Avatar e situazione immaginale operativa: fenomenologia della corporeità del gamer

Abstract

This article develops a phenomenological analysis of the videogamer’s corporeality, focusing on the avatar as an operative prolongation of the lived body within competitive e-sports. Drawing on Husserl’s ontology of the body and Edith Stein’s analyses of sensibility and community, we first characterize the videogame as an operative imagetic situation: not mere image-reception, but a normative field in which the fictum responds to and demands action. Within this regime, the avatar is neither illusion nor representation, but a functional pole of volition mediated by technical devices. Although it lacks localized tactile sensation, the avatar participates in intense hylē through global psychophysical tensions associated with risk, performance, and elimination. The videogamer’s body becomes selectively reorganized, with hyperactivation of specific operative zones (eyes, hands, voice) and incorporation of control devices into the bodily schema. In collective games, a tridimensional communal structure emerges—corporeal, psychic, and spiritual—sustained by shared purpose and communicative coordination. The analysis also highlights the inclusive potential of e-sports, where technical mediation reconfigures the functional relevance of organic limitation.