination.

The word culture does not appear with any regularity in Norberg-Schulz’s three key

books. In Intentions in Architecture (Norberg-Schulz 1979), he does distinguish the cultural

from the social, the former is “ideas, works of art, etc.”. I have suggested that cultural is

wider, vaguer and more entwined. Cultural geography views culture as a focused integration

with the immediate world around us through the sharing of language, customs, behaviors and

thoughts. However, definitions of culture vary markedly between writers and disciplines.

Mules (Mules 2000) declared:

“The concept of culture, as it has been predominantly understood in the

humanities and associated disciplines, is based on the idea of physical

presence. That is to say, culture is understood in terms of the various

representations and practices that people experience within social and

historical contexts defined by the living presence of one human being to

another. …”

My understanding of culture and cultural transmission does not necessarily rely on

physical presence, on the co-presence of others. We can develop a sensation of being in the

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presence of a culturally modified environment, without having to encounter other people

directly. Social behavior is behavior between two or more people, but cultural behavior is a

more nebulous subset of social behavior, behavior is governed by or understood in terms of a

cultural setting, not necessarily directly through social interaction. A place can still have a

sense of presence, of time, and evoke an awareness of inhabitation by others.

For place can be not only a clearing in nature but also a cultural setting, providing

cultural interaction a time and a location. An Italian stockbroker working in Japan once told

me of his respect for architecture, as it records the encounters of people and culture. In the

words of Crang (Crang 1998, 103), “spaces become places as they become "time-

thickened.’” Places do not just organize space, they orient, identify, and animate the bodies,

minds, and feelings of both inhabitants and visitors. However, unlike the theory of Norberg-

Schulz, while place can be designed to evoke certain memories or behaviors, this is an

inexact art, and there is no necessary metanarrative of place that conditions everyone to think

and judge in the same way.

Culture is also in some way socially created, defined and managed; it is expressed via

language and artifacts, but it is vaguely bounded, and it is open to (mis)interpretation. Culture

connects but also ignores threads, patterns and associations over space and time. How

cultures are spread over space and how cultures make sense of space is thus interdependent.

A visitor perceives space as place, place “perpetuates culture” (frames it, embeds it, erodes it)

and thus influences the inhabitant. In this account, if architecture makes place, architecture is

a key contributor to cultural presence.

So why is there a need for cultural presence and why does it relate to

phenomenology? There are strong reasons to explore not only my own or your own

experience of the world (be it real or virtual) but also how other people experience the world,

and sometimes we can do this even if they are not or no longer physically present.

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 Experiencing a sense of cultural presence in a virtual environment may necessitate

experiencing a sensation that people with a potentially different cultural perspective occupy

or have occupied that virtual environment as a “place”. This is highly challenging. We may

attempt to evaluate a sense of presence in virtual worlds with universal and quantifiable

metrics, but presence in the real-world may be overly pervasive, intimidating, visceral,

contested, misleading or confusing. A sense of cultural presence in a real-world place does

not necessarily lead to an understanding of a linear and perfectly formed metanarrative, so

why should it in a virtual one?

Embodiment

I may agree with Norberg-Schulz’s statement that spaces are attached to prepositions, but

such relationships are often in relation to the body, not to topology alone. His concept of

embodiment is crude, consider his praise of Otto Friedrich Bollnow’s notion that the central

point of perceived space happens from between the eyes (Shirazi 2014, Møystad 2012). This

is highly ocularcentric, what of proprioception, kinesthesia? Did he know that dancers (Ravn

2010) and martial artists (Perrin et al. 2002) often don’t perceive their centre of balance as

between the eyes, but in the middle of the body?

Our experience of place is affected by our physical embodiment, and how we use and

have trained our bodies, but place is also affected in turn by our embodiment. If we don not

understand the different ways people perceive place we may omit this capacity from our

design of virtual places. For example, seated people navigating through 3D virtual worlds on

desktop computers have less reason to swivel their head. Unless the are distracted, they will

typically look and virtually move straight ahead, and miss out on opportunties not directly

and immediately viewable on the camera window.

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Craft, Care, Wear and Tear

Before the rise of machines, because of our very bodies, we were well aware of the sacrifice

made in the making, in the crafting, of place. Our places were maintained because of toil and

care but place also reflected our care, wear and toil. This has changed dramatically.

According to Fehn (Almaas 2010):

“Our present culture is taking us further and further away from for instance

perceiving the horse as an animal that pulls the plough or works as a war

machine. The horse is being reduced to the level of aesthetics; it flies

around a race track, and it’s so beautiful you think you’ll faint. But it’s no

longer anything more. Even though the horse is a fantastic thing that has

shaped a lot of our technology. So, in our culture we are moving further

and further away from nature, and from nature as something that we use.”

Being removed from the activities of the world due to the increasing convenience and

control of technology has advantages, but it may also restrict our potential to form new

experiences and master interactions without the use of technology. And while this passage

parallels similar sentiments in the writings of both Heidegger and Norberg-Schulz, in the

works of Sverre Fehn and other Nordic architects of the twentieth century, we see concrete

attempts to bring back a sense of craft, provide a sense of process and continuity via texture

and patina, and the revealing not concealing of the human hand behind thematic details.

One of the early modern architects in the Scandinavian countries to celebrate the

human hand, so-called natural, unfinished materials and rough detail was Knut Knutsen, a

Norwegian teaching colleague of Norberg-Schulz but only infrequently referred to by him.

However, Knutsen, Sonck, Aalto, Utzon, Lewerentz, Asplund, Kampmann and Fehn would

all explore texture and detail as expressions of human scale and human building, or illusive

erosion through the illusion of well-worn care, or through the metaphorical passing of time.

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To create allegorical relationships between built form and function, their buildings were

planned and built over many years and decades, a luxury almost unheard of today. Yet the

luxury of time helped them create a sense of social accumulation through material form.

The ancient Greeks are rightly lauded for their architectonic genius (Hadingham

2008), but they were apparently stunned when they encountered the Persian temples for the

first time, precisely because they could fully appreciate the sacrifice and effort and sheer time

required. When people invest in making, they more fully appreciate the care and effort of

others in craft and art. And the expression of care through manual labor and obvious personal

dedication and honing of skill is less and less evident in buildings erected by efficient and

automated manufacturing industries.

The expression of human care and maintenance is very infrequently encountered in

digital places. This long-winded, layered process of human endeavor is one of the paradoxes

of “culture”, it is found in particular types of objects, it refers to intentions, attitudes and

activities, but it is also a framework, a specific, quasi-situated way of learning about,

recognizing and maintaining cultural agency through objects.

Virtual Environments: From Presence to Cultural Presence

Given my redefinition of culture, when we attempt to transfer Norberg-Schulz’s concept of

dwelling to virtual environments, we encounter a fundamental problem for virtual

environments (especially for experientially enriched virtual worlds and virtual heritage or

virtual history environments). How is cultural significance conveyed to different people (and

not merely to an opinionated if esteemed architectural critic)? For Norberg-Schulz’s theory of

phenomenology in architecture avoids mention of people, of social use, of cultural value. It

talks of aesthetic points of interest and gestalt-psychology forms as if they are perceived

equally and consistently by all.

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 Unfortunately, virtual environments (and virtual worlds) typically lack a sense of

place, especially in the form of cultural dwelling, cultural significance and cultural value.

This leads me to propose that creating a virtual environment with culturally specific notions

of ‘place’ (a region recognizable to a user as a culturally coded setting); we need to have

more than merely identifiable or evocative virtual environments.

When we dwell, tarry, linger or abide in a place there are also issues of ownership,

identity (or alienation), acceptance of change, accumulation (or loss) of belief and practice

(habit). Sometimes that place is a place that is specifically resonant, modulated, or otherwise

reserved for others, in that case we may need to create a virtual environment which evokes

and identifies a place carrying cultural indications of inhabitation driven by a different

cultural perspective to that of our own.

This virtual place could suggest ideas of thematically related events, evidence of

social autonomy, notions of territorial possession and shelter, and focal points of artefactual

possession, of “ready-to-hand” objects (Ables 2016). In other words, if the simulation is of a

past or culturally specific place, the virtual environment could provide a perspective of a past

culture or highly contextual culture to someone who visits from the present, or from a

different worldview.

Heidegger scholars may be interested to learn that for the last two or three decades,

the success of virtual environments has typically been predicated on the participants’ sense of

virtual presence. And many short-hand definitions have included the experience of place as a

central feature of the experience of virtual presence. For example, Mel Slater once wrote

(Slater 2003): “Presence is about form, the extent to which the unification of simulated

sensory data and perceptual processing produces a coherent 'place' that you are 'in' and in

which there may be the potential for you to act.”

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 More recently, as collaborative interaction becomes more possible and prevalent, the

presence research community has increasingly written about social and cultural presence and

the notion of presence as “being there”. In particular they have often defined virtual presence

as being in another place, or even “in the virtual world” (Sanchez-Vives and Slater 2005), but

presence and immersion are used interchangeably or in conflict with each other.

Virtual environments are often academic test cases, evaluation is still laboring to

answer the question of fidelity when it should be evaluating usefulness, engagement and

appropriateness. Of most import to this chapter is how a sense of presence and cultural

presence could help the interactive, reconfigurable and atmospheric potential of virtual

environments may allow others to gain an understanding of the cultural significance of a site.

Cultural presence is not feeling one is in the company of others (social presence), but that

another cultural viewpoint is present. I could define it as follows (Champion 2011):

“A visitor’s overall subjective impressions when visiting a virtual

environment that people with a different cultural perspective occupy or

have occupied that virtual environment as a ‘place’. Such a definition

suggests cultural presence is not just a feeling of ‘being there’ but of being

in a ‘there and then’, not the cultural rules of the ‘here and now’.”

I would agree that digital media has not (so far) proved effective or experientially rich

in its attempt to convey or afford culture as a dynamic and creative, self-identifying process,

but I don’t believe this is a permanent problem (Champion 2015). One particularly promising

avenue is to explore how a sense of the past, particularly of past inhabitation can be

meaningfully and appropriately conveyed by digital media. I also suggest that cultural

presence is NOT social presence and this distinction is of key importance to the design of

virtual places that have cultural features or components. In biology, an important distinction

between culture and society is the cumulative nature of human culture, which separates us

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from animals (Vale, Flynn, and Kendal 2012). According to biologists (Claidière et al. 2014,

1) “A wide range of other animals have culture too, but often in a limited form that does not

complexify through the gradual accumulation of innovations.” I suggest it is important here

to stress that humans accumulate culture, they modify cultural knowledge (culture managed

by infrastructure or institution) using past knowledge from previous generations.

In Mayan architecture, the spiritual value of buildings (life), is increased by the layers

of architecture built on top of the original (Harrison-Buck 2012). Culture is likewise

accumulative: it cannot easily spring from the creative loins of a single designer, it has to be

adopted, and seeks modification through use and reuse by others. It is not (and here I risk the

ire, perhaps, of architects) usually a singular creative act, even if it has been taught that way

in architectural history classes. Cultural creativity is not normally the hallmark of solitary

genius, especially in the use and enjoyment of place.

Culture is also an assortment of objects and rituals that frame and express a

communally shared idealized future. In these dual functions culture extends beyond society: a

social environment can exist where shared understandings are never preserved beyond the

life-experiences of the group. Yet the cultural heritage of a real-world society outlives

specific individuals.

For example, I mentioned that in archaeology we can draw interpretations about past

societies in terms of their cultural heritage. This does not mean that developing a social

virtual environment is necessarily the same as developing a cultural virtual environment.

Imagine meeting people in an airport lounge and socializing with them, one is not likely to be

partaking in a shared culture as the social exchanges will not become part of a cultural

framework. Likewise, meeting people in a social online world does not require that the social

online world is a cultural online world. Culture is not only materialized and transferred

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knowledge, it is specific ways of knowing about knowledge and how to carry that knowledge

further.

With this in mind, I am wary of Norberg-Schulz’s theory: tending to treat place as

possible through individual creation and playing down the importance of modulated

inhabitation, use, re-use, and accumulation. But I am also concerned with how a virtual

environment could become a world, I doubt we could create a rich virtual world based on the

notion of place and genius loci in Norberg-Schulz’s writings.

Virtual Worlds Are More Realms than Regions

What do I mean by a world? Could it be merely a virtual online environment with metaphors

of place, visited by virtual participants where both the virtual online environment and the

visitors’ actions have some form of persistence?

I would say no, a virtual world must afford different ways of doing a multitude of

things, it is interactively rich and layered. For example, Johnson (2005) and Steinkuehler

(2006) have argued that current massive multiplayer game environments are often a mixture

of vague and clear objectives. In these environments people immerse themselves, not just

spatially navigating from point A to point B, but also by exploring the environment as a

shifting world of interactive possibilities. In more Heideggeran terms one could imagine a

world as a shifting morass of clearings, paths and forgotten paths.

My second criterion: the virtual world of a computer game or world-like virtual

environment affords different ways of learning. It may involve learning how to translate and

disseminate, the simulation may also modify or create the language or material value systems

of real or digitally simulated inhabitants. In this situation, the virtual world or virtual game

play affords varying accuracy of transmission: appropriate information can be learnt and

developed by the player or passed on to others or that accuracy may be modified by what

happens in situ, on site, and en route. Cultural transmission in the real world is not linear,

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symmetrical, easily decoded. It is helped, hindered or even corrupted by people, events,

accidents and place. The virtual environment or game can store, display and retrieve

information on the encounters of people in places, it can facilitate personalization.

But it is not only the potential of a virtual world that is required for rich shareable

experiences. A virtual world affords in terms of how it defines, separates and identifies

aspects of social roles, social identities and related status. A world is composed not merely of

physical laws or regional decrees, but also by perceived realms of social influence. Where do

you perceive the home or status of rights of someone to reside, inside their house, on their

grass verge, by their letterbox? Where does the emperor or the politician or the innkeeper

have most or little power? These are not explicit in their physical demarcation but we have

some sense of them, akin to Heidegger’s notion of boundaryii. Worlds are not just bound,

they are intra-bound. Worlds are also interesting combinations and disjunctions of

remembering, encountering and forgetting. In this regard, Ables has written an interesting,

Heidegger-inspired account of the peculiar success of the computer game Myst. Ables (Ables

2016) comments:

“The artist’s true calling isn’t to portray objects the way everyone already

sees them, but it isn’t to show us something new either; it is, paradoxically,

to present what was already present as though we were seeing it for the first

time.”

Virtual Erosion, Care, and Personal Identity

In the oeuvre of the Nordic architects I have mentioned, there is sustained evidence that they

were continually challenged to construct a building that had symbolic centers but also

dynamic paths, to provide continual interest to people confined for months to the inside of

civic buildings due to the long Nordic winters. As mentioned above, their buildings required

a great deal of time to design and build, and would be difficult to complete in today’s money

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and deadline oriented way, but they revealed to me key elements of successful places which

we have not yet fully emulated in the design of virtual places.

They would employ diaphanous curtains and indirect side light, so that the light was

dynamic and inviting but never glaring, and light would be invited further into the room.

Furnishings that one holds onto, such as doors or rails, would gradually twist or textures

would change according to the thematic design of the rooms. Sometimes they would

deliberately attempt to make the building appear older and eroded than it physically was, or

bury older typology inside the newer building. For example, E. G. Asplund had the marble

columns of the Woodland Crematorium at Stockholm sawn into so that they would age faster.

If we apply some of these techniques to the design of virtual places inside digital

environments, the importance of revealing process and not only product, cause and effect,

mutability, mortality and the passing of time become key. And here, in the design and use of

human-inhabited places we see also that the expression of care is an important feature of

valued places.

I suggest Norberg-Schulz’s concentration on architectural form ignores an important

experiential aspect, personalization and erosion-by-use. This aspect is very hard to find, if at

all present, in most virtual environments. According to Ranald Lawrence (Lawrence 2007),

Sverre Fehn favored the following story about walking in the Norwegian landscape:

“When you go to untouched nature, you always cause some destruction, if

only by stepping on grass. The traces of your footsteps lead the next man to

follow the same route. The footsteps are a kind of architecture, because

they mediate the walker's feeling for the landscape, telling the follower

which view pleases him.”

But in virtual reality, where are the footprints? A place is a material history of use,

care, love and neglect. Such a level of personalization and inscription is not typically

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available to us in the design and use of virtual environments; they lack responsive, granular

and agglutinative interaction. Perhaps we have just forgotten key elements of real world

places.

Evaluation and Feedback for Encountering Virtual Cultural Phenomena

Architecture is a cultural phenomenon, and how it is conveyed, preserved, maintained and

interpreted is of immense value. Even if cultural aspects of virtual environments are still not

well known or profusely exemplified, how culture is conveyed, experienced, understood and

retold is essential for both virtual and real places. So here I will discuss the more specific

example of virtual heritage environments (where tangible and intangible traditions of cultural

heritage meet the vast but quick-changing complicated possibilities of virtual reality and

related technologies). These environments are, or should be, designed to convey a sense of

heritage and history. Historical thrownness (Wang 2015), cultural significance and how

places share cultural experiences. These concepts are, I suggest, not well explored in the

writings of Norberg-Schulz yet important to the design and enjoyment of many places either

real or virtual.

Why is phenomenology of potential import to virtual heritage (virtual reality applied

to communicate the significance of cultural heritage sites, objects, and intangible heritage)?

The ethnographic techniques used by researchers may be effective in recording activity, but

they do not directly indicate the potential mental transformations of perspective that result

from being subjectively immersed in a different type of cultural presence.

How can users learn via interaction the meanings and values of others, do we need to

interact as the original inhabitants did? How can we find out how they interacted, and

through the limited and constraining nature of current technology help interaction be

meaningful, educational and enjoyable? How do we know when meaningful learning is

reached? Through “interpretative translucency” we can test for “mild” hermeneutic

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immersion in a virtual world, where a participant begins to use and develop the codes of other

cultures and societies in order to orient and solve tasks, and to communicate the value and

significance of those tasks and goals to others. However, we may also need a

phenomenological approach in order to ensure they have grasped or at least encountered

vestiges of a culture different to their own.

Phenomenology appears to have had some form of practical use and success in

medical and therapeutic circles and also in performance (Renaud et al. 2013, Ladly 2007) but

when it is mentioned in the design and evaluation of virtual environments (let alone in the

encounter of cultural phenomena), it is mentioned in passing, and, I suggest, rather

superficially. Here is an example of how phenomenology can be simplified past the point of

usefulness: in their discussion of phenomenology Govers and Go declared (Govers and Go

2009, 43):

“This is further emphasized by existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Husserl,

Brentano and Heidegger, who believe that all that matters is that humans

participate in the world: ‘being there’ (Dasein)”.

This statement limits and distorts phenomenology. Firstly, a virtual environment lends

itself directly to issues of subjective experience and world construction, a phenomenology of

experiences in virtual worlds is surely useful, perhaps there is even scope to see how close we

can develop a phenomenology of other people’s experience in virtual environments.

Secondly, phenomenology offers a useful type of evaluation of experience in virtual worlds

where other forms of evaluation (such as questionnaires) are not reliable (Slater 2004).

Conclusion

This chapter is both appreciative and critical of Norberg-Schulz’s theory of phenomenology

applied to architecture. Attempting to bridge architecture and philosophy in a way amenable

to both is challenging. However, because of this, we need to be extra vigilant in such work,

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for both architects and philosophers may be unduly influenced by work in the other field that

appears to others as unwieldy, opaque or incapable of discussion.

And this unwieldiness is to my mind one of the problems with much of Norberg-

Schulz’s writing. The three key Norberg-Schulz books mentioned plus the much later book

Nightlands: Nordic Building are problematic. Yet while the exercise of applying Norberg-

Schulz’s architectural theory (phenomenology) to the design of virtual environments may

seem limited, there are two useful possibilities. One is that the current limitations or missing

but valuable potential of virtual worlds and virtual environments may be helped by

considering the design and theory of built places, and the second is that gaps or issues in

architectural design may themselves be brought under the spotlight when their related

theories are used to design virtual environments.

Wang and Wagner (Wang and Wagner 2007) suggest Norberg-Schulz distorted

Heidegger’s phenomenological theory by only discussing the phenomenology of special

places. Norberg-Schulz could claim precedence for this in Heidegger’s own later writings,

Heidegger himself said when he discussed art he only considered great art, but it does raise

an interesting issue here. Norberg-Schulz only seems to think phenomenology is of central

import in discussing wonderfully enriched and rewarding architectural (and landscape-

related) places. What of places of horror and terror, places that actually exclude rather than

help center people?

How are regions as discrete entities perceived? How could we simulate the

phenomena or its outcome in virtual reality or augmented reality? For AR, how can we

appropriately evaluate it? Can we use a “sense of place” test? Or are there graduations or

levels of place or dwelling that are even more difficult to evoke in digital environments?

There are many boundaries, physical or social in real places, that deserve more elaboration

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when we design virtual environments, for the boundaries to a place can be complex,

contested, chaotic or subtle.

There are other features typically missing from many virtual places, that Norberg-

Schulz had also earlier ignored or downplayed in his writings of real world places. They are:

process, effect and cause (mutability), embodiment, mortality and maintenance, (virtual)

worlds as social realms, the feeling of care, and the use of evaluation and meaningful

feedback to help improve the design of these (virtual) places. Fortunately, Norberg-Schulz’s

publications actually help highlight the importance of these concepts for virtual places,

precisely by the absence of these concepts in his writings.

Apart from dwelling, boundary and embodiment, the social and cultural associations

with architecture and place are downplayed in Norberg-Schulz’s writings. And not only do

many virtual environments lack a strong sense of dwelling compared to our own real-world

home, there are also different concepts of home that are worth trying to express and

understand, even if, (particularly if), they evade full familiarity compared to our own. For

place gets some of its power from not being other places. Therefore, it would be a serious

omission to exclude the role of alterity and assortment of differences in discussing how place

is constructed and encountered. Speaking for my field of research, virtual heritage

environments, I believe this is a significant omission. Historically, and virtually, the

development of cultural presence and the provision of past place-visitation through virtual

environments is not a “being there” but “being not quite here but somewhere else”.

Real places are haunted by a sense of inhabitation (and more general forms of

thematically bounded cultural agency), as well as by wear (and care); why not also virtual

places? I provided the concept of cultural presence as an example of how place can convey a

sense of past agency, and while not all places are human-designed or historical, many do

provide a sense of the past, a sense they were once cared for, provided a social framework, or

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reflected the values, identities and goals of their inhabitants. From my reading of Norberg-

Schulz, we will need to look elsewhere for a theory of place that affords cultural presence,

evokes a specific sense of the past and marries them with imminent embodied experience into

a genuinely impactful and lingering sense of place, or even spirit of place.

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i
An interesting connection between Sedlmayr, Heidegger, and Norberg-Schulz that I won’t

have space to explore further in this chapter was their apparent training in or returning to

Catholicism (Crysler, Cairns, and Heynen 2012).

ii
The concept of boundary as that sensed, and not hard-edged physical boundaries, is found

in the writings of Heidegger, and also in Norberg-Schulz, but the latter conflates it with

material, objective boundaries.

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Heidegger’s Building Dwelling Thinking in terms of Minecraft

Dr. Tobias Holischka

Introduction

Technology and philosophy seem to share an interesting relation. While science is relentlessly

inventing new technology, philosophy is constantly asked to explain the new phenomena and

their impact on our everyday world. This affects its various branches from ethics to metaphys-

ics, but what is called virtual reality questions reality itself: If man can create a construct that

appears to be a distinct world “next” or “outside” of ours, how can we tell which one is real?

Can we get lost in a virtual world or are we even, in fact, living in a simulation? 1 While the

simulation hypothesis (Moravec 1998), although regularly restated in new forms, fundamen-

tally refers to the discussion on Descartes’ dream argument, the non-autonomy (Malpas 2009)

of computer-generated virtual worlds ensures the primacy of the everyday world. This does

not end the debate, rather it requires an analysis of this new virtuality and especially its onto-

logical status.

Phenomenology offers an interesting approach towards this subject. Its appeal to re-

turn to the things themselves opens a way to engage phenomena of the virtual on the basis of

the fact that they are, without questioning what they are or if (or how) they even exist. The

1
One of the first authors to deal with these questions was Stanisław Lem. In his science fiction stories

from the 1950s, he describes situations where reality and “phantomatics” (virtual reality) already

precariously mix. But this results from the fact that he most often literarily combines phantomatics

with some kind of ruse or deception, which leads to an inauthentic connotation. I suppose that this

combination is not mandatory.

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phenomenological epoché, taken as an explicit bracketing-off of theoretical presuppositions

of the world, suspends any questions about the ontological status of phenomena originating

from computer technology. This way of facing the matter may, at first blush, look like a cheap

trick, like a taking things for granted that should not be. But the subliminal understanding of

virtuality as something unreal – an illusion or deception – renders any serious attempt of anal-

ysis impossible.

And this concept isn’t so far-fetched: Since the invention of optics, virtual images, like

reflections in a mirror, are connoted by visual tricks and optical illusions. This comprehension

was transferred to computer-generated virtual content. In the minds of the public, it was con-

solidated by the first video games that were obviously distinguished from what is called real-

ity, and is something still visible, for example, in the phenomenon of “flaming” within inter-

net debates, and indeed in multiplayer video games whose participants are partially not aware

about the real character of this social situation. By putting all these fascinating aspects into

abeyance, we have the opportunity to perceive and describe the new phenomena as they are.

When it comes to computer-generated content, our language is strikingly full of meta-

phors referring to space and place. We open files, exit programs, enter windows, surf web-

sites, log in and out, access chat-rooms, up- and download files (saving them on flash drives).

We post on walls and blogs, escape prompts and store data. Working at a screen is like look-

ing through a window into another world, and, after a few minutes, it feels like being there in

a way. We perceive various types of content as different places. Some are private, others, es-

pecially on the internet, can be public, restricted, transitional or forbidden. From this perspec-

tive, it stands to reason to try to apply the traditional phenomenological concept of place to

these new phenomena. Edward Casey, a pioneer in the field of the phenomenon of place,

wrote already in 1997 in “The Fate of Place”:

“As I watch television or correspond by e-mail, my immediate surroundings

may not matter greatly to the extent that I am drawn into the drama I am

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 watching or into the words I am typing or reading. But a new sense of place

emerges from this very circumstance: the ‘virtual place’, as it can be called,

in keeping with current discussions of ‘virtual reality’. In inhabiting a vir-

tual place, I have the distinct impression that the persons with whom I am

communicating or the figures I am watching, though not physically present,

nevertheless present themselves to me in a quasi face-to-face interaction.

They are accessible to me and I to them […]: I seem to share the ‘same

place’ with others who are in fact stationed elsewhere on the planet. This

virtual coimplacement can occur in image or word, or in both. The compar-

ative coziness and discreteness of such compresence – its sense of having

boundaries if not definite limits – makes it a genuine, if still not fully under-

stood, phenomenon of place.” (xiv)

In this quote, Casey puts emphasis on the fundamental social aspect of place. Its qual-

ity of bringing people together, “though not physically present”, describes a way to under-

stand virtual places as places. From this point, we can explore virtual “sites” that do not share

the social aspect and see if we still deal with virtual places. This essay is one approach to do-

ing so.

Before we start: one remark on these general thoughts. The familiar expression Cyber-

Space 2 underlines the alleged aspiration to colonize a new, digital land that has been opened

up by manmade machines. Its pioneers organize in online communities, determined by their

own law, on the frontier to the future. The “space” in CyberSpace symbolizes infinite territory

and technical opportunities. This is not just the capstone of the list of topological metaphors

2
This spelling is intended to point out its underlying focus on space.

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used to describe computer-generated content, but is also a certain sign of a deep misunder-

standing.

In his remarkable essay “How to get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time”,

Casey (1996) pointed out the difference between space and place in detail. While space is de-

scribed by Newton, Galileo, Gassendi, and others as “homogeneous, isotropic, isometric, and

infinitely (or, at least, indefinitely) extended”, which results in Descartes’ explicit notion “that

space had no qualities not present in matter, whose own primary property was metrically de-

terminable pure extension” (19-20), place by contrast integrates the bodily, sensual perception

of a human subject, preconditioned by the phenomenological approach.

Places exceed mere physical description, but they integrate a comprehensive sensing

of an extended phenomenon that is culturally predefined and they are more an event than a

thing. (Casey 1996, 24-28) If we expand this distinction into the virtual, CyberSpace is to be

taken as the perspective of developers. By using blank two- or three-dimensional axes to ar-

range constructed content, they implicitly follow the concept of space. But this differs pro-

foundly from the user’s experience: Virtual places are not homogeneous, isotropic, isometric,

and infinitely, but rather inhomogeneous, anisotropic, anisometric, and of finite extension.

Using the example of the World Wide Web, it matters if a webpage is private or public, how

content is organized, and what link one followed to get there.

And even if the Web was infinitely extended regarding the quantity of potential pages,

we settle for the ones that are of relevance for humans. 3 Place gains even more relevance

when it comes to three-dimensional virtual worlds. To accept as a “world” what we see on a

screen, or rather to let immersion happen, we necessarily grasp it as a place. Therefore, I sug-

gest to speak of CyberPlace instead of CyberSpace. (Holischka 2016) By doing so, we join

3
The Web is not infinite, due to the fact that an infinite number of pages would require infinite re-

sources to generate them. Apart from that, most of them would be cryptic gibberish.

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the user’s perception of virtual environments properly, which means as a phenomenon, not

solely a technical construct.

The virtual world of Minecraft

To describe the phenomenon of the virtual place appropriately, we need to find an appropriate

example. In my opinion, the game Minecraft 4 is well-suited to this attempt. The main reason

for that is its appearance: As we will later see, its “block-design” constantly exposes it artifici-

ality. Unlike most other three-dimensional games, it doesn’t make desperate efforts to look

like the everyday world. This is of importance insofar as we can thereby analyze the user’s

experience of a virtual place that forcefully discloses itself as a construction, instead of pre-

tending to be a “realistic” depiction. Though being fully aware of this aspect, the virtual envi-

ronment is perceived and treated as a place. To point this out in more detail, we need to take a

closer look at the dynamics of the game and the user’s actions, especially right after the start.

[INSERT FIGURE 10.1 HERE MC_Blockworld1.tif]

[Caption:] Figure 10.1: Minecraft’s landscape in blocks

The uniqueness of Minecraft lies in the segmentation of its “physical” world into

blocks that have the extent of a virtual cubic meter. The blocks are made of various material,

such as stone, wood, water etc. (209 different types in total), which form landscapes similar to

that of nature, such as jungle, desert, arctic zones and so on. The world is subjected to day and

night cycles that change every 20 minutes. Movement is exclusive to player avatars, animals,

and to the monsters that may appear at nigh: each too has the extent of a block.

4
Mojang AB, 2009. Bought by Microsoft in 2014 for 2,5 billion U.S. dollar. This paper is not an offi-

cial Minecraft product. Not approved by or associated with Mojang.

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 The player explores the world from the first-person perspective and interacts with it,

especially in terms of mining and crafting: activities which sum up Minecraft’s game mechan-

ics pretty well. Mining blocks brings them into the avatar’s inventory where they can be used

to craft other blocks, like brick, glass and iron or various tools, basically for the purposes of

speeding up mining and crafting or to manipulate the environment.

Natural and manufactured blocks can be transferred from the inventory into the world

to construct structures like houses and animal farms. Minecraft is fundamentally a sandbox

game with only a few optional goals to achieve, which leaves considerable space for creativ-

ity. On the subject of space, we can notice that the orthogonally arranged blocks constitute a

dynamically generated array of 60 million blocks in length and depth in total, which results in

a theoretical maximum expansion of 3.6 billion square kilometers, roughly sevenfold of that

of the earth. On a side note: Although the block world appears to be principally atomistic, its

finite extent and the fact that blocks can be completely destroyed, oppose this traditional un-

derstanding.

This short description for the purposes of general survey provides a first impression of

Minecraft as a game, but not as a phenomenal virtual place. We can get closer to this if we

follow the first steps of a new player. After creating a realm initially, the player is thrown into

the virtual world. At first, he realizes that he can control his or her avatar like in other first-

person games by walking back and forth and using the mouse to look around. What seems

natural and insignificant to the indifferent gamer is exactly the point where his or her body ex-

tends into the virtual and synchronizes with the avatar as a new part. 5 After this brief episode

5
The extension of the body into the virtual world recalls Merleau-Ponty’s example of the organist who

gets used to playing an organ with which he is hitherto unfamiliar in short time: “He sits on the

seat, works the pedals, pulls out the stops, gets the measure of the instrument with his body, incor-

porates within himself the relevant directions and dimensions, settles into the organ as one settles

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of self-identification, the focus changes towards the world. Although being made out of

blocks, it is recognized as a simulation a natural landscape, implying known basic patterns,

along with fantastical elements to be expected in a game. The world turns out not to be just

observable, but also alterable: By clicking on a block, a short process begins that removes the

block and puts it into the avatar’s inventory.

From the acknowledgement of this situation arises the question: What should I do

here? The metaphorical thrownness, e.g. the player’s sudden appearance in the virtual world,

carries forward in an existentialistic analogy to his very being, which is in turn a general exis-

tentialist element in most sandbox games: “existence precedes essence” (Sartre 1967, 34). If

these expressions are to be taken literally in this context, although demanding further investi-

gation, they nevertheless point at the fact that sandbox games do hardly determine players ac-

tions, but allow a wide range of freedom.

In this sense, Minecraft does not prescribe the next steps, but leads to the archetypal

existential experience of anguish – admittedly not in the sense of existential despair, but ra-

ther regarding the tangible confrontation with monsters that appear and attack already on the

first night while the player is still astounded by rapidly varying daytimes within the game.

Fighting the monsters turns out to be futile, which leaves, at least according to the first few

experiences of this kind, only the option to run, dig a hole in the ground and hide until day-

break. It may sound absurd that a virtual setting forces its players into a dark, self-made cave,

but that’s what many players actually report and take as an incitement: to survive in a hostile

environment, basically a struggle for virtual existence.

into a house.” From this point of view, we can even suppose that the avatar becomes a part of the

body, like a blind person’s cane: “Once the stick has become a familiar instrument, the world of

feelable things recedes and now begins, not at the outer skin of the hand, but at the end of the

stick.” (Merleau-Ponty 1986, 145, 152).

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 The night in the cave gives the player the time to get used the fundamental mechanics

of mining and crafting. He or she learns to produce torches that bring light and keep monsters

away, and to produce tools that grant access to more complex materials. But hiding in tunnels

turns out not be a permanent solution, as the avatar loses heath points if it does not eat. The

search for food brings the player back to the surface, which entails the necessity of a door at

the entrance to the growing tunnel system. As nocturnal wanderings are dangerous, a bed in a

safe spot is useful to simply skip nights instead of waiting until dawn.

And it has another feature. Generally speaking, if the avatar dies, it naturally gets re-

vived at the spot where it entered the world the first time, which is not necessarily close to its

tunnels. However, the construction and placement of a bed resets the spawn point to its loca-

tion and thereby gives the player control over it. On the other hand, using a bed also means to

create a safe spot to return to in the evening. Soon, the player learns that farming food and

processing it further is more efficient than collecting it, but the farms (e.g. crops, vegetables,

cattle) also need protection from monsters by lighting and defensive walls.

After a while, a complex of buildings emerges, guarded by safety devices and security

doors, with farms, tunnels, lots of chests containing various blocks, and a bed at its very core.

At this point, the struggle for survival is not over, but much more controllable, and thereby

the player comes ultimately to refer back to the initial question: What should I do here? Typi-

cally, the first buildings are functional, but not very presentable 6, which is why the player

starts to pretty them up in this stage of the game: replacing cobblestone by brick, installing

automatic doors, electric illumination, glass roofs and automatic harvesters for farms, carpets

and pictures for the bedroom and flowers in the front garden.

6
Not to neglect the fact that another player can be invited anytime to start a multiplayer session and

share the virtual world.

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 All of this is not necessary to win the game (it has no final goal anyway), but players

do it and even proudly share their architectonic achievements in online videos and multiplayer

sessions that give rise to spectacular cities. To sum up: In a game that openly shows its artifi-

ciality as a trademark, which leaves the players the freedom to do whatever they want to do,

they start to build houses and furnish them. This example of dwelling in a virtual world sets

the stage for a phenomenological investigation of virtual places. Martin Heidegger’s essay

Building Dwelling Thinking (1971a) is a great point of reference to examine this correlation.

About Heidegger’s Building Dwelling Thinking

Heidegger’s essay deals with architectonic questions only at first sight. He uses the cyphers

“building” and “dwelling” to engage his fundamental philosophical problem, the question of

being. By doing this, he follows Friedrich Hölderlin’s example of using cyphers in his poems

to get philosophical problems across, and thereby entrenched an indirect form of philosophi-

cal exposition. (Kreuzer 2004, 2012; Holischka 2016, 98) “It is language that tells us about

the nature of a thing, provided that we respect language’s own nature.” (Heidegger 1971a,

144) In this respect, his essay “traces building back into that domain to which everything that

is belongs”. (Heidegger 1971a, 143)

Reciprocally, “building” and “dwelling” are not just cyphers, but show the relation of

man to his being at the place where he builds and thereby makes the world inhabitable: “[…]

to build is in itself already to dwell” (Heidegger 1971a, 144). This mode of being differenti-

ates into two perspectives: “Building as dwelling unfolds into the building that cultivates

growing things and the building that erects buildings.” (Heidegger 1971a, 146)

For Heidegger, building and dwelling are not just architectonic achievements among

others, but he denotes dwelling as locating oneself in the world as a fundamental determina-

tion: “We do not dwell because we have built, but we build and have built because we dwell,

that is, because we are dwellers.” (Heidegger 1971a, 146)

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 He explains dwelling with recourse to the gothic word “wunian” which puts emphasis

on the fact that the dwelling man has located himself, behaves stably to the world that sur-

rounds, feeds and protects him: “To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within

the free, the preserve, the free sphere that safeguards each thing in its nature. The fundamental

character of dwelling is this sparing and preserving.” (Heidegger 1971a, 146) Preserving

means to be surrounded by the world and being concerned about it. He expresses this dual re-

lation in four aspects of a dynamic border which makes world and man what they are: the

fourfold. Its border is not dynamic in terms of shifting, but in giving man and world:

“Earth is the serving bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in rock

and water, rising up into plant and animal. […] The sky is the vaulting path

of the sun, the course of the changing moon, the wandering glitter of the

stars, the year’s seasons and their changes […].” (Heidegger 1971a, 147)

This relation of the world as the first “borders” of the fourfold is “crossed” by the rela-

tion of the mortals and the divinities: “Out of the holy sway of the godhead, the god appears

in his presence or withdraws into his concealment.” (Heidegger 1971a, 148) The stable rela-

tion, even as to the “borders”, from where man can understand himself and the world he lives

in, is not just given, but happens as the process of building: “Dwelling, insofar as it keeps or

secures the fourfold in things, is, as this keeping, a building.” (Heidegger 1971a, 149)

According to Heidegger, dwelling is the activity of producing the world, not in the

sense of creating new, previously unknown elements, but in locating the world by rearranging

the existing. What one builds by dwelling “gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, di-

vinities and mortals” (Heidegger 1971a, 151). He uses the example of a bridge that joins in

two ways: it brings mortals together walking on it, and it connects earth over a separating

river. It also metaphorically gathers the last transition of the mortal into the divine. He empha-

sizes that a location emerges from the bridge – it is not built at a location that is already there.

253
 “To be sure, the bridge is a thing of its own kind; for it gathers the fourfold

in such a way that it allows a site for it. But only something that is itself lo-

cation can make space for a site. The location is not already there before the

bridge is. Before the bridge stands, there are of course many spots along the

stream that can be occupied by something. One of them proves to be a loca-

tion, and does so because of the bridge. Thus the bridge does not first come

to a location to stand in it; rather, a location comes into existence only by

virtue of the bridge.” (Heidegger 1971a, 151-152)

Edward Casey draws the final connection from location to place in Heidegger’s paper:

“When it does arise, place shows itself to be locatory in two ways: locatory

of the bridge-thing and locatory for the fourfold. In the first action, it is ‘it-

self a location,’ an Ort; in the second, it makes room for a ‘seat,’ a Stätte,

for the fourfold, admitting and installing it. The first operation transforms

what would otherwise be a mere spot or position, a ‘simple location,’ into a

full-fledged location. The second operation ‘allows’ or ‘grants’ (verstattet) a

seat by way of opening up sufficient room for the fourfold to reside in the

bridge. When both operations are effected, place results.” (1997, 274)

Thus, dwelling can only happen if building is not just an addition to something that

has already been there, but “[b]uilding accomplishes its nature in the raising of locations by

the joining of their spaces” (Heidegger 1971a, 157).

The aspect of building as letting dwell (Heidegger 1971a, 57), without any precon-

ceived purpose, just for its own sake, can be found in virtual environments. They are typically

classified as “games”, but exceed this denomination in various aspects.

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Building Dwelling Thinking in Minecraft

In our everyday world, the aspect of dwelling is widespread, but building to dwell is, due to

our specialized economy, rather seldom. We tend to rearrange, furnish and improve our

homes, but, although paying due regard to the dynamicity of modern cities, its inhabitable

structures remain largely static, especially compared in a simplistic manner with nomadic or

settling societies. In Minecraft, we come upon a completely different setting. The player is

thrown into uncultivated nature and has to make a virtual living from scratch. The player’s

building is meant to dwell from the beginning, and from this perspective, we can apply Build-

ing Dwelling Thinking to get a better and deeper understanding of the player’s actions that

may even stand paradigmatically for all undertakings in virtual environments.

Heidegger differentiates human building into constructing (lat. aedificare) and culti-

vating (lat. colere, cultura) in the sense of cherishing and protecting. (Heidegger 1971a, 145)

We can track this already in the game: The player’s basic needs, security and food, corre-

spond with both aspects of the virtual world. Just to make this clear again, the game does not

constrain the player to build complex buildings. He or she can always choose a nomadic

Dasein, roaming with their bed and belongings and discover the virtual world. But the re-

markable thing is that players decide to build to dwell of their own accord. This brings us

back to Heidegger: “To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. It means to

dwell.” (Heidegger 1971a, 145)

Soon, the player will start to improve his or her new home. They cultivate fields and

use the harvest to breed cattle in enclosures to obtain food and valuable resources. Leather is

used to make books and armor. Agriculture and stock farming are activities that can be quali-

fied as cherishing and protecting. Both demand constant maintenance. Pure food production

does not require this amount of effort. The player accepts this for its own sake, they get them-

selves into it, namely to cherish and protect, because it’s a part of their dwelling. The aspect

of protecting is particularly important, as monsters can cause extensive damage to unprotected

255
agricultural structures. Even the first house serves to protect the avatar, and installations for

food productions become integrated into that complex to guarantee their integrity. But this is

also useful from the perspective of constructing to facilitate a reliable and nearby food supply.

Constructing and cultivating go hand in hand.

As quoted above, Heidegger reconstructs the term “dwelling” from the gothic origin

“wunian”, which draws a connection from “peace” to “free”:

“[…] preserved from harm and danger, preserved from something, safe-

guarded. To free really means to spare. The sparing itself consists not only

in the fact that we do not harm the one whom we spare. Real sparing is

something positive and takes place when we leave something beforehand in

its own nature, when we return it specifically to its being, when we ‘free’ it

in the real sense of the word into a preserve of peace. To dwell, to be set at

peace, means to remain at peace within the free, the preserve, the free

sphere that safeguards each thing in its nature. The fundamental character of

dwelling is this sparing and preserving.” (Heidegger 1971a, 147)

The coincidence of constructing and cultivating in the housing complex of Minecraft

reveals dwelling as actual sparing, as the enclosure (Einfriedung, lit. “bringing to peace”) sep-

arates the area of dwelling from a hostile and uncultivated environment. In our highly inte-

grated society, enclosures have a mainly juridical meaning, as they separate property and

thereby facilitate householder’s rights. But within our game, these legal aspects are meaning-

less: Enclosure marks the border between culture and wilderness. And this border is ulti-

mately to be overcome by new buildings, outposts and secured paths. The player will start ex-

peditions to find new land and resources. But the existential experience repeats itself: without

building, the player’s being is in danger. The player brings himself or herself to peace, within

the buildings they dwell in.

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 Heidegger calls the whole world which man inhabits the fourfold (das Geviert).

(1971a, 148) By that, he means the antitheses earth and sky, mortals and divinities. The first

refers to our physical world as we come upon it, as split into two. One is a bearing foundation,

something to come out of. The other is a superstruction, subjecting earth under its cycles and

granting fertility. Heidegger contrasts this to the opposition of divinities and mortals. “The di-

vinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. Out of the holy sway of the godhead,

the god appears in his presence or withdraws into his concealment.” (Heidegger 1971a, 147-

148) The mortals are identified as humans, as they, according to Heidegger, are the only ones

that are capable of death and die continually.

“This simple oneness of the four we call the fourfold. Mortals are in the

fourfold by dwelling. But the basic character of dwelling is to spare, to pre-

serve. Mortals dwell in the way they preserve the fourfold in its essential

being, its presencing. Accordingly, the preserving that dwells is fourfold.”

(1971a, 148)

Dwelling on earth is solely possible within the constellation of the fourfold. This con-

cept against the rootlessness of modern humans sets them, as mortals, in a global context and,

together with the other three, into the center of the world. Dwelling as sparing removes hu-

mans from their acquiring and exploiting position regarding earth and locates them in its

unity.

We can now transfer the constellation of the fourfold into the virtual world of Minecraft.

The Fourfold of Minecraft

Heidegger describes earth as “the serving bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in

rock and water, rising up into plant and animal” (1971a, 147). What we find as nature in the

Minecraft world fits into this description. Its blocks of rock, ore and soil are the virtual ground

that bears everything and from which everything seems to come out. But no nature is at work

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here which could spawn plants and animals. The virtual world is not designed in the way for

growth to take place. Instead, flora and fauna are produced and spread within the algorithmic

process of dynamic generation of the world, matching with the respective landscape. This

simulation of nature does not form an evolutionary system of competition and selection. It

confines itself to predefined growth of plants without any kind of individual variation and to

the apathetic wandering of animals within the landscape. If Heidegger’s definition of earth is

taken metaphorically, and if his pictorial language is using the natural phenomena of our eve-

ryday world just as an explication, then, after its reduction, we can find even here what he

might have meant to be valid for all kinds of worlds: earth as a serving bearer, spreading out

in rock and water, along with the principle of renewal out of itself. This universal description

of earth applies to the world of Minecraft in the same way.

Heidegger defines the sky as the vaulting path of the sun and other luminaries, the

changes of seasons, daytimes and weather, and the blue depth of the ether. (1971a, 147) The

world of Minecraft is exposed to some effects of weather, albeit not severe weather. The

known movements of the luminaries are displayed, but they have no effect on the world, ex-

cept for the alternation of day and night, which is important for the safety of the avatar. The

difference between the serving bearer and its celestial fundament that Heidegger works out

cannot be revealed within the world of Minecraft, but this is down to the fact that no living

nature is referring to it. However, if we abstract what he means when he speaks about sky, we

reach a global coherence that lies beyond the serving bearer. It’s the game’s invisible algo-

rithms that determine its processes and enclose the player’s actions. Changing daytimes, the

specific types of spawned creatures and their behavior, and the whole process of the dynamic

generation of the world rank among them. They are the counterpart to the virtual earth and

correspond to what Heidegger names sky.

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The mortals within the fourfold are human beings. This aspect of the concept appears to be

distinct at first sight, but it gives rise to the question: Do “mortals” just comprise human be-

ings? Can’t animals or plants die, too? Heidegger defines this more precisely on another occa-

sion:

“The mortals are human beings. They are called mortals because they can

die. To die means to be capable of death as death. Only man dies. The ani-

mal perishes. It has death neither ahead of itself nor behind it. […] As the

shrine of Nothing, death is the shelter of Being. […] Mortals are who they

are, as mortals, present in the shelter of Being. They are the presencing rela-

tion to Being as Being.” (1971b, 176)

According to this, the mortal in the world of Minecraft is the avatar and its death de-

mands further inquiry. Its health is symbolized with hearts that are lost for example by attack,

drowning or hunger. If they fall to zero, the avatar “dies” – not as an existential nihilation, but

only to be respawned again, along with some game-relevant penalties. This has little to do

with death as Heidegger takes it: as a personal relation to Nothing. Only mortals are capable

of death as death. But that does not apply to the avatar in Minecraft, as it is not even com-

pletely a part of its world, as it is controlled by the player from outside.

It has no direct relation to Nothing because it is just a tool or extension of the player’s

body. On the other hand, by this the player obtains access to the virtual world, which is itself

an extension of the everyday world into the virtual, and becomes a part of it in a certain way.

If we follow this understanding, the player himself or herself turns out to be the mortal in

Minecraft. While we need to operate with substitutes to explain the other parts of the virtual

fourfold, the player as a human being remains in their native position.

The divinities however are tricky to grasp and Heidegger’s definition is vague. If we

reduce them to world-relative supernatural entities that create and control the world, we can

identify the programmers and designers of the game to be the divinities, as they are the causa

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efficiens of Minecraft. The game’s artificiality in terms of τέχνη is founded on their existence.

But it is unclear if human beings symbolize divinities here, or just their messengers.

Heidegger writes on this point:

“Mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities. In hope they

hold up to the divinities what is unhoped for. They wait for intimations of

their coming and do not mistake the signs of their absence. They do not

make their gods for themselves and do not worship idols. In the very depth

of misfortune they wait for the weal that has been withdrawn.” (1971a, 148)

Mortals await the divinities in hope, especially in situations of calamity. But does the

player or their avatar await the help and intervention of a programmer? Not really. She or he

considers the programmer to be the creator that provides updates for technical (τέχνη-related)

problems, but does not expect programmers to intervene in emergency situations. Their hope

is not directed towards these programmers, as they have to get along with the mechanics of

the game all by themselves. This is not the relation that Heidegger conceptualized to be the

one between mortals and the divinities. Therefore, I suggest that the player’s divinities remain

the ones of his or her everyday world.

This way, the fourfold stretches across the worlds: while player and divinities remain

in the everyday world, earth and sky have representations within the virtual world of Mine-

craft. When we speak of the player, we are already thinking of the other three alongside:

blockworld, algorithms, lifeworld divinities. The dwelling of the mortals within the virtual

world is a real dwelling within the fourfold across the worlds.

This can be seen as an extension of Heidegger’s concept by taking the nature of the

virtual into account. Of course, it is not what he originally had in mind. But, from a phenome-

nological point of view, the player reaches out into a new world while he still remains rooted

in the everyday world. And within this process, he or she experiences a second stage of exist-

ence: being thrown in a new world, without any guidance or defined identity. What he or she

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does then, namely building and dwelling by choice, are most basic human acts that reveal

Minecraft not only to be a game, but also a place.

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Phenomenological Prolegomena.” In Senses of Place, edited by S. Feld and K. Basso, 13-

52. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Casey, Edward S. 1997. The Fate of Place. A Philosophical History. Berkeley, Los Angeles,

London: University of California Press.

Heidegger, Martin. 1971a. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” In Poetry, Language, Thought,

translated by Albert Hofstadter, 143-159. New York: Harper & Row.

Heidegger, Martin. 1971b. “The Thing.” In Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert

Hofstadter, 163-184. New York: Harper & Row.

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Wilhelm von Herrmann, 146-164. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

Holischka, Tobias. 2016. CyberPlaces. Philosophische Annäherungen an den virtuellen Ort.

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135-139.

Malpas, Jeff. 2012. Heidegger and the thinking of place. Explorations in the topology of be-

ing. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1986. Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge & Kegan

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Moravec, Hans. 1998. Simulation, Consciousness, Existence.

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Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1967. “The Humanism of Existentialism.” In Essays in Existentialism, ed-

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262
Cézanne, Merleau-Ponty, and Questions for Augmented

Reality

Patricia M. Locke

Cézanne’s luminous late watercolors offer a comparison point both in function and

aesthetic qualities to Augmented Reality interpretations of the natural world. I will look

at Cézanne’s watercolors, both in their effect upon a viewer and their mode of

production, with an eye to how they demonstrate what Merleau-Ponty calls “wild being.”

I will then contrast the aims and effects of his painting with the potential of AR

projections that could transform our felt sense of space and time, particularly with respect

to atmosphere. I conclude with questions for AR, specifically about the effects on those

who experience enhanced environments.

I define Augmented Reality as creating mediated sensory links between the

physical (real) world and electronic information, where CGI overlays enhance human

perception and cognition. I mean to set aside completely immersed environments, to

think about the ways in which digital information can appear as screens or 3-D layers

within a distinguishable physical context, but that share the real-time interactivity of

Virtual Reality. While these new technologies are exciting and offer possibilities for

creative expression, there are competing considerations that AR may devalue lived

experience and shut down our capacities to find affinity with others.

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Cézanne
One of the most transcendent experiences of my life occurred at the Chateau Noir, a

relatively wild property near Aix-en-Provence, FR, where Cézanne painted many oils and

watercolors of the nearby Mt. Sainte-Victoire amid a rocky, bramble-covered landscape. I

was able to spend an August painting in the same locale, seeking out the motifs that had

inspired me. One hot, bright afternoon, I walked right into one of the watercolors. I was

surrounded by the light, color, and expressive dimensionality of his painting, right down

to the scent of sage and pine, and the loud clamor of cicadas. I could still see what was

“really” there, but an imagined veil or scrim of a watercolor heightened and organized the

terrain into a coherent aesthetic experience. This rare event took my breath away, as I

was at last seeing “according to” Cézanne, and the natural world was presenting itself to

me in a full and unique way. This led me to consider the question: what if Augmented

Reality technology could recollect this experience for me and offer it to many others who

are unable to be at that precise location at the exact time of day and month captured by

Cézanne in “Rocks near the Grottoes above the Château Noir?” 1

Let’s examine the significance of this experience and the means by which it

affected me. In The Visible and the Invisible, Maurice Merleau-Ponty makes much of the

pre-reflective basis for the self as interdependent and interwoven with the surrounding

field. This relation reveals itself in perception. He states: “What there is then are not

things first identical with themselves, which would then offer themselves to the seer, nor

is there a seer who is first empty and who, afterward, would open himself to them—but

something to which we could not be closer than by palpating it with our look, …the gaze

itself envelops them, clothes them with its own flesh.” (1968, 131) This kind of

experience requires an openness to what presents itself and an acknowledgement of the

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ways in which the perceivers are folded back upon themselves in the very activity of

approaching contact with others. There is a reciprocity between us that manifests itself in

sensory apprehension, in the space of wild being (l’ être sauvage). On the other hand,

cultural sedimentation and self-restriction often occludes our perception and leads us to

“know” ourselves as not only distinct, but also separate, from a kaleidoscopic world.

Things and their aspects disappear from view as we learn how our culture defines,

organizes, and erases certain things to privilege others. Wild perception is a return from,

an undoing of, cultural organizing frames, such as Euclidean 3-D space. We discover that

there is a co-functioning of self-world, in a chiasmatic relation. (Merleau-Ponty, 1968,

215).

Art is a key player in slowing down the absorption of impressions and the

deepening of our responses. Already in the nineteenth century, Nietzsche recognized a

“crisis of assimilation” wrought by the resistant subject, increasing speed, and the

overloaded sensory environment. He describes the problem:

The tempo of this influx prestissimo; the impressions erase each other; one

instinctively resists taking in anything, taking anything deeply, to ‘digest’ anything; a

weakening of the power to digest results from this. A kind of adaptation to the flood of

impressions takes place: men unlearn spontaneous action, they merely react to stimuli

from the outside. (1967, 47).

What counts as external to us is mediated by our education, and accelerating

speed distorts our apprehension. Merleau-Ponty acknowledges proper distances for

perception, whether by sight, hearing, or closer proximity in scent or taste. Yet, an object

within the field is not set out as simply distinct. The perceptible field is structured in

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terms of the “difference between things and colors, a momentary crystallization of

colored being or visibility” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 132).

Thus, the enveloping by the look acts as a kind of question and response, which

allows colored shapes to emerge as meaningful, to make sense to me not as an

accumulation of facts, but as a whole. Merleau-Ponty takes sight as the premier example

of perceptual experience, though he intends us to take into account that perception draws

on the activity of intertwined senses. One of the challenges to visual representation in

both AR and in painting is to gesture towards sound, texture, etc. 2 Cézanne’s brush

strokes clearly suggest the proprioceptive gesture, and his whole-body attentiveness to

the surrounding field. AR is still in its infancy in this regard, though I assume that these

challenges can be met if designers want to enhance the sense of lived experience.

The primacy of perception in Merleau-Ponty’s thought highlights understanding

the world not as a projection of our minds, but as the ground for any figure to emerge.

The coherent self, inherent in the world, co-constitutes that world and the figures in it. On

a simple level, AR games utilizing smartphones (Pokémon Go, for example) show this

gesturing intention towards a world that is really there. In painting, we can see the event

of perception, and the alignment of conscious perception with that which is beheld.

Painting in general displays the emergence into perceptibility of the world that then

inhabits the paper or canvas as expressed by the painter. Merleau-Ponty notices a certain

atmosphere is generated through color, defined as a “certain node in the woof of the

simultaneous and the successive,” or a “concretion of visibility” (1968, 132). Color is not

a quality applied to an object, or even that by which a shape is able to be seen. Merleau-

Ponty is more focused on this sense of pre-reflective atmosphere within which painter,

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future appreciator, and the world dwell. What begins in perception evokes a thorough

intercorporeity within a common field, which can extend not only spatially but over time.

Cézanne’s late watercolors fit Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of what happens in

perception. Impressionist painters are known for dissolving the object and merging its

outlines with the milieu, while suggesting that the perceiver “mix” colors in

apprehending the painting. One thinks of Monet’s haystack series, which gets at the

specificity of atmosphere as well. Yet Cézanne worked with different watercolor

techniques, using blocks of graduated tones to support perception of planes stepping

back. Unlike most watercolorists who blend wet colors, he laid on colors one by one,

letting the layers dry in between. This gives a clear quality to each color and preserves

the glowing whiteness of the page, which often reads as foreground. 3

Cézanne tightens up his compositions with light pencil marks over some of the

color washes. Color has priority over the line, especially color applied as shadows, yet he

means to show us the structuring function of the pencil. Unlike oils, watercolor paintings

show every mistake, every gesture of the hand, and thus point to the object’s status as a

made thing. Given Cézanne’s unwavering, precise facture, we are able to variously

interpret these paintings as veils of responsive listening to the natural world, as art, and as

made things of paper and paint. We see double: a place emerges while we notice

simultaneously the delicate watercolor touches. This highlights what it means to be

present, since fullness emerges as the perceived aspects cohere, rather than an additively

enriching perception as the sum of a collective set. My imagination and memory

generatively contribute to this fullness, bringing the past to bear on the present moment.

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 Over time, Cézanne came to know the terrain, his materials, and the act of

perceiving sensations of color, and that is what he shows us. He achieves a kind of

reciprocal visibility in which the act of painting itself is implicated. His overlapping

wedges of transparent color, interacting with evocative lines and precisely “placed” white

spaces, demonstrate how he sees and how his body enters into the milieu. Therefore, a

painting is a way of knowing both the world and the self more deeply.

Seeing with Cézanne intensifies and suspends my felt sense of time, and splits

open space to offer structurally coherent virtual places that are beyond the three-

dimensionality of my ordinary perceived world. I adapt myself to his sight, and to what

he saw. The order of my noticing aspects of the original painting governs my noticing of

the overlaid milieu in a cinematic way. Aware of places of movement and rest, I am able

to resonate with a creative moment.

This understanding may contribute to my own painting practice, or to my

aesthetic appreciation of the world around me. I begin to return to pre-reflective wild

perception, as I overcome the sedimented cultural templates that obscure the world and

wear out the fresh eye. My apprehension of space and time shift, activating both my

imagination and memory in coherent ways. Cézanne lent his body to the world, aligned

his own body and gestures, and made it possible for me to do the same. The spontaneous

intertwining with the world on a pre-reflective level is, for adults, an effort that comes

about through attentive perceptual practices and forgetting conventionally shaped

experience in the moment.

With the work of imagination and memory, there can be gaps (as in dreams) in

continuity. Merleau-Ponty suggests this is an opportunity for the emergence of the

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genuinely new. Anecdotal evidence supports the claim that ordinary viewers cannot cope

initially with the new, then gradually they adapt themselves to it. It took some time for

the art world to be able to see according to Cézanne, and to re-experience previous art

works in light of his ways of seeing. Thus, Cézanne acts as a mediator, sensitive to the

world as it presents itself, and represents it to and for us. He does this through layers of

transparent color in the small abstract watercolors, as well as with oil paint on larger

canvases. We alter our own felt bodily dimensions, becoming small or larger in

proportion to the image.

The work of art structures and frames a portion of the world in a particular way,

calling us to adapt to the world as perceptible. Within this cultural overlay, there is still

an opening to wild perception, because of the consummate and fluid characteristics of

Cézanne’s work. He reveals the flesh of the world, and his paintings act as a pivot

between self and it.

Augmented Reality
While I have emphasized the work of color in manifesting atmosphere in Cézanne’s

painting, Bachelard notes that “objects create their own atmosphere.” (1971, 27).

Cézanne’s work relies on a topological model of space, which includes proximity,

envelopment, and primordial intertwining as seen above. These are values distinct from

providing organized data or images—how will AR meet this challenge? Or will we resist

a full meshing with evolving technologies? The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets

suggest that we will not resist, but will embrace the interesting, the colorful, the novel. I

would distinguish the “novel” from the “new” by the transitory superficiality of the

former and the profound effects (for good or ill) of the latter. The aforementioned hand-

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held devices are likely to give way to other AR technologies that permit us to alter space

and time, pivot between levels, and supply information, while restoring our hands to us. 4

So despite the glamorous aura of the latest phone, I want to think about whether AR’s

contribution is along the lines of Cézanne’s restructuring of spatial perception or not.

Even if AR does not intend to return us to wild perception in its drive towards

commercial applications, is this a possible goal for AR developers?

Historically, there have been culturally significant changes in spatial

apprehension, such as free-form childlike vision or the incorporation of a unifying grid

overlay in uniform Cartesian space. Another spatial order includes nested levels and

windows that open onto continuous or discontinuous fields, as we can see both in

medieval European painting and in 21st century video games. MS Hololens can display

both panel-like screens (or windows to another virtual sphere), and 3-D holograms in the

same apparent space, but as places unconnected to one another. One must learn to

interpret each of these arrangements of space, as in toggling between two football games

simultaneously on a TV with an open PIP window. Once acclimated, and anchored on

one’s physical sofa, these variations of spatial expression become easy to read rather than

physically nauseating. With the accumulation of ways of perceiving space around us, we

can become forgetful of our childhood’s raw impressions of a scale-less moon on the

horizon, in favor of what Husserl calls a “high altitude” POV, or an instrumental one,

where we take in information, without attentiveness to nuance. Yet we may still turn

towards a more fluidly reversible style, as in Merleau-Ponty’s reclaiming of wild

perception.

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 Like Cézanne’s motifs that both are and are not on the paper, leading to an

oscillation in vision, AR information may draw attention to and simultaneously rely on

CGI inherence in the visual field. AR can sensitively integrate bodily perceptual

capacities, especially the intentional gesture. David Morris notes that place and

movement (within/toward) establish the reality of things. He highlights “zones” not only

in the field, but as “movements distributed over regions of the body and its prostheses.”

Morris claims “‘zone’ and ‘envelopment’ are complementary concepts: a zone (a finger,

say) already is the envelopment of moving regions in one another, and is the basis for

further zones that envelop one another and create new zones.” (2004, 115). Thus, the

functions of one zone can be wrapped or enveloped by another, and in the case of human

beings, one intention can support or thwart another. Merleau-Ponty is headed in this

direction when he considers the reversibility of perception of things in space. He gives as

an example the finger of a glove that is turned inside out: it suffices to see the “wrong”

side to touch through its now exposed interior surface to the “right” side. (Merleau-Ponty,

1968, 263). Spatial envelopment and reversibility suit the kind of double vision I referred

to above in thinking about the white portions of Cézanne’s page. In AR gaming

applications, shifts from one level to another may display this openness to two sides. My

argument here surveys a variety of virtual interventions into real space, rather than

focusing in depth on one kind of Augmented Reality application. I am not yet convinced

that reversals of orientation in AR have the same meaning as bodily or perceptual

reversibility in Merleau-Ponty’s account.

Merleau-Ponty’s early view of the body schema in Phenomenology of Perception

included a global awareness of comportment in an inter-sensory world, along the lines of

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Gestalt psychology. My body has a “situational spatiality,” among things and other living

beings who have “positional spatiality,” within my horizon. (2014, 102). This makes

sense with AR’s intentions to allow the viewer to be the null point of perception and to

navigate the physical and virtual terrain successfully. The embodied viewer has a certain

manner or style of movement that takes into account both the felt sense of being an

integrated whole and its anchoring in objects of desire. The orientation of the perceived

world is responsive to my body as “a system of possible actions, a virtual body whose

phenomenal ‘place’ is defined by its task and by its situation. My body is wherever it has

something to do.” (2014, 260). Already in PhP, Merleau-Ponty is speaking of embodied

being as relational and open to the other, both defining and being defined by this relation.

He does not mean an avatar by “virtual body”; he means that I am already

transcending my resting position, as an active agent. Yet an avatar is by its creation ready

to explore worlds, to do deeds. Holographic humans appear before us not simply to sit as

dolls on a shelf, but as interactive companions. I change my orientation and posture in

response, and in so doing I establish a spatial level. In situations in which the milieu is at

an angle or mirrored, or otherwise distorted from the orientation with which I am

familiar, I inhabit the spectacle in order to achieve my goals. Merleau-Ponty observes:

“My body is geared into the world when my perception provides me with the most varied

and the most clearly articulated spectacle possible, and when my motor intentions, as

they unfold, receive the responses they anticipate from the world. This maximum of

clarity in perception and action specifies a perceptual ground, a background for my life, a

general milieu for the coexistence of my body and the world” (2014, 261).

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AR enhancements can provide information and ornamentation to highlight certain aspects

of the ground. The embodied being aligns both the virtual dimensions of perception and

its physical/gestural motor activity within the context it is confident of. However,

Merleau-Ponty’s mature The Visible and the Invisible puts less emphasis on clarity and

confidence than on atmospheric conditions on the horizon of my existence. I may anchor

myself in objects, I may move from place to place, but my felt sense of them is

affectively colored.

I am more interwoven with my milieu in Merleau-Ponty’s late thought; how does

this apply to AR? What we have seen so far from AR apps suits Merleau-Ponty’s earlier

mode of thought. In Phenomenology of Perception, there is still a subject facing objects,

even if the objects are virtual ones. Later, Merleau-Ponty strenuously argues against this

clear distinction, and invokes the rough texture of the real and the way it gathers us in.

Even as we notice or fail to notice its nuances, the world supports our felt sense of

embodied being, unable to close a circuit through the perceptual reversibility of touching

our own hand. I touch-almost-consciousness; I am-almost-simply object. As subjects

aware of our inherence as objects within the horizon, able to be experienced by others

with a different POV, we co-constitute spatial levels with the world. Here is where there

is room for development in AR. This place and time, woven through my body as a pivot,

turns in multiple directions given the latent content of “behind” or “ahead” of this

moment. Novels and the theatre have the scope to make manifest the reversibility of self

within a narrative arc. AR does not yet factor in this notion of the embodied being, like a

glacier mostly hidden within an indecisive milieu, which has a certain style given in part

by the world.

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 One might argue that we always already do experience the world through

(sometimes rose-colored, sometimes grey) glasses. We already do lace fears and

presuppositions into our perception, limiting our projects and expectations accordingly.

Yet, excellent works of art like Cézanne’s enable us to experience different, more

ordered, and thoughtful ways of living. When we compare his watercolors to AR

productions, we must keep in mind the aesthetic potential of the medium, in addition to

its current and most likely future uses.

AR blurs the line between what is physically present and CGI—transcending time

and space to give “you are there” experiences of events distant from us in history. Rare

experiences become shareable, and proponents claim that despite the short-term gain for

shopping and gaming, in the long run applications could increase empathy. People could

learn, feel and process experiences in a deeper way, according to Zenka, a contemporary

sculptor who explores the implications of the technology. (www.zenka.org). By standing

in another person’s shoes, she claims, one can develop compassion. Given the AR

technology, it is possible to develop less rigid, more fluid solutions to social and political

problems.

However, viewers of unframed physical appearances, or of a work of art such as a

Cézanne watercolor, must adapt their responses to that which is external. I want to

emphasize the seeing “according to” the artist, a kind of practice or training to return to

real life with the ability to see more clearly. AR features organizational structures that

adapt to the perceiver, heightening the aesthetic or informational characteristics of what

is perceived. If we assume that the current technical challenges to coordination of

different sensory systems can be met, we are still left with the issue of adjustment to the

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POV of the perceiver. It may be possible to have the freedom to switch on/off or adjust

contours of spatial arrays to enhance atmospheric effects. While this is advantageous to

AR, it is in contrast to the textured resistance of the physical world that the painters feel

especially when dealing with the ever-changing landscape. Even for abstract artists, this

material resistance is a factor each time they mix colors or use a brush. Like the artist, the

viewer has to confront the push-back of the world that does not accommodate the

viewer’s preferences. The viewer has to conform to the real world, rather than the other

way around. The very materiality of instrument and visual results confound the

expectations of the viewer, calling for widened or changed perspectives. This is the most

significant difference in ontological status between AR and painting.

AR’s organizational structure adapts to the self; the unframed natural world poses

questions by its very resistance to that POV. I would extend “natural” here to the

culturally elaborated environments in which people find themselves, insofar as the reality

of a place shares this anti-illusionistic, resistant feature. Thus, the world is not simply

background fabric for my perception and action, but the field within which these take

place. I acknowledge that we often are not sensitive to the intercorporeity of our situation,

and treat the world as if a tourist postcard backdrop for photographs of ourselves. But

even then, our bodies resist smooth transitions over time and terrain. General atmosphere

in the surround likewise affects those who enter its arena, resisting my mood or

surprising me, rather than radiating simply from myself towards it. 5

Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of depth as the first dimension is applicable at this

point, given that it takes account of our embodiment. He remarks, “depth is the means the

things have to remain distinct, to remain things, while not being what I look at at present.

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It is pre-eminently the dimension of the simultaneous.” (1968, 219).The point, the line,

and the plane are not presupposed in depth as the first dimension. All real and virtual

aspects of this particular place coexist “in degrees of proximity, they slip into one another

and integrate themselves.” He argues that because of depth things “oppose to my

inspection obstacles, a resistance which is precisely their reality, their ‘openness,’” and

my “look does not overcome depth, it goes around it.” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 219). Are

holograms and virtual screens floating in this room things? With depth? Insofar as they

integrate with the real components of the milieu, and coordinate changes with them, I

would give qualified assent. Like light, ambient sound, or dust in air, virtual projections

can offer a fullness to my experience of place. But insofar as they only appear and

maintain stability while I am pointing my camera/glasses/phone towards them, they do

not.

Perception, in Merleau-Ponty’s view, is not first a perception of things. Things

have a latent content and a comportment that doesn’t depend upon being perceived.

When perceived, much remains hidden (e.g., their history, the back side of 3-D objects),

and the object offers itself as something that could show its other angles. Cézanne notes

that “it is color that expresses all changes in depth,” and offers sensations of the palpable

distance between objects and viewer. 6 Cézanne’s watercolors have been described that is

compatible with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of depth: his “patches do not represent materials

or facets or variations of tint. In themselves they do not represent anything. It is the

relationships between them—relationships of affinity and contrast, the progressions from

tone to tone in a color scale, and the modulations from scale to scale—that parallel the

apprehension of the world.” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 287). Relations of proximity, affinity

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and the like knit together a coherent milieu that finds response in the viewer/painter’s

sensations. AR models that can be perceived by a room full of people sitting at a table

must have multiple faces as well, adapted to each viewer. A perceiver of a real table

might only see three legs, but can confirm the fourth one by walking around the object.

Meanwhile, sight of another leg is occluded. AR projections of a table might also display

only three legs, but they don’t need these legs to stand on. Stability and change of the

object accompanies the viewer’s moving POV.

The significant differences between effects of Cézanne’s watercolors on me and

customized visual AR arrays adapted to my POV, highlight the realm of ethical life. On

the level of the individual body schema, AR offers possibilities of sensory overload, but

also creative ones. On the level of community, the challenge is to foster healthy contact

between humans who open onto a continuous visual/tangible field, who can share

adventures and experience in space.

Commercial and military AR applications have inherent dangers. Medical,

technical, and educational applications are often touted, but porn and 3-D shooter

animations integrated into physical reality are likely to be more lucrative. They may also

be desensitizing. Westworld, HBO’s 2016 series depicting a “wild west” immersion

entertainment experience, complete with behind the scenes AR technology (glasses,

tablets, 3-D projections, etc.), shows the moral degeneration not only of the players, but

of the game’s organizers and maintenance staff, who become fascinated and numbed by

the many naked androids they clean up after violent sprees. 7 Gail Weiss reminds us that

there is an “ongoing construction and reconstruction of our bodies and body images,

which in turn “alter the very nature of … intercorporeal exchanges,” with humans and

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non-human others. (1999, 3). These physical and emotional responses develop as

relationships with them and internally with our very selves. Thus, indiscriminate use of

AR and other new modalities along the continuum of the real and virtual can change not

only our perception but our lived experience of self. It may be argued that we are

vulnerable to depressive, morbid, cruel, or other negative experiences with more

traditional media. Yet the blurring of reality/virtuality and the deeply affective

engagement with these modalities intensifies the risks both on individual and communal

levels.

Another question that must be asked of AR is how to manage the addictive effects

we have seen in social media use, gaming, and porn: the masking of the possibility of

genuine contact with others under the illusion of heightened interactions. This kind of

closing off from others can lead to habitual inability to do otherwise; finally, reduced

situational awareness can shrink the world to the size of a solitary soul’s desires. The

solipsistic end game is a far cry from Merleau-Ponty’s offer of a fully reversible

intercorporeity. Are we to live in a mediated world that makes a conversation with

another human, or the growing of one’s own unpredictable garden, disappointing? Or, at

its best, will AR foster interactions that help us live more flourishing lives? Isolation and

the devaluation of life with others can distort even the criteria we use for judging what

counts as a vivid life, with preferences for excitement that can lead to neglect of the body

and environmental degradation.

On the other hand, we should consider theatrical possibilities, where imagination

and memory have a wide field with the incorporation of embodied actors and aural/visual

components. The narrative strengths of AR media could be enhanced to create more

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vibrant experiences. Rather than simple illustration or functioning as theatrical

backdrops, some of the video work showing up in contemporary opera may meet

genuinely AR applications in the middle. I am thinking in particular of Jake Heggie’s

Moby Dick (2010), which visually suspended the audience in the crows’ nest high above

a ship’s heaving platform, with projections by Elaine J. McCarthy. 8 Theatrical

atmospheres are evoked by lighting and set design, and practices in these domains, as

well as cinema, could be put to good use by AR designers. AR’s as yet unexplored field

of theatrical possibilities I find most exciting, including immersive experiences supported

by humans “on stage” and off. With narratives and techniques for making worlds come

alive as intercorporeal fields, within which the participants find themselves attentive to

people, places and things, Augmented Reality applications could offer new and exciting

ways of resonating with and understanding places and times beyond the solipsistic self.

By different means, then, the painter and the AR designer may allow us to experience our

lives freshly, as intertwined with others and embedded within a dynamic context. They

may alter our perceptions of space and time, bringing past and imaginable future close to

us. In so doing, they may alter our habits and sensitivity to atmosphere, the zone-like

ambiguity of our intentional gestures towards each other. With real-time interactivity,

Augmented Reality has the potential to develop genuine contact between humans and

non-human others. But because of the difference in adaptation to/from the world by the

painter and AR, there is a heightened risk with even the most artful AR that participants

will be dazzled by illusions without a spontaneous felt affinity with others. Whether

Augmented Reality applications could enable our meeting in the pre-reflective field of

279
wild perception, and imagine a healthy future together based on our lived experience

there, remains an open question.

References

Bachelard, Gaston. 1971. “The Painter Solicited by the Elements,” in The Right to
Dream. Translated by J. A. Underwood. New York: Grossman.
Böhme, Gernot. 2013. “The stage set as a paradigm for an aesthetic of atmospheres,”
Ambiances [Online]. Rediscovering, 2013-02-10. Retrieved 2016-10-02. URL:
http://ambiances.revues.org/315.
Conisbee, Philip and Denis Coutagne. 2006. Cézanne in Provence. Exhibition Catalogue.
Washington DC: National Museum of Art.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2014. The Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald
Landes. New York: Routledge.
__________________. The Visible and the Invisible. 1968. Edited by Claude Lefort and
translated by Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Morris, David. 2004. The Sense of Space. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich.1967. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollingsdale. New York: Vintage.
Peddie, Jon. 2017. Augmented Reality, Where We Will All Live. Springer International
Publishing.
Schmalstieg, Dieter and Tobias Höllerer. 2016. Augmented Reality: Principles and
Practice. Boston: Adison-Wesley.
Smith, Steve. 2010. "A Role for the Roiling Sea as Ahab Hunts His Whale," New York
Times, 2010-05-02. Retrieved 2017-09-03.
Weiss, Gail. 2013. Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality. New York:
Routledge.

280
1
Philip Conisbee and Denis Coutagne, 2006, 210-211. Image 91, 1985-1900, watercolor

and graphite on paper, 47.5 x 30 cm. Private collection. Also, Image 93, 1895-1900,

watercolor and graphite on paper, 31.4 x 47.6 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New

York, Lillie P. Bliss Collection, 21.1934. https://goo.gl/images/ZNstNv.

2
Dieter Schmalstieg and Tobias Höllerer, 2016, 34ff. Descriptions of different kinds of

displays and non-visual sensory modalities are helpful here. They also specify the

distinctions between terms such as “augmented reality,” “augmented virtuality,” and

‘virtual reality,” as on a continuum of uses. (29). I accept their definition of AR as

presenting information and images in ways that combine real and virtual components, are

registered in 3-D, and are interactive in real time (unlike cinema). 3.

3
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_-

_Ch%C3%A2teau_Noir_and_Mont_Sainte-Victoire,_c._1890-1895_-

_Google_Art_Project.jpg. See also Cézanne, “Rocks at Bibémus,” 1887,

https://goo.gl/images/DUkWWo
4
Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry at the MIT Media Labs Fluid Interfaces group have

developed SixthSense, whose “Wearable Gestural Interface” includes a camera, small

projector, smartphone and a mirror on a lanyard around the viewer’s neck to turn surfaces

into screens, augmenting what the viewer points to as he or she moves through physical

space. Other groups are developing glasses or contact lenses to free up the hands, but

while I find the changes in technology fascinating, here I want to focus on the

consequences of AR’s potential spatial and temporal alterations in the world around us.

See also: Georgia Tech’s Augmented Environments Lab; the Tracking Project at UNC,

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Chapel Hill; Columbia University’s Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab, as well

as projects underway in the private sector, notably at Google and Microsoft. See a history

of technological developments in: Jon Peddie, 2017.

5
Gernot, Böhme. 2013-02-10. URL: http://ambiances.revues.org/315
6
Conisbee and Coutagne, 2006, 23.
7
“Westworld,” 2016, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, co-creators, Richard J. Lewis,

director. Themes of sin and redemption and meta-narratives about artificial

intelligence hold one’s interest, but the androids discover that selfhood is achieved

through interactions with one another. Meanwhile, the viewer becomes complicit with

the park’s engineers, inured to the sex scenes in the background of violent shoot-outs.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/sympathy-for-the-

robot/497531/ .
8
Steve Smith, (2010-05-02), Retrieved 2017-09-03.

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The Place of Others: Merleau-Ponty and the Interpersonal Origins

of Adult Experience

Susan Bredlau

When we perceive, what we perceive always takes the form of a figure against a ground. 1 What

we perceive could, therefore, always be perceived differently. What we now perceive as figure

could come to be perceived as ground and vice versa. Furthermore, this configuration of figure

and ground has a specific meaning. While walking on the campus at which I teach, for example,

I am focused on the people streaming past me and rather than on the buildings, and, expecting

that I will run into someone I am happy to see, I experience the campus as pleasant and

invigorating rather than uncomfortable and overwhelming.

Perception, in other words, is not a process of representing a situation that has already

been established independently of us. Rather, it is the very establishment of a situation in its

significance for us. We must recognize, therefore, the significance of the situations we perceive;

we must, to use the language of Edward Casey, whose work I will discuss further in the next

section, recognize the phenomenon of place. Rather than overlooking the phenomenon of place

1
See Phenomenology of Perception, 4: “When Gestalt theory tells us that a figure against a background is

the most basic sensible given we have, this is not a contingent characteristic of factual perception that

would, in an ideal analysis, leave us free to introduce the notion of impression. Rather, this is the very

definition of the perceptual phenomenon, or that without which a phenomenon cannot be called

perception.”
and failing, therefore, to recognize the situations we perceive in their significance for us, we

must, instead, become attentive to the phenomenon of place and describe the situations we

perceive in their significance for us.

Drawing primarily on Merleau-Ponty’s account of our experience of other people in

the Phenomenology of Perception, but also on Casey’s account of place in Getting Back Into

Place and The Fate of Place, Russon’s account of family life in Human Experience, and

contemporary research in child psychology, I will argue that such attentiveness to the

phenomenon of place reveals that our adult perception of place is a fundamentally interpersonal,

rather than an individual, achievement. Our adult perception of place is grounded in our bodies’

habits, and we begin to developing these habits not as isolated individuals but as members of a

family.

Furthermore, I will argue that recognizing our bodies' habits as having their origin in the

family helps make sense of Merleau-Ponty's claim in the Phenomenology of Perception that truly

understanding our experience other people requires that we “rediscover the social world” 2 and

reveals that our adult experience of place can have a virtual aspect that is implicit and ongoing

rather than explicit and intermittent. Rather than taking our perception of place for granted, and,

in doing so, assuming that it is shared with others, we must, instead, recognize the familial aspect

of our perception of place and begin taking responsibility for it - rejecting, sustaining or

transforming our perception of place in light of our present relations with others.

2
Phenomenology of Perception, 379.

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Section One: Place and the Lived Body
In Getting Back Into Place and The Fate of Place, Casey argues that philosophers, particularly

since the early modern period, have generally neglected the phenomenon of place and focused,

instead, on the phenomena of space and time. Yet these philosophers’ conceptions of time and

space, Casey writes, have tacitly relied on an experience of place in which place is not, as has

usually been assumed, a “mere sector” of space. 3 The phenomenon of place deserves, therefore,

to be considered in its own right; such consideration not only reveals that place is irreducible to

space but also is, in relation to time, “if anything, a first among equals.” 4

To address philosophy’s previous neglect of the phenomenon of place, Casey offers a

phenomenological account of place. 5 By carefully describing our lived experience, Casey reveals

the centrality of the phenomenon of place within our lives: “place as it forms part of daily (and

nightly) life.” 6 Our lives are not set within a homogenous and indifferent space. Rather, our lives

are set, for example, on the coast of Maine, at the university where we teach, or in the city of

Tehran. These settings are irreducible to certain quantities of land or locations on a map; as

Casey writes, “I do not take place to be something simply physical. A place is not a mere patch

of ground, a bare stretch of earth, a sedentary set of stones.” 7 These settings have a rich,

existential significance; the phenomenon of place, Casey writes, has the power “to direct and

stabilize us, to memorialize and identify us, to tell us who and what we are in terms of where we

3
Getting Back Into Place, xxii.
4
Getting Back Into Place, xxii.
5
Getting Back Into Place, xxii.
6
Getting Back Into Place, xxii, 320.
7
Getting Back Into Place, 329.

285
are (as well as where we are not).” 8 Place cannot, therefore, be understood as “the mere

subdivision of an absolute space or as a function of relationships between coexistents.” 9 Instead,

Casey writes, “A place is more an event than a thing to be assimilated to known categories. As

an event, it is unique, idiolocal” 10; places are “loci of intimacy and particularity, endowed with

porous boundaries and open orientations.” 11

In Casey’s account of place, our lived bodies, he writes, offer us a “guiding thread.” 12 If

this attention to the lived body is surprising, Casey writes, this is because philosophers have

neglected the phenomenon of the lived body as much as the phenomenon of place; there is,

“rarely any serious discussion of the role of the body in the determination of place.” 13 This

neglect of the lived relation between place and body reflects, Casey argues, modern philosophy’s

conception of the body as a mere thing in space; “At first glance, the convergence of diminished

attention to the lived body and to experienced place might seem to be merely coincidental. But in

fact the respective destinies of body and place are closely connected in philosophical thinking; as

body came to designate the hard physical body of res extensa, so place came to mean a mere

segment of infinite space.” 14

8
Getting Back Into Place, xv, italics his.
9
The Fate of Place, 233.
10
Getting Back Into Place, 329.
11
Getting Back Into Place, 233.
12
The Fate of Place, 203.
13
Getting Back Into Place, 45.
14
Getting Back Into Place, 46, italics his.

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 Drawing on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, however, Casey argues, that the body is no more

reducible to a physical thing than place is. The body’s movements, rather than simply occurring

within the places we experience are, instead, the enactment of our experience of place. Merleau-

Ponty, Casey writes, “teaches us not just that the human body is never without a place or that

place is never without (its own actual or virtual) body; he also shows that the lived body is itself

a place. Its very movement, instead of effecting a mere change of position, constitutes place,

brings it into being.” 15 The body’s enactment of our experience place is not, however, the

unilateral imposition of meaning onto utterly passive physical surroundings. The constitution of

place “requires a place that is amenable to this body-subject and that extends its own influence

back onto this subject. A place, we might even say, has its own ‘operative intentionality’ that

elicits and responds to the corporeal intentionality of the perceiving subject” (325); 16 “Just as

there are no places without the bodies that sustain and vivify them, so there are no lived bodies

without the places they inhabit and traverse.... Bodies and places are connatural terms. They

interanimate each other.” 17

As adults, each of us has an extensive repertoire of bodily movements whose exercise

generally does not require our explicit attention. These habits, Casey argues, fundamentally

inform our experience of place. Habit is not the merely mechanical repetition of specific

15
The Fate of Place, 236, italics his.
16
Getting Back Into Place, 325. See also Casey’s discussion of orientation: “as an actively orienting

force, indeed, as the very center of orientation, the lived body escapes self enclosure. To orient, after

all, is to orient to--to something other than that which does the orienting itself” (Getting Back into

Place, 234, italics his).

17
Getting Back Into Place, 327.

287
movements. Habit is, more fundamentally, a form of bodily understanding: “...knowledge by

acquaintance in the form of familiarity.” 18 Habits enact our experience of a specific building, for

example, as our home and our experience of the area immediately surrounding this building as

our neighborhood. As a form of knowledge that resides, so to speak, in our arms and legs, we can

know our way between our home and the grocery store, for example, without knowing that the

route consists of three right turns followed by two left turns. Habit is, to use the language of

Gilbert Ryle, a matter of knowing how rather than knowing that. 19

We often think of habits as individual achievements. I have the habit, for example, of

getting up early, smoking, or eating healthy food. Yet many of our habits do not reflect us as

unique individuals. Instead, as Casey notes, many of our habits reflect us as members of larger

communities; the body incorporates “cultural patterns into its basic actions.” 20 Thus not only is

“Culture carried into places by bodies...[the] body inhabits places that are themselves culturally

informed.” 21 In walking, for example, we wear paths in the ground and in building houses for

ourselves, we establish towns. Yet we also follow paths that others have worn in the ground and

move to towns that others have established. Any place, Casey writes, is pervaded by culture even

as it “retains a factor of wildness.” 22

18
The Fate of Place, 232, italics his. See also Casey’s discussion of habit as a form of memory, “Habitual

Body and Memory in Merleau-Ponty.”

19
The Concept of Mind, 16-20.
20
Getting Back Into Place, 336.
21
Getting Back Into Place, 336.
22
Getting Back Into Place, 337.

288
 Casey’s work has drawn our attention to the phenomena of place, to the inextricability of

the lived body from our experience of place, and to the critical contribution of the lived body’s

habits to our experience of place. I will now turn to Merleau-Ponty to offer a fuller account of

the lived body’s existence as habitual and the role of other people in the lived body’s formation

of habits.

Section Two: Perceiving Others as Perceptive

In The Structure of Behavior, Merleau-Ponty argues that behaviorism is ultimately unable to account for

the behavior of living beings because it fails to recognize the very phenomenon of behavior. Behavior

is activity of a subject and not an object; the movements of living beings are the enactment of their

experience, and we perceive it as such. We do not, in other words, perceive other people's body

movements as utterly insensitive to their surroundings. Rather we perceive other people’s body

movements as perceptive; “But if the other's body is not an object for me, nor my body an object for

him, if they are rather behaviors, then the other's positing of me does not reduce me to the status of an

object in his field, and my perception of the other does not reduce him to the status of an object in my

field” (PP 368).

Furthermore, if we take seriously the insight that our perception of our surroundings is

always significant, then perceiving others as perceptive entails more than simply perceiving them

as - like us - perceptive. It also entails perceiving their perception of their surroundings as - like

ours - having a specific significance; it entails perceiving them as perceptive of a place. We

perceive others as oriented toward certain things rather than others and as oriented toward these

things in one way rather than others; “The other body is...the place of a certain elaboration and

somehow a certain “view” of the world.” 23 When we perceive a person sitting beside us in the

23
Phenomenology of Perception, 369.

289
coffee shop moving her arms and making contact with the computer keyboard in front of her, for

example, we perceive her as at work, attentive to the words and images on her computer screen.

Likewise, we perceive someone who suddenly crouches down in front of a tree branch as

ducking to avoid the branch and someone who is moving quickly toward the bus as trying to

catch the bus.

Another person’s perceptual experience is, of course, never reducible to our own, and I

will return to this point in Section 5. We can be wrong about what we perceive others perceiving,

and we can even be wrong about whether a particular person is perceptive. Yet, Merleau-Ponty

argues, we can only be wrong if we first perceive others as perceptive and if this initial

perception is shown to be wrong by subsequent perception. To experience our previous

perception as mistaken - either about whether this specific person is perceptive or about the

specific significance of her perception - we must experience our subsequent perception as

correct; “Each perception, although always potentially “crossed out” and pushed over to the

realm of illusions, only disappears in order to leave a place for another perception that corrects

it.” 24 We realize we are mistaken about what one person is perceiving, for example, when we

perceive them as perceiving something else. Thus a mistake does not throw into question every

perception of others as perceptive but, instead, confirms some of these other perceptions.

24
Phenomenology of Perception, 360.

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Section Three: Infant Perception
Many psychologists, Merleau-Ponty writes, argue that infants experience others as perceptive

only through analogy. 25 The analogy runs as follows. Having experienced ourselves as

perceptive and having perceived our own bodies, we come to correlate our perceived body with

our perceptivity. Then, in perceiving others' bodies, we draw an analogy between our perceived

body and our perceptivity and others’ perceived bodies and their perceptivity. In other words, if

we see others’ eyes as seeing and ears as hearing, this is because, having seen our own eyes and

ears and having correlated our hearing with our ears and our seeing with our eyes, we then

correlate others' eyes and ears and with our own eyes and ears and, finally, with seeing and

hearing. One would expect, therefore, that infants would not be able to imitate others' facial

expressions. Having only experienced their own faces as perceptive and never as perceived, they

should have no way of drawing an analogy between the facial movements they perceive others

making and the facial movements that enact their own perception.

Yet, Merleau-Ponty observes, infants are, in fact, able to imitate others' facial

expressions, and his observations are supported by more recent research on infants. 26 Andrew

Meltzoff and Keith Moore, for example, have argued that infants who are only a few hours old

are able to imitate an adult’s tongue protrusions. Infants’ behavior, Merleau-Ponty argues,

implies that infants do not experience others as perceptive only through analogy; rather, infants

25
Merleau-Ponty's argues against an experience of others by analogy in both the Phenomenology of

Perception, particularly 367-368, and “The Child's Relations with Others,” particularly 113-120.
26
See, for example, Meltzoff and Moore, “Newborn Infants Imitate Adult Facial Gestures.” For a

discussion of this research in light of Merleau-Ponty’s discussions of infant behavior, see Gallagher,

How the Body Shapes the Mind, 65-85 and Welsh, The Child as Natural Phenomenologist, 72-105.

291
immediately perceive others' body movements as having the same powers of perception that their

bodies do. Though we do not, for the most part, observe our bodies as we perceive - and though

we are unable - even as adults - to describe many of the specific bodily movements that enact our

perception - we see others' bodies as the visible manifestation of our own powers of perception.

When we think about infant imitation, therefore, we should conceive of this imitation as a

matter of perception rather than simply movement. That is, infants' imitation of others' bodies

does not consist merely in moving in a way that is similar to the way that they perceive others as

moving; infant imitation of others' bodies consists of perceiving in a way that is similar to the

way they perceive others as perceiving. Some recent research on infant perception supports this

implication. Andrew Meltzoff, for example, has documented 18-month old children, after

watching adults unsuccessfully perform a novel activity like pulling apart a dumbbell shaped toy,

performing the activity successfully; the infants appear to imitate the adults' aim rather than just

their movements. 27 Interestingly, after watching a machine perform this same task

unsuccessfully, infants were far less likely to perform the activity successfully.

Similarly, Maria Legerstee (1991) has documented 10-month old infants who watched an

adult stick her tongue out also sticking their tongues out. Infants who watched a red stick

protrude from a white tube, however, did not stick their tongues out. If we think of both the

person and the red stick in the white tube as being perceived by the infant as objects, and we

might be surprised that the infants did not respond to both by sticking their tongues out. If we

think of the person as being perceived by the infant as perceptive, however, the red stick as being

perceived by the infant as an object, however, we need not be surprised by the difference in the

27
Meltzoff, “Understanding the Intentions of Others.” For a broader discussion of infant imitation of

other's intentions, see Meltzoff, “Born to Learn.”

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infants’ response to the person and the red stick. As adults, if we see someone in a non-

laboratory setting sticking their tongue out, we will likely perceive them as tasting something or

making a face at someone. If we see a stick moving out of a tube, however, we will not perceive

the tube as tasting something funny or making a face at someone. Meltzoff and Legerstee's

research suggests that infants – like adults – perceive other peoples’ bodies as perceptive and not

merely as moving. The phenomenon of infant imitation is, I think, worthwhile reflecting on a bit

more. We should notice that - as infants as well as adults - we do not simply remain aloof when

we perceive others as perceptive. That is, we do not merely observe that others are perceptive

and then return to perceiving the world as we had before. Instead, we often take up what we have

perceived as their perception for ourselves, and we do so without having explicitly decided to do

so; as Merleau-Ponty writes, “my perspective...spontaneously slips into the other's

perspective.” 28 When we see someone staring intently at something, for example, we are usually

curious about what, exactly, they are perceiving and try to perceive it for ourselves. There is

something appealing to us about other peoples’ perception; we are drawn out of our ways of

perceiving and into theirs.

We ought, in other words, notice that even as an infant’s surroundings could have could

have a wide variety of significances for her, she often perceives these surroundings as having the

same significance that she perceives them as having for others. In rooms filled with things that

they could pay attention to, infants not only often pay attention to what they perceive others

paying attention to - and overlook what they perceive others as overlooking - but they also often

pay attention to these things in the same way as they perceive others as paying attention to

28
Phenomenology of Perception, 369.

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them. 29 If we are not surprised that infants pay attention to what we pay attention to and pay

attention to it in a similar way to the way we do, this is because we are taking the significance of

the place we perceive for granted. Yet we should not take these significance for granted; it is,

after all, just one of many possible significances that our surroundings could have for us.

Section Four: Family

None of us are born self-sufficient. We all depend on others to raise us. I will refer to these

others we depend upon as children as our “family.” While our family may consist of two parents

and one sibling, it may, instead, consist of several orphanage workers and fifty other orphans;

likewise, while our family may be attentive and caring, our family may also be terribly

neglectful. 30

These others who raise us have particular ways of perceiving the world. Thus, rather than

beginning our lives by perceiving in solitude and only subsequently discover that others are also

perceptive, we begin our lives by perceiving others as perceptive, and we are often drawn into

the meanings that we perceive them enacting. We grow up in families in which, for example,

shoes are taken off before entering the house, plates are cleaned at mealtime, children are

generally seen but not heard, or anger is suppressed rather than expressed.

29
See, for example, Meltzoff, “Infant imitation after a 1-week delay” and Sorce, “Maternal Emotional

Signaling.”
30
For a discussion of the impact of severe neglect on infant development, see Simms, “Intimacy and the

Face of the Other.”

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 In Human Experience, John Russon offers a powerful phenomenological account of

family life and its significance for children. 31 As children, Russon argues, we are not born with a

distinct sense of the world or ourselves. Instead, we develop this sense of the world and of

ourselves by participating in family life; “It is our family--our group of familiars--that first

defines for us where we fit into intersubjective relations and, consequently, what will count as

the values by which “we” must approach the world, by which we must contact reality. Our

family defines for us our proper place, and, indeed, the place of propriety--of value--itself.” 32

The family, Russon writes, is the most familiar form of cooperative self-definition; as a

member of family, a person lives “human importance as...resting in one’s particularity--one’s

existence as this particular role player among others in a shared situation” rather than as resting

“in one’s isolated singularity--one’s existence as this singular self.” 33 The self-definition of a

family is generally a practical matter rather than a cognitive matter; it is embodied in “particular

forms of cooperative behavior” that are, in large part, habitual. 34

Through our perception of others as perceptive, therefore, we develop ways of perceiving

that are not ours as individuals but, instead, are ours as a member of a family; from birth our

perception is not entirely our own. Insofar as these familial ways of perceiving are embodied in

our habits, we do not need to explicitly think about the significance of our surroundings or of our

own behavior; rather, we immediately experience our surroundings and our behavior in their

31
Russon defines the family very broadly; insofar, then, as all infants depend on others to raise them, all

infants
32
Human Experience, 65.
33
Human Experience, 62.
34
Human Experience, 61.

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significance for our family. We experience the places, and our place within these places, that our

family does.

As infants, however, most of us experience few - if any - alternatives to our family's ways

of perceiving and few - if any - alternatives to our culture's or nation's ways of perceiving. Thus,

as Simone de Beauvoir argues in The Ethics of Ambiguity, we begin our lives with no way of

recognizing our particular ways of perceiving the world as particular; she writes, “The child's

situation is characterized by finding himself cast into a universe which he has not helped

establish, which has been fashioned without him, and which appears to him as an absolute to

which he can only submit. In his eyes, human inventions, words, customs, and values are given

facts, as inevitable as the sky and the trees.” 35

As children, we often mistake the ways things are for us for the way things simply are;

that is, we mistake what is habitual for what is natural. That we make this mistake is attested to, I

think, in our first experiences of visiting other families. We often find these other families' ways

of perceiving quite surprising. We had no sense, for example, that home could be a place where

one could wear shoes inside or could express anger. Until visiting other families, it simply had

not occurred to us that the places we perceive could be perceived differently; we experienced

what was really a particular and conventional way of perceiving as, instead, a universal and

necessary way of perceiving.

Section Five: The Social World and Responsibility

Throughout the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty makes reference to the

“anonymity” of our embodied existence; he writes, for example, that “...my organism - as a pre-

35
The Ethics of Ambiguity, 35.

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personal adhesion to the general form of the world, as an anonymous and general existence -

plays the whole of an innate complex beneath the level of my personal life.” 36 Insofar as our

bodies are human bodies, gifted with powers of perception that - though they are unique to us

insofar as we have human bodies - rather than dog bodies or dolphin bodies - that are not unique

to each of us individually, our existence is anonymous. 37

Yet this anonymity that is enacted by our bodies as organisms is not the only form of anonymity

that Merleau-Ponty notes; in Part Two, Chapter Four of the Phenomenology of Perception,

“Others and the Human World,” Merleau-Ponty writes, for example, “In the cultural object, I

experience the near presence of others under a veil of anonymity. One uses the pipe for smoking,

the spoon for eating, or the bell for summoning...” 38

Merleau-Ponty begins “Others and the Human World” by establishing that insofar as

bodily behavior enacts perception and is not distinct from it, we perceive others as perceptive.

Rather than relating to other people first as objects and then having to forge a relation to them as

subjects, we begin by relating to other people as subjects; as Merleau-Ponty writes, “...the other

person is not enclosed in my perspective on the world because this perspective itself has no

36
Phenomenology of Perception, 86.
37
For a discussion of this form of anonymity in Merleau-Ponty’s work, see Toadvine, “The Time of

Animal Voices.”
38
Phenomenology of Perception, 363. For discussions of this form of anonymity, see Weiss, “The

Anonymous Intentions of Transactional Bodies”; responding to Shannon Sullivan's criticism of

Merleau-Ponty's concept of anonymity as falsely universalizing our individual experience (195),

Weiss argues that anonymity “...can be viewed as a positive social phenomenon that enables society,

institutions, and individuals to flourish” (195, italics hers).

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definite limits, because it spontaneously slips into the other's perspective, and because they are

gathered together in a single world in which we all participate as anonymous subjects of

perception.” 39

Toward the middle of this chapter, however, Merleau-Ponty's focus shifts. While we must

recognize that our perception does not begin as absolutely distinct from that of others, he argues

that this recognition alone does not sufficiently account for our experience of others; “The

difficulties of perceiving others are not all the result of objective thought, and they do not all

cease with the discovery of behavior...” 40 Even as we perceive others as perceptive - and thus are

not utterly cut off from other people - what we perceive others as perceiving is not identical to

what they perceive; “But ultimately, the other's behavior and even the other's words are not the

other himself. The other's grief or anger never has precisely the same sense for him and for

me.” 41

Merleau-Ponty concludes the chapter by writing that, “...we must rediscover the social

world, after the natural world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as the permanent field or

dimension of existence: I can certainly turn away from the social world, but I cannot cease to be

situated in relation to it.” 42 This conclusion might seem puzzling. Having argued that our

impersonal or anonymous coexistence with others did not address all the difficulties of our

experience of others, Merleau-Ponty might now appear to merely be reaffirming this anonymous

coexistence and thus be leaving all the difficulties he raised in the middle of the chapter

39
Phenomenology of Perception, 369.
40
Phenomenology of Perception, 373.
41
Phenomenology of Perception, 372.
42
Phenomenology of Perception, 379.

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unresolved. Yet if we understand Merleau-Ponty's idea of the rediscovery of the social world in

light of the previous discussion of family, I think we can see how this idea is actually a solution

to the difficulties he raised earlier. To rediscover the social world is not, I think, simply to

recognize that our ways of perceiving are, at least in part, ours rather than simply mine or yours.

It is also to recognize our ways of perceiving as originally shared with our family.

The familial origin of our habits means that even as adults living apart from our family,

we nonetheless often continue to experience place as our family did when we were children. In

other words, the exploration of the interpersonal dimensions of place reveals a virtual aspect to

our experience of place. Unlike the virtual aspect of experiences involving technologies like

FaceTime or Skype, however, which consists of an explicit experience other people as in the

same place as us even though they are actually in a different place, the virtual aspect that I am

describing consists of an implicit experience of other people as in the same place as us even

though they are actually in a different place. This implicit experience of other people as in the

same place as us, in contrast to the explicit experience of other people as in the same place, is a

virtual aspect of experience that can be continuously, rather than just intermittently, operative in

our experience.

Even when our family is not actually present with us, and even when we are not

explicitly thinking of our family, our habits can mean that, even as adults, we continue to

experience places as if we were still encountering them with our family; as Russon writes, “our

interpersonal identity [will] always carry the traces of our family members as our founding

points of human references.” 43 Well into adulthood, for example, I may, experience New York

City as the chaotic place in which I am constantly at risk that my family experienced it as when I

43
Russon, Human Experience, 67.

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was a child. Though it has been many years since I was in New York City with my family, and

though I have been in the city on my own many times since, my persistent experience of the city

as threatening means that my family continues, in an important sense, to accompany me on my

trips into New York. Furthermore, the way in which my adult experience continues to be shared

with my family may be problematic for my relationship with the people who are actually present

with me. My partner, for example, in contrast to me, may experience the city as an inviting place

from which he draws creative inspiration, and he may experience the defensive attitude I take up

in the city as a substantial hindrance to his enjoyment of our trips. 44

Thus, just as we cannot assume that our ways of perceiving are strictly individual, we

also cannot assume that our ways of perceiving are, in fact, shared with all others. Our ways of

perceiving place, though not entirely private, are not shared universally; they reflect the specific

family that we person grows up within. As habitual, however, our ways of perceiving not fixed

givens to which we can only submit. We could develop very different ways of perceiving than

those we presently enact. Though our habits are compelling, they are not absolutely compelling.

Indeed, whether or not these ways of perceiving continue to exist depends on whether we

continue to sustain and support them. In rediscovering the social world, then, we not only emerge

out of the anonymous coexistence with others in which we were previously immersed. We also

begin to take responsibility for the habits that we developed within our family and that

constituted this coexistence. Even when we are with those who share our habits, each of us, as

adults, remains individually responsible for the continuation - or transformation - of these habits.

44
For an excellent discussion of how the continuation of familial habits into adulthood may hinder our

relations with others, see John Russon, Human Experience, 75-121.

300
 Others continuation of certain ways of perceiving does not necessitate our continuation of

these same ways. Moreover, when we have relationships with those who do not share our habits,

our unquestioning continuation of these habit may be profoundly detrimental to these

relationships.

Understood, then, as the activity of recognizing and taking responsibility for our habitual

ways of perceiving, rediscovering the social world does provide a solution to the difficulties

Merleau-Ponty raised earlier in the chapter. By recognizing that our ways of perceiving are, in

part shared, we acknowledge the experience of others and escape solipsism. By recognizing that

our ways of perceiving are shared only with certain others and by taking individual responsibility

for these ways, however, we also acknowledge that our experience is irreducible to that of others.

Though our bodies are always, in part, habit bodies, and while these habits always begin within a

specific family, we remain free to invent new ways of perceiving and to inaugurate new ways of

inhabiting place.

References

1. Casey Edward, S. 1984. "Habitual Body and Memory in Merleau-Ponty." Man and
World 17: 279-297, 1984 17:279-297.
2. Casey Edward, S. 1998. The Fate of Place. Berkeley, California, USA.
3. Casey, Edward S. 1993. Getting back into place. Toward a renewed understanding of the
place-world. Indianapolis, USA: Indiana University Press.
4. de Beauvoir, Simone. 1994. The ethics of ambiguity. Translated by Bernard Frechtman.
New York, USA: Citadel Press.
5. Gallagher, Shaun. 2006. How the body shapes the mind. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
6. Legerstee, Maria. 1991. "The role of person and object in eliciting early imitation."
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 51 (3):423-433.
7. Meltzoff, Andrew N. 1988. "Infant imitation after a 1-week delay: long-term memory for
novel acts and multiple stimuli." Developmental Psychology 24 (4):497-515.

301
 8. Meltzoff, Andrew N. 1995. "Understanding the intentions of others: re-enactment of
intended acts by 18-month-old children." Developmental Psychology 31 (5):838-850.
9. Meltzoff, Andrew N. 1999. "Born to Learn: What Infants Learn From Watching Us." In
The Role of Early Experience in Infant Development, edited by Nathan A. Fox, Lewis
Leavitt and John G. Warhol, 145-164. Pediatric Institute Publications.
10. Meltzoff, Andrew N., and Keith M. Moore. 1983. "Newborn infants imitate adult facial
gestures." Child development 54:702-709.
11. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1963. The Structure of Behavior. Translated by Alden L.
Fisher. Boston, USA: Beacon Press.
12. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by D. A.
Landes. Oxford UK: Routledge.
13. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012. "The Child's Relations with Others." In The Primacy of
Perception. Evanston, Illinois, USA: Northwestern University Press.
14. Russon, John. 2003. "Human Experience: Philosophy." Neurosis and the Elements of
Everyday Life (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY).
15. Ryle, Gilbert. 2009. The concept of mind. New York, USA: Routledge.
16. Simms, Eva-Maria. 2014. “Intimacy and the Face of the Other.” Emotion, Space and
Society 13: 80-86.
17. Sorce, James F., Robert N. Emde, Joseph J. Campos, and Mary D. Klinnert. 1985.
"Maternal emotional signaling: Its effect on the visual cliff behavior of 1-year-olds."
Developmental Psychology 21 (1):195-200.
18. Toadvine, Ted. 2014. "The Time of Animal Voices." Environmental Philosophy 11
(1):109-124.
19. Weiss, Gail. 2002. "The Anonymous Intentions of Transactional Bodies." Hypatia 174
(4):187-200.
20. Welsh, Talia. 2013. The Child as Natural Phenomenologist. Evanston, Illinois, USA:
Northwestern University Press.

References –original you sent me but not Chicago author-date

1. Casey, Edward. The Fate of Place. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

302
2. ---. Getting Back Into Place. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.

3. ---. “Habitual Body and Memory in Merleau-Ponty.” Man and World 17: 279-297, 1984.

4. deBeauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York:

Citadel Press, 1994.

5. Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind. New York: Routledge, 2009.

6. Gallagher, Shaun. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.

7. Legerstee, Maria. “The Role of Person and Object in Eliciting Early Imitation.” Journal of

Experimental Child Psychology 51, 423-433 (1991).

8. Meltzoff, Andrew N. “Born to Learn: What Infants Learn from Watching Us.” The Role of

Early Experience in Infant Development. Eds. N. Fox and J. G. Worhol. Skillman, NJ:

Pediatric Institute Publications, 1999.

9. ---. “Infant imitation after a 1-week delay: Long-term memory for novel acts and multiple

stimuli.” Developmental Psychology 24(4): 497-515, 1988.

10. ---. “Understanding the Intentions of Others: Re-Enactment of Intended Acts by 18-

Month-Old Children.” Developmental Psychology. 31 (5): 838-850, 1995.

11. Meltzoff, Andrew N. and M. Keith Moore. “Newborn Infants Imitate Adult Facial

Gestures.” Child Development 54: 702-709, 1983.

12. Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Donald A. Landes. New York:

Routledge, 2012.

13. ---. “The Child's Relations with Others.” Trans. William Cobb. The Primacy of

Perception. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

14. ---. The Structure of Behavior. Trans. Alden L. Fisher. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.

15. Sorce, James F. et al. “Maternal Emotional Signaling: Its Effect on the Visual Cliff

Behavior of 1-Year-Olds.” Developmental Psychology 21: 195-200, 1985.

303
16. Russon, John. Human Experience. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003.

17. Toadvine, Ted. “The Time of Animal Voices.” Environmental Philosophy 11 (1): 109-

124, 2014.

18. Weiss, Gail. “The Anonymous Intentions of Transactional Bodies.” Hypatia 17(4): 187-

2002.

19. Welsh, Talia. The Child as Natural Phenomenologist. Evanston: Northwestern University

Press, 2013.

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“The Place was not a Place”: A Critical Phenomenology of Forced

Displacement

Neil Vallelly

“What was life in Kakuma? Was it life? There was debate about this. On the one
hand, we were alive, which meant that we were living a life, that we were eating and
could enjoy friendships and learning and could love. But we were nowhere. Kakuma
was nowhere. Kakuma was, we were first told, the Kenyan word for nowhere. No
matter the meaning of the word, the place was not a place.”

Dave Eggers, What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2007,
373)

In 2003, Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng collaborated with American author Dave

Eggers to tell the story of his forced displacement during the second Sudanese civil war

(1983–2005). 1 The result was published as What is the What in 2007. Deng and the other

“Lost Boys of Sudan” walked for months—losing several members along the way to

malnutrition, dehydration and lion attacks—to the border of Ethiopia, where the Pinyudo

refugee camp was eventually established. But within a few years, the Lost Boys and other

refugees were chased from this camp by Ethiopian government forces, and after further

nomadic wanderings, they ended up in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. Deng spent his

adolescence in Kakuma; he was educated, fell in love, and even became part of theatre troupe

there. And yet, throughout this time, he was plagued by an existential dilemma—was life in

Kakuma really lived? After all, it was “nowhere”: “the place was not a place.”

Deng reflects on his forced displacement from the US, where he was eventually

granted asylum. 2 But the effects of his original displacement from Sudan are not resolved by

his new citizenship status, because he experiences a new form of displacement as that of the

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immigrant. In the opening chapter of the book, Deng is robbed by an American couple who

force their way into his apartment. As they keep him captive, he ponders: “if this is

punishment for the hubris of wanting to leave Africa, of harboring dreams of college and

solvency in America, I am now chastened and I apologize. I will return with a bowed head.

[…] I have been humbled so many times since arriving that I am beginning to think someone

is trying desperately to send me a message, and that message is ‘Leave this place’” (4).

What is the What is a powerful reminder that the effects of displacement remain long

after a supposed political or legal resolution, especially in a globalized era where

displacement is a primary and on-going experience for so many. On the one hand, the world

has never been more accessible: frequent flyers, commuters, and tourists traverse the globe

for the purposes of business and leisure. Likewise, the Internet and the evolution of

telecommunication technologies have transformed traditional notions of place as tied to

physical environments. On the other hand, the defense of place as a national boundary is on

the rise worldwide, and tightly controlled borders mean that millions of people are

“uprooted,” to borrow Hannah Arendt’s term, with “no place in the world, recognized and

guaranteed by others” (1978, 475).

In her work on refugees and forced displacement, Serena Parekh notes that “living

outside a nation-state is no longer an anomaly than can be brushed aside as exceptional to

contemporary political life; it has in many ways become a standard way of living for millions

of people, and will increasingly be so in the future” (2017, 5). Not only are people displaced

by national and international conflict, but climate change has ushered in a new form of

displaced person, who seeks refuge from rising sea levels, soaring temperatures, and natural

disasters (Collectif Argos 2010; Wennersten and Robbins 2017). Giorgio Agamben’s

assessment that “in the context of the inexorable decline of the nation-state and the general

corrosion of traditional legal-political categories, the refugee is perhaps the only imaginable

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figure of the people in our day” seems more prescient now than ever (1995, 114). In other

words, never has place mattered to so many, including phenomenologists.

This chapter is a critical phenomenology in two senses. Firstly, it is an investigation

that is at times critical of phenomenology—namely, its tendency to reduce displacement to an

ontological side-effect of the loss of place. Secondly, I propose that phenomenology is

critical to any understanding and potential transformation of displacement as a lived

experience. At a time when places emerge at the interstices of increased mobility and

immobility, both real and virtual, it is imperative that a phenomenology of place considers the

fundamentality of displacement in the constitution of the contemporary world. I do this, first,

by situating displacement within contemporary phenomenological notions of place, arguing

that if we are to truly understand displacement as an embodied phenomenon, then we must

displace the ontological foundations of place, so to speak. I then turn to the ambivalent

ontological and human status of refugees and displaced persons, which is illustrated in the

reduction of their bodies from lived to merely existing. This reduction prohibits a meaningful

inhabitation of place, and it is exacerbated by the attempted biopolitical control of refugee

camps and detention centers by humanitarian organizations and national governments. In the

final section I consider the relationship between the body and temporality in the experience of

displacement, in which refugees and displaced persons encounter, to quote the anthropologist

Michel Agier, “a present that never ends” (2011, 78). Drawing on the work of Maurice

Merleau-Ponty, I propose that this seemingly endless present contributes to the physical and

emotional disintegration of refugees and displaced persons, which subsequently precipitates a

slide into non-meaning and superfluousness.

***

What do you think of this place, Achak?

[…]

307
 —Kakuma? I said.
—Yes, Kakuma. There’s nothing here but us. Don’t you find that weird? That
it’s only people and dust? We’ve already cut down all the trees and grass for
our homes and firewood. And now what?
—What do you mean?
—We just stay here? Do we stay here always, till we die?
Until that moment I hadn’t thought of dying in Kakuma. (380)

***

Displacing Place
Displacement perpetually haunts the concept of place, because the ontological, social, and

political realities of place matter so dearly to those who have been denied access, for one

reason or another, to the experience of belonging to a place (real or virtual). Bruce Janz

suggests that “part of the impetus to research place comes from the recognition that many are

displaced, either due to their forcible removal from a place (e.g., a refugee situation), or from

the demise of the place itself. One cannot easily research the nature of place without

becoming implicated by it” (2005, 92). Likewise, in his indispensable philosophical

historiography of place, Edward S. Casey concedes that the forced migration of entire

peoples alongside the evolution information and telecommunication technologies suggests

that the contemporary world “is nothing but a scene of endless displacement” (1997, xiii).

But while there might be agreement that place matters precisely because of displacement (or

unplacement), what constitutes “place” and “displacement” is a lot harder to pinpoint across

disciplinary boundaries. Janz helpfully splits the range of approaches to place into four

categories: “Phenomenological and Hermeneutical,” “Symbolic and Structural,” “Social

Constructivist and Marxian,” and “Psychological and Determinist” (2005, 90–91). As he

points out, these various approaches to place often exist in a “productive tension” with one

another:

A phenomenologist may well assume that the meaning of place lies in what our places
bring out of us, while a symbolic thinker may assume that the meaning is coded in the

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 intersubjectively available aspects of place. A social constructivist may (though not
necessarily) be inclined to regard place as a potentially obfuscating concept and thus
in need of deconstruction, while others may see it as giving light to something
fundamentally true or meaningful about human experience. (91)

There is a sense, then, that the concept of place is itself displaced between disciplines and

approaches. But what these studies share is a commitment to place as meaningful, whether

this meaning is ontological, social, symbolic or otherwise.

The popularity of place as a trans-disciplinary concept is partly motivated by the

desire to transcend the association of place with location. In his Heideggerian analysis of

place, Jeff Malpas suggests that we shift away from “the simplistic notion of place as mere

‘location’ (the notion of place that is at work in the use of a map or in the giving of an

address)” and instead consider “place as that wherein things appear or come to presence.”

Consequently, “place has the character of both openness and opening—the latter being,

respectively, the most fundamental modes of the spatial and the temporal” (2016, 6). 3 Earlier

studies of place tended to stem this spatial and temporal openness. Yi-Fu Tuan argued, for

instance, “if we think of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each

pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place” (1977, 6). In

a similar vein, Michel de Certeau asserted that “place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in

accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes

the possibility of two things being in the same location (place). […] A place is thus an

instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability” (1984, 117).

There are obvious issues with this spatially and temporally static notion of place—not least,

because it contradicts the durational reality of the lived body—as it reduces the socio-spatial

experience of displacement to that of spatial dislocation (Davidson 2009). This has

significant political and social implications. “The more clearly the world is ordered into

discrete places,” writes geographer Tim Cresswell, “the more people and things that exist

outside of these places are likely to be labeled as disorder—as out of place. The production of

309
order is simultaneously the production of disorder and deviance” (2009, 8). Consequently,

rigid notions of places as locations have the potential to align with exclusionary and

discriminatory biopolitical modes of social control. Agier observes this phenomenon in his

work at refugee camps, as does Lisa Guenther in her work on prisons (2013)—both are places

that “turn their occupants into permanent deviants, abnormals who are kept at a distance”

(Agier 2011, 182).

While the idea of place as “openness and opening” allows for a more fluent and

accessible notion of place, it is a conditional openness that depends on a stable notion of what

constitutes subjectivity and a human body. That is, it requires an embodied subject that

initially belongs to a recognizable place. In his book The Memory of Place (2012), Dylan

Trigg suggests that “being-in-the-world means being placed. At all times, we find ourselves

located in a particular place, specific to the bodily subject experiencing that place. We are

forever in the here, and it is from that here that our experiences take place” (2012, 4;

emphasis in original). But we might ask, who is this “we”? 4 Does this include refugees and

the forcibly displaced?

The paradoxical nature of place rests on a simple premise: in order to move

seamlessly within and between places, one must possess a secure—primarily, legal and

economic—connection to a place. Without this secure connection, being-in-the-world means

being displaced. There lies a potential problem, therefore, at the heart of the phenomenology

of place. Most notably, it depends on a Westernized and, to a certain degree, privileged

understanding of the relationship between place and subjectivity. 5 While Heidegger asserted

that “‘place’ places man in such a way that it reveals the external bonds of his existence and

at the same time the depths of his freedom and reality,” place (or lack of) can also be the very

mechanism that denies freedom and reality (1958, 19). Thus, there is a wider issue at stake

with place as a philosophical concept—that is, the bifurcation of the world into two different

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places: “on the one hand, a clean, healthy and visible world; on the other, the world’s residual

‘remnants,’ dark, diseased and invisible” (Agier 2011, 4). And as Merleau-Ponty showed us,

the invisible is deeply enmeshed in the visible, and vice versa (1968).

Refugees and displaced persons exist in the invisible world. Parekh suggests that

“once a person becomes stateless and is rejected from the common world,

phenomenologically, if not legally, the forcibly displaced person remains in a state of

abandonment” (2017, 92). This ontological status of abandonment, Agier observes, is

“characterized by wandering and lasting destitution,” which constitutes the experience of “no

longer being in the world” (2008, 14–15; emphasis in original). Thus, when Trigg suggests

that “over time … places define and structure our sense of self, such that being dis-placed can

have a dramatic consequence on our experience of who we are, and even leave us with a

feeling of being homeless in the world,” he presupposes that one is anchored in the world in

the first place (2012, 1). Yet it would seem from testimonies that the displaced do not feel

“homeless in the world”; rather, they exist outside the world, “condemn[ed] … to a position

outside, as it were, of mankind as a whole” (Arendt 2003, 150). Parekh concludes, therefore,

that “having been excluded from this realm of shared meaning, experience, and fabrication,

stateless people have a kind of worldlessness, and are uprooted and rendered superfluous”

(2017, 91).

Phenomenologists might reply to this issue by arguing that displacement is still a

lived experience of place (Casey 1998, 24), and thus the identities of displaced persons are

determined by their experiences of locations and environments as displacing. And, of course,

they would be right. To be entirely displaced is an existential and spatial impossibility, and

thus, displacement is not in a strict sense a phenomenological reality. Rather, it is a term used

to denote an embodied experience of place that diverges from social and political norms. But

this conclusion would not be of much comfort to those for those who experience

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displacement as a daily reality, a reality that is both created by the primordiality of place and

somehow transcendent of this primordiality. It is important to remember, in this context, that

place itself is a construct—what Judith Butler might call a “frame” (2009, 6–12)—that works

to define the socially-accepted phenomenal sphere, both to augment and limit what can be

experienced and by whom. What we need, therefore, is a phenomenology of place that is

cognizant of its own limitations—that is, a phenomenology that is aware that place by no

means provides a settled ontology. This is what I mean by a critical phenomenology of

displacement.

The phenomenology of place might have overlooked displacement to date, but

phenomenology, more than any other philosophical tradition, also provides the theoretical

tools to examine what it means to be displaced. I agree with both Parekh and Agier that

displacement pushes the refugee or displaced person into a liminal phenomenal sphere. But as

Deng’s experience in What is the What exemplifies, this liminal sphere is still punctuated by

embodied and perceptual phenomena that can tell us something about the limitations of place

as an ontological ground zero. The point of a critical phenomenology of displacement is not

to think about how we incorporate the displaced into contemporary understandings of place

(which is the dominant logic of current refugee policies). Rather, it is to consider how we

might adjust the notion of place to account for displacement—we must, that is, displace

place. This seems to me like the most productive philosophical avenue in a world where less

than one percent of displaced persons are granted refuge annually (UN Figures).

One way to perform a critical phenomenology of displacement is to compare the role

of the body in experiences of place and displacement. Like citizens who are constituted by

their embodied experience of places, refugees and displaced persons are constituted by their

exclusion. Where citizens live in places, refugees merely exist outside places— “they no

longer have a social or political existence apart from their biological one” (Agier 2008, 49).

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Being reduced to pure biological existence transforms what it means to be a lived body,

which has significant implications for phenomenological considerations of place. For Casey,

“lived bodies belong to places and help to constitute them” (1998, 24; emphasis in original).

Likewise, Trigg posits that “to have a body means being in place; likewise, to be in place

means having a body” (2017a, 125). But what about those bodies that are living but do not

necessarily belong to places? Can we even say that they are “lived” bodies in the

phenomenological sense?

***

I don’t live anywhere, and you should learn from this. Why do you think I’m alive
boy? I’m alive because no one knows I’m here. I live because I do not exist. (204)

***

From the Lived to the Merely Existing Body

In his book Humanitarian Reason (2012), Didier Fassin notes that for asylum seekers

attempting to enter France, their bodies, rather than their voices, have become the primary

source of evidence for their experience of displacement. However, it is not the lived body, as

Casey imagines it, but the objectified body, which is examined by a medical practitioner for

traces of hardship, persecution, and even torture (110–11). For Fassin, “the body, no longer

the principal site at which the strength of power is manifested, has become the site where the

truth of individuals is tested. For both the poor who must exhibit the stigmata of poverty in

order to receive public aid or private charity, and the immigrants who must demonstrate their

sickness or suffering in order to obtain a residence permit … the body has become that which

bears witness to the truth” (113). In this sense, the asylum seeker is separated from his or her

body as a lived entity, and is held accountable to judgments of others upon his or her physical

being (Parekh 2017, 89). While for Casey the “body continually takes me into place … at

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once agent and vehicle, articulator and witness of being in place” (1993, 48), for the asylum

seekers in Fassin’s example, the body can be what denies them entry into place. Furthermore,

while their bodies bear “witness of being in place,” the original temporal and embodied act of

witnessing is irrelevant to their present plight. Their bodies are not lived in any meaningful

sense of the world. Their bodies are, rather, prescribed to them, handed over to others and

reconstituted according to the judgments of others.

Butler’s distinction between “apprehension” and “recognition” is a particularly useful

framework for understanding the ontological status of this prescribed body. A human body

can be apprehended as living, she suggests, but this does not necessarily mean it will be

recognized as a life (2009, 4–5). Rather, to be recognized as a life, this lived body “has to

conform to certain conceptions of what life is, in order to become recognizable” (7). These

“conceptions” are determined by a variety of political, social, and cultural norms, “which, in

their reiteration, produce a shift in the terms through which subjects are recognized. These

normative conditions for the production of the subject produce an historically contingent

ontology, such that our very capacity to discern and name the ‘being’ of the subject is

dependent on norms that facilitate that recognition” (4). We could suggest, for instance, that

if being always emerges from or returns to place, then place is a norm through which we

recognize certain subjects. Thus, those who exist outside places in a political and social sense

are bound to suffer an existential crisis (like the one Deng recounts)—they are deemed

unrecognizable through the normative frameworks that constitute subjectivity and humanity.

In the case of refugees and displaced peoples, it is primarily the loss of citizenship that

determines their ontological (and legal) status. As Parekh suggests, “once a person is stripped

of her political persona and citizenship, she appears as an abstract human being who,

precisely because of this abstraction, does not appear to be fully human” (2017, 86).

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 The things that once denoted citizenship, which once underpinned and sustained one’s

right to be in a particular place, become superfluous. Reporting on the Rohingya refugees

entering into Bangladesh from Myanmar, Hannah Beech notes that “their licences, diplomas

and other paperwork mean nothing to officialdom. Besides, you cannot eat documents. Live

chickens and bags of rice are more sustaining” (New York Times, 17 Sept. 2017). Documents

only make sense in places (primarily nation-states) and thus lose all meaning outside of these

contexts. This is a point that both Arendt and Agamben make with reference to human rights,

which are intimately tied to nation-states. “Without a politically guaranteed public realm,”

Arendt proposes, “freedom lacks the worldly space to make its appearance” (1993, 149).

Likewise, Agamben points out that in “the so-called sacred and inalienable rights of man

prove to be completely unprotected at the very moment it is no longer possible to characterize

them as rights of the citizens of a state” (1995, 116). In other words, the “rights of man” are

intimately dependent on a place of citizenship. 6

The loss of citizenship also annihilates the capacity of refugees and displaced persons

to act or speak in politically or socially meaningful ways— “the vulnerable, the wretched,

and all other kinds of absolute victim, are not subjects of speech,” Agier writes (2008, 103).

Frantz Fanon makes a similar point when referring to the colonized: “living does not mean

embodying a set of values, does not mean integrating oneself into the coherent, constructive

development of a world. To live simply means not to die. To exist means staying alive”

(2004, 232). 7 Those in refugee camps equally lose the capacity to contribute to the

“constructive development of a world,” and instead, staying alive is the only imaginable

aspiration. As a spokeswoman for the International Red Cross recently remarked with

reference to the refugee camps in northern Syria, “people don’t care anymore about politics.

What they wish for and what they hope for is—actually, the ones that we met recently, they

want just to stay alive. Their only hope is to stay alive” (Sedky, 17 Aug. 2017). The

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witnessing of death in these camps continually shadows this hope, and therefore staying alive

can manifest also as a radical fear of death. If “death,” as Heidegger suggested, “is the

possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein” (2010, 251), then perhaps living in a

refugee camp is as close as one can get to realizing this impossibility.

The rights of refugees might have been firmly established under the United Nations

convention in 1951, but this has not necessarily led to more generosity on the part of nation-

states. Matthew J. Gibney charts the shifting status of the refugee over the course of the

twentieth century and concludes that “to be a refugee, it seems, may be to have access to

important rights, but woe betide those who arrive in Western states claiming to be a refugee”

(2006, 141). In fact, the UN convention has led to “a situation where refugees are the

responsibility of all states in general, but no state in particular” (ibid., 155). Refugees and

displaced persons are not only forced from their homes, but also seemingly ostracized due to

this fact. “Each displaced person, each refugee,” Agier observes, “carries with them the

experience of being undesirable and placeless. A lived experience of the original act of

violent persecution, then the trials and complications of exodus, [and] resented by

governments that refuse to register or assist populations displaced within their own country.

Other governments … refuse to give them a national status as refugees, and try to negotiate

their departure with international organizations” (2008, 28). Superfluity is thus the

ontological consequence of refugee policies. This is most evident with the case of Said

Imasi—a stateless asylum seeker who has been held without charge or trial in Australia since

2010 (Doherty, The Guardian, 14 Jan. 2018). Imasi cannot prove where he was born—thus

he cannot gain a passport—and when he appealed to Australian immigration officials to let

him go back to Europe, they told him he had “no choices” because he “was not a citizen of

any country” (ibid.) With no legal connection to place, Imasi has no rights—he is locked up

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and continually surveilled. “Every day I am crushed, every day is another life sentence,” he

tells us, “and there is nothing I can do” (ibid.).

While humanitarian organizations play an important role in keeping refugees and

displaced peoples alive in camps or detention centers, they also operate as complex systems

of biopolitical control that can reinforce the superfluousness and non-being of their

inhabitants (Verdirame and Harell-Bond 2005). Agier argues that living in a camp “is an

experience of living in the world while being maintained on the margins of the states, in a

spatial, legal, and political in-between zone” (2016, 464). For him, a refugee camp is “no

more than a euphemistic justification for controlling the undesirables,” and humanitarian

organizations have the “power over life (and to let live or survive) and death (to let die) over

the individual that [they] view as absolute victim” (2011, 211; 196). The camp, or detention

center, not only operates to control but also to exclude the “undesirables” from the

meaningful places of the Western world (Agier 2016, 463–64). And in this exclusion, lies the

shoring up national and territorial boundaries that enable citizens to live with an existential

attachment to place (Jones 2016).

Not only are refugees and displaced peoples forcibly removed from the places that

once enabled them to lead politically- and socially-engaged lives, they are often required to

inhabit a subjectivity that disqualifies them from engaging productively in the political and

social sphere. Namely, the role of the victim. Philip Marfleet points out that in camps,

“refugees are allocated a subordinate role in which it is anticipated that they will accept the

authority of the external forces and the ‘charity script’ in which they have been given non-

speaking parts” (2006, 207). 8 This is not to say that refugees are literally voiceless and

without the power to act—in fact, there are numerous examples to suggest otherwise, as

Deng’s experience in Kakuma illustrates. 9 Rather, it is to suggest that their speech or actions

have no consequence on their living or ontological status. “The loss of the ability to act is

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such a fundamental loss not because it means that a person can no longer speak or act,”

Parekh notes, “but rather, they are no longer judged according to this but instead according to

what is ‘merely given’ about their existence—the fact they are human beings in general”

(2017, 94; emphasis in original). Like the asylum seekers in Fassin’s example, refugees and

the displaced are prescribed subjects, and as a result, “rather than being political subjects,

they become objects of humanitarian aid, bodies to be cared for and protected” (ibid., 88;

emphasis in original).

The reduction of the body from lived to merely existing presents problems for the

phenomenology of place. If “lived bodies belong to places” then what do merely existing

bodies belong to? And if a phenomenology of place depends on the lived body as the vehicle

through which place can be experienced, is it even possible to construct a phenomenology of

displacement? Merleau-Ponty offers one way to answer these questions. The lived body is of

course the cornerstone of his phenomenology—it is, after all, our “general medium for

having a world” (2010, 169). But he is also aware that the body can be the very vehicle that

denies a meaningful existence in the world:

“Our body does not always have meaning, and our thoughts, on the other hand—in

timidity for example—do not always find a plenitude of their vital expression. In

these cases of disintegration, the soul and the body are apparently distinct: and this is

the truth of dualism. But the soul, if it possesses no means of expression—one should

say rather, no means of actualizing itself—soon ceases to be anything whatsoever and

in particular cases ceases to be the soul, as the thought of the aphasic weakens and

becomes dissolved; the body which loses its meanings soon ceases to be a living body

and falls back into a state of a physico-chemical mass; it arrives at non-meaning only

by dying.” (2008, 209; emphasis in original).

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We can see that for Merleau-Ponty, the collapse of meaningful existence occurs through the

“disintegration” of the body, where the body appears to turn against itself and precipitate a

radical dualism at the heart of being-in-the-world. This disintegration has been applied to the

experiences of solitary confinement (Guenther 2013), illness (Carel 2016), and anxiety (Trigg

2017a), but could as easily be attributed to the situation of refugees and displaced persons. In

being denied a “means of expression” through the reduction of their bodies to mere biological

existence, refugees and displaced persons are in danger of “ceas[ing] to be anything

whatsoever.”

***

The walk to Ethiopia, Julian, was only the beginning. Yes we had walked for months
across deserts and wetlands, our ranks thinned daily. There was war all over southern
Sudan but in Ethiopia, we were told, we would be safe and there would be food, dry
beds, school. I admit that on the way, I allowed my imagination to flower. As we
drew closer to the border, my expectations had come to include homes for each of us,
new families, tall buildings, glass, waterfalls, bowls of bright oranges set upon clear
tables.
But when we reached Ethiopia, it was not that place.
—We are here, Dut said.
—This is not that place, I said.
—This is Ethiopia, Dut said.
It looked the same. There were no buildings, no glass. There were no bowls of
oranges set upon clear glass tables. There was nothing. There was a river and little
else.
—This is not that place, I said again, and I said it many times over the coming
days. The other boys tired of me. Some thought I had lost my mind. (256)

***

“A present that never ends”

What is it like to arrive in a place that is not a place? What is it like to be forced from one’s

home, from one’s placement in the world, and to travel alone or in a group for weeks,

months, or even years, and arrive at an unknown location, one that can only have existed in

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the imagination until it is actually inhabited, and somewhere that, to all intents and purposes,

is nowhere? Drawing on his experiences of various refugee camps, Agier depicts the

characteristic experience of a new arrival:

“The typical displaced person arrives in the camp (a generic term that also includes

refugee camps, makeshift settlements, and possibly reception centers or

accommodation facilities for migrants) after having experienced many losses: a

complete or partial loss of place, belongings, and links. Even if at a given time that

person “chose” to leave due to whatever constraint (be it political, ecological,

economic, or social), these losses are the main mark of his/her dis-identification (a

term that refers to the complaint relating to the “loss of identity”). Furthermore, all

displaced people end up in one way or another separated from, abandoned, or even

rejected by the state that was supposed to protect and represent them. The camp is the

place of the stateless, an “out-place” (hors-lieu) established in a zone between the

jurisdictions, territories, and societies of the country or countries whose territory on

which it stands, or to which it is adjacent. In camps that act as a border, the displaced

only exceptionally come in groups; they are individuals who find themselves in a

camp and try to recognize each other, get closer to one another and form at most a

community of survival or a community of shared existence.” (2016, 463)

Deng’s description of his arrival in Ethiopia rings true with Agier’s observations. Ethiopia is

not the utopia he imagined, but rather an aporetic repetition of the same. What emerges,

eventually, is a makeshift community, one that is precarious, ever changing, and dependent

on external resources. For other displaced persons, their arrival in a camp or detention center

does not transform or even mildly placate their displacement, even if they are fleeing from

violent persecution. A Rohingya refugee who arrived in a Bangladeshi refugee camp told

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Beech: “Now we are supposed to be safe in Bangladesh, but I do not feel safe” (New York

Times, 2 Sept. 2017).

In attempting to understand the complexity of refugee camps, detention centers, or

other locations in which displaced persons end up, it is important to distinguish between “out-

places” and “non-places” (Relph 1976; Trigg 2012, 2017b). The latter are “those areas which

have no personal or cultural meaning, but that we frequent, pass through, or spend long

periods of time in as part of modern existence” (Aucoin 2017, 397). These include airports,

supermarkets, hotel lobbies, and as is increasingly the case now, virtual places. Some

scholars have referred to refugee camps and detention centers as “non-places” (Augé 1995;

Sharma 2009; Dörfler and Rothfuß 2017), but there is a fundamental problem with this

association. While airports, supermarkets, or hotels might be transient places, they are still in

the world. In fact, they are extremely important to the functionality of the globalized world.

This also means that a non-place is aimed towards some kind of future place, one in which

the transiency of the non-place eventually abates. But an “out-place,” as Agier calls it, is an

extra-territorial space that is outside of place, and therefore outside of the productive

functionality of the world. In What is the What, for instance, Deng describes Kakuma as “a

kind of vacuum created in the absence of any nation” (446). As vacuums, refugee camps and

detention centers are, in many ways, external to linear or lived time. The phenomenological

experience of these out-places manifests in a continuous state of waiting, but it is a waiting

not aimed at anything or anywhere in particular—it is, to quote Agier, “a brutal entry into a

state of liminal floating” (2008, 30). 10 As one Nepalese refugee reflects on his time in a

camp, “I had no hopes for the future, no dreams for the destiny and I was aimless” (Tamang

2014, n.pag). It is this aimlessness that differentiates out-places from non-places in a

phenomenological sense. 11

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 The body plays a central role in orientating the subject towards a future. For Merleau-

Ponty, the body “unites present, past and future, it secretes time, or rather it becomes that

location in nature where, for the first time, events, instead of pushing each other into the

realm of being, project round the present a double horizon of past and future and acquire a

historical orientation” (2010, 278–79). In doing so, the body “takes possession of time; it

brings into existence a past and a future for a present; it is not a thing, but creates time instead

of submitting to it” (ibid., 279). In order to create time, the body generates what he calls an

“intentional arc,” which “projects round about us our past, our future, our human setting, our

physical, ideological and moral situation, or rather which results in our being situated in all

these respects. It is this intentional arc which brings about the unity of the senses, of

intelligence, of sensibility and motility” (ibid., 157). By anchoring us in space and time, the

body, in its physicality, carries our immediate affective and historical behavioral past, which

enables us to move towards the temporal horizon of the future. The present, therefore, must

be conceived as a perpetual liminality, which “is supported by a future larger than any future.

To consider the organism in a given minute, we observe that there is the future in every

present, because its present is in a state of imbalance” (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 15). Yet as

refugee testimonies illustrate, the present is not in a state of imbalance, nor is there an

intentional arc directed towards the future. The daily struggle to survive grounds the body of

the refugee or displaced person in an interminable present and the future ceases to exist as an

imagined or even embodied possibility, but rather only as the repetition of the present.

Merleau-Ponty observes a similar phenomenon with psychic illnesses, where “the move

towards the future, towards the living present or towards the past, the power of learning, of

maturing, of entering into communication with others, have become, as it were, arrested in a

bodily symptom, existence is tied up and the body has become ‘the place where life hides

away’” (2010, 190). We might also say that refugee camps or detention centers are places

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“where life hides away,” because the intentional arcs of their inhabitants have been “arrested

in a bodily symptom”—that is, a body that is aimless.

Merleau-Ponty lays the ground for a phenomenology of displacement in

Phenomenology of Perception. He writes that “if the world is atomized or dislocated, this is

because one’s own body has ceased to be a knowing body, and has ceased to draw together

all objects in its one grip; and this debasement of the body into an organism must itself be

attributed to the collapse of time, which no longer rises towards a future but falls back on

itself” (2010, 329). For him, displacement is as much a temporal phenomenon as it is spatial.

As time “falls back on itself” and manifests in an endless present, space is flattened out and

place becomes indistinguishable from smooth space. In this sense, time is what gives space

its depth, but only if this temporality is inhabited by a lived body. In paraphrasing Merleau-

Ponty’s notion of depth, Fiona Utley writes that “depth is the dimension through which

spatiality emerges as inhabited—as both affective and bodily proximity—and temporality is

experienced as the intercorporeal intertwining of embodied being through differing rhythms

of duration” (2016, 196; emphasis in original). It is the lack of spatial depth, brought about by

the collapse of time, which denies refugees and displaced persons from truly “inhabiting”

place in any meaningful way. This is precisely why Deng can say of Kakuma “the place was

not a place.”

***

One hour south would be Kakuma, sparsely populated by Kenyan herders known as
the Turkana, but within a year there would be forty thousand Sudanese refugees there,
too, and that would become our home for one year, for two, then five and ten. Ten
years in a place in which no one, simply no one but the most desperate, would ever
consider spending a day. (363)

***

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Conclusion: Recovering the Lived Body

In her study of solitary confinement, Guenther suggests that “the body is the hinge of our

being, the place where we are open to the world, and for that very reason it can be exploited

and turned against us; but for the same reason, it is also a place where we can return to

ourselves and rearticulate our bodily intimacy, recovering to whatever extent possible the

phenomenological and ontological conditions of intercorporeal depth” (2013, 191). How do

we recover the lived bodies of refugees and displaced persons? How do we return them to

themselves? And how might phenomenology be useful in this endeavor? To answer the last

question requires us to think critically about the phenomenology of place. We must admit that

the notion of place conceals within itself an exclusionary dimension—that is, it depends as

much upon what it excludes as it does upon what it includes. Also, we must acknowledge that

the ontological and human status of refugees and displaced persons is ambivalent, and

operates somewhere below the level of those who belong to place. We could say, presently,

that the philosophical notion of place is not doing its job. Or rather, more precisely, it ought

to do its job better. Rather than trying to adapt the identity of the refugee to established

notions of political, social, and even national subjectivity (which are dependent on belonging

to place), the ambiguous ontological status of the refugee represents an opportunity to bring

into the question the very normative reproductions of subjectivity that alienate the refugee or

displaced person in the first place.

If we think of displacement simply as a lack of being placed, then we might think that

the only solution to this predicament is the incorporation of the displaced into established

places. The focus of contemporary refugee policies, for instance, is primarily on quotas,

which are controlled largely by nation-states. 12 But as I noted earlier, the pitiful number of

refugees who are granted asylum in nation-states illustrates that placing the entirety of the

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displaced is not a realistic possibility. Furthermore, housing displaced persons in new places

does not so much solve the trauma of displacement, but merely relocate this trauma to a new

environment. “Refugee policy,” Parekh proposes, “ought to be concerned with addressing the

ontological deprivation of statelessness, and not merely the political harm of a loss of

citizenship” (2017, 83). What we need, therefore, is a deeper understanding of this

“ontological deprivation.” That is, we need to acknowledge that displacement does not only

situate refugees or displaced persons outside of place, but outside of themselves, humanity,

and the world itself—they lose “the ground from which one can engage meaningfully with

others and with the world that is shared in common” (ibid., 91; emphasis in original).

Phenomenology offers us one means to explore this “ontological deprivation.” Like being-in-

place, being displaced is an embodied experience that occurs in the here and now, despite the

uncertainty of this here and now. And while the living status of the displaced body might also

be ambivalent, it is by adequately attending to the embodied experience of displacement that

we can start to return the living body to its lived status.

1
For details of the collaboration process, see Guardian article by Eggers (May 26, 2007) and

VAD Foundation interview with Deng and Eggers (accessed Sept. 9, 2017).
2
Deng has since returned to the newly established Republic of South Sudan to take up the

role as Education Minister in the northern state of Bahr el-Ghazal.

3
It is not possible to do justice to the entirety of Malpas’s work on place here, which stems

from his reading of Heideggerian phenomenology, particularly Heidegger’s later works that

develop a “topography” or “topology” as an ontological method. For a comprehensive

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overview of Malpas’s work on place, see Paloma Puente-Lozano, “Jeff Malpas: From

Hermeneutics and to Topology” in Janz (2017), 301–16.

4
The use of “we” as a personal pronoun is not limited to Trigg’s work, but is rife throughout

the phenomenology of place.

5
In defense of the claim that place is potentially exclusionary, Malpas argues that “an

exclusionary politics presupposes the idea of that from which ‘others’ are excluded, but

this does not establish that place is an intrinsically reactionary or exclusionary idea, only

that it may be employed to reactionary or exclusionary ends—and this would seem to be

true of just about any important concept one may care to name” (20). He writes later in the

same book, “simply to reject place because of its use by reactionary politics is actually to

run the risk of failing to understand why and how place is important, and so of failing to

understand how the notion can, and does, serve a range of political ends” (27). See

Heidegger’s Topology: Being, Place, World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

6
In The Ethics of Immigration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Joseph Carens

considers some practical solutions to this dilemma, which revolve around “breaking the

link between claim and place.” Doing so, he proposes, would mean that the incentive to

claim asylum would not simply be motivated by economic reasons, as there would be no

guarantee that one’s economic situation would be better off in the place where one is

eventually granted asylum (216–17).

7
Lisa Guenther observes a similar phenomenon with prisoners in supermax prisons in the

US: “On the one hand, their bodies still live, eat and defecate, wake and sleep (often with

difficulty). On the other hand, a meaningful sense of living embodiment has for the most part

drained from their lives” (2013, 165).

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8
In a similar vein, Agier observes that in Somalian refugee camps in the east of Kenya the

humanitarian status of the refugees as victims “implies the social and political non-

existence of the beneficiaries of aid” (2011, 133).

9
Marfleet points out that refugees often resist the role of the victim, “especially at times

when regulations are being enforced most insistently, as during food distribution or when

a camp census is under way,” which can lead to skirmishes and riots (2006, 207–08). See

also, Clara Lecadet, “Refugee Politics: Self-Organised ‘Government’ and Protests in the

Agamé Refugee Camp (2005 – 13).” Journal of Refugee Studies (2016) 29 (2): 187–207.
10
Guenther suggests that “waiting to do nothing … is an overwhelming feature of prison

temporality, even beyond the most obvious occasion for waiting: for eventual release from

prison” (2013, 196).

11
There are occasions, however, when the transience of refugee camps is embraced and

defended by its inhabitants, as Michael Kimmelman has noted with Palestinian refugees

on the west bank. As these camps become more urbanized and architecturally developed,

the Palestinian inhabitants fear losing their status as refugees or stateless people, which is

marker of their political subjectivities. “Refugees Reshape Their Camp, at the Risk of

Feeling at Home.” New York Times, 6 Sept. 2014.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/world/middleeast/refugees-reshape-their-camp-at-

the-risk-of-feeling-at-home.html?mcubz=0
12
For a detailed introduction to the different “measures of exclusion” used by Western states,

see Gibney (2006), or for more on the rights of refugees see James Hathaway’s The Rights of

Refugees Under International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Katarzyna

Grabska and Lyla Mehta (eds.), Forced Displacement: Why Rights Matter (Palgrave

Macmillan, 2008). In their understanding of humanitarian aid as “Janus-faced,” Verdirame

327
and Harrell-Bond also suggest that “UNHCR continued to support the encampment policy

because of its perceived attraction to donors” (2005, 17).

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Virtual Dark Tourism in The Town of Light

Florence Smith Nicholls

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to explore a phenomenology of virtual space and place and how it

could be applied to dark tourism in video games. It begins by introducing the concepts of

phenomenology and dark tourism, and then traces a methodology for applying these to the

case study The Town of Light. Drawing from archaeology, queer phenomenology and game

studies, the central argument is that a phenomenology of virtual dark tourism should pursue

the idea of an assemblage of play which considers neither the player, gaming platform nor

virtual space in isolation. Queer phenomenology is particularly relevant to the assemblage of

play as it questions essentialist and binary approaches. It will be recommended that

phenomenological studies of virtual space engage with what Brendan Keogh describes as

“eyes-at-screens, ears-at-speakers, and muscles-against interfaces,” (2015, 16), as part of a

process of rejecting an apparently neutral universal embodied experience which erases

“bodies of difference” (Burrill 2017, 1065).

Using a thick description of my own phenomenological experiences in the game, I

explore how the dark heritage of the non-fictional asylum in Town is presented through an

understanding of a virtual sense of place, the recreation as digital doppelgänger and queer

phenomenology. Further qualitative research into player phenomenological experiences of

potential virtual dark tourist sites will be recommended. It is hoped that although this is only

a precursory venture into the potential of virtual dark tourism, that the path will be clear

enough that the reader can easily follow my journey, even if they don’t agree with the route

that I have taken.

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Phenomenology

Phenomenology can be broadly defined as the study of the appearance of things, how we

experience them, and the meaning that we draw from that experience. The history of

phenomenology as an existential philosophy will not be retold here, rather the frictions and

overlapping of different phenomenological approaches will be teased out through a

discussion of how phenomenology has been subject to relevant interdisciplinary application.

The setting of The Town of Light is to be considered as an example of digital dark

heritage, whilst the player experience of the game will be argued to constitute a form of

virtual dark tourism. For this reason, the application of phenomenology to archaeology

and digital reconstructions of archaeological sites will be considered, as well as

phenomenology’s role in dark tourism research. Game studies’ engagement with the

concept will be explored to demonstrate the challenges and opportunities of applying

phenomenology to virtual space and place.

Dark tourism and phenomenology

The concept of dark tourism was first introduced by Lennon and Foley (1996). Whilst they

defined it as a post-modern phenomenon fueled by 20th century media reporting on atrocities

and disasters (2000, 6), Seaton (1996) contends that the deliberate visitation of sites

associated with death and disaster has occurred for centuries prior to this, with Stone and

Sharpley (2008, 574) considering the attendance of Roman gladiatorial games or pilgrimages

as forms of death-related tourism.

The ambiguous definition of dark tourism is one source of criticism for the field in

general (Light 2017). One solution to this has been to typologize dark tourist sites. Sharpley

(2005) has attempted to do this through creating a spectrum of ‘paler’ to ‘darker’ tourist sites.

Stone (2010) has also categorized along a continuum, from ‘Dark Fun Factories’ to ‘Dark

Camps of Genocide.’ Though these typologies are based on how particular sites are marketed

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and consumed, they are inevitably from a prescriptive, Western perspective (Bowman and

Pezzulo 2010), which is symptomatic of a field which has been dominated by British

scholarship (Korstanje 2017). Particularly pertinent to this piece is the fact that a digital dark

tourist site such as the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra in The Town of Light would occupy

an uneasy position within such a spectrum. As a virtual reconstruction, should the digital

Ospedale be considered as ‘paler’ site since it does not constitute the analogue original, and is

accessed as part of the commodified experience of a video game? The nature of digital

authenticity will be explored further below.

Research into tourist motivations for visiting dark tourist sites and their experiences is

another way to come at the problem of trying to pin down the phenomenon of dark tourism.

In their thesis on dark tourism motivations, Robinson outlines phenomenology as a

methodological approach in tourism studies, with interviews being the most prominent

method of data collection (2015, 100). This was also the case with Baidwan’s thesis (2015)

on dark tourism and Marilyn Monroe’s grave. Interviews of video game players’ experiences

in The Town of Light were not conducted for this piece due to time constraints but it is

important to note that such research would provide a more robust examination of the

phenomenological experience of the game and would be recommended for further research.

The most direct consideration of digital dark tourism as it applies to a virtual

reconstruction of an historical site is González-Tennant’s (2013;2016) work on the

educational and social justice potential of dark tourism in relation to his own virtual

reconstruction of Rosewood, Florida. This was an African-American community destroyed in

1923. González-Tennant is particularly interested in a virtual archaeology of the recent past

(2013, 69), and to this end they visit several different memorials in the online world of

Second Life. Though phenomenology is not an explicit focus of their work, the audio-visual

experience of visiting these virtual places is included in their analysis (2013, 74).

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Archaeology and phenomenology

In the case of archaeology, Tilley (1994) advocated for phenomenology as a means of

attempting to understand past human interaction in particular landscapes or settings.

However, Tilley’s approach has been subject to considerable critique within the discipline.

Hamilton and Whitehouse (2006) have discussed the highly subjective nature of

phenomenological approaches in archaeology which rely on the first-person perspective of

the archaeological practitioner. In particular, Eve has picked out the fact that archaeologists

have not, in general, followed a Husserlian phenomenology which is more concerned with

experience in terms of an “analysis of its constituent parts and its ‘essence’” (2012, 525) than

with the sensual feelings of the individual phenomenologist.

An essentialist phenomenology which seeks to position itself as objective is also

problematic. A key disagreement in the history of phenomenology is that a Husserlian

approach seeks to ‘bracket’ away individual beliefs so as not to contaminate the research,

whilst Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger advocated for the researcher acknowledging their own

presence in their work (Robinson, 2015). However, both approaches could be considered

limited, especially if an essential body is assumed to exist, or if they do not engage with

gender, race and other intersectional factors which make up an individual’s

phenomenological experience. It is for this reason that a queer phenomenology which

considers neither an individual human body nor digital places as discrete entities will be

explored as the methodological approach for this piece.

Methodology

Whilst archaeologists have theorized about the phenomenological experience of digital

reconstructions of archaeological sites (Eve 2012), game studies scholars have been

particularly productive in getting to grips with the challenge of approaching a

phenomenology of digital space. In the last section, the subjective nature of phenomenology

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was mentioned as a key problem for practitioners. In their thesis, A Play of Bodies A

Phenomenology of Videogames Brendan Keogh examines the embodied textuality of video

games and the ‘assemblage’ of play, a “cybernetic assemblage of human and non-human

bodies” (2015,43), a concept which Taylor (2009) applies to user-created mods in World of

Warcraft. Their work takes inspiration from Donna Haraway’s Manifesto for Cyborgs (1985)

and Situated Knowledges (1988). Keogh draws out a particularly important point from the

latter work:

“That knowledge is always embodied and partial is not a problem to resolve (a move

that only ever confers impartial status to one partial perspective) but a reality to

account for” (2015, 52).

Rather than trying to avoid or gloss over the inherent bias involved in any

phenomenological perspective, this study seeks to embrace and actively engage with its own

partial nature. This approach becomes even more salient when the full implications of the

aforementioned assemblage of play are considered. Rather than constructing a

phenomenology of play in which the human player, the gaming platform and the virtual space

of the game are distinct entities, the assemblage of play considers all these elements to be part

of a circuit in which no one element is essential or isolated, rather it is through the practice of

play that each is constituted (Keogh 2015, 52). It is interesting to note that the term

assemblage is also employed in archaeology to describe a group of artefacts found in the

same context (thus both temporally and spatially associated).

This piece takes a case study approach, focusing on the game The Town of Light. Care

will be taken to put the game in its historical context, both in terms of its subject matter and

games with similar themes. This singular case study approach, based on my own research,

has some obvious shortcomings in its inevitable descriptive and subjective nature. Following

Sobchack, I will focus on crafting a ‘thick description’ of The Town of Light which takes into

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account its own subjectivity, whilst also being “sufficiently comprehensible to a reader who

might “possibly” inhabit it” (2004, 5). My priority is to attempt to untangle the thorny issue

of how a phenomenology of game space would work in as transparent a form as possible.

Thus, if a reader disagrees with my method and conclusions, they will be able to clearly see

the process I undertook to get there and use this as a springboard for further discussion.

Case study: Town of Light

Insert here Figure 14.1: A Scene from the Game: Town of Light (source: company

screenshot)

The Town of Light (Figure 14.1) was released in 2016 and created by the Italian development

studio LKA. It is set in Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra, a non-fictional asylum in Volterra,

Italy. It can be classed as a walking simulator, a game which involves exploration and

discovery rather than combat or point-scoring. The central premise of the game is that the

player unravels the experiences of fictional protagonist Renée who was a patient there from

the late 1930s to early 1940s.

The ‘real-world’ Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra originated in 1888. It underwent

six separate stages of development and in total included a vast array of buildings to

accommodate patients but also workshops and other facilities. The building which the game

is predominately set in was known as the ‘Padiglione Charcot,’ the Charcot Pavilion. This

was built in the third phase of development, between 1926 and 1929, and was a women’s

ward (Castiglia, n.d). The Italian Mental Health Act of 1978 led to a reform of the Italian

psychiatric system, the closure of asylums and replacement with community-based services

(Cosetti and Conca 2016). This led to the dereliction of the Ospedale.

The Town of Light was chosen as a case study for several reasons. Firstly, it contains a

virtual recreation of a real heritage site, which allows for a discussion of virtual authenticity

and phenomenology. Secondly, and more pertinently in terms of a phenomenology of virtual

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dark tourism, the game specifically focuses on the suffering of the protagonist at a time which

was historically particularly difficult for the institution. Renée was an asylum patient in the

late 1930s to early 1940s, which was a period when Italy was ruled by the National Fascist

Party under Benito Mussolini. From 1942–43, mortality rates reached 21% at Volterra

asylum, which was 60 times as high as the mortality rate in the general population (Casetti

and Conca, 2016:108). During this period patients suffered particularly terrible conditions

due to scarcity of resources during the Second World War. The temporal, as well as the

spatial setting of the game as a place of dark heritage is the main reason that it was chosen as

a case study.

It is vital to put the game in ludographical context-that is to consider how it relates to

other games which depict mental health institutions, fictional or otherwise. Historically, video

game representations of mental health have tended to lean on harmful stereotypes (Yarwood

2015). One example of this is BioShock Infinite (Irrational Games 2013) in which at one stage

the player encounters ‘Lunatics’ who will engage them in combat. The mentally ill are

commonly depicted as violent props in video games, especially horror titles such as Outlast

(Red Barrels Studio 2013) in which you play as a freelance investigative reporter trying to

escape a psychiatric hospital.

There are some notable exceptions to this trend. Depression Quest by Zoë Quinn, is

an interactive fiction game which attempts to replicate the debilitating effects of mental

illness through game mechanics and decreasing player agency. Against the backdrop of

harmful representation, The Town of Light also sets itself apart, depicting the experiences of a

patient in a non-fictional asylum based on archive research (Donnelly 2017).

Firstly, the nature of potential assemblages of play, and what constituted my own experience

with the game, will be elaborated upon. Following this, aspects of the phenomenological

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experience of The Town of Light which contribute to a reading of it as a dark tourist site will

be reviewed.

Assemblages of play

The Town of Light is available across multiple gaming platforms; at the time of writing it has

been released on PC, on the PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The game can also be

experienced in virtual reality using the Oculus Rift headset. Though an analysis of the

phenomenological experience of playing a specific game across different platforms was not

possible for this piece, this would be one avenue of future research. My own assemblage of

play involved myself seated at my desk and accessing the game through my laptop computer.

The game has the default standard keyboard/mouse configuration, with mouse

movement corresponding to the ability to look around, and the WASD keys mapped on to

movement forwards, backwards, left and right. Describing the standard ways I interact with

the game as a baseline has a purpose, as it demonstrates Keogh’s point that the assemblage of

play involves engagement both ways-I become a player through interacting with the game,

and the game world is manipulated by my bodily interaction with keyboard keys and a mouse

(2015, 41).

In the spirit of acknowledging that all phenomenological views are partial, I also want

to elaborate a bit more about my own personal experience that I bring to the assemblage of

play. Keogh highlights how many factors influence how a video game is incorporated into a

player’s embodied experience (2015, 50), included the player’s previous experience of

games. As my academic and professional background is in archaeology, my experience of

playing The Town of Light was informed by my own focus on material culture and built

heritage.

Furthermore, I played particular scenes of the game several times in order to confirm

the results of previous playthroughs, and would frequently stop to take screenshots for future

339
reference. This illustrates how the very practice of attempting to study a game influences the

phenomenological experience of it. Other factors that could affect the assemblage of play

include disability, age, gender, race, past experience with a gaming platform, time of day at

which the game is played, and many others. Queer phenomenology and the assemblage of

play will be explored later, but first the scene must be set.

A sense of place

The player’s first impression of the Ospedale is an obvious place to start in a

phenomenological study of The Town of Light. Below, a description of this will be provided

so that a reader unfamiliar with the game has context for how I’ve analyzed this experience

from my own perspective.

The game opens with a cracked pathway, an outbuilding and a gate immediately in

front of me. The caption “Inspired by real events” appears in white text across the screen,

followed by “Volterra, Tuscany, Italy,” a feature which borrows from the cinematic practice

of temporally and spatially situating the viewer through text. Birdsong can be heard and it is a

clear, sunny day. Beams of sunlight fall behind the gate, directing my attention to it. It is only

once I open the gate that piano music starts playing and the name of the game developer and

the title The Town of Light appears on screen. I must then round a corner and follow the path.

It is at this point that the main location of the Ospedale, the Padiglione Charcot is seen for the

first time, and it is at a distance with the view partly obscured by trees.

Walking along the pathway, with fencing to the left and an embankment with rocks to

the right, I have no choice but to take this route to the building, where swallows can be seen

circling near the roof. Once I get close to the building, part of the fence which would prevent

access falls down, though there is clearly a sign in Italian warning against unauthorized

access. Having entered through the gap in the gate, what appears to be a women’s voice (in

the English translation) can be heard saying “This place. Time. Memory.” The building itself

340
appears derelict with broken windows, chipped plaster and overgrown foliage. Entering the

Padiglione Charcot through the front entrance, there is a distinct contrast between the exterior

sunlit world and the interior, darker and more enclosed space.

The concept of ‘place’ is a contested one. There is a tension between the idea that

‘place’ should be considered as objective fact, and the opposing idea that it is always a

human construct. Place in the context of a video game can in most cases be considered as

more restrictive in that most games have obvious artificial boundaries as video game space is

not indefinite (an example would be the embankment I mentioned in the passage above-a

player cannot climb this and reach a space beyond it). In this way, games could be considered

as ‘islands’ (Fassone 2017), or as containers of virtual space. However, as the assemblage of

play informs us, a game is never an essential experience in isolation. Massey’s’ assertion of

place as process (1991, 29) is highly compatible with the assemblage of play, in that as my

understanding of the Ospedale is informed not only by my interaction with a keyboard and

mouse to explore the building, but the phenomenological experience is also informed by my

prior knowledge of the place that the game has reconstructed and my previous playthroughs.

Another point to consider is the subtle but significant semantic difference between the

concept of “place” versus “site” (Trigg 2012, 259). A site, at least in archaeological terms,

refers to a clearly delineated location which is subject to archaeological research or

investigation. Similarly, dark tourist destinations are commonly referred to as sites and not

places. This perhaps suggests that The Town of Light becomes a dark tourist site partly

through its investigation as such, however such a circular argument would not take into

account the presentation of the Ospedale as a place inhabited by its own history and the

memories of the game’s protagonist. This leads to a discussion of the digital Ospedale as a

virtual reconstruction.

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Authenticity and the doppelgänger

The detailed nature of the reconstructed Ospedale is marketed as a key unique selling point of

the game on its official website: “The story is set in Italy in the first half of the 20th Century

in a place which really existed and has been meticulously reconstructed” (LKA 2016). In

archaeology, virtual reconstructions have been subject to scrutiny. Gillings (1997, 11) has

commented on this subject that “the issue of authenticity is concerned not with direct

comparison and evaluation of form, but with engagement and process.” Authenticity based on

the idea of visual approximation is limited in scope, and by its very definition ocularcentric.

In a study of their virtual reconstruction of the Peel Gap Turret on Hadrian’s Wall,

Eve focuses on the concept of presence and how, for example, in order for this to be

maintained our embodied experience in a virtual world should match up with that in the

analogue world (2012, 588). I aim to challenge this viewpoint in the following section.

The Ospedale can be conceived as a digital double doppelgänger to the analogue asylum that

already existed before it was created. However, a simple process of replication has not

created the digital version.

The developers of The Town of Light have interpreted the asylum and made choices

regarding how it is presented in the game. Certain aspects of the history of the asylum have

inevitably been privileged. An example of this is that one of the first documents that the

player can interact with they enter the asylum is a certificate on the wall immediately beyond

the entrance, awarded to the Volterra Charity Congregation in 1933 for being compliant with

the fascist regime and agriculturally cultivating their land. As mentioned previously, the

game specifically focuses on the early 20th century history of the asylum, and this is an

example of that.

At the centre of the screen is a pale dot. If this passes over an object or document that

the player can interact with a black dot appears within it. In my case, this interaction involved

342
pressing the left mouse button to take a closer look at the document. In a room immediately

to the left of the entrance, there is a table with various objects on it, including photographs.

My interest in the history of the asylum quickly drew me to these objects-I left-clicked and

was able to see these in more detail. With the left mouse button I could pan across the object,

as well as move the mouse to partially rotate it and use the mouse wheel to zoom in. These

photographs, showing various views from the interior and exterior of the asylum are just

some of many archive documents that are included in the game. Their main function is to be

scrutinized in a disembodied way (the player character’s body does not visibly interact with

them), which arguably adds to the impression that these are artefacts in a carefully curated

and controlled experience. The original, derelict asylum is empty. A ‘behind-the scenes’

interview with the developers details that they deliberately chose to populate their version

with objects taken from archives and museums pertaining to the history of the institution

(Wired Productions Ltd 2017). Does this add to the ‘authenticity’ of the virtual asylum?

In her book Carnal Thoughts Sobchack reflects on how documentary footage has

been used in cinema to add authenticity to fictional narratives, including the practice of using

earlier footage of an actor (2004, 262). The digital doppelgänger of the Volterra asylum is not

a copy but a partial view. Just as the archive photographs it contains present a specific view

of the asylum at one moment in time, the digital reconstruction itself was made possible

through photographic and film footage which were taken by the developers (Wired

Productions Ltd 2017).

Constructing a digital ruin draws attention to the heritage of a specific place as “the

ruin’s history is also its presence” (Trigg 2012, 269). The process of that creation involves

making interpretations of that place and its history, a collage of what will inevitably be partial

views. For the developers, the inclusion of documentary sources was important to their

process, thus important to their own authenticity. The heritage of the asylum, and specifically

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its early 20th century heritage, is an important theme in the narrative they wanted to tell. To

further strengthen my argument that The Town of Light is a dark tourist site, I will examine

how the protagonist’s suffering is focused on and experienced in the game.

Queer phenomenology

Whilst a singular digital doppelgänger was discussed in the previous section, there is

technically more than one asylum represented in The Town of Light-the present day derelict

asylum, and the early 20th century asylum which is experienced through flashbacks. These

flashbacks commonly take the form of animated sequences with no interactivity. Other

flashbacks are scenes which are embodied by the player, always in black and white and with

a warped perception of space. The latter will be focused on in this section in a discussion of

proprioception in video games, queer phenomenology and the suffering of the protagonist.

Before I discuss Town directly, I need to assemble some theoretical scaffolding. In

their piece ‘The Phenomenology of Angry Birds’ (2017) Giddings discusses the embodied

proprioception (or ‘feeling’) of virtual physics. This is particularly relevant to the assemblage

of play as they considered that this should be understood as “distributed across and through

human and non-human sensoria” (2017, 3). In particular, Giddings notes how virtual gravity

in Angry Birds is the interplay between algorithmic generation and tactile player input, which

is simulated but ‘feels’ convincing (2017,7).

General gameplay in The Town of Light obeys virtual physics which mimic those

which my body is subject to. I do not expect the chair I am sitting on to float in the air, nor do

I expect objects in the game to float either. However, in the flashbacks perception of space

and the ‘feeling’ of movement in the game are dramatically altered. For example, in a scene

which takes place in the refectory, I perceive the world in black and white. I am surrounded

by other people at tables, lying on the floor or walking around aimlessly. Some have their

face in their hands, and there are sounds of distress. As I press down on the ‘W’ key to walk

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forward, my progress is slower than usual, and I find myself holding the key down harder

though this makes no difference. My perception of space is also altered-the room appears to

warp from side to side the more I walk forwards. There are several different flashbacks of

this nature in the game.

Another scene in the game is distinctive because it completely subverted my

expectations of the in-game physics. The first time that the player visits the Observation

Ward there is a flash of white across the screen. In front is a long, narrow corridor lined with

open doors. As I move forward, the nearest doors automatically close. I stop, and the space

around me begins to fade into darkness with the end of the corridor still visible. If I move the

mouse I find that I can no longer look behind me, which is unsettling as I find I have less

autonomy over my movement that usual. There is no choice but to move forward and

continue to be confronted with more doors closing. As I reach the end of the corridor I

discover there is a space in the floor-I move forward and suddenly I am walking into it,

though according to the virtual game physics this should be impossible. As I continue to walk

forward I reach a ‘wall’ which then becomes a ‘floor’ as I walk along it and this process

continues. At one point I even approach a wall with beds on it which then becomes a floor as

I come into contact with it. At the end of this sequence Renée narrates how she first came to

the asylum.

With these portions of the game in mind, I can now turn to Sara Ahmed’s Queer

Phenomenology (2006). One way of defining queer theory is “its commitment to difference

as pragmatics” (Burrill 2017, 997), challenging binary and normative notions of sexuality and

identity. This ties into how Ahmed imagines a queer phenomenology as not just a matter of

identifying queer, deviant objects, but of queering phenomenology and its established norms

as a discipline (2006, 79). Of particular relevance to the flashbacks and corridor scene is this

passage:

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“It is by understanding how we become orientated in moments of disorientation that we

might learn what it means to be oriented in the first place” (2006, 125).

It was when my proprioception of gravity and movement was disrupted in The Town

of Light that I came to reflect on its existence in the first place. It is incredibly significant that

this occurs during flashbacks of Renée’s past experience in the asylum. As a mentally ill

woman, it is arguable that these flashbacks also render her as the ‘Other’ through embodied

disorientation. It should also be noted that it is only in flashbacks that other human bodies are

encountered in the game, and these are also usually other patients who are presented as

confused or in distress.

A queer phenomenology would question the binary opposition between the

phenomenological experience of the past and present asylum. Renée is a fictional character

but her narrative is based on research into the experience of patients at the Ospedale (Cross

2017). In this way, an embodied experience of the difficult heritage of the asylum is

presented as one of disorientation in relation to other disoriented bodies. This leads back into

a discussion of The Town of Light as dark tourism. To play the game is to become part of an

assemblage of play which is reconfigured in the flashbacks. The ‘endless corridor’ is perhaps

one example of when the embodied opposition between past and present asylum is more

obviously disrupted. As a scene it is difficult to place both temporally and spatially within the

internal logic of the game except in relation to Renée’s arrival at the asylum. One of Ahmed’s

observations seems particularly pertinent to this:

“The social depends in part on agreement on how we measure space and time, which

is why social conflict can be experienced as being “out of time” as well as “out of

place” (2006, 258).

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 A deliberate disruption of virtual place through manipulation of game physics is a

powerful non-verbal way of communicating Renée’s conflict with her institutional

experience. This demonstrates how the ‘break in presence’ can be a method of

communicating difficult heritage and the unstable, multivalent nature of ‘place.’ The

phenomenological experience of the embodied past of the Ospedale is disoriented in relation

to the present-this is the virtual dark tourism of The Town of Light.

Recommendations

One of my main recommendations for future work which I hope to pursue is a survey of

players’ phenomenological experience of The Town of Light and other video games which

could be considered as virtual dark tourism. There were many other aspects of the game

which I would have liked to have discussed, not least the presentation of Renée’s queer

relationship, the phenomenological experience of immaterial culture, the manipulation of

lighting in the game, playing the game in its original Italian and how the passage of time

affects the experience of the present day asylum.

The potential of the assemblage of play, which is particularly relevant to a queer

phenomenology, would also be recommended for further application to virtual place. Indeed,

the assemblage of play has great queer potential as an approach which favors hybridity rather

than essentialism. There is a danger that phenomenologies of virtual space could adopt an

apparently neutral, universal body (Burill 2017, 1065) which is actually just the reaffirming

of the heterosexual, cis, white, able-bodied male experience.

Conclusion

Dark tourism as a field has enthusiastically adopted phenomenology in conducting qualitative

research into the experience of deliberately consuming death and disaster sites. If the

embodied experience of dark tourists is integral to dark tourism research, then the assemblage

of play is a productive approach to virtual dark tourism. A phenomenology of virtual place

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should not be decontextualized from the full circuit of actors which are involved in its

experience. The assemblage of play as a theory directs our attention to the distributed, partial

and personal nature of embodiment which should be embraced rather than held at arms’

length.

To this end, I have explored The Town of Light as a case study, employing thick

description of my own assemblages of play to demonstrate how the game has created an

experience of the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra which specifically engages with difficult

heritage. There are some shortcomings with this approach in its scope, however it is hoped

that this chapter will serve as a primer on the phenomenological potential of virtual dark

tourism. The path of this subject is not well-trodden-perhaps the reader will follow it further,

or even better, forge a new one of their own.

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