Immanuel Kant treated the success of our epistemological, moral and aesthetics judgements as fait accompli, but at the same time retained the schematism as its mysterious ground. Essential to the architectonic of modern subjectivity, the schematism is the spatial patterning of time by the imagination that ultimately allows us to connect a concept to an intuition. Schemas like number, a dog, or a triangle function like mediators that pre-structure experience and regulate how something appears to us. Yet even though the hierarchy of faculties shifts between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment, these books only present the most rudimentary outline of what renders subjectivity possible. For example, why did Kant not begin from an original synaesthesia, but from a heterogeneity of domains of experience still waiting to be synthesized?
Twentieth century philosophy has generally tried to follow Kant by ‘forgetting’ the schematism, that is, by faithfully describing its cognitive and normative achievements. However, authors such as Heidegger, Adorno, Deleuze, Simondon, and Stiegler have emphasized that subjectivity, even in the modest, anti-metaphysical guise of philosophy, remains ignorant of its own preconditions unless it reckons with what for Kant remains ‘a hidden art in the depths of the human soul.’ Posing the question of the schematism once more means asking what is it, beyond what is already intelligible or sensible, that makes us think in the way we do? And also: To what extent does this make our apparently autonomous thought inseparable from a kind of stupefaction, or even enchantment?
The sounding of the soul is not just a cognitive, but in the first place an aesthetic and political problem. Kant’s acknowledgement of depth indicates that the schema-producing activity does not just occur in the head but in objective reality, where we are always already beyond ourselves. This demands a return to the critical question of our modes of (meta)schematization: What are the corporeal, cultural, political, and technical schemas that animate us? How do new media, forms of artificial intelligence, and digital money get a hold on our souls today? And where does the free and wild creation of schemas that could break their spell occur?
Schedule Day 1 Friday May 26th Programme
11:00 – 11:10h Welcome + intro: Sjoerd van Tuinen
11:15 – 12:40h Lecture: Christian Lotz Respondent: Ryan Kopaitich
14:00 – 16:00h Workshop #1 The Architectonic of the Soul (four 10min talks, interspersed with discussions). Participants: David van Putten, Sander Tuns, Lorenzo Vicari, Riccardo M. Villa
16:30 – 18:00h Lecture: Daniel W. Smith Respondent: Georgios Tsagdis
Evening Lecture
20:00 – 21:30h Miriam Rasch
Respondent: Sonia de Jager
A partial testimony of a highly automated subject
We’re all subjected to the patterned recognition of data technologies. Categorised and targeted, we’re called out and treated as automatons with no mind of their own. Our data floats on the surface of our bodies, ready for appropriation and extraction by profit-driven technologies. What hides within is of no consequence to the algorithmic readers. How to speak up from that crumbled notion of being? If everything we say is in line with what is to be predicted, how do we let the excess of ‘the fifth quarter’ (Tom McCarty) pour out? In this fictionalized / performative / poetic lecture, Miriam Rasch reads the partial testimony of a highly automated subject and asks what it means to listen. Being targeted by algorithmic and data technologies may in the first instance bring out the desire to join, share, voice, and opine; then shift to withdrawal, silence, or even an awkward shying away; but might end with a listening stance. A state of curious not-knowing, rather than the matching of expectations or a confirmation of what is.
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This event is organised by Erasmus School of Philosophy + Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics, TU Vienna + V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media. Find more information on the official page.