Editors: Krzysztof Pijarski, Tytus Szabelski-Różniak

We seem to be finally beyond the anxieties of digital dualism, an appellation coined by Nathan Jurgenson to describe the conviction that the online and offline are “largely distinct”, to the extent of being mutually exclusive. As Jurgenson reminds us, “one is never entirely connected or disconnected but always deeply both.” It is this recognition of being “deeply both” that we would like to take as a starting point for our questioning. What are the consequences of acknowledging this duplication, or maybe rather – complementarity of being?

At the same time, online is not a place to inhabit, but a stream to jack into, not so much directly, as via screens. As Stephane Vial pointed out, the fear of screens – whose representationalist structure could be seen as main source of digital dualism – is “a normal and inevitable phenomenological anxiety owing to the slow acculturation of our perceptual structures”, because technologies are not only tools, but above all structures of perception. The rise of the networked image understood as the new condition of the image “under capitalist, computational reproduction” was an intervention into these structures that is closely related to the topic of entanglement, prompting Andrew Dewdney to postulate the need to “forget photography.” To Dewdney, photography “is a ruined territory populated by archaic knowledge practices bounded by a computational network of relations between images, humans and machines”, throwing into relief the need to look at the relationship between data and matter, between discursive practices and material phenomena, including both human and nonhuman forms of agency.

Today’s digital structures of perception and experiencing are not only human-made but originate from such a deep entanglement of human and more-than-human actors, as well as new forms of performativity, that the modern, Cartesian representationalism that was so vehemently criticized by feminism, poststructuralism, and queer theory, seems to be finally consigned to the dustbin of history. One of the sites, where this is most apparent in the digital sphere, is the space of subjectivity and identity, where “profilicity” is arguably supplanting authenticity as new technology of the self. At the same time, as Karen Barad pointed out, entanglement, stemming from quantum theory, is not to be understood in a constructivist frame, which too often “confuses theory with play”. In the context of the above-mentioned issues, it is not about a new freedom to be whatever we want, or a mystic perspective of total image-language communication, but an acknowledgment of being as becoming, and always (in relationship) with other phenomena – not only nonhuman, but also technological. While performative, Barad’s attempt at acknowledging entanglement is a rethinking of realism with an insistence on the entangled nature of epistemology, ontology, and ethics:

To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence. Existence is not an individual affair. Individuals do not preexist their interactions; rather, individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating.

Of course, one of the central questions to be asked about entanglement concerns AI, how this technology will reconfigure – for better or for worse – the ways we live, think, interact, and simply are. How should we understand the agency of this technology? What kind of relationship can we build with its instances? Should we be afraid, exhilarated, or is it just another late capitalist hype cycle? Is control the way to go, or should there be space for trust?

In this issue of “View” we would like to look closer at the entanglement of being and screen today, and more generally: digital entanglement(s), especially in the spheres of:

• (creative) subjectivity
• identity and experience
• the networked image
• (late, platform, digital) capitalism
• ecologies
• activism and agency
• communication
• everyday life

We are accepting abstracts (maximum A4 page) until January 10, 2024. Deadline for submission of the first version of the text: February 29, 2024. Should you have any questions, please contact the editor: kpijarski@pismowidok.org 

When submitting paper, please include: author's bio, abstract (in Polish or English) and bibliography of the text (Chicago-style format). Please send to the editor's email address: redakcja@pismowidok.org.