Benedikt Kuhn | Automatic Aesthetics. On the Relation of Life and Technics in Marx
20. Jan
6:15 pm, C40.530
Subjective experience in the first third of the 21st century – whether in the most intimate forms of relating to oneself and others or in the most macro events of global politics – is shaped by complex networks of media technologies. If it is true, as Marx puts it, that “[t]he forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present,” how is such a transformation to be understood – conceptually, and in relation to the contemporary nexus of technics and capital today? Elaborating the relation between exteriorization (Entäußerung) and alienation (Entfremdung) that permeates Marx’s oeuvre from its early to its late stages, this talk will develop the conceptual relation of teleology, life, and technics. It will then demonstrate how this conceptual model relates to the problem of critical aesthetics of the present and delineate some of its limitations.
Benedikt Kuhn is working on a critical theory of the relation between technology and sensibility. He is a PhD candidate in the research initiative “The Disruptive Condition” at Leuphana University and currently Visiting Scholar at the Program in Literature at Duke University.
Language: English
An event organized by the Research Initiative The Disruptive Condition.
Contact: Nicolas Schneider (nicolas.schneider@leuphana.de)