Theory of Technomagic: Spells, Ecstasy and Possessions in Digital Culture

Abstract

The rituals, ceremonies and effervescence of the sacred manifest themselves in digital culture not only through the proliferation of new religious cults. They do so through the online actualisation of traditional religious forms but also the spiritual elevation of objects (Houtman & Meyer, 2012), practices (Carolyn, 2014) or ephemeral, playful and dreamlike images (Susca, 2016). In most cases, they involve figures that evoke the most sensitive and immaterial aspects of experience: its flesh (Esposito, 2004; Henry, 2000) and its imaginary (Durand, 1992). This is the actualisation of what Durkheim (2008) called the “social divine”. We are thus witnessing the proliferation of a multitude of small churches characterised by a low degree of institutionalisation and a high symbolic and emotional density (Maffesoli, 2020). In this sense, digital sociality acquires a decisive value in transfiguring ordinary life, the realm of the profane, into a mythical and mystical experience, brushing up against the sacred in its wildest form (Bastide, 1975). Indeed, the relationships that emerge from these media landscapes reveal a capacity to associate what is separate in time and space, previously belonging to the spiritual and transcendent orders (Davis, 1999). Thus, the culture of connection and sharing actualises in secular spheres a whole set of symbolic experiences reminiscent of religious mysteries (Campbell, 2012). This imaginary modifies the modern relationship between technology and society according to a paradigm that could be called “technomagic”.