Re-thinking Relationality in the Sociotechnological Condition (19-20 May, 2016)

*Re-thinking Relationality in the Sociotechnological Condition*


We are pleased to invite you to the workshop "Re-thinking Relationality
in the Sociotechnological Condition" at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg,
Digital Cultures Research Lab (DCRL).
The event will be held on May 19th and 20th 2016.

*Venue*
Musikschule Lüneburg, Studio 2, St. Ursula-Weg 7, Lüneburg

*Registration*
If you would like to attend the event, please register with
(paul.feigelfeld /at/ leuphana.de) until May 12th.

*Organizers*
Boris Traue, Post-Doc Researcher at the Digital Cultures Research Lab
(DCRL), Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
(boris.traue /at/ leuphana.de)

Götz Bachmann, Professor for Digital Cultures at the Institute for
Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM)
(goetz.bachmann /at/ leuphana.de)

*Event description*

Understandings of relations and relationality are currently under
reconsideration both in sociology and media studies. Substantialist
ideas of "the" social and "the" technological are frequently understood
to have been effectively replaced by concepts of hybridity,
sociotechnicality, naturecultures, spatiality, networks, etc. However,
it seems as though these more holistic notions again need to be revised
to adress the intersection of power, technology, and normativity in
contemporary societies. A more radically relational perspective which
adresses modes of experience within and through relational orders may be
better suited to grasp both the horizontal (interactive, valuative) as
well as vertical (hierarchical, ordering) aspects of realities in the
cybernetic sociotechnological condition. It promises to account for the
constitution of reflexivity and agency in the co-individuation of
technologies, norms, and subjectivity. Recent developments in
sociological and media research contribute to this debate with a triadic
concept of relationality. The symposium brings together different
strands of relational thought and research in social theory and media
theory. It adresses the following questions: In what sense is the
relation prior to what is being related, such as subjects, other living
beings and things? Do technologies supplement, augment or replace
institutional, normative power? How can the related entities re-work
relations? What are agency and reflexivity in communication, discourses,
assemblages, infrastructures, dispositifs, institutions, when these are
understood as radically relational phenomena?
An attempt to re-think, describe and understand relations at once lived
and engineered may allow us to come to terms with the affective,
emotional, normative and political underpinnings of contemporary
communication societies. The two-day event engages sociologists and
media scholars in a dialogue about the artificial nature of contemporary
social and technological relations and their epistemic, agentic,
political and normative dimensions.

*Schedule*

Thursday May 19th

9:30 -10:30 Arrival

10:30-11:00 Welcome: Götz Bachmann (Leuphana)
Introduction: Boris Traue (Leuphana)

11:00-12:00 Hubert Knoblauch (Technische Universität Berlin)
Subjectivity, Reciprocity, and Relationality

12:00-13:00 Anna Tuschling (Universität Bochum)
„The forgotten Third?“ Relationality and Affective Computing

13:00-14:30 Lunch (at the venue)

14:30-15:30 Jérémy Grosman (Université de Namur)
Youtube's Recommendation System: Relating Contents, Users and Advertisers

15:30-16:30 Michaela Pfadenhauer & Tilo Grenz (Universität Wien)
Objectivation as Relationality. Consequences concerning Media Technology

16:30-17:00 Coffee Break

17:00-18:00 Mathias Blanc (CNRS, Lille)
The relation-image. Relationality through Visual Media

18:00 – 19:00  Gesa Lindemann (Universität Oldenburg)
The Triadic Structure of Dividualization and Individualiziation

19:00 – 19:30 Reception

20:30 Dinner (Restaurant)

Friday May 20th

10:00 -11:00 Yuk Hui (Universität Lüneburg)
On the Concretization of the Social in Light of a Realism of Relations

11:00 – 12:00 Paula Bialski (Universität Lüneburg)
tba

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00 -14:00 Anna Henkel (Universität Oldenburg):
Relations of Meaning. Relationing media of verbalized and corporealized
meaning

14:00 - 15:00 Olli Pyyhtinen (Tampereen Yliopisto/University of Tampere)
Human and Nonhuman Thirds and a Theory of Relations

15:00-16:00  Closing Round and Good-Byes

Latest from Blog

Review of The Question Concerning Technology in China (Genron, 2022) in Artscape (JP)

昨年、哲学者ユク・ホイの主著2冊が立て続けに日本語に翻訳された。その1冊が『再帰性と偶然性』(原島大輔訳、青土社)であり、もう1冊が本書『中国における技術への問い』(伊勢康平訳、ゲンロン)である。かれのおもな専門は技術哲学だが、過去には哲学者ジャン=フランソワ・リオタールが手がけた展覧会「非物質的なものたち」(1985)についての論文集の編者を務めるなど★1、現代美術にも造詣が深いことで知られる。 本書『中国における技術への問い』は、近年まれにみるスケールの哲学書である。著者ユク・ホイは香港でエンジニアリングを、イギリスで哲学を学び、ドイツで教授資格(ハビリタツィオン)を取得したという経歴の持ち主だが(現在は香港城市大学教授)、本書を一読してみればわかるように、そこでは英語、中国語はもちろん、ドイツ語やフランス語の文献までもが幅広く渉猟されている。そのうえで本書が投げかけるのは──まさしく表題にあるように──「中国」における「技術」とは何であるか、という問いである。 そもそもこの「技術への問い(The Question Concerning Technology)」という表現は、ハイデガーによる有名な1953年の講演(の英題)から取られている(『技術への問い』関口浩訳、平凡社ライブラリー、2013)。本書は、かつてハイデガーが西洋哲学全体を視野に収めつつ提起した「技術への問い」を、中国哲学に対して差しむけようとするものである。せっかちな読者のために要点だけをのべておくと、本書でホイがとりわけ重視するのは「道」と「器」という二つのカテゴリーである。大雑把に言えば、中国哲学においては前者の「道」が宇宙論を、後者の「器」が技術論を構成するものであり、ホイはこれら二つの概念を軸に、みずからが「宇宙技芸」と呼ぶものの内実を論じていくことになる。言うなればこれは、古代ギリシアにおける「テクネー」を端緒とする西洋的な「テクノロジー」とは異なる、中国的な「技術」の特異性を明らかにする試みである。 Read more