Body Without Organs

But can the emphasis on ecclesial embodiment be actualised virtually? Can we be the body online? Doesn't this disembodied form of communication vitiate the corporeal metaphor? Surely not. Paul himself comments that, although absent in body he is with others “in spirit” (2 Co. 5.3; Col. 5.3). If this is more than a pious sentiment, it must refer to some metaphysical connection, a reality of fellowship across physical distance

The work of Marshall McLuhan and Charles Taylor, both Canadian Roman Catholics, may shed some light. McLuhan criticised the “discarnate” nature of western society, due to its reliance on media and technology. In his case, this meant TV; but has been applied now to the Internet. Taylor uses the term “excarnate”, delving into the philosophical roots of the problem, which he sees in the Neo-platonic devalorisation of matter and the body, in favour of a dualistic preference for mind and spirit over the former. Both examinations are readily observable in the present use of the internet, especially during Covid.

There is however a two-fold dialectical significance of this: these media are simultaneously the means of our separation and our connectivity – without them, at this time, we would be even more isolated, and yet they also perpetuate that separation. Our relationships are hence mediated: but was that not ever so? Do we not always communicate via media? In addition, McLuhan discerns a similar ambiguity in our mediatisation: the positive use of technology is as an ‘extension’ of human capacities.

Another analogy is the “body without organs”, an idea developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. This, they oppose to the dominant state and capitalist system. Instead of fixed institutional forms, the “body without organs” refers to deterritorialised social groups, operating underground, outside the formal structures of society, in order to subvert it, to sidestep its determinisms and controls. Rather than pyramidal organisation, the body without organs, as they theorise it, draws on their other concept of the “rhizome”.

The rhizome is a tuber, like a potato, or runner bean, which grows and spreads organically, sprouting fresh buds along its length. They use this to describe the radical, spontaneous extensiveness of radical subversion. They also considered it “virtual”, as opposed to the definitive structures of top-down hierarchies. In this respect, it resembles a pre-digital version of the virtual: the ability of small groups to deploy creativity within the interstices of the global circuits. As such, it also corresponds to the “fluid modernity” identified by Zygmunt Bauman: the flexible, mobile world of the mediatised urban. The Archimedean lever is thus available to any micro-activist coterie: using smart phones to insert fresh modes of apprehension into the mass of the macro-culture.

Online small groups may be one expression of this spreading tentacular modality. But we must not overlook the dark spots of digital disconnection. This is another sign, of poverty and exclusion. Paradoxically, authentic ministry amidst the digital nodes, may require old-fashioned technologies: phonecalls (e.g. conference–call lifegroups for the elderly), or even letters.