This document discusses the concepts of nature, culture, subjectivity, and their relationships. It argues that traditionally nature and culture were seen as separate, but discoveries in science have shown that nature has creative potential and works through communication and adaptation, demonstrating a "becoming cultural of nature". Key concepts discussed include Prigogine's work on self-organizing chemical reactions, Simondon's view that subjectivity emerges from an inseparable process, and Deleuze's concepts of potentiality, virtuality and simulacra. The document also discusses Hume's concept of sympathy and how it relates to the production of social institutions and agreements through openness between subjects.

1. The ‘becoming cultural’ of the
nature: sympathy and simulacra
in creative processes
CLAUDIA LANDOLFI
LECTURER IN MEDIA STUDIES
Global Center for Advanced Studies - Italy

2. nature/culture
Traditionally, the realms of nature (passivity of
immutable laws) and culture (will, liberty) are
been conceived as separated and opposite
the Newtonian paradigm of mechanicism has
deeply influeced the modern perspective on
subjectivity and behaviours (we think of the
metaphor of ‘the clock’)
The discovery of the entropy in matter (Clausius
1865) produced meaningful changes: entropè in
ancient greek language means ‘changing’,
transformations.

3. since then, the describing image of the universe is
no more the clock but the fire that burns in a kiln
I. PRIGOGINE, I. STENGERS La Nouvelle
alliance. Métamorphose de la science (1979): they
propose a new horizon for the biological and social
sciences as a source of renewal to establish a new
epistemological paradigm, which allows us to
reconsider the relationship between science and
culture, between humans and nature.

4. Prigogine analyzed the auto-organizative chimical
phenomena in which we can observe the rising of reaction
mechanisms characterized by a sort of ‘ability’ in taking
part in synthesis (evolution of non linear systems).
From here we discover that the the matter has autonomous
potentiality in responding to stimuli and works through the
interaction between single elements.
In this sense, the instability of the matter is tied with auto-organizational
features into the frame of infinitive
possibilities of variations.
The norm of being, in Canguilhem is the production of
variations not the repetition of a supposed natural model

5. The interaction
The indetermination principle of Heisenberg has made
impossible for us conceiving the nature as an isolated
object from the observer.
The deep interaction between ‘external world’ and ‘internal
world’ in subjectivity, and between ‘passivity’ and ‘liberty’
has been already stated by Spinoza in his theory of affectus
Moreover, the nature has creative potentialities, it works
through informations and communications in a continuum
contagion into the space, it produces innovative
adaptations so you can talk about ‘becoming cultural of the
nature’.

6. All those discoveries changed our way of imagine
the world and the subjectivity
Can we answer to the questions: ‘what is the
nature’? What is the subjectivity? What is culture?
Separating those realms? Or maybe we have to
state, with Simondon, that the subjectivity emerges
from a virtual process in which we can’t separate
the single elements that participate in this process?

7. Simulacra
Deleuze derived his 'flowing and desiring subjectivity’ from
the concepts of: potentiality, virtuality, simulacra. All those
concepts are very frequently evoked by Deleuze, but he has
been inspired by Hume. In Deleuze the concept of
simulacrum expresses the virtual potentiality of being
(human and natural) i.e. the difference as solution to
escape from the limits. This is humean project of a pacific
and creative subjectivity able to overcoming the violent and
closed subjectivity, open to the changes of point of view and
able to ‘abandoning’ his authenticity.
The symphatetical subject in society can be confronted with
the concept of simulacrum.

8. The simulacrum has long been of interest to philosophers.
In his Sophist, Plato speaks of two kinds of image making.
The first is a faithful reproduction, attempted to copy
precisely the original. The second is intentionally distorted
in order to make the copy appear correct to viewers. He
gives the example of Greek statuary, which was crafted
larger on the top than on the bottom so that viewers on the
ground would see it correctly. If they could view it in scale,
they would realize it was malformed. This example from the
visual arts serves as a metaphor for the philosophical arts
and the tendency of some philosophers to distort truth so
that it appears accurate unless viewed from the proper
angle.

9. Nietzsche addresses the concept of simulacrum
(but does not use the term) in The Twilight of the
Idols, suggesting that most philosophers, by
ignoring the reliable input of their senses and
resorting to the constructs of language and reason,
arrive at a distorted copy of reality.
Klossowski and the nietzschean circle in France
in which was they preached the end of truth,
substantiality of the subject, the immutability of
being, the strong relationship between passionate
imagination (Dionysus) and the clear idea (Apollo).

10.  Postmodernist French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argued that a
simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right:
the hyperreal. Where Plato saw two steps of reproduction—faithful and
intentionally distorted (simulacrum)—Baudrillard sees four: basic
reflection of reality; perversion of reality; pretence of reality (where
there is no model); and simulacrum, which "bears no relation to any
reality whatsoever".
 Gilles Deleuze sees simulacra as the avenue by which an accepted ideal
or "privileged position" could be "challenged and overturned". Deleuze
defines simulacra as "those systems in which different relates to
different by means of difference itself. What is essential is that we find
in these systems no prior identity, no internal resemblance".

11.  The concept of vicariance in Berthoz seems to fit in this perspective: the
mind ‘naturally’ works ‘culturally’ in producing something that is
fictional, and responds to a need of changing in difficulties. The
vicarious is a sort of simulacrum, a replication that is ‘no more’ and ‘not
still’, is different from the original but is not a ghost: it produces effects
into the reality.
 Another reference can be represented by Hume and by the concept of
symphaty.
 Hume’s theory of mind is fictional. Perceptions are elaborated by the
mind passionately and from the passion emerges the imagination of a
new social world via symphaty, nature is an open process of production
and innovation on biological level, on the level of the mind, of emotions
and of social relations

12. The concept of symphaty comes from the Phisics and it
means: reciprocal action of things between them or their
ability to influence each other. The concept was related
primarily to the physical world. With Hume, instead,
sympathy was related to emotional involvement between
individuals in society.
In Hume, the sympathy is the basic openness of
subjectivities to the world (Macherey) meant as a
continuum fluxus of data that affect the body and it doesn’t
work according to a predefined model but through a
mechanism of association of ideas and imitation - not
identification - which occurs by association of ideas arising
from the passions and perceptions

13. The sympathetic interaction is productive of institutions
and agreements in David Hume, we think of his interest in
resolving the conflictuality between strangers and between
people from different cultures, religions, states. The
imitative processes that act in the vicariance is meant here
as necessary for peace.
In fact the subjects open themselves to a new society
creating positive habits that are not derived from the
indisputable respect of the tradition but from the interplay
between sympathetic subjects.
The Vicariance can be meant as the paradigm for an idea
of nature that is supposed to be culturally productive,
supporting an idea of creation of social agreements on the
basis of sympathy. So we can say that in the nature and in
the culture we can recognize a similar mechanism in
producing new realities through a fictional substitute.