Khora and Media Philosophy

Abstract McLuhan’s extensionism is based on the root metaphor of media as extensions of humans, like “outered” bodily organs or systems. This article puts forward and elaborates on an alternative root metaphor. It offers an understanding of media using Plato’s maternal, imagistic, polysemic, genealogical concept of khora as a metaphor, seeing media as receptacles, wombs, and sieves, and speculating on the ethical significance of the three understandings. After introducing and developing the metaphor of “medium as khora ,” the article focuses on the vexations of the digital age, and the serviceability and limitations of Maxwell’s demon as a technical solution. Eventually, the article comes to the issues of composite khora , mental symbiosis, and spiritual nourishment. It draws on the thoughts of Deleuze and Flusser, and invokes the wisdom of Daoism, Zen, and Nietzsche’s spiritual hygienics.