The sociotechnical imaginary of the imperial mode of living and its miner(e)al: the dark subconscious of green transition

Abstract

This article critically investigates the specific sociotechnical imaginaries of the imperial mode of living in its relation to the so-called ecological and digital transition. The term sociotechnical imaginary refers to the role of science and technology in producing visions of the common good, social relations, and the future. Here, however, the concept is reinterpreted through an Althusserian-Lacanian lens as a space of subject identification. The imaginary of the imperial mode of living is shaped by techno-determinist, utopian, and techno-liberal ideologies that depict technological development as both independent from social and ecological relations and, at the same time, as the sole engine of their transformation. Technologies appear as black boxes, concealing the socio-ecological processes, material extraction, and racialized labor exploitation that make them possible. The subject hailed by this imaginary is oriented toward the future through technology as the only drive of progress. Drawing on Lacan’s notion of the real, the article identifies the mineral – as both a material and symbolic component of technologies – as the unthought unconscious of these imaginaries: a condenser of racial, colonial, and ecocidal dynamics, but also a prism through which to deconstruct the hegemonic imaginary of transition by exposing its inconsistency.