No Bifurcation without Innervation. Connecting Stiegler with Benjamin

0576947 - FLÚ 2024 eng A - Abstract
Ritter, Martin
No Bifurcation without Innervation. Connecting Stiegler with Benjamin.
[Techne logos, Care and the (Neg) Anthropocene. The European Culture and Technology Lab + Annual Conference /2./. Dublin, 18.01.2023-20.01.2023]
Method of presentation: Přednáška
Event organizer: European University of Technology
URL events: https://www.upct.es/contenido/destacados/ficheros/14923Conference%20Schedule%20(Draft)%20TeLA%202023.pdf 
EU Projects: European Commission(XE) 101086898 - CETE-P
Institutional support: RVO:67985955
Keywords : Anthropocene * Benjamin * bifurcation * innervation * Neganthropocene * Stiegler
OECD category: Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Bifurcation is much emphasized in the work of Bernard Stiegler and his followers. I have no doubt about the need of producing bifurcations, that is, “opportunities to branch out in new directions” (to quote the book just mentioned). However, we should also focus on the conditions of bifurcating. I would even argue that making bifurcations possible, i.e. “producing” conditions of their emergence, is the most important, if not the only feasible, task. Accordingly, I will show that Stiegler’s ideas on bifurcation can and should be linked with Walter Benjamin's ideas on the human-technology relation, especially with his concept of, and the call for, the innervation of technology. Without this innervation, no bifurcation is possible. I will proceed in two steps. First, I will connect Stiegler’s general organology with Benjamin’s notion of technology as an organ of humankind. Second, I will show that bifurcating, as understood by Stiegler, is impossible without innervating depicted by Benjamin. The technologically driven process called Anthropocene dislocates human psycho-social relation to, and connection with, the world while making possible, or disclosing, new connections. But we are belated vis-à-vis “our” technology and must innervate it to be(come) able to realize these possibilities. In other words, we can caringly live our lives only by making our technological milieu a functioning, i.e. innervated, organ of humankind.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0346640