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Technoculture and Critical Theory Technoculture and Critical Theory While technology allows humanity to develop more constructive ways of engaging with the world, it also extends the capacity for domination and exploitation. It enables us to realise our needs, but can also reconstruct those needs so that aspirations towards human progress realise themselves within a technocratic, antihuman paradigm – in the ‘service of the machine’. Technoculture and Critical Theory theorises the ambivalence most of us register towards technological progress. The author explores the work of major thinkers and cultural movements that have grappled with the complex relationship between technology, politics and culture. Subjects such as the Internet, cloning, warfare, fascism and Virtual Reality are placed within a broad theoretical context which explores how humanity might, through technology, establish a more ethical relationship with the world. Examining the philosophy of writers such as Heidegger, Benjamin, Lyotard, Virilio and Žižek, and cultural movements such as Italian Futurism, this book marks a timely intervention in critical theory debates. The broad scope of the book will be of vital interest to those in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, cultural studies, politics and communications. Simon Cooper is an editor of Arena Journal, and teaches in Communications at Monash University. Routledge Studies in Science, Technology and Society 1 Science and the Media Alternative routes in scientific communication Massimiano Bucchi 2 Animals, Disease and Human Society Human–animal relations and the rise of veterinary medicine Joanna Swabe 3 Transnational Environmental Policy The Ozone Layer Reiner Grundmann 4 Biology and Political Science Robert H. Blank and Samuel M. Hines, Jr. 5 Technoculture and Critical Theory In the service of the machine? Simon Cooper Technoculture and Critical Theory In the service of the machine? Simon Cooper London and New York First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2002 Simon Cooper All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-16702-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-26181-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–26160–0 (Print Edition) Contents Acknowledgements vii 1 Introduction: in the service of the machine? 1 2 Beyond enframing: Heidegger and the question concerning technology 18 3 Walter Benjamin and technology: social form and the recovery of aura 44 4 Futurism and the politics of a technological being in the world 67 5 Between totalitarianism and heterogeneity: Lyotard and the postmodern condition 88 6 Paul Virilio: overcoming inertia? 114 7 Psychoanalysis, cyberspace and its discontents: Turkle, Žižek, Brennan 138 8 Conclusion 160 Notes 166 Bibliography 171 Index 177 Acknowledgements This text began as a doctoral dissertation and so I would first like to thank my supervisors Andrew Milner and Paul James for their assistance and advice in the preparation of that earlier work. I would especially like to thank my friends and colleagues in the Arena group, whose theoretical approaches, friendship and encouragement have pro- vided an important context through which my own ideas could develop. In particular I would like to thank Geoff Sharp, but also John Hinkson, Alison Caddick, Paul James, Guy Rundle and Nonie Sharp for their support, advice, and for providing a model of political, theoretical, and personal engagement that has profoundly affected my own work and life. The contribution of Arena to Australian political and cultural life is enormous; without it, I suspect this work could never have been written. Long-suffering friends who deserve thanks for their friendship and support are Paul Atkinson, Andrew Johnson, Ben Rossiter, Jacqueline Coad, Alison Wall, Matthew Ryan and Mary Roberts, Lauren, Bonnie and Ian Black, and Gail Ward. Thanks also to my new colleagues within the mass communica- tions section at Monash, in particular Mary Griffiths and Mike Griffiths. I am especially grateful to Alison Hart for all her help and generous support in the preparation of the book manuscript, often in difficult circumstances. Her energy, intelligence and focus allowed the text to gain shape much more rapidly than it might have otherwise. The most profound debts are the hardest to express. I want to thank my mother for all her support and encouragement, and for allowing me the free- dom to pursue my own path. But most of all I want to thank Samantha Black for her love and support. She has long been a source of inspiration, intelligence and humour in my life. Without Samantha, it is unlikely that the book would have been completed. I therefore dedicate it to her. Sections of Chapters 2, 3 and 6 have appeared in an earlier form in Arena Journal (see no. 5, 1995; no. 6, 1996, and no. 9, 1997). 1 Introduction In the service of the machine? the problem is knowing whether the Master–Slave conflict will find its reso- lution in the service of the machine. (Lacan 1977: 27) Lacan’s ‘problem’ encapsulates the ambivalence most of us register towards technological progress. While technology allows humanity to develop more constructive ways of engaging with the world, it also extends the capacity for domination – whether it be nature or simply those who are different. Technology can allow us to realise our needs; however it can also reconstruct those needs so that aspirations towards human progress realise themselves within a technocratic, antihuman paradigm – in the ‘service of the machine’. This book is about how to come to terms with this ambivalence. Implicitly, we all recognise that technology occupies an increasingly cen- tral role in our lives. Whether we look at the Internet, the possibilities for human cloning, the rise of high-tech global markets or any number of other examples, there seems to be scarcely any part of our lives that is not in some way technologically mediated. Popular culture registers this phe- nomenon of an increased technologisation of the lifeworld by simultaneously welcoming the change and contradictorily creating narra- tives revolving around a peculiar ‘paranoid’ sensibility. Cyberpunk fiction, television shows like the X-Files and Nowhere Man, and movies such as The Matrix tap into our fears of the increased capacity of technology to affect our lives, whether through more pervasive surveillance mechanisms or through the manufacture of powerful technological illusions. At one level, the increased popularity of paranoia as a cultural fantasia registers our ambiva- lence towards the effects of this ever-increasing technological mediation of our lives. At a deeper level, paranoia might be an implicit recognition of how technology works subtly, and behind our backs, to reconstruct the mode of our being human. This is the central concern of this book: how technology-in-use works to reconstitute our mode of being in the world, both directly and indirectly. Through an examination of how twentieth- century theorists and cultural movements have understood technology, the 2 Introduction: in the service of the machine? book attempts to articulate a position through which to engage with tech- nology in the contemporary era. This book explores the possibilities for a critical theory of technology. It does so by examining the work of various modern and postmodern thinkers and movements for whom the question of technology has been central. In the first part, the modernists Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and the Futurist movement are considered. The second part examines Jean-François Lyotard, Paul Virilio and more recent forms of ‘Cyberculturalism’ as analysed through psychoanalytic theory. The book thus proceeds by way of a comparison of ear- lier modes with contemporary postmodern writers. Through examining the work of these theorists and movements, it aims to show, in both a descriptive and more distinctively theoretical sense, how technology impinges upon and reconstructs social and cultural meaning. I will argue that analysing this process enables us to reflect upon the conditions where on the one hand this transformation might be welcomed. On the other hand, however, it also allows us to make an argument about the need to set limits to the nature of techno- logical mediation, an argument unavailable to theories based around a concept of neutrality, or to those that understand technology empirically. It is the aim of this book to engage theoretically with writings on technology in a manner which will enable us to go beyond the mere recognition that ‘something’ changes whenever it is technologically mediated. Our relations with technology are often marked by a deep ambivalence. Intuitively, many people feel uneasy about the rate of technological change, yet can find no base from which to transform their feelings into a broader social critique. Such ambivalence can also be seen in the thinkers and
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