Human Studies https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-019-09508-4 THEORETICAL / PHILOSOPHICAL PAPER
Seeing Through the Fumes: Technology and Asymmetry in the Anthropocene Jochem Zwier1
· Vincent Blok2
© The Author(s) 2019
Abstract This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On the one hand, we aim to show how the Anthropocene occasions an experience of our inescapable inclusion in the technological structuring of reality that Martin Heidegger associates with cybernetics. On the other hand, by confronting Heidegger’s thought on technology with Georges Bataille’s consideration of technological existence as economic and averted existence, we will criticize Heidegger’s account by arguing that notwithstanding its inescapable inclusion in cybernetics, technology in the Anthropocene itself fosters an experience of what remains excluded. We conclude by indicating how such an experience is relevant for contemporary philosophical investigation of technology. Keywords Anthropocene · Earth · Heidegger · Bataille · Cybernetics · Asymmetry And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey To that frigidity of brainless ray – George Meredith
Introduction This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On the one hand, we aim to show how the Anthropocene occasions an experience of our inescapable inclusion in the technological structuring of reality that Martin Heidegger associates with cybernetics. On the other hand, by confronting Heidegger’s thought on technology with Georges Bataille’s consideration of technological
* Jochem Zwier Jochem.zwier@ru.nl 1
Faculty of Science, Institute for Science in Society, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2
Department of Social Sciences; Subdivision Philosophy, Wageningen University and Research, Hollandseweg 1, Wageningen 6706 KN, The Netherlands
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