Although Heidegger proclaimed that the essence of technology is a bringing-forth or revealing (poiesis) of the world, he did not articulate what kind of world or whose world it brings forth. Given that technology is, after all, made by humans, it is highly probable that it reveals an anthropocentric world. How do later thinkers of technology such as Derrida, Deleuze/Guattari, Serres, Simondon, and Stiegler address this ambiguity regarding the relation between technology and the human being? To what extent do contemporary trends of philosophy of technology such as neocybernetics, object-oriented ontology, and new materialism succeed in elucidating a potential of technology to reveal a non-anthropocentric world? And how does the historical change in the dominant mode of technology impact on “the essence of technology”? In other words, what different relations between technology and the human do three historically dominant modes of technology—mechanics of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, thermodynamics of the nineteenth century, and information theory of the twenty and the twenty-first century—develop and realize? In what ways do literary, cinematic, performative, or computational media works deploy, assemble, or transform aesthetic techniques and/or media technologies to reproduce, complicate, or break with anthropocentrism? 

This seminar aims to bring together proposals that rethink the role of technicity in all forms of art in revealing, deconstructing, or modulating the world on the multiple scales beyond and below those of human perception, memory, understanding, and emotion. We also invite proposals that examine and/or supplement existing critical theories on technics and the world from a non-anthropocentric or planetary perspective. Proposals are also welcome that aim to closely read literary texts, films, performances, or intermedial and computational media works that experiment with artistic techniques’ or media technologies’ potential to reinvent a non- or post-anthropocentric collective or assemblage.

Related possible topics we consider include but are not limited to:

• Paleontological explorations of technics


• The status of technology in environmental humanities


• Technogenesis and anthropogenesis


• Media archaeology and technology


• Technology of biopolitics and human/inhuman assemblages


• Theories of apparatus and dispositif


• Technology and affect


• Technology and art for the Frankfurt School and Benjamin


• Artificial intelligence and art making


• Science and technology studies’ approaches to technicity in art

Please submit a paper title, abstract, and speaker bio by selecting “Technicity and the Genesis of the Posthuman World in Literature, Film, Performance, Computational Media, and Critical Theory” in the drop-down menu on the ACLA website. Please feel free to send inquiries to seminar organizers at jchlpark@yahoo.com and m.inoue@r.hit-u.ac.jp