Virtual Intimacy in Life-Worldly Space
Updating Alfred Schutz’ Phenomenology to Include Embodied Digital Mediation
Ernée Derckx
2 September 2018
University: University of Amsterdam Assignment: Master Thesis in Philosophy Title: Virtual Intimacy in Life-Worldly Space
Subtitle: Updating Alfred Schutz’ Phenomenology to Include Embodied Digital Mediation Name Program: Wijsbegeerte van een bepaald wetenschapsgebied
Name Candidate: Ernée Derckx Student number: 10058524 Name Supervisor: dr. S. Niklas
Name Second Reader: dr. T.M.T. Coolen Date: 2 September 2018
Table of Contents
Abstract ... 1
Introduction ... 2
A phenomenological approach ... 3
ASMR medical roleplay videos ... 5
Embodied virtual experience ... 7
Outline of this study ...11
Chapter 1. Extending Alfred Schutz’ Phenomenological Theory of the Life-world to Cyberspace ...13
Virtual intimacy in the realm of “consociated contemporaries” ...14
Mediated We-relationship in embodied digital media ...16
Spatio-temporal schema of the everyday life-world ...18
Chapter 2. Structural and Experiential Axes of the Spatio-Temporal Schema of the Everyday Life-World ..21
I. Temporal synchrony: a shared community of time ...21
I.a. Schutz and Zhao on objectively structured time: “world time” ...21
I.b. Schutz and Zhao on subjectively experienced time: “life-worldly time” ...22
II. Spatial immediacy: a shared community of space ...25
II.a. Schutz and Zhao on objectively structured space: “geographical space” ...25
II.b. Schutz and Zhao on subjectively experienced space: “life-worldly space” ...27
Structural-experiential axes of spatio-temporal schema of the life-world ...31
Chapter 3. Experiential-Structural Character of Spatio-Temporal Mediation in Three Media: Telephone, Blogosphere and ASMR videos ...32
I. Temporal synchrony: a shared community of time ...34
I.a. Objectively structured time: “world time” ...34
I.b. Subjectively experienced time: “life-worldly time” ...34
II. Spatial immediacy: a shared community of space ...35
II.a. Objectively structured space: “geo-space” ...35
II.b. Subjectively experienced space: “life-worldly space” ...36
“Life-worldly space” as embodied mode of virtual mediation ...40
Chapter 4. Phenomenal Density of the Re-Embodied We-relation in Life-Worldly Space ...43
Virtually re-embodied We-relation ...43
Modified mirroring and body-to-device relation ...46
Stereotypes ...47
Phenomenal density ...50
Anonymous intimacy ...53
Chapter 5. The Reality of Virtual Intimacy ...57
Real-virtual continuum ...57
Virtual province of meaning ...59
Conclusion ...63
To my wonderful parents
“Of course, there are new situations, unexpected events. But at home, even deviations from the daily routine of life are mastered in a way defined by the general style in which
people at home deal with extraordinary situations.”
Abstract
This thesis updates Alfred Schutz’ phenomenological theory of the life-world to delineate the constitutive features of virtual intimacy. As an exemplary case, I study the experience
of virtual intimacy in embodied digital media by example of the YouTube genre of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos and in particular the subgenre of
medical roleplays. In addition to the explicit notion that the life-world organizes itself along the axes of temporal synchrony and spatial immediacy, Schutz’ phenomenology implicitly holds that communities of time and space organize themselves along structural and experiential axes. To include the virtual life-world in Schutz’ theory I draw up a schema
that explicates the axes of objective structures and subjective experiences, along which spatio-temporal digital mediation takes place. I demonstrate that ASMR videos generate a
community of subjectively experienced space that I call “life-worldly space”. This new virtual mode of mediation expands Schutz’ theory with the possibility to conceive of the experience of virtual intimacy in embodied digital media. I propose that life-worldly space
as experienced in embodied digital media facilitates, and in turn is constituted by, a new type of “re-embodied relation” that is a modification of Schutz’ immediate We-relation. This virtually mediated We-relation is generated between “stereotypes” online and generates the possibility of virtual intimacy, the degree of which depends on the amount of
“phenomenal density”. This updated Schutzian framework understands virtuality as a
province of meaning and thus as a specific mode of reality. Contrary to popular notion that
understands virtual intimacy to be secondary to ‘real-life’ intimacy, it provides impetus to conceive of virtual intimacy as a mode of intimacy in its own right. Ultimately, I propose that embodied digital media are not experienced as intimate despite but precisely because of
2 Introduction
The concept of intimacy has undergone a transformation during the last decade of the twentieth century. While over the course of modernity ‘traditional’ discourses of intimacy have referred to romance or direct physical contact with a spouse, more recently
alternative notions of intimacy have entered popular experience and academic interest. The internet in particular, has been credited with creating a new global space for exploring and developing different intimacies. Over the last decades the onset of mobile digital
communication devices and social networking applications have caused a major shift in the mode of human social engagement. On the internet online communities originate, social networks are created, and even physical desires can be fulfilled. By enabling day to day intimate interactions that do not necessitate direct physical proximity, the internet has forged new ways to experience intimacy, both in the context of pre-existing relationships and interactions with strangers. Social ties that previously were established and sustained primarily through face-to-face interaction have become complemented by a new genre of online interpersonal relationships. On the internet, distant people may become as
intimately familiar or more so, than proximate ones.
Together with these developments, an academic field has emerged that
understands the contemporary experience of intimacy to span both the online and offline realms, as internet users supplement offline interactions with intimate contact through various types of digital media. Today, scholars are only beginning to understand how intimate physical relationships can be experienced in the seemingly disembodied and impersonal global digital network. Social research demonstrates that relationships formed online can be similar in meaning, intimacy, and stability to traditional relationships. In fact, online interactions between strangers can accelerate the experience of intimacy compared to offline contexts (Chambers 2016, Lambert 2016). Moreover, the internet has generated an area of experimentation that not only reproduces existing forms of communication but also creates new ones. Notably, digital media that feature a video function let users
develop new phenomenological habits by explicitly involving their body and engaging them as sentient subjects.
As the nature of human social interactions continues to evolve alongside ongoing developments in digital technologies, it is critical to gain a better philosophical
understanding of the effects of these changes on human experiences of intimacy. Overall, surprisingly little has been written on fundamental questions regarding the nature of virtual intimacy compared to offline intimacy, particularly in relation to the different features of
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digital media. I investigate how intimacy is experienced in “embodied” digital media that generate an experience of physical proximity and even a shared sense of corporeal contact. How does their mode of embodiment mediate the experience of virtual intimacy? And how does this affect the concepts of reality and virtuality, and how they relate to each other?
A phenomenological approach
Philosophical reflection on the phenomenon of virtual intimacy has remained limited so far. Scholars of new media and digital culture can draw from a plethora of perspectives offered by among others anthropologists, sociologists, geographers and political theorists who have extensively applied classical theories from their field to human social
interactions in the new digital realm, but philosophical accounts remain in remarkably short supply. It seems that whenever philosophers do write on digital media, they are unmistakably influenced by the work of Gilles Deleuze, particularly his joint work with Felix Guattari, for in contemporary philosophical discourse on digital media, concepts like “rhizome,” “assemblages” and especially “becoming-machine” never seem far away. Indeed, as early as a decade ago Neil Spiller (2002) acclaimed A Thousand Plateaus to be “the philosophical bible of the cyber-evangelists” and suggested that “this book is possibly one of the most quoted philosophical texts in connection with the technological
“spacescape”” (96). Almost two decades later it is my impression that Deleuze’s presence in philosophy of the internet (if it can be considered a coherent discipline) has only intensified.
I do not contest this influence for the link between Deleuzian thought and digital media appears quite self-evident, and the efforts of scholars working in this tradition have provided valuable new ways to understand our relation to digital media in which material bodies, their virtual representations, the human imagination and computer technology altogether construct a reality that has both ‘material’ and ‘virtual’ components. Yet however valuable such an approach might be, I do regret the scarcity of alternative philosophical perspectives with which digital media, and in particular virtual intimacy, are considered. My thesis makes a start on redressing the subtle, and therefore insidious, bias of digital media discourse in the direction of critical theory. I aim to demonstrate that its philosophical scope can be broadened through the inclusion of other thinkers, beginning with the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz. In his effort to provide a basis for Weberian interpretive sociology through Husserlian phenomenology, Schutz makes a fruitful connection between sociology and philosophy: the same fields that I combine in my
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double master’s research that this thesis forms part of (the next section explains this further). I am less concerned with locating Schutz’ thought within the broader debate on digital media and offer instead an in-depth exploration of how his philosophical
commitments can be productively mobilized to re-think our evolving relationship to virtual intimacy. I aim to use philosophical theory for a more adequate interpretation of contemporary social reality by applying Schutz’ theory of the life-world to the
interpretation of this emerging phenomenon in today’s society.
Phenomenology after Edmund Husserl has taken as its main task to understand the world in its everydayness and the phenomenological approach has occupied an important place in the philosophy of technology ever since Heidegger. The American philosopher Don Ihde (2015, 2002) was one of the first to make everyday interactions with internet technology the subject of phenomenological reflection. In forging the tools
necessary to understand the role that online technology plays in structuring everyday human experiences and human-technology relations, Ihde principally draws on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty but rarely mentions Schutz. It is my goal not to replace but to
complement his phenomenology of modern technology by supplementing it with a Schutzian perspective on digital media. Schutz’ appreciation that the life-world is experienced as inherently social forms the central thrust of his work and best befits the purposes of my thesis. The fact that Schutz did not witness the advent of the internet does not make him any less suitable for my purposes, because his work, and his concept of mediation in particular, offers many ideas that speak to contemporary issues of virtual intimacy.
While critical scholars are busy doing the important work of refiguring the contours of the digital media debate, I aim to advance the clarification of its ground structure. Most contemporary scholars of digital media primarily contextualize technological-cultural developments and critically evaluate conceptualizations of new media. It is my impression that while complex questions about the extent to which digital media produce transformations in power, politics, and subjectivity are thoroughly
explored, underlying key concepts often remain unclear. I aim to explicate two terms that are frequently used in these debates but of which a precise definition rarely appears, namely mediation and virtuality. A Schutzian framework makes it possible to conceptualize these terms not in the speculative manner in which they currently tend to circulate, but in a way that is closer to the lived experience of the everyday life-world. Although Schutz did not write in plain prose, he did express his ideas with a clarity that helps to put forward a
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more structured account of the characteristic features of virtual mediation, and by extension of virtually mediated intimacy. This project should be understood not as a critique of the efforts of digital media theorists, but as a relevant contribution to the debate at large.
My thesis aims to delineate the constitutive features of virtual intimacy and investigates the experience of virtual intimacy in embodied digital media as an exemplary case. In specific, I study the phenomenon that links my philosophy thesis to my sociology thesis. In addition to remedying the lacuna in phenomenological research on the
experience of virtual intimacy, this is the first philosophical study of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response medical roleplays on YouTube. These online videos feature
performances of scripted physical interaction that makes for a particularly striking case of the possibility of virtual intimacy experienced between distant strangers in embodied digital media. Ultimately, my goal is to further open up discussion on the “realness” of the experience of virtuality and to provide impetus to conceive of virtual intimacy as a mode of intimacy in its own right. In what follows I pursue the following sub-questions: (i) How does a shared experience of spatial mediation create an irreducible form of virtual
intimacy? (ii) How does the phenomenon of ASMR medical roleplay videos make this tangible? (iii) What is the set of constitutive features of virtual intimacy in embodied digital media gained by an analysis of said phenomenon? Although these questions are not linked to specific sections, they are answered in mutual communication throughout the chapters.
ASMR medical roleplay videos
I study virtual intimacy by example of the YouTube genre of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos. The acronym was coined in 2010 by the online community that revolves around this sensory phenomenon. It describes an experience in which individuals perceive a tingling, static-like sensation across the scalp, back of the neck and other areas in response to specific stimuli (Barratt and Davis, 2015). Sensory ‘triggers’ that activate this pleasurable feeling can be visual as well as auditory, but usually are a mix of both. Common triggers are whispering and receiving close physical attention from another person. There are more than 12 million ASMR videos on YouTube. The platform hosts numerous channels where “ASMRtists” upload videos aimed to provide viewers with the ASMR sensation. By concentrating a high amount of triggers these videos offer a very condensed version of the sensation that one can experience in real life. Within its online community ASMR videos are endorsed as a solution for stress and insomnia, helping members to relax and fall asleep. Over the years different genres have emerged
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and the so-called “roleplay videos” that include performances of “body work” like haircuts, massages or medical procedures, have become the most prominent.
All seven peer-reviewed studies that have been published on ASMR videos so far (Bennett 2016, Gallagher 2016, Del Campo and Kehle 2016, Barratt and Davis 2015, Waldron 2015, Andersen 2014, Ahuja 2013) suggest that roleplay videos that feature scripted interactions between ASMRtist and viewer generate an alternative intimacy. In the videos a paradox of distance and closeness is at play as creators and viewers are strangers, separated in both space and time, that experience a mediated physically proximate
encounter in the privacy of their own surroundings. While most digital video services let synchronous interaction take place between people who already have an established relationship (e.g. video call services like Skype), a growing number of social connections starts and remains within the virtual realm without ever resulting in ‘real’ – in the sense of material – face-to-face contact. In this latter category ASMR roleplay videos generate online social relationships that are both anonymous and intimate. Contrarily to the personal dialogue of the video call, ASMR videos are characterized by monologue-like content and an asynchronous one-to-many nature, yet they can still be experienced as intimate.
The object of analysis is the popular subgenre of “medical roleplays” that features performances of medical treatments like GP consultations, hearing tests or optometric checks1. ASMR medical roleplay videos can be understood to form a “body genre”
(Williams, 1991) that use somatic-cinematic stimulation to involve viewers’ anatomy as a whole. The videos employ genre-specific techniques (zoom-in perspective, whispering) to give intimate performances of touch (physical tests, up close diagnosis) with the intention of producing a pleasurable sensation of proximity and even tactility in the viewer. The videos are shot from the patient’s point of view and feature the ASMRtist playing a solicitous health professional. Medical roleplays normally contain a streamlined routine of health checks where ASMRtists explicitly involve the viewer’s body in their script.
Interaction is simulated by asking viewers to carry out tasks (‘now breathe out for me please’) or to answer questions (‘how many fingers am I holding up?’) followed by a few quiet seconds that allow for a reply.
As indicated above, my combined master’s research operates at the intersection of
1It might be helpful to provide readers that are unfamiliar with this type of video with an example of an
ASMR medical roleplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3-jZU3kxLE [[ASMR] Hospital Roleplay - Full
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two disciplines. Whereas this philosophy thesis applies phenomenology as a theoretical approach, my sociology thesis employed it as a method for empirical research. I conducted 12 phenomenological interviews with young adults about their embodied lived experiences of virtual intimacy in watching ASMR medical roleplay videos. The first part presented an in-depth analysis of a relatively small part of my data, using phenomenological description to zoom in on the constitution of viewers’ lived experiences of virtual intimacy while watching the videos. The last part zoomed out by using an extensive part of my data to sketch out the wider social context that influences, and in turn is impacted by, those experiences. Together they provide an ideal-typical description of the phenomenon of ASMR medical roleplay videos that forms the basis of the current study. Although the reader is kindly advised to read the sociology thesis before continuing with the one at hand, the sociological conclusions that form the point of departure for this philosophy thesis are now briefly summarized.
My research found that in medical roleplays, performances of close corporal inspection let viewers experience a specific type of personal attention trigger, namely to be carefully figured out by a medical professional. As one of the interviewees put it: “There is something about being measured and being touched and analyzed” (male, 20, USA). While real-life physical examination aims to identify a problem and offer treatment, pre-recorded medical inspections are designed to arrive at benign results. It is not the actual diagnosis, but the intimate professional physical scrutiny leading up to it, that makes medical roleplays so enjoyable. My sociology study shows that medical roleplays constitute a new kind of intimacy at the intersection of the screen and the body that is enjoyed for its own qualities. While mainstream media accounts frequently present ASMR videos as a fantastic and even pathetic escape from reality, most interviewees said that they did not experience this virtual intimacy as a substitute for real-life experiences of intimacy, but as a
“completely separate thing” (male, 36, Canada). In fact, overall viewers found the medical roleplay genre enjoyable over the real-life medical encounters it imitates, because the videos provide the pleasures of medical examination in pure and undiluted form. My philosophy thesis studies the same phenomenon but shifts the accent from exploring its appeal to determining its constitutive features.
Embodied virtual experience
There is one area in particular where I believe Schutz’ work can be productively employed to contribute to contemporary debates on virtual intimacy, namely on the central question of the body. Philosophical consideration of virtual embodiment has produced two main
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lines of thought. Dualists conceive of the internet as a non-material realm that allows users to escape the confines and limitations of their human bodies, while monists consider human-technology relations to be explicitly embodied. The tension between these two views is not just a product of contemporary techno-cultural debate but stretches over the history of Western metaphysics. The mind-body divide that characterizes the dualist position can be traced back to Enlightenment rationality, Christianity, Descartes and finally Plato. Although early internet discourse widely conceived of “cyberspace” as a disembodied zone, in recent decades scholars increasingly have come to understand it as a site where “flesh, machinery, binary code, cultural codings, and imagination converge” (Brians, 2011).
This embodied turn was initiated by Donna Harraway’s A Manifesto for Cyborgs (1985) that debunks what Carly Harper and Ingrid Richardson have termed the “fleshless ontology” (2001) of early cyber discourse. According to this “technofantasy” (Ihde, 2002), the internet would finally deliver the Western metaphysical promise, namely to free users from the earthly constraints of the body. However, in recent decades digital media have, at least in part, come to work not as negater of the material body but precisely as its mediator, as they are increasingly designed to let users sense the embodied presence of distant others. The most obvious example is formed by attempts to incorporate direct tactile sensation into virtual experience through the use of internet-enabled haptic feedback devices such as “virtual hug shirts”. However, the digital transmission of intimacy does not necessitate actual – in the sense of material – bodily contact as the physical aspects of intimate interaction can be imparted much more subtly. The popular mobile app Snapchat, for example, generates a new type of “techno-embodied practice” (Wargo 2015, 51) by letting its hundred millions of users stitch together digital pictures and videos to compose a continuing experience of physical proximity and thus multiplying the spaces where bodies can be “present”. This recovery of the body online not only calls for a
reconsideration of existing embodied media that shape many everyday lives but also for the anticipation of the evolving role that digital media can play in day to day experiences of intimacy in the near future.
I ascribe to dominant discourse in digital media studies that shifts the emphasis from the split between a material body and a virtual body to their interrelation. A phenomenological approach can help to conceive of the body in a more straightforward way than is generally the case in (critical) studies of digital media, by locating the material “body” in objectively structured “geo-space” and the experience of “lived corporeality” in
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subjectively perceived “life-worldly space”. I will argue that these clear-cut definitions are necessary to allow for a rigorous investigation of the constitutive features of virtual intimacy in embodied media. Nonetheless, my analysis is compatible more sophisticated conceptions of the body, as the notion of “lived corporeality” is characterized by an experiential quality which leaves room for more complex and finetuned notions of embodiment.
Because it is my aim to understand embodied mediation in a way that is close to the lived experience of the everyday life-world, I avoid such theory-laden terms as
“biodigital bodies” or “affective assemblages” (Daniels et al., 2016) that dominate current digital media discourse. In favor of more straightforward vocabulary, I adopt Melanie Swalwell’s (2008) definition of embodied digital media as organizing sensory-aesthetic engagement that evokes an “intense embodied experience” of which users often only have an “intuitive understanding” (75). Embodied digital media address the body, and vice versa, viewers “invest” their senses in the act of viewing: that is to say, they watch not just with their eyes, but with their entire anatomy2. This definition belongs to contemporary
film- and video game discourse that identifies what Stéphane Vial (2012) would call an “ontophany shift” (16) from media’s traditional concern with spectatorship as narrative identification to an understanding of spectatorship as embodied involvement. Vial uses the term ‘ontophany’ to describe the process through which, depending on historical and cultural factors, being (ontos) appears (phaino) as involving a new quality of ‘being-in-the-world’ or, as Vial calls it, of ‘feeling-in-the-‘being-in-the-world’. He argues that new technologies can bring about ontophany shifts that alter the dominant (technological) structures of perception and thus demand adjustment of the very idea of ‘reality’.
Digital mediation of time and space generates new spatio-temporal experiences, such as that people do not have to be in the same physical location to meet in ‘cyberspace’, but also new perceptive structures to process them. These structures of perception, in turn, come to generate new forms of “phenomenality,” namely that what appears as ‘real’ when digital media connect the local and the global in new ways. I argue that embodied digital media let users develop a particularly striking case of what Vial calls new
“phenomenological habits” (20), especially since the widespread use of mobile video calling services like Skype, FaceTime, and Snapchat, have started to generate increasingly common experiences of embodied virtual intimacy. While the static user interfaces that are
2 Although the term “viewer” lacks precision because it focuses primarily on the visual, for reasons of brevity
I use “viewing” to signify the act of perception in the broadest sense: not only via the eyes, but with the entire body.
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prevalent in text-based “disembodied” digital media render most human-computer interactions merely visual activities (e.g. writing blog posts or reading e-mails), such new “embodied” digital media engage the user as sentient subject, affecting their corporeal experience and their perception of the spatial relationship between themselves and on-screen others accordingly. These should be understood as ideal-typical categories that form the two extremes of a spectrum of digital media embodiment. For all media are in some sense embodied, ranging from such diverse forms as letters carrying handwriting or the radio transmitting voices.
My research makes a start with sketching out the constitutive features of virtual intimacy that can take place along this spectrum of embodiment. I am in particular interested in digital video services that can be placed on the embodied side of the
spectrum as they let geographically distant individuals “inhabit” each other’s private space by mediating not only the sound of their voice but also facilitating “tactile and haptic viewing” (Barker, 2009) that imparts a sense of embodied presence. The subgenre of ASMR medical roleplays can be located on the far end of the embodied side of the spectrum as its creators most explicitly implicate the viewer in their “body work”
performances. Most medical roleplays feature binaural recording techniques that simulate the acoustics of a three-dimensional environment, aimed to elicit the experience of being in close proximity to the ASMRtist. The sound source is recorded by two separate microphones that are placed at a distance comparable to the space between two ears so that the viewer hears a clear distinction between left and right perspectives. This way, instead of letting the user inhabit the distinctly virtual body of an on-screen character (e.g. game avatars), medical roleplays let viewers experience the mediated manipulation of their
own material bodies.
In order to promote more systematic understanding of embodied virtual experience, and virtual intimacy in specific, philosophical conceptions of the life-world need to be aligned with the virtual embodiment that can be experienced quite intuitively in everyday life. In what follows I offer the first sketch of a conceptual framework that makes the constitutive features of the experience of virtual intimacy philosophically intelligible. By putting the lived body central in the perception of actual- and virtual worlds, a phenomenological approach can help to break open ontological dualisms. For although today online interaction populates many aspects of daily existence, dominant opinion appears to maintain that virtual intimacy is somehow less “real” than its traditional – in the sense of material – counterpart. Schutz’ phenomenology brings the question of reality back
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to the realm of experience. Ultimately, I will argue that this allows for a conception of virtual intimacy as simultaneously taking part in, and being constituted by, the actual, the real and the virtual. The experience of virtuality is informed by the reality of the everyday life-world, and vice versa; one does not exclude the other.
Outline of this study
In what follows I will extend Alfred Schutz’ phenomenological theory to include the concept of “life-worldly space” as experienced in embodied online media to delineate the constitutive features of virtual intimacy in an increasingly distanciated life-world. The first chapter sketches space and time as the basic strata of the social life-world and explains the concept of “mediation” as articulated by Schutz prior to the advent of the internet. I take up Shanyang Zhao’s extension of Schutz’ theory to include “cyberspace” as an emergent realm of the life-world where “consociated contemporaries” interact in mediated co-presence. Building on both Schutz and Zhao I distinguish a new type of digitally mediated experience that is enabled by embodied media. In the second chapter, I draw up a schema to explicate the structural and experiential components of temporal synchrony and spatial immediacy in the everyday life-world. I develop this schema to demonstrate that digital mediation stretches out over a structural temporal continuum, an experiential temporal continuum, a
structural spatial dualism and an experiential spatial continuum.
In the third chapter, I place three digital media on the dualism and continuums that make up the schema’s axes; namely the telephone as discussed by Schutz, the blogosphere as discussed by Zhao, and ASMR videos. After explicating the
spatio-temporal character for all three media, I determine along which of these axes “mediation” takes place, thus creating different modes of virtual intimacy. I argue that while
disembodied digital media (telephone and blogosphere) evoke a sense of “life-worldly time” to remediate the online lack of structural spatial immediacy, embodied digital media (ASMR videos) remediate this lack by providing users with the experience of linking two geographically separate places into a temporary shared “life-worldly space”.
In the fourth chapter, I demonstrate that life-worldly space conditions the possibility of virtual intimacy in embodied digital media. I present life-worldly space as a new digital mode of mediation that facilitates, and in turn is constituted by, a new type of “re-embodied We-relation” that is a modification of Schutz’ immediate We-relation. I propose a set of adjacent concepts that become conceivable within this virtual community of subjectively experienced space, namely: “modified mirroring”; “body-to-device
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advanced a more structured account of the constitution of virtual intimacy, in the fifth chapter I extrapolate some of my conclusions to reflect on its implication for the concepts of reality and virtuality. Schutz’ notion of “provinces of meaning” allows for a conception of intimacy as simultaneously taking part in, and being constituted by, the actual, the real and the virtual. Ultimately, the example of ASMR videos offers an alternative view on the “reality” of virtual intimacy, namely by understanding virtuality as a province of meaning and thus as a specific mode of reality.
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Chapter 1. Extending Alfred Schutz’ Phenomenological Theory of the Life-world to Cyberspace
Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) was born in Vienna and studied law, social science, and
philosophy at Vienna University. He developed an early interest in the work of Max Weber and later drew heavily on that of Edmund Husserl. As a social scientist, Schutz appreciated the importance of an adequate theory of human action for the methodology of sociology as put forward by Weber. As a philosopher, he took an interest in phenomenology and applied to the social world the descriptive analysis of the constitution of the everyday life-world in human experience as advanced by Husserl3. Although Schutz builds on central
concerns in both Weber and Husserl, his original integration of their thought leads him into new territory where neither might have wanted to follow him. With his
comprehensive analysis of the basic structures of the fabric of meaning that are “taken as self-evident” by the natural attitude in the everyday life-world, Schutz hoped to offer a mature phenomenology of social reality and thereby to give an account of the foundations of the social sciences. As suggested by his friend and colleague Aron Gurwitsch (1962), Schutz’ intellectual project may best be characterized as giving a systematic description of “the common-sense world as social reality” (50).
This thesis is based on Schutz’ two major works, namely Der sinnhafte Aufbau der
sozialen Welt (1932) and Strukturen der Lebenswelt (1973), that I will respectively refer to as
Phenomenology of the Social World (PSW) and The Structures of the Life-World (SLW). The later book was posthumously co-authored by Schutz’ former student Thomas Luckmann and is based on the investigations that Schutz undertook in the quarter of the century between his first book and his early death in 1959. It contains an elaboration of themes that had already been sketched in PSW and subsequent papers. After Schutz moved to New York in 1939, where he joined the graduate faculty of the New School for Social Research and in 1952 eventually accepted a professorship, the basic pattern of his thought was enriched but not fundamentally altered by new intellectual influences, such as American pragmatism especially as articulated in the works of William James and George Herbert Mead. Schutz’ thinking as it appears in SLW continued in the direction to which PSW may well serve as a signpost, advancing problems already raised or touched upon in his early work and occasionally developing themes that had originally been overlooked. Encouraged by the unity of Schutz’ thought I freely draw from both books.
3 Schutz’ interpretation of Husserl’s early work anticipated and applied to the social sciences ideas of the late
Husserl that became fully known only after publication of the most important Krisis-manuscripts in Die
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My focus lies on Schutz’ explication of space and time as the basic strata of the social life-world. Building on Husserl’s analysis of human orientation in space and time and adding his own claim that the style of lived experience in the everyday world is inherently social, Schutz explicated the elementary spatio-temporal structures which provide the foundation for social experience in everyday life. This groundwork is highly suggestive of a range of subsequent issues with which Schutz concerned himself very little or not at all. I take up the spatio-temporal experience of intimacy which Schutz has only sparsely commented on, and a new phenomenon that did not exist in his time but that can be illuminated with the help of his work, namely that of virtuality as experienced by technological, and in specific digital, means. Indeed, in the preface to the later book Luckmann observes that the analysis of the structures of everyday life is not completed with Schutz’ work, but rather that it provides us with the task to keep on developing a theory of the life-world on the frontier between philosophy and social science. I aim to make a contribution by updating Schutz’ theory to account for new spatio-temporal experiences of virtual intimacy.
Virtual intimacy in the realm of “consociated contemporaries”
According to Schutz, new phenomena can have constitutive elements that render hitherto sufficient typifications inadequate and thus motivate new explications of our experience of them. The “stock of knowledge” (SLW, 7) is the unity of one’s own experiences and those transmitted by fellow-men, which serves as reference schema for understanding the life-world and forms the taken for granted basis of the “fundamental attitude of the normal adult” (SLW, 22) that is assumed in the spontaneous and routine pursuits of daily life. In this “natural attitude” we can become aware of the “deficient tone” (SLW, 8) of our stock of knowledge if digitally mediated experiences of intimacy do not fit into what have until now been taken as the valid and self-evident reference schemas for intimacy and virtuality: the first is traditionally thought to necessitate temporal synchrony and spatial immediacy and the latter to negate both. In the case of virtual intimacy, however, we are confronted with an in-between situation that is intimate yet virtual; spatially mediated yet temporally asynchronous. This discrepancy between experience and stock of knowledge demands a re-explication of central structures of the life-world.
Based on differences in the spatio-temporal organization of human contact, Schutz divided the phenomenological life-world into two main realms. The realm of consociates, consisting of “fellow men” (Mitmenschen) sharing a community of space and a community
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of time, and the realm of contemporaries, comprising distant individuals (Nebenmenschen) that share neither a community of space nor a community of time4. People share a community
of time when they experience the passage of time together moment by moment and their streams of inner consciousness flow side by side in simultaneity. People share a
community of space when they are corporeally co-present in the same location and within each other's perceptual reach. For most of history, the largest part of human interactions took place in the realm of consociates where the “here” and “now” converged. Face-to-face interactions were characterized by spatial and temporal immediacy. In modern society, however, the rise of technologically mediated communication has been tearing space away from place (Giddens, 1990). Reflecting on the nature of telephone conversation, Schutz considered the challenge that this new communications technology posed to his
phenomenological theory of the life-world: the dichotomy between the realm of consociates and the realm of contemporaries became untenable. As a first step in answering this problem, Schutz formulated the concept of “mediation” to describe situations where individuals share a community of time without sharing a community of space. In Husserl’s original notion all human perception is mediated: by thoughts, experiences, sensory organs, environments, etcetera. Schutz’ additional use of the term refers to technological mediation by an electronic device that extends sensory perception beyond the normal range of naked human senses.
As co-author for the posthumous publication of The Structures of the Life-World Luckmann stopped short of declaring mediated experience to constitute a third realm of the life-world. Shanyang Zhao (2004, 2007, 2015) takes up this project by extending Schutz’ theory to include “cyberspace”: an emergent realm of the life-world brought about by the advent of the Internet that accelerates the process of space-place separation. Zhao defines the two phenomenological realms in terms of ‘co-presence’: in the realm of consociates, face-to-face interactions constitute co-presence, and in the realm of
contemporaries, non-face-to-face interactions create a situation of non-co-presence. He then adds to this a third realm of consociated contemporaries, where “face-to-device”
interactions through electronic (e.g. telephone) and digital (e.g. internet) media create a situation of “mediated co-presence” which he coins teleco-presence5 (Figure I). In the sense
4 Schutz divides the life-world into four major realms: the realm of consociates, the realm of contemporaries,
the realm of predecessors, and the realm of successors. Realms of predecessors and successors are not part of the contemporaneous world, which is the focus of my thesis, and are therefore not discussed here.
5 However, Zhao explains that just like the fact that not all people within each other’s immediate reach are
consociates (e.g. strangers at the bus stop) and not all those beyond each other’s immediate reach are contemporaries (e.g. a family member on a trip), not all people online are consociated contemporaries.
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that these ‘distant others’ do not share a community of space, they are mere contemporaries, but to the extent that they share a community of time, they are consociates.
Figure I: characteristics of the three realms of the life-world from Zhao (2004). Mediated We-relationship in embodied digital media
Alike Schutz’ telephone, blogs, and ASMR videos facilitate electronic – that is, digital – mediation that enables users to maintain intimate contact with one another over great distances. For Schutz, the possibility of intimacy is precipitated by the mutual orientation of the “We-relationship” (SLW, 87). He defines the We-relationship as “[t]he face-to-face relationship in which the partners are aware of each other and sympathetically participate in each other’s lives for however short a time” (Idem). In the realm of consociates, co-present individuals form a We-relationship that is characterized by both temporal
synchrony – as they simultaneously “coexist” in the sense that their “respective streams of consciousness intersect” (PSW, 102)6 – and spatial immediacy – as they are corporeally
co-present in a common environment where their bodies are observable as “a field of expression for [their] subjective experiences” (163). Zhao’s analysis of the blogosphere takes up Schutz’ observations on the decreasing possibility of retaining temporal synchrony in the increasing absence of spatial immediacy in technologically mediated human contact:
“Depending on the state of communications technology, the symptoms whereby the Other is apprehended can decrease while the synchronization of the streams of consciousness can still, to a certain extent, be maintained: a conversation face-to-face but in the dark, a telephone conversation, smoke signals, drum language, televideophone, letters” (SLW, 90).
6 This simultaneity is understood in the sense of Henri Bergson’s (1896) durée: “the simultaneity of two
durations of streams of consciousness is simply this: the phenomenon of growing older together” (Schutz PSW, 103).
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Zhao argues that as an alternative to the immediate and embodied interaction of the face-to-face encounter, written biographical self-disclosure can produce a “quasi “joint” stream of inner consciousness” online that serves as the foundation for the intimate mutual understanding of Schutz’ We-relationship (Zhao 2007, 150)7. According to Schutz, the
intimate We-relationship produces a “subjective meaning context” which serves as a shared scheme of expression and interpretation8. Zhao argues that similarly, in the realm
of consociated contemporaries individuals form a “mediated We-relationship” and interact as “intimate strangers” in a subjective meaning context:
“Anonymous communications in cyberspace lead to the rise of a new realm of social relations in the life-world characterized by anonymous intimacy or intimate anonymity […] if consociates can be regarded as intimate friends and
contemporaries as anonymous strangers, then consociated contemporaries may be considered either intimate strangers or anonymous friends” (Zhao 2004, 100-101 – my italics).
Zhao discussed the phenomenon of virtual intimacy more than a decade ago when online social relations almost exclusively belonged to the “chat rooms, multi-user dungeons, and bulletin boards” (2007, 147) of the blogosphere. Since then the popularization of social media and the onset of new embodied digital media like Snapchat, FaceTime, and
YouTube have restructured digitally mediated experience so drastically that Schutz’ theory is in need of another update to offer a more accurate depiction of the present life-world. While Zhao’s definition of virtual intimacy is restricted to digital media that function in “disembodied text mode” (2004, 101), I set out to investigate virtual intimacy between “intimate strangers” by analyzing the explicitly embodied digital medium of ASMR medical roleplays. Indeed, at his time Schutz already observed that phenomena like “the infatuation with film stars” (SLW, 72) would require specific examination because it concerns a
mediated social relation that has not been formed in a living We-relation but due to their ubiquitous ‘presence’ it has a certain degree of intimacy. My thesis seeks to expand Schutz’ phenomenological theory of the life-world by investigating how embodied digital media establish intimate teleco-presence, offering neither direct corporeal co-presence nor
mutual written biographical self-disclosure, but still allowing their users to enter the mutual
7 Blogs, short for weblogs or web-based live journals, emerged as a digital medium in the 1990s. Bloggers
share their thoughts, feelings and daily life via biographical narratives that are posted online.
8 The realm of contemporaries on the other hand, mostly contains strangers that participate in a
“They-relationship” and interact with each other anonymously in an “objective meaning context” based on typified knowledge that defines situations of interaction for non-co-present individuals.
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orientation of the We-relationship, and thus generate the possibility of virtual intimacy. I argue that the mediating role that Zhao accredits to creating a ‘quasi-joint stream of inner consciousness’ online, in the case of embodied digital media is taken up by generating a shared sense of “live corporeality” in “common environment” on a distance. Indeed, Schutz seems to have already pointed in this direction with his descriptions of the transitional zone between the immediate face-to-face situation of consociates and the mediated contact between mere contemporaries:
“We make the transition from direct to indirect social experience simply by following this spectrum of decreasing vividness. The first steps beyond the realm of immediacy are marked by a decrease in the number of perceptions I have of the other person and a narrowing of the perspectives within which I view him. At one moment I am exchanging smiles with my friend, shaking hands with him, and bidding him farewell. At the next moment he is walking away. Then from the far distance I hear a faint good-bye, a moment later I see a vanishing figure give a last wave, and then he is gone. It is quite impossible to fix the exact instant at which my friend left the world of my direct experience and entered the shadowy realm of those who are merely my contemporaries. Gradual progression from the world of immediately experienced social reality to the world of contemporaries: face-to-face, telephone call, letters, via a third party etc. The total number of the other person’s reactions open to my observation is progressively diminished until it reaches a minimum point” (PSW, 177).
Although Schutz has often described a similar spectrum of decreasing immediacy for the experience of time, he rarely presents it for the experience of space, except for the prior description of a departing friend that occurs in both of his main works. In fact, space has neither been of particular interest in the works of his most prominent colleagues and inspirators, like William James, Edmund Husserl, and Henri Bergson. In what follows, I seek to redress this omission in the phenomenological tradition by explicating the experiential continuum of spatial immediacy in Schutz’ theory.
Spatio-temporal schema of the everyday life-world
Building on Schutz (PSW/SLW) and Zhao (2004/2007/2015) I compose a schema of temporal synchrony and spatial immediacy in three realms of the life-world:
contemporaries, consociates, and consociated contemporaries (Table I). According to Schutz, each realm of the life-world has a unique spatio-temporal structure and the
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possibility of intimacy necessitates a shared community of both time and space. When time and space are completely synchronous and immediate, the possibility of intimacy is high, and when they are fully asynchronous and fully separated, the possibility of intimacy is low. While contemporaries lack a community of time and a community of space, consociates share both, and consociated contemporaries use media to remediate the lack of one by sharing the other. According to Zhao, virtual intimacy can be enabled by mediation: when a digital medium scores low on one of the axes, intimate teleco-presence can still be mediated by a high score on the other axis. Both Schutz and Zhao study disembodied media (respectively the telephone and blogosphere) and conclude that these evoke a sense of temporal synchrony that remediates the lack of spatial immediacy. In other words: a shared community of time mediates the lack of community of space. Although addressed by neither Schutz nor Zhao, I propose that mediation can work the other way around as well. For example, when I am reading a text that was carved into a park bench years ago, I share a community of space with the writer without sharing a community of time with her. More specific, I study the embodied digital medium of ASMR videos and conclude that it evokes a sense of spatial immediacy that remediates the lack of temporal synchrony. In other words: a shared community of space mediates the lack of community of time.
Temporal synchrony
Community of time Lack of community of time Spatial immediacy Community of space Consociates Consociated contemporaries in embodied media (ASMR videos) Lack of community of space Consociated contemporaries in disembodied media (telephone, blogosphere) Contemporaries
Table I: temporal synchrony and spatial immediacy in three realms of the life-world (contemporaries, consociates, and consociated contemporaries).
In addition to the explicit notion that the everyday life-world organizes itself along the axes of temporal synchrony and spatial immediacy, Schutz’ phenomenology implicitly holds that communities of space and time organize themselves along structural and
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experiential axes. Although Schutz does not make this distinction overt it is detectable, for
example, when he explains our direct experience of another person:
“He shares a community of space with me when he is present in person and I am aware of him as such, and, moreover […] of his body as the field upon which play the symptoms of his inner consciousness. He shares a community of time with me when his experience is flowing side by side with mine, when I can at any moment look over and grasp his thoughts as they come into being, in other words, when we are growing older together” (PSW, 163).
Here, “direct presence” and “growing older” can be discerned as structural factors of respectively space and time, and “awareness of the other’s body” and “shared flow of experience” as respective factors of lived experience. I argue that it is of crucial importance to understand mediation as taking place along this additional set of axes as well. For by enabling different structural and experiential degrees of temporal synchrony and spatial immediacy, different media facilitate yet different ways of mediation between these four components (time, space, structure, experience) – resulting in again different degrees and forms of intimate human teleco-presence. This will be further explained in the chapters below. For now, it is important to note that both Schutz and Zhao use the concept of “mediation” simply to describe media that enable individuals to share a community of time without sharing a community of space. In other words: they only address one set of axes, namely the spatio-temporal one. The media that they discuss, for Schutz the telephone and for Zhao the blogosphere, evoke a sense of temporal synchrony that mediates the lack of spatial immediacy. Here, the more precise questions to be answered are: is it a structural or
experiential lack of spatial immediacy that needs to be mediated? And, in addition, is it structural or experiential temporal synchrony that mediates? In other words: along which of
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Chapter 2. Structural and Experiential Axes of the Spatio-Temporal Schema of the Everyday Life-World
Neither Schutz nor Zhao makes a clear distinction between the structural and experiential axes of the spatio-temporal schema of the life-world. These components can nonetheless be explicated in both of their theories. Hereto I draw up a schema comprising the axes of objective structures and subjective experiences of the spatio-temporal character of the life-world. It establishes that temporal synchrony can be achieved through a community of
objectively structured time (“world time”) or a community of subjectively experienced time
(“life-worldly time”) and that spatial immediacy can be realized through a community of
objectively structured space (“geo-space”) or a community of subjectively experienced space
(“life-worldly space”) (Table II).
Temporal synchrony Spatial immediacy
Community of: Objectively structured time Subjectively experienced time
Objectively structured space Subjectively experienced
space
“world time” “life-worldly time” “geographical space” “life-worldly space”
Table II: structural and experiential axes of temporal synchrony and spatial immediacy in the life-world I. Temporal synchrony: a shared community of time
In his description of the phenomenon of temporal synchrony Schutz introduces the concept of a “shared community of time” (SLW, 64). Although he does not explicate this distinction, it can be subdivided into an objectively shared community of “world time” (SLW, 28), where two partners simply exist in the same temporal structure, and a subjectively shared community of “life-worldly time,” where two durations flow side by side in
simultaneity and experience the passage of time together moment by moment; thus sharing immediate lived experience that allows them access to the other’s consciousness.
I.a. Schutz and Zhao on objectively structured time: “world time”
“World time” and “geo-space” are what Schutz calls “ontological boundary conditions” (SLW, 94) that form the taken-for-granted basis of human life. Schutz defines world time or “clock time” (SLW, 49) as comprising the “unmodifiable temporal elements of the factual existence of the life-world” (SLW, 50). The “fixed course of temporality” (Idem) conditions everyday existence by forcing the principle of “first things first” on it through structural laws of succession. As the fundamental temporal structure of one’s reality world time limits subjective duration. One ages in it and it forms the absolute boundary of
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plans: “I live through world time as transcending “my” time” (SLW, 46). Although in everyday life the natural attitude generally lacks the motive to reflect on it, this knowledge of finitude stands out against the experience of the world’s continuance. Ultimately, the objectively shared community of “world time” is realized through the expectation of death as the definitive departure from the life-world. However, in a more everyday sense, we can speak of two partners taking part in a shared “objective temporal order” (SLW, 33) when their inner durations are limited by the same clock time, that is convertible so as to cross time-zones, and they interact in simultaneity within that temporal structure.
At Schutz’ time of writing, communication took place either in simultaneity, in the case of face-to-face encounters and telephone conversations, or with an extended time lag, in the case of postal correspondence and exchange through a third party. Zhao (2007) adds that the internet has transformed the temporal structure of human contact from a simple dichotomy to an elastic continuum. While online communication can take place almost synchronously through the instant messaging of “live text chat” that lets users respond in less than a second, it can also manifest less synchronously through “e-mail, newsgroups, or bulletin boards” (147) where correspondence usually has a time lag that stretches between minutes, hours, years – or even fully asynchronous, for example in the case of blog posts that are never read.
I.b. Schutz and Zhao on subjectively experienced time: “life-worldly time”
According to Schutz, subjectively experienced time in the life-world or “life-worldly time” (SLW, 47) is built up where the “subjective time” of the stream of consciousness intersects with the clock as “world time,” with the rhythm of the body as “biological time,” and with the calendar as “social time” (Idem). Schutz draws his terminology directly from Husserl when he explains that the temporal structure of the natural attitude or the “stream of consciousness” (PSW, 52) consists of retentions, original impressions, and protentions. These are respectively acts of immediate memory of what has been perceived “just a moment ago,” acts of awareness of what is perceived “right now,” and immediate anticipations of what will be perceived “in a moment”. Strongly influenced by Husserl’s conception of the temporal articulation of consciousness, Schutz defines life-worldly time as a “flowing succession of impressional phases” (SLW, 56) in which every actual phase contains retentions of the just-past phases and anticipations of typically continuing phases, so that in subjective experience time appears to be permanently flowing off. To characterize this experience of “subjective time” (SLW, 52) in relation to the everyday life-world, Schutz adopts Henri Bergson’s (1896) concept of durée or “continuous duration” (SLW, 48) that
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describes the inner stream of consciousness that flows on independently of the imposed, fixed course of objectively structured world time:
“At one moment an experience waxes, then it wanes. Meanwhile something new grows out of what was something old and then gives place to something still newer” (PSW, 47).
While the outer world time can be partitioned into “homogenous quantitative units of meaning” (SLW, 55) like seconds, hours and years, Schutz explains that inner subjective time describes a continuous coming-to-be and passing-away of heterogeneous qualities that are describable with difficulty in a language “imprisoned” (SLW, 54) in spatial modes of expression:
“From the point of view of being immersed in duration, the “Now” is a phase rather than a point, and therefore the different phases melt into one another along the continuum” (PSW, 51).
Each phase of experience flows into the next without any sharp boundaries as it is being lived through, but each phase is distinct in its “thusness,” or quality, insofar as it is held in the gaze of attention. Here, Schutz draws upon William James’ (1890) description of consciousness as “plans of flight and resting places” (243). For similar to a bird’s flight, life-worldly time is not perceived as consisting of isolated and self-contained phases, but rather as undifferentiated experiences that “shade into another” (PSW, 51) in a flowing continuum. According to Schutz a subjectively shared community of “life-worldly time” is realized through an act of “synchronizing of inner consciousness” in the mutual realization that “your stream of consciousness has a structure analogous to mine” (SLW, 103). Here Schutz builds on Husserl’s notion that although we have no direct access to the inner consciousness of another person, we are able to “grasp” it based on the knowledge of our own mind. Different from objects that can persist over a period of world time, two streams of consciousness can endure together; this is what Schutz describes as “the
simultaneity of two durations of streams of consciousness” where each partner participates in the “onrolling inner life” of the other, grasping each other’s thoughts as they develop in a “vivid present” (SLW, 298). Living through the same life experiences in simultaneity – including the experience of each other – individuals come to “grow older together” (PSW, 103). Consociates share both an objective community of time, as their inner durations are limited by the same world time, and a subjective community of time, as the immediate
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lived experience that they share allows them access to the other’s consciousness and thus provides them with the possibility to share intimacy. By contrast, contemporaries share an objective community of time without sharing a subjective community of time; they have no access to each other’s consciousness and thus no possibility to share intimacy.
Projecting Schutz’ conclusions onto the internet, it initially appears that although internet users can share an objective community of “world time,” they do not share a subjective community of “life-worldly time,” for the online world seems to lack precisely that what Schutz considers to be crucial for the mutual synchronization of inner consciousness; namely the possibility to grasp each other’s thoughts as they develop in the “vivid present” (SLW, 298).
However, the realm of “consociated contemporaries” as introduced by Zhao (2004, 2007, 2015) makes it possible to conceptualize a new type of subjective community of time that understands temporal synchrony as the degree to which a shared sense of “live duration flow” is experienced in “mediated co-presence” (2007, 145). Zhao
understands online mediation as an inherently temporal phenomenon when he describes it as “the emergent condition of human interaction that brings physically dispersed
individuals temporally together in cyberspace” (2004, 99). He argues that although “teleco-present individuals” (2004, 100) are physically situated in different local environments while using the internet their flow of consciousness splits up into two separate streams: one shared with consociates offline and the other shared with consociated contemporaries online. To describe how distant individuals conceive of each other in this new realm of the life-world, Zhao builds on Schutz’ notion that intersubjectivity is constituted through mutual knowledge. According to Schutz, knowledge of our contemporaries is derived from ideal typifications that are readily available in the public domain, while face-to-face interactions with consociates allow us to come to know our fellow-men over time by direct observation in a shared living environment. Zhao adds that in the online realm of
consociated contemporaries, the exchange of textual description of lived experience forms the primary source of mutual knowledge. According to Zhao, the immediate sharing of lived experience that is so characteristic of the community of “life-worldly time” in the offline realm, is replaced in the online realm by “mutual biographical self-disclosure” (2004, 100) which allows distant individuals mediated access to each other’s lived-through experience:
“In each episode of voluntary self-disclosure, people come to bare their souls to each other, sharing personal stories, intimate moments, happiness,
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and sorrows. Through repeated sessions of such revealing discussions, complete strangers become intimately familiar with each other’s past as well as current life experiences, hence becoming “consociates” in the online world” (2007, 149).
Such intimate mutual self-disclosure lets internet users create a “narratively merged biography” (2015, 120) that enables them to “re-synchronize” (2007, 149) their streams of consciousness online. Although they are not able to immediately grasp each other’s lived experience, they can mediately grasp each other’s “live duration flow” as it develops in the “vivid present” online. This way consociated contemporaries can establish a mediated subjective community of “life-worldly time” sharing of lived experience provides access to the other’s consciousness and thus the possibility to share intimacy.
II. Spatial immediacy: a shared community of space
In his description of the phenomenon of spatial immediacy Schutz introduces the concept of a “shared community of space” (SLW, 64). Although he does not explicate this
distinction, it can be subdivided into an objectively shared community of “geographical space,” where the worlds within reach of two individuals overlap, and a subjectively shared community of “life-worldly space,” that consists of a shared sense of “live corporeality” and “experienceability” of a common horizon.
II.a. Schutz and Zhao on objectively structured space: “geographical space”
“Geographical space” or “geo-space” is the ontological boundary condition that objectively structures spatiality in the everyday life-world. Schutz describes the spatial “determinations of the animate organism” namely that “everyone is given to himself as the center of a coordinated system that exhibits an arrangement according to actual and potential reach, as well as according to the actual and potential zone of operation” (SLW, 93). Schutz makes a distinction between the “world within actual reach” which is the sector of the world that is accessible in immediate experience, and the “world within potential reach” which transcends the sector in actual reach. In addition, Schutz distinguishes between the “primary zone of operation” which is the province of non-mediated action within the primary world within reach, and the “secondary zone of
operation” (SLW, 41) which is the province of mediated action within the secondary world within reach. The wide-awake person in the natural attitude is involved primarily in the world within actual reach; the area that can be experienced immediately through the senses
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and that arranges itself spatially around him as its center. His individual geographic location, his exact “here” in the world within actual reach, forms the zero-point of a system of coordinates within which the dimensions, distances, and perspectives become determined for his orientation in objectively structured space.
The primary zone of operation forms a “province of unmediated action” (SLW, 44) that can be influenced through direct action that is confirmed in immediate results. Schutz agrees with George Herbert Mead’s (1932) notion that this “manipulative zone” within the world within actual reach presents the “kernel of reality” of the life-world. For only the experience of physical objects in the manipulative zone gives us the “fundamental test of all reality” (124) in the form of the experience of resistance. Thus structurally, space works as a dualism: either, partners share a “community of geo-space” where their worlds within reach overlap, or they do not, there are no options in between. Contemporaries are not located within each other’s direct perceptual reach; one person’s here is invariably another person’s there. Such structural spatial separation – often combined with structural temporal divergence – characterizes the realm of distant individuals. Consociates, however, are located within each other’s direct perceptual reach; when two worlds within reach overlap Schutz speaks of a “face-to-face” situation. According to Schutz, the face-to-face encounter is the only social situation characterized by temporal and spatial immediacy. When two face-to-face individuals take up a mutual orientation to each other – Schutz calls this a “reciprocal Thou-orientation” – they enter into what Schutz calls a “We-relationship” (SLW, 65) that forms the condition for the possibility of intimacy.
At Schutz’ time of writing and for most of human history, interaction took place exclusively between consociates in geo-space where place and space coincide: to meet with someone was the same thing as to go someplace. However, the introduction of the
internet, paired with the onset of electronic communication devices – first the telephone and more recently laptops and smartphones – has been gradually “tearing space away from place” (Giddens, 1990). Zhao argues that although consociated contemporaries are not located within each other’s direct perceptual reach, the separation of space as “cyberspace” from place as “geo-space” allows their worlds within reach to overlap in what he calls a “face-to-device” situation:
“Under the condition of teleco-presence, human individuals engage in a mode of interaction described as “face to device” for the reason that individuals in
