EXPRESS: Objectal Resistance: The Political role of personal objects in workers’ resistance to spatial change

Flexwork, i.e. the combination of shared offices and telework, is one of the major changes affecting the workplace these days. But how do employees react to these transformations of their work environment? In this paper, we investigate employees’ resistance to the introduction of flexwork in a large Belgian organization. We show employees resisting this workspace transformation through the use of personal objects as means to physically reconnect to the place, using objects to convey their claims and objectively occupy places. Though space has become a key analytic concept in the study of organizations, research still largely neglects the concrete role played by personal objects in the capacity of workers to resist change in the occupation of workspaces. We highlight the mutual constitution of objects and space in practices of resistance to workspace change. We show specifically how the politicality of these materials—referred to here as objectal resistance—comes from the meaning that people assign to objects when they place them in order to reestablish workers’ bodily presence at work—i.e., from acts of objects embodiment and emplacement. We contribute to studies of resistance in the workplace by showing that objectal resistance is a complex combination of overt and covert activities, which leads to see the classic opposition between recognition and post-recognition politics in a new light.

Accounting for Imaginary Presence

Both Husserl and Sartre speak of quasi-presence in their descriptions of the lived experience of imagination, and for both philosophers, accounting for quasi-presence means developing an account of the hyle proper to imagination. Guided by the perspective of fulfillment, Husserl’s theory of imaginary quasi-presence goes through three stages. Having experimented first with a depiction-model and then a perception-model, Husserl’s mature theory appeals to his innovative conception of inner consciousness. This elegant account nevertheless fails to do justice to the facticity and bodily involvement of our imaginary experience. Sartre’s theory of analogon, based on his conception of imaginary quasi-presence as ‘magical’ self-affection, embodies important insights on these issues. Kinesthetic sensations and feelings are the modes in which we make use of own body to possess and be possessed by the imaginary object, thus lending it a semblance of bodily presence.

Gottesdienst in ›Corona‹-Zeiten oder: Drei Variationen zum Thema Präsenz

The article focuses on liturgical questions caused by the Corona-pandemic and concentrates on the question of liturgical presence. For the Reformation, the presence of Christ/of God’s word and the presence of the congregation as an active subject in worship is central: Worship is all about the communio in a vertical and horizontal perspective and the participation of the whole congregation. Seen in this perspective, the discussion about the possibility of (Sunday) services in physical co-presence in 2020 was notably reduced. The article reflects (1) on bodily presence in digital contexts, (2) on the presence of the Church in the public sphere, and (3) on God’s presence in worship. The article aims to overcome dualistic concepts of ‘digital vs. analogue’ and reevaluate the chances of digital presence and physical co-presence in liturgical contexts.

Old(er) Media and New Musical Affordances in Virtual Reality Experiences

This chapter explores how recent virtual reality experiences (from 2010 onward) have remediated musical “protocols” of older audiovisual media such as film, video games, and music videos while creating a number of new affordances that draw attention to the newness of VR. Soundtrack and music video protocols in 360° videos such as Lost and Gorillaz’s “Saturnz Barz” emphasize the affordance of looking for a sound source, while the addition of an ambient musical soundtrack to the VR remediation of Google Earth emphasizes the user’s bodily presence in the virtual environment. Critiquing and expanding the notion of VR as a form of what Bolter and Grusin would call “transparent immediacy,” the chapter suggests that the music in these VR applications also facilitates experiences of hypermediacy, foregrounding the apparatus and idiosyncrasies of a new medium.

The Weight of Bodily Presence in Art and Liturgy

This essay addresses the question of virtual church, particularly on whether or not liturgy can be done virtually. We will approach our subject from a somewhat unusual perspective by looking to types of aesthetic experiences which we have been doing “virtually” for a long time. By exploring how we experience art in virtual and physical contexts, we gain insight into the corresponding experiences in liturgical practices. Drawing on Mikel Dufrenne, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gabriel Marcel, I first examine the importance of the body when we experience “presence” in aesthetic environments. Next, I consider the weight of the body in experiences of presence in liturgical practices, both in person and virtual, guided again by Gabriel Marcel as well as Bruce Ellis Benson, Emmanuel Falque, Christina Gschwandtner and Éric Palazzo. Through these reflections, I argue that what art teaches us about the significance of the physical closeness of the human applies to the practice of liturgy and that, while unexpected benefits will surface in virtual settings, nothing replaces the powerful experiences that arise when the body is physically present.

The missing sense of peace: diplomatic approachment and virtualization during the COVID-19 lockdown

With the unprecedented COVID-lockdown in 2020, many peace diplomatic efforts turned virtual. This represented a temporary loss of many of the usual practices of peace diplomacy and provided an opportunity to examine micro-dynamics of both virtual diplomacy and face-to-face meetings. Based on interviews with parties and mediators involved in the Syrian and Yemeni peace processes we analyze the affordances of virtual and physical meetings respectively. We find that virtual meetings condition peace diplomacy by broadening accessibility, putting confidentiality at risk, allowing for higher frequency of meetings, often disrupting interaction, but also in some instances equalizing it. The transition to virtual also meetings demonstrated what is lost in the absence of physicality: bodily presence, spending longer periods of time together, the possibility of reconciliatory interaction and sharing informal space. When this is missing, it hampers conditions for what we call the sense of peace, that is, the visceral potential of meeting physically, which we conceptualize to include a sense of understanding, togetherness and trust. We further propose a wider application of this conception beyond peace diplomacy, in the form of diplomatic approachment. Finally, we suggest strategies in virtual diplomacy and discuss how virtual and physical diplomacy may supplement each other.

Territorial Presence As A Ground For Claims: Some Reflections

"Territorial Presence As A Ground For Claims: Some Reflections" returns to political theory to assess the moral and legal position of those individuals who are inside the territory of liberal democratic states, but whose very presence has been unauthorised by the state. The author asks the question as to what their bodily presence means and does from a political perspective. The paper is part of a broader political phenomenology of territoriality in liberal national thought and puts emphasis on the idea that it is migrants’ bodily presence within the state’s territory that lies at the analytical heart of the conversation about irregular immigrants. What is paradoxical about territorial presence of unauthorised migrants is that such presence is simultaneously (1) the source of the offence states invoke as a justification for making them ‘illegal’; (2) the basis for protections the migrants may claim against the state for basic fair treatment while present; and (3) the ground for claims they make (or are made on their behalf) to remain present – i.e., to stay in the territory. Territorial presence is thus a fertile ground for the analysis of arbitrary law-making in migration. The author sets out to analyse some recent legal developments pertaining to the governance of irregular non-citizen immigrants in the United States. These developments bear on the project of theorising "immigrant justice" as resistance to the growing illiberalization of migration policy. In her view, the very existence of a class of people designated as irregular migrants within state polities presupposes that such polities maintain formal exclusionary border regimes and that in such regimes, some persons are predesignated as ineligible for entry. And even though those exclusion rules do not function to fully preclude entry and presence of such persons, states do not treat their arrival as an automatic basis for full membership either. Hence, irregular immigrants are territorially present in a state that purports to eschew that presence. The author then explores how the idea of “sanctuary” relates to the kinds of claims that both liberal humanitarians and immigrant justice advocates have been making over the last few years. These are claims which ground protection in what exponents cite as the overriding ethical significance of immigrants’ territorial presence – their already-hereness – as the basis for recognition and rights. In particular, the author makes the case that even though "sanctuary" provides a logic of safe harbour, it fails to end the predicament of constitutive based in border exclusionism. For her, the political, social, but also philosophical, struggle for the idea of border abolitionism requires a figurative sword that must go beyond sanctuary so that borders are not just mitigated, but radically deconstructed and even destroyed. The author takes this to be the vital imperative that confronts all legal and political theorists who must engage the normative challenge of rethinking arbitrary law-making in view of the new inequalities that a global political order grounded on sovereign borders produces.

Identity and Aesthetics. Atmosphere as an approach to the appearance of the concrete person

The article suggests that recent ideas of aesthetics can contribute to discussions of identity where the idea of identity can prevent nuanced perceptions of how identity appears causing prejudiced and judgemental views. An idea of identity may be an answer to the complexity of one’s bodily presence, but the answer can by reducing complexity cause conflicts in perception of oneself and others. An aesthetic of bodily presence suggests an awareness of the appearance of identity that goes against prejudicial views on other people, views in danger of neglecting the concrete other.