Papers by Franziska Aigner
Technophany, A Journal for Philosophy and Technology
Martin Heidegger and Bernard Stiegler have both famously argued that philosophy has hitherto been... more Martin Heidegger and Bernard Stiegler have both famously argued that philosophy has hitherto been incapable of seeing, recognizing, or remembering technics. Both thinkers confronted this technical aporia by putting forward their own thought on technics, arguing to find themselves in a historically singular position from which technical thought proper can, for the first time, be questioned and invented. This article shows how both Heidegger’s and Stiegler’s conceptual projects are supported by a two-fold reading of the history of philosophy as at once devoid of technical thought proper, while at the same time harbouring, but only ever implicitly, the resources for thinking and remembering said technics. Their readings of the work of Immanuel Kant will be shown to be exemplary in this regard. This article ultimately concludes that, as a result of both Heidegger’s and Stiegler’s particular self-positioning within the history of technical thought, neither of them could recognize the tec...
This dissertation aims to critically intervene in twentieth century European philosophical though... more This dissertation aims to critically intervene in twentieth century European philosophical thought on technics, the discourse concerning skills, tools, instruments, and machines, as well as technology, the scientific meta-discourse on technics, by way of a critical reading and conceptualization of the role and meaning of technics for Immanuel Kant's transcendental philosophy. Starting from a critical analysis of Martin Heidegger, Gilbert Simondon, and Bernard Stiegler's thought on technics, I will show how Kant came to stand for a philosophy that could not, and, further did not think technics. Against Heidegger, Simondon and Stiegler, according to whom Kant was incapable of recognizing the technical problematic at the center of his philosophy, I argue that we should read Kant's philosophy as being constitutively shaped by an ongoing, developing concern for technics. Following a close reading of Kant's texts from the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) until his very last unfinished manuscript, the Opus Postumum (1796-1803), my project works chronologically through Kant's explicit references to technics (die Technik), as I aim to synthesize a concept of technics out of the Kantian text and lay out the role and meaning of technics through the various stages of Kant's thought. I will show that Kant did not only 'know' something about technics, but that his transcendental philosophy is essentially of technics, at once explicitly constituted against, while at the same time relying on, being built upon, and proceeding from technics. While the Critique of Pure Reason will be shown to be at heart a critique of instrumental reason, which is to be remedied by a twofold critical program, both sides of which already harbor a positive concept of technics, it is in the final Opus Postumum that Kant will be seen to articulate the systematic place and vital role of technical-practical reason for the system of transcendental philosophy. The Opus Postumum charges technical-practical reason with the technicalpractical task of world-building, and thus the cosmo-technical context for both the universal laws of science and any particular technical-practical action. Consequently, then, while for Heidegger, Simondon, and Stiegler, Kant came to stand for a philosophy that could not think technics, I aim to reopen the larger question concerning the relation between philosophy and technics through the restricted discussion of the relation between Kant and technics, and the concept of technics that I discover in the Kantian text. I am fortunate to have written this dissertation in the company of many friends and colleagues. Most of all, I would like to thank my first supervisor, Howard J. Caygill, for having first sparked my interest in Kant, for having taught me how to read Kant and Simondon long before becoming my supervisor, and for having become my friend in the process. In our first PhD supervision meeting, Howard put me on the trail of an old, blue and long out-of-print book that one might be able to find in the British Library. Written by the little known Gerhard Lehmann, this book would soon become the key to my project. Little did I know, back then, of Howard's gift to detect long before myself where it was that I was going, and to provide, so generously, the horizon upon which my philosophical intuitions could develop. I would like to thank Peter Hallward, my second supervisor, for being the critical, perceptive, and sharp reader that he is, and for his continued insistence on rigorous argumentation and clarity. I am greatly indebted to the incisive and critical questions posed to me by Peter Osborne, some of which have forced me into crisis, resulting in necessary decisions long overdue. It has been an intense honor to discuss my project with Étienne Balibar, whose brilliant insights have helped me navigate through difficult passages more than once, and whose teachings will stay with me through all that lies ahead. I would also like to thank Stephen Howard for having read my work on the famously difficult Opus Postumum at various stages throughout the process, and for his generous comments, which have both improved my argument and my confidence. I could not have written this dissertation without all the professors and students at the Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy, which has become my home throughout the last six years of my life. I would like to thank in particular Matt Hare, Isabell Dahms, Marie
espanolEl siguiente articulo es una investigacion critica sobre lo politico en los nuevos materia... more espanolEl siguiente articulo es una investigacion critica sobre lo politico en los nuevos materialismos feministas. La agencia, la identidad y la subjetividad se vuelven mas complejas en las teorias del nuevo materialismo, aunque no se eliminen del todo. Se entienden como el producto complejo de una red de relaciones material y discursiva, natural y cultural, de la que podria surgir una subjetividad politica feminista representada por ejemplos siempre situados y situacionales. No obstante, mientras los nuevos materialismos feministas ofrecen perspectivas complejas respecto a la naturaleza efimera de las practicas que establecen limites, desestabilizando conceptualizaciones binarias del sujeto y el objeto, la materia y el discurso y aspectos similares, nuestro articulo se centra en como tales complejidades pueden fundamentar una politica feminista propiamente dicha, particularmente vinculada a la obra de la fisica cuantica y filosofa Karen Barad.Empleando las herramientas conceptuale...
The following essay is a critical investigation into the political within feminist new materialis... more The following essay is a critical investigation into the political within feminist new materialisms. Agency, identity and subjectivity are complexified in new materialist theories, although not entirely done away with. They are understood as the complex product of a material-discursive, nature-cultural web of relations from which a feminist political subjectivity might emerge in its always situated and situational instantiations. However, while feminist new materialisms offer complex insights into the transient nature of boundary drawing practices, destabilizing binary conceptualizations of subject and object, matter and discourse and the like, our focus in this article is on how such complexifications can ground a feminist politics proper, in particular concerning the work of feminist quantum physicist and philosopher Karen Barad. Using the conceptual tools developed by Peta Hinton (2014) and Catherine Malabou (2011), our argumentation works through Barad’s notions of objectivity, ...
Maska, 2016
Vivienne Newport spoke to us about the early choreographic works of Tanztheater Wuppertal under t... more Vivienne Newport spoke to us about the early choreographic works of Tanztheater Wuppertal under the direction of Pina Bausch, in which Newport participated as one of the seminal dancers. Furthermore, she spoke to us about the internal dynamic in the company and the particularity of Pina Bausch’s relations to the dancers.
Maska, 2016
Reinhild Hoffmann spoke to us about the slow shift in the dance studio towards equal Mitsprachere... more Reinhild Hoffmann spoke to us about the slow shift in the dance studio towards equal Mitspracherecht (German for, literally, “the right to speak with”) of the dancer and author. She furthermore offered an insight into her own working method and her collaboration with Arno Wüstenhöfer, who offered choreographic directorships to Pina Bausch in Wuppertal and later to Hoffmann in Bremen.
Maska, 2016
Dominique Mercy first met Pina Bausch in the United States at a summer academy organized by the c... more Dominique Mercy first met Pina Bausch in the United States at a summer academy organized by the choreographer Paul Sanasardo. Telling of his experience of the New York dance scene in the beginning of the 70s, and how he perceived it as differing from both living as well as dancing in Europe, he moves on to provide a detailed account of the development of Pina Bausch’s questioning method.
Maska, 2016
William Forsythe spoke to us about being a spectator of Pina Bausch’s work and about the German S... more William Forsythe spoke to us about being a spectator of Pina Bausch’s work and about the German Stadttheater landscape of the 1970s and 80s, as well as about the development of his particular way of working in relation to the issues and concerns he found himself immersed in.
Maska, 2016
Susanne Linke spoke to us about the state of dance in post-war Germany, her experiences of dancin... more Susanne Linke spoke to us about the state of dance in post-war Germany, her experiences of dancing for Pina Bausch at Folkwang Tanzstudio and her generation’s intuitive emancipatory gesture of abandoning classical roles and themes.
Maska, 2016
Raimund Hoghe spoke about his work as a writer, articulating and giving form to the political and... more Raimund Hoghe spoke about his work as a writer, articulating and giving form to the political and artistic climate of Germany from the 1960s onwards. Having worked with Pina Bausch as one of the first dramaturges of dance, he recalled the development of their friendship and working relation.
New Formations, 2017
As is well known by now, the work of late French philosopher Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) has bee... more As is well known by now, the work of late French philosopher Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) has been burdened by a somewhat difficult historical reception, both within France as well as internationally. Slowly supplemented by posthumously published philosophical fragments and lecture courses delivered at the Sorbonne, as well as interviews, and articles,1 his principal work remained the twofold 1958 doctorate L’Individuation à la lumiére des notions de forme et d’information [Individuation in light of notions of form and information; major thesis] and Du mode d’existence des objets techniques [On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects; minor thesis]. Whilst a partial, unofficial English translation of On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects by Ninian Mellamphy has been circulating since the late 1980s,2 Simondon’s thought was until recently mainly available to the Anglophone reader via the writings of Bernard Stiegler.3 As both monographs and considerable secondary literature on Simondon have started to appear in English over the last decade, the only books still missing were the English translations of the primary texts themselves.4 In April 2017, the first complete English translation of Simondon’s On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects has been completed by Cecile Malaspina and John Rogove. Thus, fifty-nine years after its completion, the Anglophone world is at last able to read Simondon himself, at least his minor thesis. Considering that this work was conceived prior to the digital revolution and on the cusp of the cybernetisation of the world, we might well ask, what can On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects tell us about the technical world we live in today? Simondon’s approach to technics is lucid in its critique and unique in its inventive philosophical constructions. He rejects the accounts of technics provided by metaphysics, naturalistic discourse on labour and culture in general and declares them insufficient since they rely on the primitive schema of hylomorphism in order to do their bidding. Thus, at the core of Simondon’s approach lies his critique of hylomorphism (hyle – ancient Greek for matter; morphe – ancient Greek for form), the philosophical doctrine of how matter, usually taken to be passive, takes on active form. Simondon shows how this supposed universal and logical schema of the genesis of being as the process of taking form is nothing but ‘the transportation into philosophical thought of the technical operation reduced to work’ (p248). On this basis, the main critique against hylomorphism is then that it essentially leaves the active centre of the technical operation obscure. Instead, it relies on the activity 1. L’Invention dans les techniques. Cours et conférences (19651976), Cours sur la Perception (19641965), Imagination et invention (19651966), Communication et information: cours et conférences, Sur la technique, (19531983).
Artnodes, 2014
The following essay is a critical investigation into the political within feminist new materialis... more The following essay is a critical investigation into the political within feminist new materialisms. Agency, identity and subjectivity are complexified in new materialist theories, although not entirely done away with. They are understood as the complex product of a material-discursive, nature-cultural web of relations from which a feminist political subjectivity might emerge in its always situated and situational instantiations. However, while feminist new materialisms offer complex insights into the transient nature of boundary drawing practices, destabilizing binary conceptualizations of subject and object, matter and discourse and the like, our focus in this article is on how such complexifications can ground a feminist politics proper, in particular concerning the work of feminist quantum physicist and philosopher Karen Barad. Using the conceptual tools developed by Peta Hinton (2014) and Catherine Malabou (2011), our argumentation works through Barad's notions of objectivity, accountability, agency and subjectivity. At the core of the article lies the question of whether Barad's realist notion of 42
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Papers by Franziska Aigner