(utdrag av Leonardo Electronic Almanac Vol11, no10, 2003. Hele vol11 ligger som pdf på dropbox)
Irina Aristarkhova
Guest Editor
This issue of LEA has come about as a result of my ongoing
interest and work in the area of technology and sexual/cultural
differences. While considering this particular focus of
interest, I realized that the general question of the
fundamental relationship between technology and difference has
been rarely considered in the field of new media art,
cyberculture, science, technology and society studies, and other
convergent areas where “modern technologies” are critically
engaged. As such, this issue comes from a conviction that any
specific study of difference in relation to technology has to be
seen within a larger framework that is sensitive to the historic
relationship between these two concepts. Moreover, there is an
urgent need to systematically and critically think through
“technology and difference” together, as a pair.
Whether one frames it as technology and difference or (though
not the same, surely) difference and technology, it remains a
complex, albeit understudied, connection. While both parts of
this expression have been explored in Western literature –
philosophical, anthropological, historic, literary, cybernetic,
biological and so on – they have rarely been explored together,
with a few notable exceptions. Leaving the question of “why” to
the historians of ideas, this editorial addresses two main
questions: first, what, fundamentally, do the concepts of
technology and difference reveal and what role have they have
played in Western thought and beyond; and second, what is the
relationship of art to our understanding of technology and
difference. Any analysis that we undertake here would be
necessarily limited, not only by the lack of space, but also by
(desirable) acknowledgment of the specificity of the language in
which it is written and thought through, with all its obvious or
unintended consequences. One should also see the following
points exactly as questions, openings for a future discussion,
rather than theses or theoretical imperatives of the topic at hand.
TECHNOLOGY AND DIFFERENCE REDEFINED
What is technology? According to Stiegler, technology has come
to be “the discourse describing and explaining the evolution of
specialized procedures and techniques, arts and trades – either
the discourse of certain types of procedures and techniques, or
that of the totality of techniques inasmuch as they form a
system: technology is in this case the discourse of the
evolution of that system” [1]. By its very definition in Western
tradition, *techne* is tied to its carrier, its maker, most of
the time understood as “human” [Ed. note – as the last letter of
the word “techne” is Greek, and thus unreadable in this textonly
format, it has been rendered here using only standard
English characters]. It is a skill, something one acquires,
practices and, in that sense, can be a tool or an instrument.
When we say that it is tied to a human, the reverse is correct
as well: the human (especially “upright” human – see Marx, among
many others) is made by its tool, hand tool, in particular.
Human and technique form a system. Thus, *techne* is an
attribute, as well as a defining essence of human.
As such, in Western tradition, *techne* sets itself as a
differentiator to what the human is – its memory and history
(writing, language, database), its soul (mobile, self-creative
principle, everything that technical is not, according to
Aristotle) and not only to its self, but also, and always, vis-ˆ-
vis “the rest” of its being in the world (establishing,
measuring levels of difference): the human from natural,
cultured from barbaric, human from animal and from plant,
animate from inanimate, such as automata and machine. However,
as Stiegler, following Leroi-Gourhan, argues, far from being an
“invention OF human,” the technical *invents* human, so much so
that the entire discipline – anthropology – is foregrounded by a
close relation between “the *ethnic* and the *technical*.” And
indeed, unlike the conventional view, that through technology
humans master nature, here we have an argument that anthropology
can be considered as technology – especially in its methodology,
in its main focus on “how” people “make” what they are – through
language, art, tools, various ways of doing things.
We have seen, so far, that in questioning technology we come
close to the whole system of which it is a part: human, nature,
machine, society, the question of Creator(s).
If we take into account Stiegler’s argument of “technics as
inventive as well as invented [2],” the next question for our
couple “technology and difference” might be formulated as
follows: Can “technology” be subsumed under the concept of
difference? Is its “function” to enact, produce and “store”
difference? Definitely, it is one of its “realities,” especially
for modern technologies. Rather than seeing *techne* as a means
of dealing with nature, machine or other humans, we might
suggest here that it is acting as a “spacing”, a mediator
between various groupings, so that they do not collapse into
impossible sameness. This suggestion might not appear obvious in
any particular technology, though it comes to the foreground
when we consider modern technologies’ reliance on
differentiation, diversity and non-determinability. The ones
that are based on the strongest desire to unify and normalize
are the ones that are most obsessed with difference, defined by
it and the desire to “domesticate,” assimilate or annihilate it.
ART AND TECHNE
It is not accidental that this topic is raised in a publication
that is devoted to art, together with science and technology.
Many of the contributors are artists, work with artists or write
on art. Frequently in the definitions of technology, its essence
and its origin, art becomes “one more” translation of *techne*,
the “artificial,” the “man-made.” Otherwise, their difference is
traditionally established through the notions of function and
purpose: technology is supposed to be “utilitarian,” purposeful,
while art is anti-utilitarian and use-less. While deconstructing
this opposition of art and technology, their difference, as well
as their relation needs to be addressed with a new radicality,
without collapsing one into another. Heidegger asserts that
“Because the essence of technology is nothing technological,
essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation
with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to
the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally
different from it. Such realm is art. But certainly only if
reflection on art, for its part, does not shut its eyes to the
constellation of truth after which we are *questioning* [3].”
Such questioning demands a simultaneous address of two
imperatives. On the one hand, we need to question the above
mentioned definition of technology as “the discourse describing
and explaining the evolution of specialized procedures and
techniques, arts and trades,” as far as art is concerned. On the
other hand, we need to ask what kind of art works might engender
such questioning, in its own turn. The difference between art
and technology, its understanding, is probably what lies at the
heart of our specific formulation of the question: technology
and (its?) difference. It is also a question on what “other”
human might be, or has been, invented by art.
Finally, by introducing “difference” back into “technology,” we
seek to revive feminist, deconstructivist, genealogical and postcolonial
gestures of ethical questioning, a fundamental return
to “ethics,” before, simultaneously and after technocentric,
anthropological, aesthetic, scientific or metaphysical
explorations. It is essential to raise this question of
interdependence of difference and technology, especially in the
light of a new optimism that problematically propagates modern
technology as a de-differentiating force: it supposedly builds
bridges, unites, globalizes (for better or for worse), brings us
closer to become the same, based on the “code” or some other
“common ground.”
This is the first of two issues exploring these themes. This
issue starts with two essays, followed by two project reports
and a “featured artists” section. in the First, Gunalan
Nadarajan explores the history and implications of our
conceptions of “plant difference” with reference to his work-inprogress,
*Moving Garden*. In the second essay, Faith Wilding
critically discusses new reproductive technologies, with
specific emphasis on stem cell research in relation to sexual
difference. Robert Bodle presents a project report on the online
activist media collectives in Los Angeles, followed by
Diana McCarty’s critical consideration of two Berlin-based
initiatives in open source software. The “Featured Artists”
section offers selected works by interdisciplinary artists Mendi
+ Keith Obadike: *The Interaction of Coloreds*, *Keeping Up
Appearances* and *Blackness for Sale*. The second of these two
issues will include essays by Eugene Thacker and Raqs Media
Collective and project reports by Radhika Gajjala and Seda
One can find both parts, along with illustrations, at the LEA
web-site: http://lea.mit.edu. In conclusion, I would like to
thank all the contributors and express my gratitude to the LEA
editors for their patience and editorial assistance.
Learning to Eat Bugs 