Prolegomena to the Study of (the) Digital Being: Jacques Derrida and (the) UnBeing

This paper theorises what I call (the) digital Being by mobilising Jacques Derrida’s work on writing, mourning, and the spectre. Locating my inquiry in the material and the ideal, and/or the historical and the transcendental, I argue that (the) digital Being is in fact UnBeing, a novel theoretical concept which provides me with what James Bridle calls a ‘metaphor’, a ‘metalanguage’ or a new ‘shorthand … that simultaneously acknowledges … the reality of a world in which people, politics, culture and technology are utterly enmeshed ( Bridle 2019 , 5). Although scholars have produced meticulous research in the wider field of digital ontology, to my knowledge no one has raised the question ‘what is (the) digital Being?’ Responding to this question, this essay tries to carve a new path toward further cementing Derrida’s work not only in digital media but in the wider field of media theory.