By LEONARDO CABRAL*
The process of formation of current subjectivity speaks to the fact that the reproduction of ultraliberal capitalism is in check
The conference cycle Mutations In its opening booklet for the year 2024, the essay written by the organizing philosopher, Adauto Novaes, exposes the crossing of contemporary sensitivity by dynamics that make it open to critical measurement. Not only open to critical measurement – the reflection we make on this process – but open to critical measurement because this is the effect of the dispute over sensitivity, a conflict that occurs between forces that dominate and forces under control.
Paul Valéry, cited by Adauto Novaes in his opening essay, says that sensitivity is the true driving force of intelligence. Therefore, when we talk about the dispute over sensitivity, we say that this conflict is intended to refer sensitivity to its pragmatic use – inversely to critical and creative intelligence, when creation is non-existent without the thought that infers reality. (Furthermore, work exists when there is a critical perception of the position I occupy with work, making it something that in subjective terms is not pragmatic; otherwise, what exists is subjection.)
Thus, contemporary reality is mobilized by historical-dominant forces when what comes into question is this: the reproduction of the current way of life, which is not simple reproduction, when this current way of life is marked by the force of processes that have in given the worsening of capital concentration. What aggravates the concentration of capital is directly related to the loss of nature, and this loss is conditioned by the current stage of the techno-scientific revolution.
Within the perspective that encompasses the current technoscientific revolution, the recent pandemic led the actions that were produced in immediate reality to virtual reality, and this is the process that – as a historical fact – intensified the predominance of technoscience in the future. What we did in person is what we do virtually.
Thus, in a 2020 text, psychoanalyst Tales Ab'Saber says that this recent virus led to the return of civilization to the scope that forms its unconscious, in terms that would be Freudian. “They would” be Freudians, considering that we must think about this historical conformation based on what precedes the pandemic; it is intensified by the pandemic and has a consolidated effect after the pandemic: it is therefore being said about what virtual reality is.
In fact, the process that turns immediate reality into virtual reality is a process that redefines the conception of the Freudian unconscious. By redefining the Freudian unconscious, we do not return to the scope that forms the unconscious that civilization has; we move towards the formation of the unconscious in new terms, and to think about what this is we must read Freudian theory and study what is the heart of this transformation.
Stating that the unconscious of civilization is within the process that forms this process – based on the current techno-scientific revolution –, it is when techno-science creates virtual reality that the subject sent to this process is faced with the duplication of their identity. As psychoanalyst Juan-David explains, when Freudian theory says that the psyche “receives energy, transforms it into action and, consequently, reduces the tension given by the energy”, the excitement that happens to the psyche is of internal origin, and not external.
However, when the context is virtual reality, there is the external-internal character of the perception of energy by the psyche: external, because my being is determined by what happens in virtual reality, which captures the internal dimension of the psyche. Therefore, identity is doubled when the psyche is subject to perceiving energy externally-internally.
The process can be defined as follows: when interacting in virtual reality, the virtual identity achieves absolute pleasure, however, as it continually terminates the tension given by the virtual energy charge – repeating ad infinitum this cycle – this tension is irreducible in the face of immediate reality, the real space that is in opposition to the virtual space, which opens the conflict between immediate reality and virtual reality. This conflict is opened when the exposed process shows the prevalence of virtual identity over the identity that takes place in immediate reality.
When the psyche receives energy externally-internally, the perception of energy by the psyche is given by virtual reality and is delivered to virtual reality, and this opens the conflict in the face of immediate reality, when this is conditioned by the predominance of virtual identity over identity inherent to immediate reality. The consequence is unique: the ontological status of reality is non-existent when the reach of pleasure through virtual identity is absolute.
Thus, it is through this process that the ontological status of reality is not given by immediate reality; It is through this process that the ontological status of reality is given by virtual reality, which conditions immediate reality, and conditioning immediate reality is what finally accomplishes this: we live in virtual reality. When we move forward – due to the characteristics of the current historical context – towards the formation of the unconscious in new terms, this formation consumes virtual reality as a new reality, which prevails over the previous one.
The first consequence is this: coming into conflict with immediate reality, this reality is accelerated by the presence of virtual reality – where the core of contemporary existence lies –, while, because it is conflict, it accelerates virtual identity, accelerating the consciousness of the subject who was referred to this process.
The logic of virtual reality is the conflict between appearances – it is, in short, conflict. This has consequences for the immediate reality, and in this the subject's sensitivity: because it is a process that consumes the subject's identity in new terms, and because it is a process that converges in the immediate reality, there is the return of societies to the historically modern point of where contemporary social conflicts began.
What governs collective existence in immediate reality – which has been reversed into virtual reality – is the indifference exposed in the struggle of all against all, a process that over time has the power to unite dominated social classes in the face of the interests of social classes that dominate. In Adauto Novaes' essay, Paul Valéry asks: “can the human spirit overcome what the spirit has done?” That is, can virtual reality where there is an addiction to absolute pleasure be oriented to the point where – beyond what is addiction – it will re-engage sensitivity, a condition for intelligence?
The disparity between virtual reality and immediate reality is a crisis – and crisis is a condition for the growth of any science –, therefore, when virtual reality has primacy over immediate reality, within a process that forms the unconscious in new terms, what is there? it is not exactly the permanence of the current conflict in modernity and contemporary times; there is, as said, the re-engendering of this.
When the subject's identity is conceived in new terms – within a process that forms the unconscious, diverging from before –, there is the assumption of the time that it is new. While we exist within the renewed conflict between social classes (conflict between irreconcilable subjects), virtual reality, however, is intrinsically artistic. The unconscious that is formed in new terms by virtual reality, when virtual reality, being artistic, takes precedence over immediate reality – influencing what happens in it –, gives immediate reality the configuration of gaze that sees in it what is artistic.
This is how we could say that the ontological preparation for a new reality is what this text exposes. The process of formation of current subjectivity speaks to the fact that the reproduction of ultraliberal capitalism is in question. Creating this society that is new – until the era is new – is the challenge facing critical thinking.
Leonardo Cabral He is a historian and writer. Author of the novel The peasant sketches (Roof tile).
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