Technological Mediation and Power: Postphenomenology, Critical Theory, and Autonomist Marxism

Abstract

This article focuses on the power of technological mediation from the point of view of autonomist Marxism (Hardt, Negri, Virno, Berardi, Lazzarrato). The first part of the article discusses the theories developed on technological mediation in postphenomenology (Ihde, Verbeek) and critical theory of technology (Feenberg) with regard to their respective power perspectives and ways of coping with relations of power embedded in technical artifacts and systems. Rather than focusing on the clashes between the hermeneutic postphenomenological approach and the dialectics of critical theory, it is argued that in both the category of resistance amidst power-relations is at least similar in one regard: resistance to the power of technology is conceptualized as a reactive force. The second part of the article reads technological mediation through the lens of the antagonistic power-perspective on class struggle developed in autonomist Marxism. The outline of a provisional autonomist philosophy of technology is developed using Foucauldian dispositifs of biopower in contrast to the hermeneutic and dialectical approach. It is thus argued that resistance should here be understood in terms of practice that subverts the technically mediated circuit of production itself.

Seduced by Technology? How moral agency is mediated by the invisibility of everyday technologies

“…wholehearted embracing of journal technology; Harcourt, 2015); withdrawal (e.g. refusal to publish in journals; Rao et al, 2015) or demands for democratization (e.g. moving to open source publication; Rao et al, 2015).…”

“…A distinction between subject and object is retained in postphenomenology but this is not an ‘ a priori separation’ (Verbeek, 2016, p. 202; see also Rao, Jongerden, Lemmens, & Ruivenkamp, 2015), as in critical realism. As such, the subjects and objects of postphenomenology are described as distinct but not separate, whereas ANT has been described as overcoming the separation of subject and object.…”

Thing-Transcendentality: Navigating the Interval of “technology” and “Technology”

“…also Van Den Eede 2013. Interestingly, furthermore, there are authors who argue that Feenberg is actually akin to postphenomenology in that both offer merely "reactive" recipes in the face of the structures of power relations (Rao et al 2015). So seen from a postphenomenological perspective, Feenberg 'goes too far,' but seen from other, more 'radical' perspectives, he can be perceived to not 'go far enough.'…”

Love and Realism

“…To state it directly: Stiegler’s approach to technology is not dialectical. As organo logical, it understands the human-technology-society relation with Simondon as transductive (and thus not dialectic) in nature and with Nietzsche as traversed by com-posing, rather than op-posing antagonistic tendencies; and in this sense Stiegler’s view is close to that of post-autonomist Marxism (Bantwal-Rao et al 2015 ). As pharmaco logical, it simply cannot be dialectical because the pharmakon ’s ‘negativity’ (its toxicity) can never be ‘sublated’ ( aufgehoben ) as it persists as technical heteronomy and thus calls for an on-going therapy (Stiegler 2015 , 129).…”

“…As for the call for democratic control of technology, which Milberry proposes as a student of Feenberg: as I’ve tried to show in a recent article co-written with Mithun Bantwal-Rao, Joost Jongerden and Guido Ruivenkamp, under capitalist conditions, the call for democratization of technological innovation seems idle since it ‘remains severely limited for the simple reason that there is no incentive for industry to engage in any significant democratization for any reason beyond that of the market […] or public institutional force’ (Bantwal-Rao et al 2015 ). Such a call only makes sense if combined with a radical critique of the capitalist order, something that is conspicuously absent in Feenberg’s later, watered-down (from too much wrong-headed concessions to STS, that is) version of critical theory.…”