While the mixed (perpetrator and sufferer) structural positions provide access to unique experiences helping the constrained and disillusioned subjectivities in the trial of particularity, on their own they are not capable of stabilizing such critical praxes. Actors are not only embedded in intersubjective networks, but also in the inter-objective actor-networks constituted of human and non-human components. Accordingly, the era of permacrisis is characterized not only by the structural paradoxes distorting intersubjectivity, but also by the technological paradoxes affecting embodiment and the embeddedness in the material world. In chapter four these paradoxes are explored from the perspective of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of chiasm. According to his phenomenological analyses, embodied subjectivities are intertwined with the material, transcendental and symbolic layers of existence. Because these components constitute an inextricable complexity, the challenges arising on each level can be resolved by relying on the complementary ones. The exponential technological expansion distorts this existential structure: the new technological mediators operating on all these levels lead to the ‘rigidity’ of flesh. As chiasm originally characterized by plasticity is replaced by the flesh being intertwined with the technological mediators, the subjects become exclusively dependent on their naturalized tools.
The consequences of such rigidity vary from addiction (in case only technologies provide solution to existential challenges) to anxiety (in case the needed technologies are scarce) or depression (in case not even the exclusive technologies provide solution to a challenge and the subjects are left without alternatives, such as consoling narratives or caring relationships). To overcome these consequences, the elementary level of inhabiting the world needs to be reconfigured. For this purpose, a fundamental aspect of technologically mediated chiasm is analyzed. Actors rely on technology in a naturalizing manner insofar as it integrates them into the world on a material level. The most important indicator of such embeddedness is visceral satisfaction: if technology can ensure enjoyment, then its legitimacy is taken for granted. That is why the analysis of mediated chiasm should focus on the broader existential structure of enjoyment: by reconstructing its broader space of possibility, localizing satisfaction on such existential map, and reconstructing the modernization dynamics, the reconfiguring of distortive technologies can be described.