Lukáš Likavčan

This paper presents a blueprint for a new aesthetic theory which is informed by recent developments in the philosophy of speculative realism on the one hand, and capable of addressing issues arising from the ecological crisis and the emergence of artificial intelligence on the other. The primary point of departure here is the philosophy of Quentin Meillassoux and Immanuel Kant. Aesthetics is understood as a speculative investigation of the realm of possible assemblages (or compositions) of entities. Such assemblages manifest xenorationality – that is, non-human principles of association and composition. Drawing on the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Steven Shaviro, I define rationality as the investment of external objects into the human mind, rather than an autonomous subjective faculty. General genetics of xenorationality uncovers the original exteriority and ancestrality of rational principles vis-à-vis the human subject. Furthermore, xenorational aesthetics is demonstrated on the example of Google AI AlphaGo program’s surprising move in the 2nd match against the world’s top Go player, Lee Sedol. This move was described by viewers as “inhuman” yet “beautiful”, and it will be argued that it was a manifestation of AlphaGo’s xenorationality. Lastly, the argument can be generalised to planetary ecosystem processes, leading to an assessment of the aesthetic experience of xenorationality in the process of cognitive mapping as the major driver of socio-political practices in the Anthropocene.

This article investigates recent transformations in global capitalism’s political economy as it relates to the evolution of globally integrated production and exchange apparatuses, such as platforms, enabled through technological advances in computational infrastructures. These infrastructures are explicable in terms of the model of the Stack, understood as an accidental mega-structure of the contemporary platform economy that is integrating previously detached circulation and accumulation structures. The Stack is introduced as an integrative model of a multi-layered political economic system that allows us to understand and explain recent developments in global capitalism. Focus is thereby given to intensified real abstraction of labour induced by the capitalist appropriation of planetary-scale computation, and the associated rise of platform sovereignty in opposition to the traditional sovereignties of states and markets. Building on the model of the Stack, we set in relation different perspectives on recent capitalist development in terms of planetary-scale computation: transnational informational capitalism, cognitive capitalism, intellectual monopoly capitalism and techno-feudalism. Thereby we highlight aspects of value creation as well as rent-seeking through the model of the Stack.

This article proposes a concept of technology appropriation as a means of ideological repurposing of technology in a de-growing economy. Its economic and institutional foundations are set forth using an endogenous theory of economic development in the spirit of Marx, Schumpeter and Veblen. Technological and institutional change lead interdependently to the emergence of socio-technical complexes which are subject to ideological appropriation. These complexes are analyzed as actor-networks from an ontological perspective and exemplified using special cases in the information and communication technologies (ICTs). The approach contributes to synthesizing critical political economy with actor-network theory. Technology appropriation is elaborated as a means of repurposing existing technologies in terms of recombination, with an emphasis on the strategy of habilitation. This political economic strategy delivers new insights for a solidary mode of economic reproduction in a low-carbon de-growing economy.

In this chapter we aim to analyse the emergence of autographic visualisations produced by the Earth itself, and processed by a vast machine of sensing and modelling the Earth. First, we introduce the general framework of autographic visualisation theory as sketched by Dietmar Offenhuber, and we compare it to the notion of operational images crafted by Harun Farocki. While doing so, we argue that autographic visualisations are non-representational – which principally distinguishes them from photographs of the Earth – and sensitive towards the socio-material context of the emergence of data – which makes them different from operational images. In the second part of the chapter we explore the infrastructural context of the emergence of autographic visualisations on the global scale, answering the question of whom or what is the primary witness of planetary autographic visualisations. Ultimately, our claim is that autographic visualisations bring our attention back to the ways in which the opaque reality of the planet unveils itself in productive or destructive alignments between its human and non-human elements, for better or worse.

The history of thinking about thinking is populated by numerous attempts to model reason in topological terms. Amongst them, the prominent place is occupied by Immanuel Kant’s explanation of thought’s need to restrain its own exercise by means of an analogy between geographical orientation (modeled on the human body) and orientation in thinking. As natural as his analogy might seem, the first part of this chapter aims at deconstructing Kant’s attempt as both replaceable and constraining, and at proposing a possibility of alternative topological accounts of thinking. Hence, while endorsing the utility of spatial models, we call for an unbinding of the parochial connection between thinking and the form of the human body implicit in historical topological models of reason. For this reason, in the second part of the chapter we suggest that the topological framework embodied by Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) can be used as an alternative to formulate such a model of thinking, based on their commitment to dimensionality and use of space as an active, dynamic, and transitory element. Rather than arguing that ANNs somehow think, we suggest that they offer a mirror that lets humans look back at themselves and construct their thinking differently. We conclude by proposing that the benefit of looking in this mirror is open-ended and twofold: (1) It divorces our image of thinking from anthropomorphism, and (2) it offers a normative model of reason with potentially practical consequences for how humans act.

This paper applies concepts of elemental media and metabolisms to the case of cosmic and planetary ecologies that emerge from the interaction between Earth and Sun, manifesting in photosynthesis or carbon isotope chemistry. In doing so, it expands on registers of media theory and environmental studies and prompts the reader to consider the medial and archival affordances of the light-based interactions, and further processes they give rise to. The main aim of the paper is to use these observations to speculate about the human condition in the Anthropocene, characterised by the experience of human mediality. The paper addresses human mediality mainly in the dimension of affective qualities this condition may prompt, and the resulting narrative model of selfhood – the metabolic self. The paper develops its conceptual contribution in close proximity with several artistic examples, especially Eduardo Navarro’s performance In Collaboration with the Sun (2017–2019). The paper is positioned as a contribution to studies of multispecies cohabitation and more-than-human communication, while also developing a narrative strategy for talking about the decentred position of human species in the more-than-human world-making.

Since the notion of the Anthropocene entered the discourse of environmental humanities, it has prompted multiple conceptual innovations. This paper focuses on one such case: the term planetary – and the adjacent genre of planetary thinking – theorized by a broad range of scholars. The original contribution of this paper lies in developing an astronomical concept of the planet, derived from the definition agreed by resolution 5A 2006 of International Astronomical Union, which defines planets based on their dynamical context. By means of philosophical interpretation of the definition’s underlying assumptions, this paper articulates standalone philosophical implications of the astronomical concept: the contextualization of the planet in expanded ecology of the solar system, paired with the understanding of the planet as a structure of phase gradients and as a historical natural kind. Furthermore, I position the astronomical concept alongside theorizations of the planet by Latour, Stengers, Clark & Szerszynski as well as Chakrabarty, touching upon the Gaia hypothesis or the concept of geological history. Finally, I encourage deeper disciplinary interaction between astronomy and environmental humanities. The benefits of this interaction are highlighted in the concluding discussion concerning the multiplicity of planetary narratives and applications of the astronomical concept of the planet.

The paper questions the compatibility of critical realism with ecological economics. In particular, it is argued that there is radical dissonance between ontological presuppositions of ecological economics and critical realist perspective. The dissonance lies in the need of ecological economics to state strict causal regularities in socio-economic realm, given the environmental intuitions about the nature of economy and the role of materiality and non-human agency in persistence of economic systems. Using conceptual apparatus derived from Andrew Brown’s critique of critical realism and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, the paper refuses ontological nature/society dualism employed by critical realism, and stresses the role of non-humans in practical production and reproduction of socio-economic networks on the one hand, and in broadly defined ecological economic research on the other hand.