Techne beyond Monoculture Part Two

Instructor: Cecile Malaspina Date & Time: May 6th, 13th, 27th, June 3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th, July 1st. 09:00-11:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: This Seminar addresses an aspect of the critique of technology that tends to conflate what is derogatively called techno-scientific rationality with the rationality of capitalism. Given the indispensable role of technology in addressing climate change, and its intrinsic relation to the natural and human sciences, this Seminar seeks to turn the tables of critique by asking: what are the conditions of possibility for science and technology, not only to serve the common good but to foster creativity and diversity that is sensitive to the dynamic evolution of cultural and ecosystemic specificities. In other words, how must we rethink the sprawling of contemporary tékhnē in order to emancipate it from capitalist monoculture and from the inanity of its performance principle?

2023 presents the second iteration of this Survey Seminar, which started in 2022. The inspiration for the first iteration of this Seminar was a presentation by Japanese Shokunin (master craftsmen) Shuji Nakagawa and Takahiro Yagi at Japan House on 2nd June 2022, which raised questions about the innovative relations between traditional crafts and high-tech design and industry, throwing into relief outmoded oppositions between hand-crafted objects that are valued as culturally representative of specific places or regions, and the industrial,- standardized production of objects that are devalued as tokens of a globalized consumer monoculture.

This Survey Seminar features innovative and leading thinkers and practitioners, ranging from philosophy to design, from engineering to political theory and aesthetics, to develop a transversal inquiry into the conditions of possibility for a technodiversity capable of espousing and synergizing with cultural-, ecosystemic- and biodiversity. The emphasis on the Greek term tékhnē intends to open a wider philosophical angle on the objects, dynamics, behaviors, and networks that mediate our relationship with the world and with others—as a timely reminder of the Greek correlation between tékhnē and governance, as well as rhetorics. What encompasses tékhnē is not only the exchange of ideas but also that of specialized materials and tools. This exchange is, as Levi-Strauss remarked, characteristic of humanity: isolated societies are inert societies, and only societies in contact with each other progress (Montaigne après Montaigne, Paris: Ehess, 2016). In turn, it is of the utmost urgency to question the grounds on which so critical a part of human inventiveness is cajoled into the capitalist performance principle and ensuing monoculture, to which techno-scientific rationality is all too readily reduced.

IMAGE: Nam June Paik, TV Cello 1971.

To see The New Centre Refund Policy CLICK HERE.