Benedikt Kuhn | Automatic Aesthetics. On the Relation of Life and Technics in Marx
20. Jan
6:15 pm, C40.530
SSubjective 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 a PhD candidate in the research initiative “The Disruptive Condition” at Leuphana university, where he is working on a dissertation on the relationship between sensibility and technology in Kant, Marx and Stiegler. His most recent publications relate to Marx's theory of value as a basis for criticism of contemporary poetry and Bernard Stiegler’s reading of Kant’s first Critique.
Language: English
An event organized by the Research Initiative The Disruptive Condition.
Contact: Nicolas Schneider (nicolas.schneider@leuphana.de)