Listening to the world Sonic intimacy: voice, species, technics (or, how to listen to the world ), by Dominic Pettman, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2017, 130 pp., US$55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-80479-988-1, US$18.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-50360-145-1

Techno-genesis: Reconceptualising geography’s technology from ontology to ontogenesis

“…The reason for making this argument is not to dismiss Stiegler's conceptualisation of technology and technics. Clearly Stiegler offers much for geographical research, from his formulation of processes of grammatisation in his critique of capitalism (Stiegler, 2010b), to his theorisation of technological memory through tertiary retentions (Stiegler, 2009) to name just two areas. Rather, by developing an alternative reading a techno-genesis in this paper, the key point is to make space for understanding Simondon’s distinct contribution to conceptualising technology and technics as a thinker who is, at times, positioned as a natural ally to Stiegler thought (c.f.…”

“…Yet, to focus on technology as a primary condition of human ontology risks assuming, though often implicitly, that technics could account for a universal process of human exteriorisation. When Stiegler (2009: 76) writes that technics can be understood as a ‘tendency’ that ‘runs across ethnic diversity universally – it is its différance’, clearly this is not to impose some universal figure of the human or the human body without ethnic diversity and difference. Rather, it suggests that technics is primarily a source of différance that the human is universally subject to via the same ontologically primary processes of technical constitution and exteriorisation (technics as de-fault of origin).…”

“…However, problems occur when the specific determining powers of technologies are understood too closely in terms of the ontology of the human. In human geography, Bernard Stiegler’s (1998) conceptualisation of technology in terms of technics has done much to help apprehend the agential powers of technology (Kinsley, 2014, 2015; Rose, 2017; Ash, 2015, 2016, 2017; Wilson, 2015; Bissell, 2014, 2018) – particularly for theorising how human life is recomposed by technologies via certain spatio-temporal modes of exteriorisation (Stiegler, 1998, 2009, 2010a). Yet, in this paper, I argue Stiegler’s concept of technology is hindered by a lingering anthropocentrism that poses certain problems to the way geographers understand the relationship between the agential capacities of technologies and the production of spacetimes.…”

Crystallising places: Towards geographies of ontogenesis and individuation

“…at a time when Simondon's ideas were also being rediscovered in French philosophy (LaMarre, 2013). Since then, there have been a wide range of engagements with his thinking in philosophy and cultural studies (see Stiegler, 1998Stiegler, [1994Stiegler, ], 2009Stiegler, [1996Stiegler, ], 2011Stiegler, [2001; Mackenzie, 2002;Toscano, 2006;De Boever et al, 2013;Combes, 2013Combes, [1999), as well as a more recent concern with his work in anglophone cultural geography (see Woodward et al, 2015;Lapworth, 2016Lapworth, , 2020Lapworth, , 2023Roberts, 2017;Ash, 2018;Keating, 2019Keating, , 2023. 4.…”

Rethinking Posthumanist Subjectivity: Technology as Ontological Murder in European Colonialism

“…What is a component of recursive co-constitution of subjectivity for some is the destitution of subjectivity for others. When posthumanist scholars write of the originary technicity (Mackenzie, 2002; Stiegler, 1998) or contemporary technicity (Haraway, 2003; Hayles, 2004, 2012) of human life, they fail to acknowledge that technology is only selectively – rather than universally – co-constitutive of subjectivity.…”