These lectures outline the project of a general organology, which is to say an account of life when it is no longer just biological but technical, or when it involves not just organic matter but organized inorganic matter. This organology is also shown to require a modified Simondonian account of the shift from vital individuation to a three-stranded process of psychic, collective and technical individuation. Furthermore, such an approach involves extending the Derridean reading of Socrates's discussion of writing (...) as a pharmakon, so that it becomes a more general account of the pharmacological character of retention and protention. By going back to Leroi-Gourhan, we can recognize that this also means pursuing the history of retentional modifications unfolding in the course of the history of what, with Lotka, can also be called exosomatization. It is thus a question of how exteriorization can, today, in an epoch when it becomes digital, and in an epoch that produces vast amounts of entropy at the thermodynamic, biological and noetic levels, still possibly produce new forms of interiorization, that is, new forms of thought, care and desire, amounting to so many chances to struggle against the planetary-scale pharmacological crisis with which we are currently afflicted. (shrink)

The conception of a modular structure of mind, which postulates that the mind is composed of more or less autonomous subsystems, is widespread in contemporary psychology. Proponents of a modular structure of the mind, such as Marshall (1980; 1984; 1985), Fodor (1983), Gardner (1983), and Shallice (1988), have linked their work to F. J. Gall's theory of organology or of the “functions of the brain”. This paper argues: (1) Gall's organology defends a view of the capacities of the (...) mind that relies on a specific relation between the organism and its organs. The organs of Gall stem from and originate “needs” so that they embody not so much processing capacities, but perception-for-action cycles. (2) Modules and organs arise at different levels of description that cannot be easily matched. (3) It is just this central distinction between organs and modules which explains the inherent relation between organology, comparative biology and differential psychology on the one hand and modularity and cognitive science on the other. (shrink)

Stiegler argued in Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise that we must refer to archi-cinema just as Derrida spoke of archi-writing. In this article he proposes that in principle the dream is the primordial form of this archi-cinema. The archi-cinema of consciousness, of which dreams would be the matrix as archi-cinema of the unconscious, is the projection resulting from the play between what Husserl called, on the one hand, primary and secondary retentions, and what Stiegler, on the other hand, (...) calls tertiary retentions, which are the hypomnesic traces of conscious and unconscious life. There is archi-cinema to the extent that for any noetic act – for example, in an act of perception – consciousness projects its object. This projection is a montage, of which tertiary retentions form the fabric, as well as constituting both the supports and the cutting room. This indicates that archi-cinema has a history, a history conditioned by the history of tertiary retentions. It also means that there is an organology of dreams. (shrink)

We are living in and beyond two massive changes in the world, both of which must be addressed by education, the caretaker of memory. First is the geological era of the Anthropocene—a crisis...

Develops a program for undertaking figural analysis of narrative film by drawing on the work of three philosophers: Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze.

Digitalization of (higher) education has been an increasingly important subject in the recent years, spiking especially due to pandemic lockdowns. While many scholars and third parties consider this process to be an improvement or even an inevitability, I argue that there is much to understand about it beyond ‘attending to the materialities of digital education’. This paper aims to do two things: 1) to argue why digital materialities approach (‘attending to the materialities of digital education’) is not enough to grasp (...) the digitalization of the University (and thus, its stakes) and 2) to discuss how combining general organology and an educational-phenomenological outlook offers a more robust way of understanding digitalization of the University and its stakes. I conclude by pointing to the issue of place and placefulness that seems to be one of the most directly affected characteristics of the University and studying, which calls on to be reflected further upon. (shrink)

In this paper, in the first place, I aim to enquire into Bernard Stiegler’s critical appropriation of his mentor Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance, emphasizing how Stiegler’s philosophy of technology stems from an original interpretation of the main tenets of deconstruction. From this perspective, I will investigate Stiegler’s definition of technology as tertiary retention, i.e., exosomatized, artificial memory interrelating with biological memory, testing its hermeneutic strengths as well as possible weaknesses. In the second place, I aim to contrast Stiegler’s understanding (...) of technology with the concept of multistability brought forward by postphenomenological philosophies of technology such as those elaborated by Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek. This investigation will enable me to submit that Stiegler’s approach represents a peculiar and innovative way to conceive of technology. On the one hand, indeed, it does not seem to fall prey to the criticisms raised by postphenomenology against traditional philosophies of technology such as Martin Heidegger’s or Jacques Ellul’s, deemed to be overly deterministic, abstract and pessimistic in their understanding of technology. On the other, it retains important methodological precautions from deconstruction, thereby pointing at some possible blind spots of postphenomenology, especially concerning the vexed question of the empirical-transcendental divide, which Stiegler aims to develop beyond both Derrida’s and postphenomenology’s stances. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to question the significance of Derrida's deconstruction of the concepts of subject and history. While ‘postmodernity’ tends to be characterized by philosophical critique as the ‘liquidation of the subject’ or the ‘end of history’, I attempt to show that Derrida's deconstruction of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘historicity’ is not an elimination or destruction of these concepts, but an attempt to transform them in order to free them from their metaphysical-teleological presuppositions. This paper argues that this transformation, (...) which begins in Derrida's and continues in Stiegler's texts, leads to the notions of ‘psycho-social individuation’ and ‘doubly epokhal redoubling’. I maintain that such notions ‘supplement’ the metaphysical concepts of subject and history by forcing a reconsideration of the technical conditions of psychic individuation and the technological conditions of ‘epochality’. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to interpret Yuk Hui’s ambitious and promising project of cosmotechnics and technodiversity as a kind of “critical synthesis” of the philosophies of technology of Martin...

While ethnomusicologists often write about musical instruments and engage with social theories, these two predilections are typically distinct, and rarely are instruments theorized let alone considered in social terms. Drawing on recent work in Science and Technology Studies, I argue for a study of the social where musical objects (including instruments) and people are actors within patterned heterogeneous networks. I begin with literary examples of instruments framed as having agency, then move to the treatment of instrument-agency within organology. As (...) an exemplar for this methodology, I consider the social life of the saz, an ubiquitous lute from Turkey. (shrink)

This article presents a new approach to studying aesthetics by weaving together a thread of ideas based on investigating the problematics of the philosophy of art from a behavioral paradigm in order to exceed the margins of aesthetics. I claim that it makes no sense to ask if something is art, but rather we should be looking out into the manners in which art subsists, consists, and insists itself. Several notions of what I call behavioral aesthetics are proposed such as (...) observation, aesthetic experience and aesthetic conditioning, behavioral materialism, out-comes, behavioral memory and replication or acquisition, interaction and intra-action, emotional engineering, artificial instincts, aesthetic dissonance, and the problem of measurement. The proposed goal of behavioral aesthetics consists in studying the process of individuation as constitutive of art with the methods of Bernard Stiegler’s general organology and genealogy of the sensible. The article presents a behavioral stance as a borderline mode for approaching the genealogy of aesthetics. I mostly refer to Tania Bruguera’s Behavior Art School and Wright Judson’s Behavioral Art, and the paradigm of new materialism, notably agential realism of Karan Barad. (shrink)

This paper aims to connect Stiegler’s reflections on theoretical computer science with his practical propositions for the design of digital technologies. Indeed, Stiegler’s theory of exosomatization implies a new conception of artificial intelligence, which is not based on an analogical paradigm (which compares organisms and machines, as in cybernetics, or which compares thought and computing, as in cognitivism) but on an organological paradigm, which studies the co-evolution of living organisms (individuals), artificial organs (tools), and social organizations (institutions). Such a perspective (...) does not compare human capacities to machine performances but studies the way in which the evolution of material and technical supports affects and transforms psychological, cognitive or noetic faculties (intuition, memory, understanding, imagination, sensibility, reason, etc.), as well as the constitution of different kinds of knowledge. This new theoretical paradigm implies a new ‘design’ for digital technologies, which considers their social role and their impact on psychological, cognitive or noetic faculties. (shrink)

Following Hannah Arendt’s insights into the affinities between Marxism and the philosophy of life, this article reconstructs a theoretical position that we propose to call ‘vitalist Marxism’. This position conceives of life not only as an essential foundation of the production process, but also as a critical resource for resistance to the capitalist logic of exploitation. We highlight the role Georges Canguilhem (1904–95) played in developing this position, in particular by depicting tools and machines as ‘organs of life’. Drawing on (...) Canguilhem’s early writings as well as unpublished manuscripts, we show that this ‘organological’ understanding of technology was rooted in the increasingly anti-fascist reception of Marx in France during the 1930s. Against the background of today’s protests against climate destruction, racism, and anti-feminist violence, all of which invoke the defense of basic living conditions, we argue that the critical position of vitalist Marxism acquires remarkable topicality. (shrink)

This article attempts an organological and pharmacological re-interpretation of the later Heidegger’s understanding of modern technology as a provocative mode of revealing of beings, in particular of its central notions of Gestell [enframing] Gefahr [danger], Kehre [turning] and Ereignis [event]. Although these notions in principle allow us to think what is at stake currently in the Anthropocene as the age of total automation, generalized toxicity of the technical milieu and post-truth calling for a radical bifurcation, they need to be reframed (...) and re-imagined in terms of the process of exosomatization issuing from humanity’s original and necessary default of origin and situated within the perspective of entropy and negentropy, both unthought by Heidegger. Only thus will it become possible to really think and take care of what Heidegger called the danger of technology and its turning into the event as the destiny of enframing. This also requires a rethinking of Aristotle’s theory of four causes as it is invoked by Heidegger in his analysis of technology, in particular the efficient and final causes, in terms of what Deleuze called quasi-causality, here understood as the need and the obligation for mortals to make their fault come true, i.e., to make it truly happen or make it advene in truth, out of the experience of the danger as the ordeal of the necessary default. Thus becoming the anti-anthropic cause of anthropic toxicity, humans would restore final causality as quasi-causality and inaugurate, as neganthropos, the bifurcation into the Neganthropocene. (shrink)

El artículo describe el paradigma mecanicista que ha orientado la investigación de la naturaleza y el comportamiento técnico del hombre hacia ella en la cultura occidental, el cual ha entrado actualmente en una crisis. La filosofía intenta contraponer un paradigma holístico-organológico para corregir la relación dominante del hombre sobre la naturaleza, de modo que se logre una relación de igualdad. El artículo plantea las implicaciones éticas y las modificaciones de la mentalidad que dicha corrección de paradigma exige.

This article addresses “Creativity after Computation” by looking into the concept of artificial imagination, namely the machine’s ability to produce images that challenge artmaking and surprise human beings with the aid of machine learning algorithms. What is at stake is not only art and creativity but also the tension between the determination of machines and the freedom of human beings. This opposition restages Kant’s third antinomy in the contemporary technological condition. By referring to the debate on the question of imagination (...) in Kant, Heidegger, and Stiegler, the article suggests that imagination is always already artificial and that it is more productive to develop an organology of artificial imagination. It clarifies the notion of artificial imagination and offers an organological reading through a reinterpretation of Leibniz’s monadology, Kant’s sublime, and Schiller’s aesthetic education against the backdrop of recursive algorithms. (shrink)

ResumoEste artigo propõe elucidar a relação entre a cibernética e a mecanologia na obra de Simondon, considerando suas duas teses de doutorado e a entrevista concedida em 1968 a Jean Le Moyne, a pedido do Ofício do Filme do Québec, no Canadá, ao longo da qual é predominante o uso de "mecanologia", em contraste com as teses, onde sofre a concorrência dos vocábulos "alagmática" e "organologia", ficando o termo "cibernética" na penumbra. A cibernética é celebrada na França em 1962, no (...) contexto dos famosos Colóquios de Royaumont, quando Norbert Wiener foi homenageado e a cibernética ocupou toda a cena, com a participação ativa de Simondon na organização do evento. Essa situação leva os estudiosos a interrogar-se pelo destino do termo "cibernética" em sua obra, caso estivesse em jogo a segunda cibernética, em vez da primeira, e que só veio a lume mais tarde. Mais do que o interesse historiográfico do assunto, o artigo pretende suscitar um interesse epistemológico na filosofia da tecnologia. O desafio é lançar luz sobre a questão ainda por demais obscura acerca das relações entre a tecnologia, a engenharia e a ciência.This article aims to clarify the relationship between cybernetics and mechanology in Simondon's work, considering his two doctoral theses and the interview he gave in 1968 to Jean Le Moyne, at the request of the Quebec Film Office in Canada. In this interview the use of "mechanology" is predominant, in contrast with the theses, where it suffers from competition with terms such as "allagmatics" and "organology", leaving the term "cybernetics" in the shade. Cybernetics is celebrated in France in 1962, in the context of the famous Royaumont Colloquia, when Norbert Wiener was honored and cybernetics occupies the whole scene, with Simondon's active participation in the event organization, This situation leads experts to question the fate of the word "cybernetics" in his work, in the case the second cybernetics was at stake, instead of the first one, but that only came to light later. More than a subject of historiographical interest, the article aims to evoke an epistemic interest in the philosophy of technology. The challenge is to shed light on a question that still remains obscure: the relationships among technology, engineering and science. (shrink)

This is an attempt to describe and explain so-called timbre-based music as a special system of musicking, communication, and psychological and social usage, which along with its corresponding beliefs constitutes a viable alternative to “frequency-based” music. Unfortunately, the current scientific research into music has been skewed almost entirely in favor of the frequency-based music prevalent in the West. Subsequently, whenever samples of timbre-based music attract the attention of Western researchers, these are usually interpreted as “defective” implementations of frequency-based music. The (...) presence of discrete pitch is often regarded as the structural criterion that distinguishes music from non-music. We would like to present evidence to the contrary—in support of the existence of indigenous music systems based on the discretization and patterning of aspects of timbre, rather than pitch. This evidence comes mainly from extensive ethnographic research systematically conducted in eastern European and Asian parts of Russia from the 1890s. It involved the efforts of thousands of specialists and was coordinated by dozens of research institutions, and it has included not just ethnomusicology but linguistics, philology, organology, archaeology, anthropology, geography, and religious and social studies. Much of the data has not been translated into Western languages. Timbre-based tonal organization (TO) differs from that based on frequency in its personal orientation: musicking here occurs primarily for oneself and/or for close relatives/friends. Collective music-making is rare and exceptional. The foundation of timbre-based music seems to have vocal roots and rests on “personal song”—a system of personal identification through individualized patterns of rhythm, timbre, and pitch contour, utilized like a “human voice”—whose sound enables the recognition of a particular individual. The instrumental counterpart of the personalized singing tradition is the jaw harp tradition. The jaw harp is the principal musical instrument for at least 21 ethnicities in Russia, who occupy over half the territory of the country. The evolution of its TO forms the backbone for the development of timbre-based music art. Here, we provide the acoustic, socio-cultural, geographic, and chronological overview of timbre-based music. (shrink)

Beginning with a survey of the shortcoming of theories of organology/media-as-externalization of mind/body—a philosophical-anthropological tradition that stretches from Plato through Ernst Kapp and finds its contemporary proponent in Bernard Stiegler—I propose that the phenomenological treatment of media as an outpouching and extension of mind qua intentionality is not sufficient to counter the ̳black-box‘ mystification of today‘s deep learning‘s algorithms. Focusing on a close study of Simondon‘s On the Existence of Technical Objectsand Individuation, I argue that the process-philosophical work of (...) Gilbert Simondon, with its critique of Norbert Wiener‘s first-order cybernetics, offers a precursor to the conception of second-order cybernetics (as endorsed byFrancisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, and Ricardo B. Uribe) and, specifically, its autopoietic treatment of information. It has been argued by those such as Frank Pasquale that neuro-inferential deep learning systems premised on predictive patterning, suchas AlphaGo Zero, have a veiled logic and, thus, are ̳black boxes‘. In detailing a philosophical-historical approach to demystify predictive patterning/processing and the logic of such deep learning algorithms, this paper attempts to shine a light on such systems and their inner workingsàla Simondon. (shrink)

This article is interested in ‘voice imaging’ as a technical field through which people experience new relations between organic and inorganic forms of life. Grounded in a study of voice imaging in historical and contemporary scientific research, the article applies and expands on Bernard Stiegler’s ‘General Organology’, with an eye to understanding the voice as a dynamic capacity for volition. By exploring the scientific research into voice imaging, the article argues that the voice, as a cultural image, is an (...) imaginary organ that transgresses the boundaries of technological, biological, physical, psychological, social and cultural frameworks. (shrink)

El artículo intenta mediar entre dos posiciones opuestas: la actitud proveniente del concepto científico, físicomatemático, técnico y tecnológico de la naturaleza, y la actitud de un concepto organológico del mundo de la vida. La actitud ante la naturaleza será, según el caso, objetivante y dominadora, o simpatética y eco-ética. El artículo expone la historia de esta oposición y aboga por un cambio de mentalidad que integre al hombre y la naturaleza en un todo orgánico.

This article draws on Bernard Stiegler’s insights and articulates them alongside other contemporary reflections in order to understand the psychic, social, and political issues raised by our contemporary digital hypomnesic milieu. I will explore the theoretical presuppositions underlying the functioning of digital devices to try to show that this computationalist technoscientific paradigm is based on problematic epistemological foundations, which an organological approach implicitly deconstructs. I will thereafter attempt to develop a pharmacological analysis of “generative artificial intelligence,” showing that its massive (...) proliferation risks a new kind of “symbolic misery,” a “proletarianization” of expression and a generalization of social “disbelief.” Finally, I will try to show that the project of a “hermeneutic web” suggested by Stiegler needs to be revived and transformed in this new organological context: I will suggest some proposals to fight against attention economy and expression economy and to put computational automata in the service of collective intelligence. (shrink)

In this reply I further defend my claim that the transcendental should always remain a primary concern for philosophy of technology as a philosophical enterprise, contra the empirical turn’s rejection of it. Yet, instead of emphasizing the non-technological conditions of technology, as ‘classic’ thinkers of technology such as Heidegger did, it should recognize technology itself as the transcendental operator par excellence. Starting from Heidegger’s ontological understanding of transcendence I show that while technical artifacts may indeed always conform to a certain (...) horizon of understanding, they also constitute this horizon in specific ways. Following Stiegler I show that concrete technologies (technology with a small ‘t’) are not just empirical effects of an overarching movement of transcendence (Technology with a capital ‘T’) but are originally constitutive of it. In response to Romele’s critique that the social, language, images, imaginaries, symbols, etc. are also transcendentals, I argue that all these phenomena are always already conditioned by technical milieus. As for Besmer’s contention that I offer a reductive interpretation of postphenomenology’s notion of multistability, I argue that there are decisive systemic and organological limits to multistability offered by technical artefacts and that all variation in use and implementation is always constrained by inherent technical tendencies and processes of concretization. Agreeing with Besmer that the transcendental and the empirical should be understood not oppositional but compositional I argue that technology may be that which constantly ‘mediates’ between the two. (shrink)

In Of Grammatology, Derrida discusses Leroi-Gourhan in relating différance to memory, the ‘program’, and the history of life. In Technics and Time, 1, Stiegler argues that Derrida failed to draw all the philosophical implications of linking différance to the questions of life and retention. Derrida returned to the life sciences in 1975, in a seminar not published in its entirety until 2019. There, Derrida attempts to deconstruct the geneticist François Jacob's account of the ‘logic of life’, but Derrida's analysis of (...) different kinds of memory and programs seems confused, suggesting that the Derridean text remains haunted by the deficiencies of his earlier reading of Leroi-Gourhan. Later in the seminar, Derrida shows foresight concerning the problems arising from seeing the genetic molecule as akin to a computer program, despite Jacob making this link via Schrödinger and Wiener's discussions of negentropy. When Derrida turns to a reading of Freud and libidinal energy, however, he ‘assumes’ a reading of Laplanche but ignores the latter's critique of Freud's own preoccupations with the second law of thermodynamics. The limitations of Derrida's attempts to bring deconstruction together with scientific understanding expose the need for the kind of ‘organological’ and ‘neganthropological’ approach that Stiegler will ultimately pursue. (shrink)

ResumoO presente artigo visa mostrar o significado da filosofia biológica da técnica em Gilbert Simondon. Essa rubrica coloca em ação uma leitura da filosofia da técnica do filósofo francês como uma ontologia regional no interior de sua ontologia geral ontogenética, que, nesse regime específico, baseia-se em um modelo do orgânico. Para tanto, mostraremos que a individuação dos objetos técnicos, sua concretização marcada pela superdeterminação funcional, obriga-nos a pensá-los em sua organicidade e desde uma organologia geral. Ademais, os conceitos de adaptação (...) e de ambiente associado também contribuem enquanto aspectos biológicos que acompanham a concepção de Simondon do modo de existência dos seres técnicos. Como resultado, veremos que quanto mais concreto e adaptado - na série de sua evolução específica -, mais o objeto técnico se aproxima da individualidade propriamente biológica. Essa aproximação não terá, entretanto, o sentido de uma assimilação completa entre o técnico e o orgânico. Na autoprodução vital, permanece sempre um resto para além do maquínico, cuja demonstração é erigida por Simondon, por fim, com a ideia de uma origem vital absoluta dos objetos técnicos enquanto "mutação orientada". Apontaremos que tal origem não tem base meramente humana, mas se estende também para outras esferas do domínio vital.The present article aims to show the meaning of the biological philosophy of technique in Gilbert Simondon. This concept puts into action a reading of the French philosopher's philosophy of technique as a regional ontology within his ontogenetic general ontology, which in that particular scheme is based on an organic model. We will elaborate this to show that the individuation of technical objects, their concretization marked by their functional overdetermination, forces us to think of them in its organicity and from a general organology. Moreover, the concepts of adaptation and associated environment also contribute as biological aspects that accompany Simondon's conception of the mode of existence of technical beings. As a result, we will see that the more concrete and adapted the technical object is - in the series of its specific evolution - the more it comes closer to the proper biological individuality. This approximation will not have, however, the meaning of a complete assimilation between the technical and the organic. In the vital self-production, Simondon demonstrates that there always remains something beyond the machinical, namely, the idea of an absolute vital source of technical objects as a "guided mutation". We will show that such a source is not merely human, but also extends to other spheres of the vital domain. (shrink)

: This article focuses on cognitive enhancement technologies and their possible anthropological implications, and argues for a reconsideration of the human-technology relation so as to be able to better understand and assess these implications. Current debates on cognitive enhancement consistently disregard the intimate intertwinement of humans and technology as well as the fundamentally technogenic nature of anthropogenesis. Yet, an adequate assessment of CET requires an in-depth and up-to-date re-conceptualization of both. Employing insights from the work of Bernard Stiegler, this article (...) proposes an organology and pharmacology of CE. What is typical about new CET is their interiorizing nature, which can be expected to fundamentally reshape organological configurations. Starting from the premise that CE is a phenomenon that predominantly unfolds within the current conjuncture of cognitive capitalism, I will present the issue of cognitive proletarianization as being of crucial importance for considering CE. I conclude by providing some methodological guidelines for the development of a positive pharmacology of CET and by suggesting that CET should be considered as technologies of the self sensu Michel Foucault. (shrink)

In cinematic experience, a view from nowhere appears in an instituting moment – neither in time nor out of time, but part of time itself – when a camera reflex lifts the viewer’s perception out of somewhere and into the infinite time of the film. We argue that the view from nowhere found in Birt Acres’s film Rough Sea at Dover – a fifteen-second shot of waves breaking against a sea wall in Dover, England in 1895 – transcends all attempts (...) to turn it into a view from somewhere, as an empty space that carries the auratic trace of the past into the present through phase shifts of technical mediation. In Simondon’s terms, the view from nowhere opens up possibilities of becoming all ways at once in the reflexive capacity of the human organon. Following Stiegler’s organological technics, we identify the capture of perception by the apparatus of recording and playback in the digitally automated algorithm as a threat to the reflexive capability of the organon to see otherwise in the creative individuation opened up in the phase-shifting process. Our analysis triggers a switch from an anthropocentric to a neganthropic-ecological mode of seeing in which the auratic trace of the event of waves crashing against the pier is seen in an inhuman view from nowhere that carries the threat of automatized systems in which human noesis – self-reflexive capacity – is eclipsed by machines. By seeing otherwise, the eclipse by machines is reversed to reveal the complex becoming of the film in its materiality as a work of creative individuation. (shrink)

The so-called.Karlsschulrede. (1793) of the German naturalist Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer can be considered as a keystone to the understanding of"Naturphilosophie" both in German idealism (Schelling) and the romantic period.Kielmeyer's work considers life as the result of specific forces in the organic realm and thereby searches to explain the harmony of organic existence anddevelopment. Taking into account Kant.s outlines for a lifescience in the "Kritik der Urteilskraft" (1790), Kielmeyer's notion of teleological processes in nature is sketched. The historical and epistemological relevance (...) of this "vital-materialistic" (Lenoir) theory of life can be characterized by three major transformations in the understanding of nature in the "Karlsschulrede": First, the development of a holistic, organological view on the world, second, the emphasis on phenomena of life as historical processes and third the analogy between organism and mind. These issues found the strong influence of Kielmeyer's text on philosophy and science in the early 19th-century. (shrink)

The so-called .Karlsschulrede. (1793) of the German naturalist Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer can be considered as a keystone to the understanding of"Naturphilosophie" both in German idealism (Schelling) and the romantic period.Kielmeyer's work considers life as the result of specific forces in the organic realm and thereby searches to explain the harmony of organic existence anddevelopment. Taking into account Kant.s outlines for a lifescience in the "Kritik der Urteilskraft" (1790), Kielmeyer's notion of teleological processes in nature is sketched. The historical and epistemological (...) relevance of this "vital-materialistic" (Lenoir) theory of life can be characterized by three major transformations in the understanding of nature in the "Karlsschulrede": First, the development of a holistic, organological view on the world, second, the emphasis on phenomena of life as historical processes and third the analogy between organism and mind. These issues found the strong influence of Kielmeyer's text on philosophy and science in the early 19th-century. (shrink)

Introduction. On objects, humans, and machines. Part I. Material inscriptions. Instrumentality -- New instruments -- Epistemic tools -- Digital organology.

Music invents, constructs, quite simply makes the body, in sonorous spaces that resonate both within and between us. The disciplinary power of music was well known to the ancient Greeks and ancient Chinese. This disciplinary power holds simply for listeners, but of course is especially true for performers, for people who train their bodies in relation to the prostheses, the instruments, that make music possible. Both systematic and historical, this book is the first truly comprehensive critique of organology (the (...) study of musical instruments as related to the human body). (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler was the first distinguished critic to have recognized that Derrida’s deconstruction is, concurrently, a philosophy of techniques. Stiegler’s perceptive thesis is widely endorsed by Derrida's recent commentators. It is possible to locate in Derrida’s earliest writings a reflection on the genesis of the “technical supplement,” which allows us to situate Derridan philosophy in a specific tradition concerned with the philosophy of techniques. By thinking of Life—and not Man—as a producer of “technical objects,” Derrida joins a well-established philosophical lineage, (...) subsuming Bergson’s “vital impulse”’ the “general organology” of Canguilhem, Simondon and Stiegler; and Leroi-Gourhan’s “technical life.” In this article, I attend to the genesis of the technical object in Derrida’s philosophy, in order to show how and why it is possible to rethink it within the horizon of “vitalist” philosophies of techniques. (shrink)

If musical instruments belong to the organology of anthropotechnics, noise music can be seen as a disorganizing force, as well as a principle of recycling and as a surgery of the sonic flesh. Why is noise so intimately linked to a gesture dis-instrumentation ? An analysis of Christian Marclay’s video Guitar drag paves the way for a reflection that invites us to consider noise as the place of emergence of what contemporary politics can only leave unthought.

Über die Ideen der theoretischen Vernunft hinaus kennt die Ideenlehre Kants eine Reihe von Ideen reflektierender Urteilskraft und praktischer Vernunft, deren Status, ob konstitutiv oder regulativ, deren systematischer Zusammenhang und deren Legitimation nicht offensichtlich sind. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes stellen Versuche einer Klärung dar, etwa hinsichtlich der Modifikationen der Idee der Zweckmäßigkeit, die die Kritik der Urteilskraft als ästhetische, organologische und ethiko-theologische Zweckmäßigkeit entfaltet. Außerdem wird Zweckmäßigkeit auch in Gestalt der Frage nach dem Fortschritt zum Besseren in der Geschichte thematisiert. (...) Weitere Beiträge diskutieren Ideen der moralisch-praktischen Vernunft, die Freiheitsidee, die personifizierte Idee des Guten, und der Rechtsvernunft, etwa die Staats- und die Völkerrechtsidee. *** In addition to theoretical reason, Kant s theory of ideas recognises a number of ideas of reflective judgment and of practical reason. Their status, systematic coherence and legitimation are not obvious. The essays in this volume seek to offer clarification, for example by modifying the idea of purposiveness which the Critique of Judgement develops as aesthetic, organological and ethico-theological purposiveness. Purposiveness is also thematised as the question of historical progress towards improvement. Other contributions discuss ideas of moral and practical reason, the idea of freedom, the personified idea of goodness, and legal reason, e.g. the forms of national and international law. (shrink)

The article critically examines the project of the Hong Kong philosopher Yuk Hui to create organological and cosmotechnical epistemology. To open up the prospect of a “new epistemology” of this kind, Hui carries out a historical and rational reconstruction of the 250-year movement of European thought – from German idealism to second-order cybernetics. In all these theories and approaches, he reveals the key role of the recursive-contingent ligament. But what has happened in recent decades that prompted the author to reassemble (...) Wiener’s non-trivial cybernetic machines and propose a cosmotechnical strategy for moving towards a “new epistemology”? How justified is it that, in constructing his axiocosmotechnics, he turns to the philosophy of the East, ancient and modern? The author of the article attempts to provide answers to these and other questions. (shrink)

To explore the realm of creativity, we will make use of the concept of instauration as articulated in the work of Étienne Souriau. Although infrequently used, the word remains extant in English, with agreement among dictionaries that the primary definition is the action of restoring or renewing, with a secondary meaning of instituting or founding. While both senses are at play in Souriau’s thought, it is perhaps the tension between the two that is predominantly in question, akin to what we (...) describe as open containment. We think instauration, as institutive renewal, in dialogue with Merleau-Ponty’s late use of the term aesthesiology to further elaborate the process of creating as a return to the wonder that is aesthesis, the affectively and sensually apprehended opening onto and entanglement with what is. Merleau-Ponty extends aesthesiology as the science of the sense organs themselves into a philosophical organology for ontology. His use of aesthesiology and Souriau’s use of instauration constitute efforts to offer sufficient conceptual containment to be able to say the contingent and ambiguous open of ongoing originating, even while both thinkers strive not to institute any final closure by this very act of naming. This is the inevitable tension of writing philosophic creation.Pour explorer le royaume de la créativité, nous utilisons ici le concept d’instauration tel qu’il a été articulé dans l’oeuvre d’Étienne Souriau. Quoique utilisé rarement, ce terme est attesté dans la langue anglaise. Les dictionnaires anglais accordent que sa définition principale désigne une action de rétablissement ou de renouvellement, avec un sens secondaire d’institution ou fondation. Si les deux sens sont à l’oeuvre chez Souriau, c’est peut-être la tension entre eux qui y est surtout patente. Nous pensons ici l’instauration, entendue comme renouvellement instituant, en dialogue avec l’idée d’esthésiologie telle que Merleau-Ponty la comprend à la fin de son oeuvre. Il utilise cette notion pour développer sa conception du processus de création comme retour à l’étonnement que produit l’áisthesis. L’áisthesis est en effet l’ouverture, affective et sensible, et l’entrelacs, affectif et sensible, à ce qui est. Merleau-Ponty prolonge ainsi l’esthésiologie entendue comme science des organes sensibles, vers une organologie philosophique à visée ontologique. L’usage de l’esthésiologie chez Merleau-Ponty et l’usage de l’instauration chez Souriau constituent des efforts vers une maîtrise conceptuelle suffisante pour pouvoir dire l’ouverture continue, contingente et ambiguë de l’originaire – bien que les deux penseurs ne visent pas à instaurer une clôture finale à partir de l’acte nominatif. Telle est la tension inévitable qu’on rencontre lorsqu’on cherche à écrire la création philosophique.Utilizzeremo in queste pagine per esplorare il regno della creatività il concetto di “instaurazione” così come si trova articolato nell’opera di Étienne Souriau. Benché impiegato raramente, questo termine è attestato anche nella lingua inglese. I dizionari inglesi danno come significato principale quello di un’azione di ristabilimento o rinnovamento, a cui si aggiunge un significato secondario di istituzione o fondazione. Se è vero che entrambi i significati sono all’opera in Souriau, è d’altra parte ancor più evidente la loro tensione. Proporremo qui di pensare l’instaurazione, intesa come rinnovamento istituente, in dialogo con l’idea di estesiologia così come la intende Merleau-Ponty alla fine del suo percorso. Egli usa questa nozione per sviluppare la sua concezione del processo creativo come ritorno allo stupore dell’áisthesis, cioè dell’apertura affettiva e sensibile, e dell’intreccio affettivo e sensibile, a ciò che è. Merleau-Ponty prolunga così l’estesiologia come scienza degli organi di senso in direzione di un’organologia filosofica orientata ontologicamente. L’indagine sull’estesiologia condotta da Merleau-Ponty e l’uso del concetto di instaurazione in Souriau costituiscono così altrettanti sforzi di dire concettualmente l’apertura continua, contingente e ambigua dell’originario – benché sia chiaro che i due pensatori non intendono raggiungere in alcun modo, con questo dire concettuale e con questa scelta lessicale, una qualsiasi “chiusura” della questione. Tale è infatti la tensione inevitabile cui ci si ritrova esposti quando si tenta di scrivere la creazione. (shrink)

This is a commentary piece on Marco Pavanini's article ' ‘Multistability and Derrida’s Différance: Investigating the Relations Between Postphenomenology and Stiegler’s General Organology' in which I critically extend upon his comparative analysis of postphenomenology''s notion of multistability and Stiegler's conception of organology, focusing in particular on the pharmacological nature of Stiegler's organology and the latter's most recent re-interpretation of it in terms of entropy and negentropy. Among other things I show, and both are more intended as additions (...) than criticisms with respect to Pavanini’s very helpful comparison, that the most important concern for Stiegler in theorizing technology is the fact that the transductive relations between the three organ systems distinguished in his pharmaco-organology of technology open up affective or libidinal circuits between these systems, i.e., circuits either of desire or drive depending on the way the pharmakon is adopted or not, and that these circuits are fundamentally noetic circuits vulnerable to denoetization; and that these libidinal-noetic circuits as conditioned by technology should be interpreted in terms of entropy and negentropy. Both insights are lacking in postphenomenology, which generally fails to consider the irreducibly destitutive character of all technology, rightfully emphasized by Pavanini, since it lacks a genuine pharmacological awareness. (shrink)

El pintor Blasco de Grañén, uno de los principales exponentes de la pintura gótica aragonesa del segundo tercio del siglo XV, fue el autor de las pinturas de varios retablos realizados para las tres provincias aragonesas en las que se representaban escenas de la Virgen María con el Niño y la Coronación de la Virgen junto con ángeles músicos. En el presente artículo, además de describir estos temas y tipos iconográficos, se realiza un breve recorrido histórico-artístico de cada pintura, se (...) describen las escenas musicales y se identifican sus elementos. Finalmente, se obtienen ciertas conclusiones acerca del contenido musical de las pinturas de Blasco de Grañén, que se caracterizan por su rica iconografía musical. Painter Blasco de Grañén, one of the main exponents of Aragonese Gothic painting of the second third of the 15th century, was the author of the paintings of several altarpieces made for the three Aragonese provinces, on which scenes of the Virgin and Child and the Coronation of the Virgin were represented with angels musicians. This article, as well as summarizing these iconographic subjects and types, makes a brief historic-artistic outline of each painting, describes the musical scenes and identifies their elements. Finally, some conclusions are drawn about the musical content of the paintings by Blasco de Grañén, which are characterized by their rich musical iconography. (shrink)

Prosthesis and the human hand have been terms used by various philosophers in order to describe the interaction that binds together the human being and the technical artefact – Martin Heide...

Istanbul is home to a multimillion dollar transnational music industry, which every year produces thousands of digital music recordings, including widely distributed film and television show soundtracks. Today, this centralized industry is responding to a growing global demand for Turkish, Kurdish, and other Anatolian ethnic language productions, and every year, many of its top-selling records incorporate elaborately orchestrated arrangements of rural folksongs. What accounts for the continuing demand for traditional music in local and diasporic markets? How is tradition produced in (...) twenty-first century digital recording studios, and is there a "digital aesthetics" to contemporary recordings of traditional music? -/- In Digital Tradition: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul's Recording Studio Culture, author Eliot Bates answers these questions and more with a case study into the contemporary practices of recording traditional music in Istanbul. Bates provides an ethnography of Turkish recording studios, of arrangers and engineers, studio musicianship and digital audio workstation kinesthetics. Digital Traditions investigates the moments when tradition is arranged, and how arrangement is simultaneously a set of technological capabilities, limitations and choices: a form of musical practice that desocializes the ensemble and generates an extended network of social relations, resulting in aesthetic art objects that come to be associated with a range of affective and symbolic meanings. Rich with visual analysis and drawing on Science & Technology Studies theories and methods, Digital Traditions sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Scholars and general readers of ethnomusicology, Middle Eastern studies, folklore and science and technology studies are sure to find Digital Traditions an essential addition to their library. (shrink)