【Vanguard Summit 2】1. Rhizomic Thinking and Machinic Ethics: The Humanities in the Anthropocene

Speaker: Prof. Woosung Kang (Seoul National University)
Moderator: Prof. Hsien-hao Liao廖咸浩特聘教授 (National Taiwan University)
Title: Rhizomic Thinking and Machinic Ethics: Humanities in Anthropocene
Time: 15:00-17:00, June 15, 2020 (Monday)
Venue: 1F DFLL Conference Room, Gallery of University History (校史館外文系一樓會議室)

Abstract:
What Heidegger called “enframing”(Gestell) of modern technology seems to arrive at the logical conclusion with the introduction of the idea of postmedia. From artificial intelligence to biotechnologies, technology came to encompass not only molar levels of material reality but the molecular spaces of microhabitat. With the mediation of hyper-technology, humans came to confront the unprecedented task of re-situating themselves as a subject and object of what is called the Anthropocene. This is indeed “the state of emergency” in every possible sense of the term. Now nature begins to strike us back. Theorists of “posthuman” propose in the face of this planetary ecological crisis to minimize human factor, capitalizing on the interconnectedness of the world of objects. But the era of the Anthropocene is precisely the moment when the human came to realize its own limitedness as well as the innate instability of nature. There is no organic, static nature out there; it is the sphere of becoming, full of what Deleuze called ongoing rhizomic mutations. It has interconnected itself even with technologies. My interest is to think about the way the humanities contribute to understand the Anthropocene and to overcome the anthropocentrism inherent within contemporary theories of post-humanism and the Anthropocene.

Organizer: Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, National Taiwan University
Co-Organizer: Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University