One liner
Linking Catholic mysticism with remote cybersex, this essay explores how bodies are controlled, stimulated, and dissolved by external structures, from God to the cloud.
Description
This essay draws a provocative connection between Catholic mysticism and contemporary technologies of remote intimacy, arguing that both are structured by what it calls “determination from the outside.” Beginning with the case of Polish mystic Faustyna Kowalska (1905 - 1938) and her experience of stigmata—understood as an erotic, painful, and deeply intimate form of external intervention—the text establishes a model of the body as something acted upon by forces beyond itself.
It then moves to teledildonics and cybersex technologies, where touch, pleasure, and sensation are similarly produced at a distance, controlled through networked devices. These systems distribute the body across space, fragmenting and reassembling it through digital mediation, while maintaining an intimate link between external control and internal experience.
Drawing on cyberfeminism, psychoanalysis, and media theory, the essay suggests that such technologies do not represent a radical break from the past, but rather a continuation of older structures of mediated desire. The figure of the mystic becomes a precursor to the networked subject: both experience pleasure and pain as effects of an external agent, whether divine or technological.
Links
Reference
Konior, Bogna. “Determination from the Outside: Stigmata, Teledildonics and Remote Cybersex.” ŠUM: Journal for Contemporary Art Criticism and Theory, no. 12 (2019).