“I” come isola, informazione, interazione. Gli arcipelaghi come segno della realtà

The paper suggests that the process of insularization show concretely at the “extra–linguistic” macroscopic level of reality what for some linguists is valid at the “infra–linguistic” level of reality and for some philosophers is valid at the “extra–linguistic” microscopic level of reality: individual entities are actually given, but more as provisional results of relational processes and less as things which are already made and have not relations with their surroundings. With this aim, I start defining the Saussure’s idea that in language there are only differences without positive terms through the words of G. Boehm, who describes language as a network of boundary lines which delimit a group of islands of meaning. Thus, I highlight the connection between the problem of the structure of the language (linguistic level) and the problem of the structure of the world (ontological level): we tend to see the world alternately as made of matter and atoms (of separated islands), or as made of energy and fields (of waters), but what if we consider it made of information and interactions — that is, of archipelagos? (§ 0). Hence, I discuss such oscillation by contraposing the digital ontologies and the informational ontology: I explain that they consider the “bit” of information respectively as an atom–island and as a difference–interaction. Thus, I claim that we can develop the core–idea of the informational ontology, passing from its micro–level to the macro–level of “folk ontology”, if we consider islands not only textually, but also and first of all extra–textually — that is, not just as words and metaphors, but firstly as things and — better — as processes (§ 1). Then, I use some philosophical tools (mainly from G. Deleuze’s and P. Sloterdijk’s works) and some anthropological hints (mostly the idea of an archipelagic perspectivism) to stress that the geophysical reality of islands is a tangible sign of the archipelagic” way in which the reality of things is structured. I insist that a world understood as an archipelago is a world understood as made not of bounded shores, but of islands of difference in seas of similitude, affected by climate change, currents, and the inhabiting work of everything — human and non–human. Finally, I underline that in an archipelagic world we have neither “isolated” islands, nor “flat” water: instead, we have waters that connect and separate islands that take shape exactly along such process of dynamic differentiation (§ 2).