Cosmotechnics: For a Renewed Concept of Technology in the Anthropocene

This book explores the concept of cosmotechnics, which offers an anti-universalist and pluralist perspective on technology beyond the West. It critically engages with Yuk Huis' notion and examines its implications for thinking about technology in the Anthropocene. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 152 pages
Publication date: 25 September 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This volume offers initial reflections on the meaning and implications of Yuk Huis notion of cosmotechnics, which presents a radical and pluralistic perspective on technology that transcends the Western realm. Martin Heideggers renowned analysis of technology as enframing and rooted in ancient Greek techne has played a pivotal role in understanding and critiquing technological society and culture throughout the twentieth century. However, the extent to which his analysis can be applied to the development of technology outside of 'the West, such as in China, Africa, and Latin America, particularly in the context of receding Western dominance and the looming threat of global ecological disaster, remains unclear. Recognizing the planetary expansion of Western technology already observed by Heidegger, while also acknowledging the existence of non-Western origins of technical relationships to the cosmos, Yuk Huis notion of cosmotechnics calls for a rethinking of the question concerning technology, in dialogue with decolonial studies and the so-called ontological turn in contemporary anthropology. This rethinking challenges the universality still present in Heidegger, as well as in Simondon and Stiegler, and proposes a radical technological or rather cosmotechnical pluralism or technodiversity.

The contributors to this volume critically engage with this proposal and examine the potential ramifications of Huis cosmotechnical turn in thinking about technology as it emerges as a planetary force in our current age of the Anthropocene. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.

Weight: 312g
Dimension: 174 x 246 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367769376