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<address><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.e-flux.com/journal/86/161887/cosmotechnics-as-cosmopolitics/">https://www.e-flux.com/journal/86/161887/cosmotechnics-as-cosmopolitics/</a><br>
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<div class="article-headline">Journal #86 - November 2017</div>
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<div class="article-authors">Yuk Hui</div>
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<h2>§3. Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics</h2>
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<p>I propose to go beyond the notion of cosmology; instead, it would
be more productive to address what I call cosmotechnics. Let me
give you a preliminary definition of cosmotechnics:<u> it is the
unification of the cosmos and the moral through technical
activities, whether craft-making or art-making.</u> There hasn’t
been one or two technics, but many cosmotechnics. What kind of
morality, which and whose cosmos, and how to unite them vary from
one culture to another according to different dynamics. I am
convinced that in order to confront the crisis that is before
us—namely, the Anthropocene, or the intrusion of Gaia (Latour and
Stengers), or the “entropocene” (Stiegler), all presented as the
inevitable future of humanity—it is necessary to reopen the
question of technology, in order to envisage the bifurcation of
technological futures by conceiving different cosmotechnics. I
tried to demonstrate such a possibility in my recent book <em>The
Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in
Cosmotechnics</em>. As one can gather from the title, it is an
attempt to respond to Heidegger’s famous 1949 lecture “The
Question Concerning Technology.” I propose that in order to
rethink the project of overcoming modernity, we must undo and redo
the translations of <em>technē</em>, <em>physis</em>, and <em>metaphysika</em>
(not as merely independent concepts but also concepts within
systems); only by recognizing this difference can we arrive at the
possibility of a common task of philosophy.</p>
<p>Why, then, do I think it’s necessary to turn to cosmotechnics?
For a long time now we have operated with a very narrow—in fact,
far too narrow—concept of technics. By following Heidegger’s
essay, we can distinguish two notions of technics. First, we have
the Greek notion of <em>technē</em>, which Heidegger develops
through his reading of the ancient Greeks, notably the
Pre-Socratics—more precisely, the three “inceptual” (<em>anfängliche</em>)
thinkers, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Anaximander.</p>
<p> In the 1949 lecture, Heidegger proposes to distinguish the
essence of Greek <em>technē</em> from modern technology (<em>moderne
Technik</em>).</p>
<p>If the essence of <em>technē</em> is <em>poiesis</em>, or
bringing forth (<em>Hervorbringen</em>), then modern technology, a
product of European modernity, no longer possesses the same
essence as <em>technē</em> but is rather an “enframing” (<em>Gestell</em>)
apparatus, in the sense that all beings become standing reserves (<em>Bestand</em>)
for it. Heidegger doesn’t totalize these two essences of technics,
but nor does he give space to other technics, as if there is only
a single homogenous <em>Machenschaft </em>after the Greek <em>technē</em>,
one that is calculable, international, even planetary. It is
astonishing that in Heidegger’s so-called <em>Black Notebooks</em>
(<em>Schwarze Hefte</em>)—of which four volumes have been
published so far<em>—</em>we find this note: “If communism in
China should come to rule, one can assume that only in this way
will China become ‘free’ for technology. What is this process?”</p>
<p><u>Heidegger hints at two things here: first, that technology is
international (not universal); and second, that the Chinese were
completely unable to resist technology after communism seized
power in the country. This verdict anticipates technological
globalization as a form of neocolonization that imposes its
rationality through instrumentality, like what we observe in
transhumanist, neoreactionary politics.</u></p>
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