Ontological Crosscurrents in Digital Culture: Woolf/Derrida – Being/UnBeing

Whether through Rachel Vinrace’s death in The Voyage Out (1915), or through Jacob’s empty shoes in Jacob’s Room (1922), or via Mrs Dalloway’s and Septimus’ inner-monologues in Mrs Dalloway (1925), or indeed through Isa Haines’ three-fold mirror reflecting her eidolon but also her tripartite oppression in Between the Acts (1937), Virginia Woolf’s work demonstrates a sustained preoccupation with Being. This preoccupation becomes explicit in ‘A Sketch of the Past’ (1939), in which she links ‘Being’ with writing (p. 70). Her ontological appurtenances (absence, loss, mourning) constitute the inspiration for and impetus behind my own work which theorises (the) digital Being as UnBeing, a radical new concept in digital ontology, which provides me with a metalanguage for the ways in which our digital reality reassesses questions of ethico-political nature. In this presentation, I echo Woolf in theorising (the) digital Being qua UnBeing as ‘writing’, but further problematise her approach by combining it with Jacques Derrida’s work on writing and attendant concepts such as the spectre and mourning. My work therefore capitalises on, and is indebted to, Woolf’s sustained preoccupation with Being and shows the urgency of Woolf’s thoughts on writing and creativity in enabling us to comprehend but also cope with (and resist?) the multiple challenges of contemporary life, thought and (creative and pedagogical) practice.