Materials, Technologies, Ethics : [MTE Reading Group]

2016-17 Autumn, Spring & Summer Terms

Research and Practice MA and PhD students from all disciplines are welcome to
participate.
Topic: Materials, Technologies, Ethics
This reading group will span the quantum 20th centurys interest in duration (Bergson,
Grosz), observation, experience, and territory (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze), and
the movements of political forces that organise life within these forces (Arendt, Guattari,
Butler, Haraway, Barad), and the role that technologies play in determining things
(Stiegler, Stengers, Ellul). We will examine a range of models used to engage these
themes and topics, including the phenomenological, the technoscientific, the ecological,
and the ethical.
Format: Each meeting of the two-hour group will consist of an in-depth reading and
discussion of one or more texts. This is not a seminar, and all participants should do the
core readings prior to the meeting.
Participants are expected to acquire the literature themselves, but wherever possible I will
make pdf files available. More readings will be added or suggested as we go, according
to the groups research interests.
Time: 15.30-17:30 Monthly Wednesdays
Location: MIRIAD. Righton Building. Upstairs open space .
Reading group convener: Felicity Colman contact: f.colman@mmu.ac.uk
All students across the faculty are welcome please email Felicity in advance.
The following reading list is indicative and we will discuss further texts in the group.

Meeting Dates + topics:

2016
Materials
1. 19 October: Difference matters
2. 16 November: Quantum matters
2017
Technologies:
3. 18 January: Machinic questions
4. 15 Feb : Codes + Algorithms
5. 15 March : Techno-aesthetics
Ethics:
6. 17 May : technological ethics
7. 14 June : social ethics
8. 12 July : ethical ecologies

Group Background Reading:

Latour, Bruno. 2007 [2004] . On the Difficulty of Being an ANT: an Interlude in the
Form of a Dialog In Reassembling the social. Hampshire: Oxford University Press, 141156. [Latour reassembling in dbox]

Part 1: Materials.
Week 1: Difference matters: Perception, Time, Memory, techno-aesthetics
Discuss:
Bergson, Henri. [1896] 1988. Matter and Memory. Translated by N. M. Paul and W. S.
Palmer. New York: Zone. [Intro + Chapter 1.]
http://files.cargocollective.com/616824/henri-bergson-matter-and-memory-zone-booksedition-1.pdf
Grosz, Elizabeth. 2004. Bergsonian Difference, The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution,
and the Untimely. Duke University Press, 155- 184.
Background:
audio discussion on what is phenomenology:
BBC (2015) Phenomenology, in our time
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04ykk4m

Week 2: Quantum matters

Discuss:
Whitehead, Alfred North. 1925. The Quantum Theory in Science and the Modern
World, Cambridge University Press, [Lectures delivered at Lowell Institute in Boston
("Lowell Lectures")], 129- 137.
Olkowski, Dorothea. 2016. "The Cogito and the Limits of Neo-materialism and
Naturalized Objectivity." Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 30,
http://www.rhizomes.net/issue30/olkowski.html
Further contemplation:
Barad, Karan. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Duke University Press.
Barad, Karen. 2012. Interview with Karen Barad. In Dolphijn, R. and van der Tuin, I.
(eds),
New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press,
4870
Online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/11515701.0001.001

Shaviro, Steven. 2014. The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism. University Of

Minnesota Press.
Stengers, Isabelle. 2011. Thinking with Whitehead: a free and wild creation of concepts.
Translated by Michael Chase. Harvard University Press.

Part 2: Technologies
Week 3: Machinic technologies
Discuss:
Guattari, Felix. 1995 [1992]. Machinic Heterogenesis in Chaosmosis. Translated by
Paul Bains and Julian Perfanis.Sydney: Power publications, 33-57.
Guattari, Felix. 1995 [1992]. Machinic Orality and Virtual Ecology in Chaosmosis.
Translated by Paul Bains and Julian Perfanis.Sydney: Power publications, 88-97.

Further thoughts:
Berardi, Franco. The soul at work: From alienation to autonomy. Semiotext (e), 2009.
Gene Kogan, Francis Tseng. 2016- Machine Learning for Artists.
https://monoskop.org/log/?p=17733
Stiegler, Bernard. [2001] 2011 Technoscience and Reproduction in Technics and time,
3: Cinematic time and the question of malaise. Translated by Stephen Barker. Stanford
University Press, 187-224.

Week 4: Codes + Algorithms

Discuss:
Stocker, Gerfried. 2003. CODE- the Language of Our Time, 10-14 in Stocker,
Gerfried, and Christine Schpf. CODEthe Language of Our Time. Ars Electronica 2003.
Osterfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Verlag.
Schuppli , Susan. 2014. Deadly Algorithms: Can Legal Codes hold Software
accountable for Code that Kills? Radical Philosophy, Issue 187 UK: 2-8.

Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2008. "On" sourcery," or code as fetish." Configurations 16,
no. 3 : 299-324.
Further:
Coleman, E. Gabriella. Coding freedom: The ethics and aesthetics of hacking. Princeton
University Press, 2013.
Coleman, Gabriella. Hacker, hoaxer, whistleblower, spy: The many faces of Anonymous.
Verso Books, 2014.
Manovich. L. (2013) The Algorithms of Our Lives. In The Chronicle of Higher
Education. Online: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Algorithms-of-Our-Lives-/143557/
[accessed 15 March 2016]
Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the
Machine, Cambridge, Mass. 1965
Refer back to week 2, quantum questions

Week 5 : Techno-aesthetics
Discuss:
Heidegger, Martin. [1955] 1977. "The question concerning technology, in The question
concerning technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New York:
Harper Perennial, 3-35.
Simondon, Gilbert. [1982] 2012 "On techno-aesthetics" Translated by Arne De Boever.
Parrhesia 14, no. 1: 1-8.

Further:
Hodge, Joanna. 2012. Reason, grounds, technology in Heidegger and ethics.
Routledge, 2012, ch. 2 34- 65. https://issuu.com/miranpogacar/docs/hodge__joannaheidegger_and_ethics

Part 3: Ethics
Week 6: Technological ethics
BIG Discussion / continues week 5[Heidegger] :

Arendt, Hannah. 1958. Action in The Human Condition. Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 175- 247.
Jacques Ellul. 1980. The Power of Technique and the Ethics of Non-Power, Translated
by Mary Lydon, in The Myths of Information: Technology and Post-Industrial Culture,
ed., Kathleen Woodward, Coda Press, 242-247.
Karppi, Tero, Marc Bhlen, and Yvette Granata. 2016. Killer Robots as cultural
techniques International Journal of Cultural Studies , doi:10.1177/1367877916671425

Further readings:
Ellul, J. (1964) [1954] The Technological Society, translated by John Wilkinson, New
York: Vintage.
Ellul, J. (1965) [1962] Propaganda: The Formation of Mens Attitudes, translated by
K. Kallen and J. Lerner, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Week 7: Social ethics [rituals, myths, sexuality]

Discuss:
Braidotti, Rosi. 2006. Affirmation versus Vulnerability: On Contemporary Ethical
Debates, in Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, (10: 1), 235-254.
Stanford, Stella. 2004. Lets talk about sex in Radical Philosophy, (127) 35-51. [filed
as rp127] [reviews of: Luciana Parisi, 2004. Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology
and the Mutations of Desire, Continuum, London/NewYork ; Mario Perniola, 2004. The
Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World, trans.
Massimo Verdicchio, Continuum, London/New York. ]
Guattari, Felix. 1995 [1992]. On the production of Subjectivity in Chaosmosis.
Translated by Paul Bains and Julian Perfanis.Sydney: Power publications, 1-32.
Further:
Haraway, Donna. 1997. ModestWitness@SecondMillennium.
FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience (New York &
London: Routledge
Van Dijck, Jos. The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford
University Press, 2013.

Final Week 8: Ethical ecologies

Discuss:
Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Sympoiesis: Symbiogenesis and the Lively Arts of Staying
with the Trouble in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham
and London: Duke University Press, 58-98.
Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Sowing Worlds: A Seed Bag for Terraforming with Earth
Others in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and
London: Duke University Press, 117-133.

Further:
Blanc, Nathalie. 2012. "From environmental aesthetics to narratives of
change." Contemporary Aesthetics 10. Online:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/ca/7523862.0010.007/--from-environmental-aesthetics-tonarratives-of-change?rgn=main;view=fulltext
Mies, M. and V. Shiva, 1993. Ecofeminism, London: Zed Books.

Zylinska, Joanna. Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene. Open Humanities Press, 2014.
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/minimal-ethics-for-the-anthropocene/