Machine and Sovereignty

Yuk Hui is professor of philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam and professor at City University of Hong Kong. He is author of Art and Cosmotechnics, Recursivity and Contingency, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics, and On the Existence of Digital Objects (Minnesota, 2016).

• Contents Preface Introduction: For a Planetary Thinking §1. On the Planetary Condition §2. Planetary Thinking as Political Epistemologies §3. Search for a Planetary Politics beyond the Nation-State §4. Toward a Tractatus Politico-Technologicus of the Planetary 1. World Spirit as Planetary Thinking §5. Individuation of the Spirit as Historical Process §6. World Spirit as Planetary Thinking and the Place of Reason in History §7. Freedom as the Drive of the Transitions of Political Forms §8. Recursivity of Reason and Freedom in the Modern State 2. The Organism of the State and Its Limit §9. Spirit and the Organic Becoming of the Externalized §10. Organism of the State versus Organism of the Animal §11. The Impasse from the State to Planetary Freedom 3. From Noetic Reflection to Planetary Reflection §12. Noetic Reflection: Consciousness and Life §13. Bioeconomical Reflection: Georgescu-Roegen Reads Hegel §14. Cybernetic Reflection: Toward the Consciousness of Machines §15. Noospheric Reflection: In Search of a Planetary Freedom? 4. Mechanism, Organism, or Decisionism §16. From Political Theology to Political Epistemology §17. Machine and Organism in The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes §17. Political Epistemology in Hobbes’s Leviathan §19. Catholicism and the Logic of Complexio Oppositorum §20. The Death of Hegel and the Triumph of Political Vitalism 5. Nomos of the Digital Earth §21. First Deconstruction on the Contingency of Sovereignty §22. Second Deconstruction on the Contingency of Friend and Enemy §23. Sovereignty and the Elementary Philosophy of Space §24.GroßrÄume as Post-Static Political Form and the Problem of Pluralism §25. Giving Colonialism, New GroßrÄume, and Digital Sovereignty 6. An Organology of Wars §26. The Disproportion of Organs and the Hubris of Wars §27. From a Cybernetics of Freedom to an Organology of Differences §28. The Conflict of Tendencies and the Recurrence of Mysticism §29. The Dynamics of the Technical Tendency and Technical Fact §30. On the Organological Relation between Technology and Democracy §31. Biodiversity, Noodiversity, and Technodiversity 7. Toward an Epistemological Diplomacy §32. Acceleration, Automation, and the Prosthetic Future §33. Universality Seen from the Perspective of Technodiversity §34. Sovereignty Seen from the Perspective of Technodiversity §35. Technodiversity Analyzed via an Anatomy of Technical Objects §36. Technodiversity as Epistemological Diplomacy Notes Bibliography Index

"Machine and Sovereignty is a profound, groundbreaking, and timely call for a refoundation of political order and governance in light of current technological and ecological challenges at the planetary scale. Reinterpreting classical concepts of sovereignty and the state, Yuk Hui’s advocacy for an epistemological diplomacy incorporating technodiversity, noodiversity, and biodiversity inaugurates a new language of planetary coexistence beyond the nation-state and Anthropocene. This book is destined to become a seminal text in political philosophy and technology studies. It is not only an intellectual tour de force but also a crucial guide for navigating the complexities of the twenty-first century." -Antoinette Rouvroy, University of Namur   "Machine and Sovereignty responds to the growing call for a new planetary thinking in contemporary political culture and across the sciences and humanities. By replacing earlier theologico- and logico- settings of philosophy and the political with the technological, Yuk Hui both builds on his earlier work on techno-logic and expands it into a thinking of the planetary techno-political. This book is an important contribution to contemporary understanding of the political implications of thinking and acting in an increasingly digitalized planet." -Howard Caygill, author of Force and Understanding: Writings on Philosophy and Resistance