Richard Grusin’s account of Bruno Latour’s talk, chaired by Isabelle Stengers, at “The Large, The Small, and the Human Mind” conference last week, as part of the Swiss Biennial on Science, Technics + Aesthetics in Lucerne.
Archive for January, 2010
Compositionism
19 January 2010Deleuze and Speculative Realism
18 January 2010It would sure be interesting to explore further the confluence of Deleuze and Latour, and the eddies they create in object-oriented philosophy. If you feel inspired to contribute, see this call for papers by Deleuze International (hat tip to Object-Oriented Philosophy and Speculative Heresy).
The Nature of Technology
16 January 2010Speaking of journals and technology, the special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics on the question concerning technology has now been published and it is apparently freely available for a month (hat tip to Object-Oriented Philosophy). It is set to become a definitive point of reference on how technology matters for the social sciences, given the comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the problem provided by some of the most interesting people working on the subject (or shall we say object). This also explains the conundrum of why an economics journal had commissioned a philosopher (Graham Harman) to write an article about Heidegger’s take on technology, which really intrigued me at the time. Here are my initial ruminations on Harman’s article from May 2009. Needless to say, this Cambridge J. Econ. special issue is very close to the ANTHEM focus, namely the overlap and communication between Heideggerian, STS, and economic approaches to the question of technology.
Here is the list of articles and contributors:
The Nature of Technology
Philip Faulkner, Clive Lawson, and Jochen Runde: Theorising technology
Philosophy of technology
Graham Harman: Technology, objects and things in Heidegger
Albert Borgmann: Reality and technology
Andrew Feenberg: Marxism and the critique of social rationality: from surplus value to the politics of technology
Peter Kroes: Engineering and the dual nature of technical artefacts
Wiebe E. Bijker: How is technology made?—That is the question!
Trevor Pinch: On making infrastructure visible: putting the non-humans to rights
Tim Ingold: The textility of making
Marcia-Anne Dobres: Archaeologies of technology
Robert Aunger: What’s special about human technology?
Wanda J. Orlikowski: The sociomateriality of organisational life: considering technology in management research
Judy Wajcman: Feminist theories of technology
Technology and Economics
J. Stan Metcalfe: Technology and economic theory
Giovanni Dosi and Marco Grazzi: On the nature of technologies: knowledge, procedures, artifacts and production inputs
Carlota Perez: Technological revolutions and techno-economic paradigms
Tony Smith: Technological change in Capitalism: some Marxian themes
Anne Mayhew: Clarence Ayres, technology, pragmatism and progress
What is Technology?
15 January 2010A call for papers with a proper question: “What is Technology?” – Theory, History, Ontology, by the International Social Science Journal (ISSJ).
Reposing the Heideggerean question of Being and techné, this volume of the International Social Science Journal aspires to again ask “what is technology?” and interrogate the effects of technology on subjectivity, psyche and the body. We ask how the technological infiltrates and shapes social facts and problematize the long-standing distinction between nature and techné. How are post-modern subjectivities interpolated by the technological and how is the very notion of the human called into question in light of advances in science and technology?
Moreover, this issue will seek to telescope the very possibility of an ethics of science and technology and the philosophical grounds for such an ethics in an age bereft of all narratives of transcendence. Themes to be engaged include:
1. History/Theory
2. The post-human/trans-human/cyborgs
3. Cybernetics, Nanotechnology, and Converging Technologies
4. Language, Culture, Subjectivity
Contributions can emerge from any discipline and theoretical orientation.
Please send abstracts and queries to S. Romi Mukherjee by 28 February 2010. Final articles expected for July 2010. E-mail: s.mukherjee@unesco.org
Sloterdijk in English
3 January 2010A nice bibliography of Peter Sloterdijk’s work in English with links, from Sean Sturm.
