The Bracketing of Presence: Dematerialization and Disembodiment in Times of Pandemic and of Social Distancing Biopolitics

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to help us understand how and why the COVID pandemic, and its associated biopolitics of social distancing, may have affected our relationships with our own bodies and other persons, thus helping to accelerate what might be termed a <i>bracketing of presence</i> that was already well underway in our modern and contemporary social practices. We focus on 3 historical vectors, all rooted in specific technologies, that have profound implications at the levels of our social imaginary and prereflective ways of being: architecture, social media, and medicine. Architecture has progressively eliminated “porosity” between spaces by establishing clear borders between public and private spaces (also within the private ones), thereby contributing to our drive for social distancing. Social media have provided apparatuses that replace intercorporeal encounters with disembodied, virtual interactions mediated by images. Visual experiences that are more embodied, participatory, and “immersed” are replaced by passive forms of “seeing”: the other becomes an image for me, and I for the other. The object of medicine has also recently dematerialized with the advent of the new “optical” and “digital” machines of modern medicine, which can operate remotely thanks to an increasingly powerful interface reliant on computational power and the resources of artificial intelligence, thereby dispensing with body-to-body interactions. We offer these reflections as routes to a better understanding of changes that have occurred and are occurring on the planes of both culture and individual psychological existence.

Disembodiment and Delusion in the Time of COVID-19

“…In this imaginary realm, the other appears to me as a two-dimensional disembodied being, namely as an image, as I appear as an image to the other ( [31], p. 160). The embodied, participatory, and immersed kinds of experience are replaced with passive forms of seeing ( [32], p. 116). The world is transformed into something to be observed (looked at) instead of engaged with.…”

Face-to-face vs. remote digital settings in job assessment interviews: A multilevel hyperscanning protocol for the investigation of interpersonal attunement

“…Moreover, attention to neuroscientific applications for human-centred technology has grown, with an interest in human-computer interaction (HCI) [ 11 ] and how the interpersonal relationship might be impacted by technology [ 12 ]. The increased use of digital communication tools, the pervasiveness of virtual environments for interaction, and the sudden turn towards new spaces for social engagement have an active role in shaping the relationship between people [ 13 ]. As an example, given the intrinsic limitations in properly conveying part of non-verbal communication cues shared by some of the most diffused web-based communication and conferencing platforms (degraded information on body posture, proxemics and gestures if a webcam is used, loss of information apart from verbal and vocal ones if no webcam is used), the massive use of such digital tools has gradually modified the information exchange, inter-personal regulation, and sense-making processes that connote HRM duties, thus leading to a greater focus on linguistic content and, among non-verbal communication channels, on non-verbal vocal cues (e.g.…”