9, 1 (2025)
Technology and Culture
If we can assume the reciprocal relationship between technology and culture as coextensive with the human dimension (from the prehistory of man to his current stabilization, up to the limit of his possible overcoming), it is surprising how the theoretical reflection on this relationship comes after, and how it becomes more consistent and decisive as this relationship loses its connotation of hendiadys or almost hendiadys, so that it appears on the contrary in terms of an open tension or even of a real contrast.
In modern capitalist society, due to the expansion of the mechanical domain, technology is linked first and foremost, if not exclusively, to civilization. Only in this very different, halved, if not even reversed form, does something of the ancient hendiadys survive and culture appears as a power of an action aimed at modifying reality, objects, increasing their value, where the empowerment and increase in value however concerned the other side involved in the movement of transformation: the subject. The colere, the cultivating, if on the one hand it refers to nature, to its transformation and care aimed at making it a place habitable by man, a cultivating that accompanies the clearing of the land also (and not secondarily!) the “cult” rendered to the gods, on the other hand it concerns the “cultivation of the soul”, cultura animi in Cicero’s words, that is, a condition of the subject––personal culture made possible in turn by the spiritual transformation of the environment, ultimately the personal formation and self-realization through an objective culture (goods and cultural values). In any case, whether this regards either the object or the subject, the transformation is aimed at following its nature, to bring to completion the potentialities prefigured in its disposition, not to impose foreign forces and purposes (properly one cultivates a plant in order to obtain an edible fruit, better than the one that would be naturally produced by that very plant, but one does not cultivate a tree to obtain the mast of a ship). Now, it is precisely the divergence between objective culture and subjective culture, up to a fracture such that the increase of one not only does not correspond to the increase of the other but rather operates in such a way as to prevent its deployment, which characterizes what has been defined as the modern crisis of culture––the modern “tragedy of culture,” to use Simmel’s expression, which represents in the most acute way the all-modern opposition between technology and culture.
With a penetration that finds no equals, this conflict brings into play philosophical reflection––but also sociological, historical, artistic and literary considerations, in short the entire German culture––in the years between “Bismark and Weimar,” to take up here the subtitle of a collection of essays dedicated precisely to the relationship between technology and culture, which well restores the richness of a debate destined to mark in the form of an insurmountable dichotomy (but also of the opposition to it) the reflection to come, well beyond Germany and Europe itself and for the entire twentieth century, or at least certainly until the end of the Cold War and the “unification of the entire world under Capital.” The pairs of opposites in which the dichotomy “technology and culture” is specified in this debate, of which “no serious comparison on this issue can fail to take into account” (Technology and culture, 1975), are widely known: “Zivilisation/Kultur,” “Mechanisierung/Kultur,” “Spirit/Soul” (or even “Spirit/Life”) are just some of a long list, which together with keywords such as for example “Intellectualization”, “Disenchantment”, “Relativism” (and their opposites) mark the disintegration of Culture or even the full realization of its nihilistic essence, if we understand culture with Heidegger “as the realization of the supreme values, through the commitment in favor of the highest goods of man,” accompanied by “analogous commitment to itself, thus becoming a politics of culture” (The age of the image of the world, 1977).
This story, which decisively seals the relationship between “technology and culture” and sinks a significant part of its roots in Nietzsche’s critique of the modern scientific factory of culture (well summarized in the formula “internal culture for external barbarians”), finds its most powerful neutralization and defeat in the stigmatization of this opposition in terms of reactive and reactionary criticism of declining intellectual bourgeois strata, aristocratic mandarinism which paved the way for Nazi madness, when not directly high intellectual fascism and petty-bourgeois and provincial defense. A powerful apparatus of revision and rehabilitation of mass culture, of the information society, of its progressive and democratic character (“inclusive” we would say today), has been affirmed over time in different latitudes, becoming hegemonic in public discourse. Although it seems not to ignore (first of all in order to defuse in advance any objection) the fascination with technology typical of certain revolutionary and nationalist right, as well as the potentially totalitarian character and exploitation of the mega-capitalist machine (or of less thunderous but not without grip accusations, such as those of conformism, homogenization and more or less occult persuasion of the cultural industry), such a device abdicates from any critical attitude and willingly supports the progress and new evolutions of mass technologies, the last of which pertain to the digital culture.
The question that this issue of “Mechane” wants to try to answer is then to what extent the paradigm of the opposition “technology and culture”––distinctive of the past criticism of advanced capitalism––should be considered obsolete and captivated by outdated grand narratives in our era of “cultivated technology” (kultivierte Technik), as well as of a fully developed “technical culture.” In the light of the “new spirit of capitalism” (call it as you please: “platform-capitalism,” “data capitalism,” “surveillance capitalism” and so on) is there still a tension not entirely resolved between technology and culture? And if there is, in what form and following––or not following––which philosophical traditions and/or “critical theories?
With this in mind, we invite you to submit contributions for the number 9 of “Mechane.” The issues to be addressed include, among others:
- Genealogical aspects of the link between technology and culture in the philosophical field;
- The role of technology in the definition of the categories of modern and postmodern, with particular attention to the anthropological and philosophical tradition;
- Different models of development of the relationship between technology and culture;
- Transformation, organization, innovation of culture and promotion of technical culture and culture of innovation;
- Technology and new material and immaterial cultures;
- Culture and new technological society of the spectacle;
- Culture and education, technological education and technological organization of education.
Submissions are invited in Italian, English, French, German, and Spanish. Please forward a brief abstract (no more than 500 words) to mechane.journal@gmail.com by December 15, 2024. Authors of accepted proposals will be requested to submit the complete paper (no more than 40,000 characters) by April 15, 2025. All submissions will be subject to peer review.