The Philosopher's Corner: The 'Immersed Flesh': A Phenomenological Conceptualization of Immersive Virtual Reality Embodiment
Amir Haj-Bolouri · ACM SIGMIS Database the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems · 2025
Immersive virtual reality (IVR) provides an emerging research discourse for the information systems (IS) field, with respect to ''embodiment.'' Embodiment has been a subject for IS studies. Contemporary research on IVR embodiment, however, is scarce, especially from the perspective of the immersive experience. Hence, this paper explores how Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological view on embodiment and ontology of the Flesh can be employed to conceptualize IVR embodiment for the IS field. As a result, this paper contributes with the concept of ''Immersed Flesh,'' a phenomenological conceptualization of IVR embodiment that is proposed to advance the IS discourse on IVR research, embodiment, and phenomenology. The Immersed Flesh is defined as the tissue or matrix that gives rise to a potency of merging worlds (e.g., physical, virtual) bearing actuality, in a dynamic and relational process of embodying activities among a plurality of singularities that constitutes the very fabric of reality. As a concept, the Immersed Flesh focuses on the very feeling of immersive embodiment and highlights it through three illustrative examples: (1) embodying the ''living body'' of an immersed body-subject, (2) embodying intersubjective perspective-taking of the other's body-schema, and (3) embodying the objective body and immersed interworld of passing entities.