Being-in-the-screen: phenomenological reflections on contemporary screenhood

The screen is the place that draws us in and somehow demands our attention—hence the saying ‘glued to the screen.’ In an important sense, screens are increasingly the ‘world’ that matters, the world that calls for us to (re)present ourselves there, to be first and foremostly in-the-screen. Moreover, being-in-the-screen frees us from the material weight of a body, a located place and time, and many of the social norms that such material rooted-ness implies. Screen communication is dominated by the instantaneous, emotive, multitasking, the intuitive, and ongoing improvisation. Moreover, in surfaciality and plasticity of the screen, disembodied subjects can play with their identity. Traditional categories such as gender, race, socio-economic class, loose their definitive authority. The physical screen is just one element of the relational whole that makes ‘being-in-the-screen’ possible. The screen in its screening always and already facilitates certain patterns of perception, structures of attention, models of thinking, and thus alter our lives independently of individual analysis or opinions.