Carlos Willatt/Marc Fabian Buck - The Digital Colonization of the Virtual
Channel: Allgemeine Erziehungswissenschaft an der HU Berlin
Date: 06/12/2022

Dr. Carlos Willatt (Santiago, CHI)/Dr. Marc Fabian Buck (Hagen, GER)

The Digital Colonization of the Virtual and the Persistence of (Proto-)Virtuality in Educational Settings

Panel on September 15th, 2022 as part of the 6th International Symposium on Phenomenological Research in Education: Realities. Phenomenological and pedagogical perspectives. Introduction by Prof. Dr. Malte Brinkmann.

Prof. Brinkmann's homepage: https://hu.berlin/aew_eng
Blog: http://paed.ophen.org/?lang=en
Symposion on Phenomenological Research in Education: https://hu.berlin/sym_phen_ed

Abstract:
The pervasive and partly compulsory digitalization of life-worlds (Buck & Zulaica, 2022), both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, has introduced major changes in the educational field. This concerns spatial-temporal experiences and practices as well as the language we use to refer to them. Everyday expressions such as ‘virtual classroom’, ‘virtual library’, ‘virtual meetings’, or—as a rather recent phenomenon—‘virtual study rooms’ on Tiktok have become ‘natural’ when talking about digitally-mediatedsettings. These expressions, however, imply a prior and tacit identification of the digital with the virtual (Champion 2019, Grimshaw, 2014; Nardi, 2015; Ollinaho, 2018). Given that digitally-mediated and traditional, face-to-face educational situations are different, this identification is problematic for at least two reasons: (1) it reinforces an opposition between virtual and corporeal realities to the detriment of a more complex understanding of reality; (2) it prevents us from analyzing the intricate entanglements of virtuality and corporeality, that is to say, from distinguishing what is virtual in corporeality and what is corporeal in (digital) virtuality. [1]
In this contribution we aim to question this identification as it neglects experiential differences regarding both digital and virtual realities. Our thesis is that this identification is a result of a ‘colonization’ of the virtual by ongoing processes of digitalization. Thus, we want to tackle debates on postdigital realities (Cramer, 2015; Jandrić et al., 2018; Peters et al., 2021) by relativizing the hegemony of the digital and, instead, highlighting the relevance and complexity of the virtual. In order to describe virtual and corporeal realities not as opposed but as part of a rich, multidimensional reality, we suggest to approach virtuality primarily in terms of protovirtuality. This means, it is necessary to show how a primordial form of the virtual already persists and resists in the very embodied experience.
We develop our thesis in four instances. First, from a historical and conceptual perspective we show how this identification arises and becomes tacit over time. Here we analyze the expressions ‘digital’ and ‘virtual’ and focus on their philosophical, technological and educational meanings. Secondly, drawing mainly on MerleauPonty’s insights in the Phenomenology of perception we address three aspects of the phenomenon of protovirtuality: space, movement and body. We argue that protovirtuality differs from and is not reducible to the experience of virtuality in digitally-mediated settings. Thirdly, we offer some examples of experiences in educational settings in which protovirtuality and digital virtuality can–and should–be distinguished. Finally, we make some remarks on the idea that in the age of postdigital and posthuman visions corporeality persists and resists as something primordial and irreplaceable in the pedagogical field.