On behalf of Céline Borelle: Dear colleagues, As part of the DREES-funded project "Digital Detox", we are pleased to organize a one-day colloquium on "Rethinking the digital virtual as a regime of action, experience and relationship". The event will take place on January 28, 2025 at the EHESS (Paris). It will open with a lecture by Lisa Messeri, Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, on her recently published book *In the land of the unreal. Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles*. Paper proposals must be submitted by September 6, 2024. Please find below the full call and submission details. We are looking forward to hearing from you! Céline Borelle for the Scientific and Organizing Committee ---- *Rethinking the digital virtual as a regime of experience, action, and relationship * Céline Borelle (SENSE, Orange et CEMS, EHESS-CNRS-INSERM) Elsa Forner (CEMS, EHESS-CNRS-INSERM) Anne-Sylvie Pharabod (SENSE, Orange) According to Gilles Deleuze (1995), the virtual can be defined as that which is entirely real but not actual, that which does not exist in a concrete, tangible way. A concept first developed in philosophy, it began to be used in the field of computer technology in the late 1980s, notably through the term “virtual reality”, coined by engineer Jaron Lanier to describe interaction with a simulated environment (Woolley, 1992). Since then, it has expanded to become a means of investigating digital applications in general (Woolgar, 2002). In particular, the virtualization made possible by digital technologies has been the subject of anxious questioning. Digital uses have been seen by some as symptomatic of an attraction to the virtual that would take precedence over the real (Jauréguiberry, 2000; Turkle, 2011) or at least be able to compete with it, including the risk of a pathological social withdrawal of the individual (Piotti, 2021). This call, on the contrary, invites us to free ourselves from any normative goal in order to question the process of virtualization, which is constantly fed by technological developments and oriented towards the extension of the “immersive web paradigm” in its perceptual, narrative and social dimensions (Boullier, 2008). More specifically, it proposes an empirically grounded study of forms of digital virtualization, i.e. the dematerialized situations produced by the use of digital technologies. The aim is to explore the ways in which these virtual situations engage people and contexts, opening up possibilities of simulation, anonymity and distance. Without adopting a technical determinist perspective, since “the virtual does not depend on a technical apparatus to exist” (Proulx and Latzko-Toth, 2000, p. 103)1, this call aims to take a fresh look at the forms of virtualization made possible by digital technologies: from the mediatization of interpersonal exchanges on the Internet to acting in environments that are at least partially simulated thanks to what are now called "immersive" technologies (virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality), not to mention interactions with technical devices equipped with artificial intelligence (social robots, chatbots, online avatars). Human-machine interaction is a distinct field of research at the intersection of engineering, cognitive science, psychology, and ergonomics. Several social science traditions can also be mobilized to think about the simulation of human interactions with artificial beings (Borelle, 2018). This call therefore proposes to focus more specifically on activities performed by humans in virtual environments, drawing attention to situations in which bodily involvement is not obvious and can be questioned. This choice stems from the desire to work on the notion of the virtual by taking seriously the specificities of the system of engagement it authorizes. While the “material turn” in the social sciences has enabled digital infrastructures to be brought to light, the thrust of this appeal is to argue that digital technologies have also opened up the possibility of engaging with dematerialized situations. The salutary questioning of the idea that the digital world proceeds from a suspension of physical and social constraints has led to the abandonment of the notion of the virtual in most social science research. Our hypothesis is that this abandonment has been too radical, and that this notion can usefully characterize registers of action, orders of experience, and relational dynamics specific to the digital context. Therefore, this call proposes to reopen this notion by unfolding it as a regime of experience, action, and relation. Based on the synthesis proposed by Marcus Doel and David Clarke (1999), Serge Proulx and Guillaume Latzko-Toth (2000) distinguish three approaches to the relationship between the real and the virtual. In the first two approaches, which are based on normative thinking, the virtual is opposed to the real. On the optimistic side, the virtual is seen as a way of "solving" the imperfections of the real. It allows a wealth of possibilities to be explored. On the pessimistic side, the virtual is subordinated to the real in a logic of 'representation'. It is seen as a degraded copy of reality. Putting these two normative approaches in historical perspective, it seems that we have moved, in the words of Serge Proulx, from the "sublime" to the "ersatz". The currently dominant narrative of the history of digitization is characterized by this dynamic of disenchantment, from a founding techno-enthusiasm to a resurgence of critique (Bellon, 2019; Alexandre et al., 2022). The sociology of uses has developed by abandoning the normative perspective in favor of a descriptive approach, which aims to understand the virtual in its hybridization with the actual. This is the third approach identified by Serge Proulx and Guillaume Latzko-Toth (2000). Numerous studies have sought to challenge the opposition between the virtual and the real, to emphasize that digital experiences are framed by the same social mechanisms as experiences of co-presence, and to show the interactions between the deployment of online and offline activities. The topic of “virtual communities”, for example, has generated a wealth of literature along these lines, from the work of Howard Rheingold (1995) to work on the revitalization of a leisure activity such as knitting through its online sharing (Zabban, 2016). Sociology and anthropology have taken an interest in forms of online sociability, particularly in comparing the rules of online and offline interaction. Several studies have examined interactions in simulated virtual reality environments (Schroeder, 2002), in online forums (Beaudouin, 2016), in persistent games (Bainbridge, 2010), or in relation to an “imagined audience” on social networks (boyd and Ellison, 2007). These studies highlight the reconfiguration of forms of collaboration and conventions, between netiquette (Hambridge, 1995) and playful experimentation (Pharabod, 2021). The sociology of use has also focused on investigating forms of “online visibility” (Cardon, 2008), the ways in which we present ourselves on personal pages (Licoppe and Beaudouin, 2002), blogs (Paldacci, 2006), social networks (Georges, 2009), and online games (Auray, 2004), in particular by looking at the issue of the digital double. This work has thus invested the digital world as a new medium for constructing the social, the collective and the self. In doing so, the focus on the entanglement between online and offline activities has led sociology to gradually abandon the notion of the virtual. The normative disqualification of the virtual was compounded by the deconstruction of its analytical scope. In the end, sociology has done little to study the digital virtual as such, not only as a new medium but also as a new territory, a perspective outlined by geographical approaches to the spatial dimension of online phenomena (Perrat, 2020). The few works that have set out to study “the virtual for its own sake” (Boellstorff, 2008, on Second Life) focus on persistent games, “modes of inhabiting virtual worlds” (Lucas, 2018), the experience of a “techno-trance” (Triclot, 2016), or the virtual funeral as a “lived spiritual event” in World of Warcraft (Servais, 2012). The field left open has been taken over by other disciplines that have mobilized this notion of the virtual and taken on the task of studying it as such. Psychoanalysis has taken an interest in the metamorphoses of the ego in the virtual age (Godart, 2016; Alcon Andrades and Tordo, 2023). Experimental psychology has dealt with the assessment of cognitive skills, such as the ability to drive, using virtual simulation (Milleville-Pennel et al., 2010), or with the way people invest in their avatar, in particular by measuring the "Proteus effect", which refers to the fact that an individual's behavior in virtual worlds is modified by the characteristics of his or her avatar (Szolin et al., 2022). From a multidisciplinary perspective, a number of studies in the information and communication sciences extend this line of inquiry to the embodiment of avatars (Amato and Perény, 2013; Beaufils and Berland, 2022) and, more broadly, to the determinants of immersive experience in the use of digital devices (Bonfils and Durampart, 2013). Design has also taken an interest in the changes in perception under virtual conditions (Vial, 2013). The aim of this call is to take a sociological look at the digital virtual as a mode of action, experience, and relationship. The aim is to take a fresh look at the relationship between the real and the virtual, as well as other pairs of terms that are often embedded in the analysis of their articulation: real/false, simulated/authentic, fictitious/effective. The results of sociological studies that have documented and analyzed arrangements with reality through forms of fiction, trickery or even lies (see, for example, Hennion and Vidal-Naquet, 2012, on the ethics of care) could usefully be put to the test in an investigation of virtual situations. This call for papers aims to bring together contributions that investigate the design, engagement, and regulation of virtual situations. As other disciplines place great emphasis on the perceptual dimension of engagement, especially in immersive situations, we propose to explore other dimensions as well: spatiality, temporality issues, modulations of social sanctions, contextual plasticity, and reduction of material costs. This call for proposals is structured around three axes, organized around different modalities of articulation between the real and the virtual. 1. Virtual training This axis concerns situations in which people train to act, to make a gesture, to forge or perfect a way of doing things, in virtual environments. These situations are characterized by challenging the boundary between the real and the virtual by focusing on the transposition of the virtual to the non-virtual. Here, virtual simulation is set up as a means, with the horizon of action located outside the virtual. The challenge is to consider the specificities of “technical repetition” in the Goffmanian sense (Goffman, 1991) in a digital environment. Virtual training involves suspending the test of action in a physical environment, often a collective one. We can think of the design of virtual reality exposure therapy (TERV) to treat military post-traumatic stress syndrome (Brandt, 2013), and the uses of TERV to treat phobias (Klein and Borelle, 2019; Forner , 2020) and addictions (Borelle and Forner, 2024); the use of virtual reality to acquire soft skills in the context of training (the art of the pitch, for example, see Faustin Barbe's thesis in progress) or job search (see the interview training tool used by Pôle emploi); learning technical gestures in the medical context (the use of augmented reality in surgery), in the fields of design and architecture (modeling spaces in virtual reality), or even in the military (the use of simulators to train fighter pilots, Dubey and Moricot, 2016); raising awareness of personal attacks through experiences from different points of view, in the justice system (use of virtual reality in cases of domestic violence) and in the fight against gender discrimination, ordinary sexism and sexual harassment (see the start-up Reverto, specialized in VR tools dedicated to human rights). 2. Experimenting the virtual This axis brings together situations in which the virtual is the horizon for action. The virtual is invested for its own sake, as an end in itself. The challenge is to analyze the way in which people play with the boundaries between the virtual and the real, maintaining the vagueness in order to experience its richness. In the field of beliefs, we can think of digital religious practices (Campbell and Evolvi, 2019) or the reception of online clairvoyance (Gilliotte and Guittet, 2023). In terms of affective and sexual relationships, we can think of the consumption of online pornography (Pailler and Vöros, 2017) or camsex (Béliard et al., 2021) and pairing with avatars (Giard, 2021). In the realm of cultural and leisure practices, we can think of online museum visits (Bernon, 2023), virtual tourism, the experience of a symphony concert in augmented reality (Laurent, 2023), and the use of the Pokemon Go application (Berry and Vansyngel, 2021). In the world of consumption, we can think of visiting an apartment in virtual reality (Ivanov and Rejeb, 2017) or the shopping experience in virtual reality (Bettaieb, 2018). In terms of the relationships that the living have with the dead, we can think of online spiritualism (Georges, 2013), practices that consist of keeping the deceased virtually alive (Julliard and Quemener, 2018), and the digital experience of mourning one's child through "mamanges" and "papanges" (Ruchon, 2015). In the field of mental health, we can think of therapy experiments with avatars or online chatbots (the first ELIZA chatbot, created by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966, was designed to simulate a Rogerian psychotherapist). 3. Framing the virtual This axis covers the activities involved in framing the virtual, from its design to its institutional regulation. We can look at how designers think about virtual situations, how their practices have changed with technological developments (see, for example, the history of virtual reality headsets outlined by Michaud, 2017), how they envisage the transposition of the real to the virtual and vice versa, how they concretely deal with issues such as imitation2, realism and verisimilitude (Suchman, 2016), or immersion, incarnation and digital doubling (Messeri, 2024), and how these practices give rise to debates. We can also interrogate the activities involved in regulating the boundaries between the virtual and the real, and in framing engagement in virtual activities and relationships, especially in situations where the consequences of the virtual on the real are the subject of both a problematization and a construction of modes of reparation. 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