CLAUDIA LANDOLFI

LECTURER IN MEDIA STUDIES

The ‘becoming cultural’ of the nature: sympathy and

simulacra in creative processes

Global Center for Advanced Studies - Italy

nature/culture

Traditionally, the realms of nature (passivity of immutable laws) and culture (will, liberty) are been conceived as separated and opposite

the Newtonian paradigm of mechanicism has deeply influeced the modern perspective on subjectivity and behaviours (we think of the metaphor of ‘the clock’)

The discovery of the entropy in matter (Clausius 1865) produced meaningful changes: entropè in ancient greek language means ‘changing’, transformations.

since then, the describing image of the universe is no more the clock but the fire that burns in a kiln

I. PRIGOGINE, I. STENGERS La Nouvelle alliance. Métamorphose de la science (1979): they propose a new horizon for the biological and social sciences as a source of renewal to establish a new epistemological paradigm, which allows us to reconsider the relationship between science and culture, between humans and nature.

Prigogine analyzed the auto-organizative chimical phenomena in which we can observe the rising of reaction mechanisms characterized by a sort of ‘ability’ in taking part in synthesis (evolution of non linear systems).

From here we discover that the the matter has autonomous potentiality in responding to stimuli and works through the interaction between single elements.

In this sense, the instability of the matter is tied with auto-organizational features into the frame of infinitive possibilities of variations.

The norm of being, in Canguilhem is the production of variations not the repetition of a supposed natural model

The interaction

The indetermination principle of Heisenberg has made impossible for us conceiving the nature as an isolated object from the observer.

The deep interaction between ‘external world’ and ‘internal world’ in subjectivity, and between ‘passivity’ and ‘liberty’ has been already stated by Spinoza in his theory of affectus

Moreover, the nature has creative potentialities, it works through informations and communications in a continuum contagion into the space, it produces innovative adaptations so you can talk about ‘becoming cultural of the nature’.

All those discoveries changed our way of imagine the world and the subjectivity

Can we answer to the questions: ‘what is the nature’? What is the subjectivity? What is culture? Separating those realms? Or maybe we have to state, with Simondon, that the subjectivity emerges from a virtual process in which we can’t separate the single elements that participate in this process?

Simulacra

Deleuze derived his 'flowing and desiring subjectivity’ from the concepts of: potentiality, virtuality, simulacra. All those concepts are very frequently evoked by Deleuze, but he has been inspired by Hume. In Deleuze the concept of simulacrum expresses the virtual potentiality of being (human and natural) i.e. the difference as solution to escape from the limits. This is humean project of a pacific and creative subjectivity able to overcoming the violent and closed subjectivity, open to the changes of point of view and able to ‘abandoning’ his authenticity.

The symphatetical subject in society can be confronted with the concept of simulacrum.

The simulacrum has long been of interest to philosophers. In his Sophist, Plato speaks of two kinds of image making. The first is a faithful reproduction, attempted to copy precisely the original. The second is intentionally distorted in order to make the copy appear correct to viewers. He gives the example of Greek statuary, which was crafted larger on the top than on the bottom so that viewers on the ground would see it correctly. If they could view it in scale, they would realize it was malformed. This example from the visual arts serves as a metaphor for the philosophical arts and the tendency of some philosophers to distort truth so that it appears accurate unless viewed from the proper angle.

Nietzsche addresses the concept of simulacrum (but does not use the term) in The Twilight of the Idols, suggesting that most philosophers, by ignoring the reliable input of their senses and resorting to the constructs of language and reason, arrive at a distorted copy of reality.

Klossowski and the nietzschean circle in France in which was they preached the end of truth, substantiality of the subject, the immutability of being, the strong relationship between passionate imagination (Dionysus) and the clear idea (Apollo).

Postmodernist French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argued that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal. Where Plato saw two steps of reproduction—faithful and intentionally distorted (simulacrum)—Baudrillard sees four: basic reflection of reality; perversion of reality; pretence of reality (where there is no model); and simulacrum, which "bears no relation to any reality whatsoever". 

 Gilles Deleuze sees simulacra as the avenue by which an accepted ideal or "privileged position" could be "challenged and overturned". Deleuze defines simulacra as "those systems in which different relates to different by means of difference itself. What is essential is that we find in these systems no prior identity, no internal resemblance".

The concept of vicariance in Berthoz seems to fit in this perspective: the mind ‘naturally’ works ‘culturally’ in producing something that is fictional, and responds to a need of changing in difficulties. The vicarious is a sort of simulacrum, a replication that is ‘no more’ and ‘not still’, is different from the original but is not a ghost: it produces effects into the reality.

Another reference can be represented by Hume and by the concept of symphaty.

Hume’s theory of mind is fictional. Perceptions are elaborated by the mind passionately and from the passion emerges the imagination of a new social world via symphaty, nature is an open process of production and innovation on biological level, on the level of the mind, of emotions and of social relations

The concept of symphaty comes from the Phisics and it means: reciprocal action of things between them or their ability to influence each other. The concept was related primarily to the physical world. With Hume, instead, sympathy was related to emotional involvement between individuals in society.

In Hume, the sympathy is the basic openness of subjectivities to the world (Macherey) meant as a continuum fluxus of data that affect the body and it doesn’t work according to a predefined model but through a mechanism of association of ideas and imitation - not identification - which occurs by association of ideas arising from the passions and perceptions

The sympathetic interaction is productive of institutions and agreements in David Hume, we think of his interest in resolving the conflictuality between strangers and between people from different cultures, religions, states. The imitative processes that act in the vicariance is meant here as necessary for peace.

In fact the subjects open themselves to a new society creating positive habits that are not derived from the indisputable respect of the tradition but from the interplay between sympathetic subjects.

The Vicariance can be meant as the paradigm for an idea of nature that is supposed to be culturally productive, supporting an idea of creation of social agreements on the basis of sympathy. So we can say that in the nature and in the culture we can recognize a similar mechanism in producing new realities through a fictional substitute.