Links a cultural logic of variation to questions of movement and affect. This book attempts to replace the opposition of literal and figural with distinctions between stasis and motion, and actual and virtual. It tackles theoretical issues by applying them to cultural mediums. It is intended for students of cultural studies and cognitive science.

Replacing the traditional opposition of literal and figural with new distinctions between stasis and motion and between actual and virtual, "Parables for the Virtual" tackles related theoretical issues by applying them to cultural mediums as diverse as architecture, body art, the digital art of Stelarc, and Ronald Reagan's acting career. The result is an intriguing combination of cultural theory, science, and philosophy that asserts itself in a crystalline and multi-faceted argument. "Parables for the Virtual" will interest students and scholars of continental and Anglo-American philosophy, cultural studies, cognitive science, electronic art, digital culture, and chaos theory, as well as those concerned with the 'science wars' and the relation between the humanities and the sciences in general.

Introduction: Concrete is as Concrete Doesn't
1. The Autonomy of Affect
2. The Bleed: Where Body Meets Image
3. The Political Economy of Belonging and the Logic of Relation
4. The Evolutionary Alchemy of reason
5. On the Superiority of the Analog
6. Chaos in the 'Total Field' of Vision
7. The Brightness Confound
8. Strange Horizon: Buildings, Biograms and the Body Topologic
9. Too-Blue: Color-Patch for an Expanded Empiricism