On inhuman reflections, or, thought after recursion
Topics: Social Theory
, Cultural Geography
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Keywords: cosmotechnics, philosophy of technology, cybernetics, Anthropocene
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 59
Authors:
John Kendall, University of Minnesota
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Abstract
In “Can Thought Go On without a Body?”, Lyotard responds to the impossibility of thinking an end—as doing so requires thought to have already passed through it—by contemplating the end of thought, namely, in the explosion of the sun in 4.5 billion years, after which there will be “no thought left to know its death took place.” And it is precisely at the end of thought that Lyotard reveals its originary condition: the organic body, which forecloses any transhumanist hope of sparing thought its end through the achievement of immortality in inorganic machines. The affirmation of the organic, however, misunderstands the problem: the concept of the organic does not afford any independence of thought contra inorganic machines. As Hui has shown, cybernetics has already actualized the concept of the organic in the logic of recursion, which allows for machines to evolve past simple automatons and become the gigantic, self-structuring organisms in which we now live. In this paper, I show that analysis of the logic of recursion precedes any meaningful speculation on end in the Anthropocene. Further, thought after recursion must move beyond the self-consciousness reflected in planetary systems (e.g. financial markets, climate models) toward the apperception of algorithmic catastrophes (e.g. market crashes, climate crises) which these systems not only normalize but depend upon. ‘End’ is not in the renunciation of cybernetics in praise of the organic, then, but an irruption or incompleteness immanent to cybernetics which can, perhaps, allow for its reappropriation, or what Hui calls cosmotechnics.
On inhuman reflections, or, thought after recursion
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
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