Post-Digital Life-Politics

With the thematic focus "Post-Digital Life-Politics", the Research Unit Sociological Theory combines questions at the interface of digitality, sociality and sustainability. Post-digitality refers to a state in which digitality and sociality have become so intertwined that they are difficult to separate as distinct spheres. New questions thus arise for politics of living and the possibilities of alternative practices and their structuring (with reference to A. Giddens' concept of life politics). The program builds on anthropological and neo-pragmatic theories of contemporary French philosophy (among others L. Boltanski and L. Thévenot: On Justification, B. Latour: An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence, P. Descola: Beyond Nature and Culture). From a (political)-ontological and practice-theoretical perspective, the question of alternative forms of life and cosmologies is raised. These can or should lie beyond a productivist naturalism (keyword: modern industrial society) and an emerging digital analogism (keyword: cybernetic control society).

 

The research program is sketched in outline in the following articles:

– Lamla, Jörn (2022): Künstliche Intelligenz als hybride Lebensform. Zur Kritik der kybernetischen Expansion. In: Friedewald, M./Roßnagel, A./Heesen, J./Krämer, N./Lamla, J. (Hg.): Auswirkungen der Künstlichen Intelligenz auf Demokratie & Privatheit. Baden-Baden: Nomos, S. 77-100. [Open Access].

– Lamla, Jörn (2021): Die symbolischen Ordnungen des Konsums – und die Fallstricke produktivistischer Soziologie. In: Lenz, Sarah / Hasenfratz, Martina (Hg.): Capitalism unbound. Ökonomie, Ökologie, Kultur. Frankfurt/Main; New York: Campus, S. 283-299.

 

On Sept. 16, 2022, the department contributed to the inaugural conference of the Kassel Institute for Sustainability with a panel titled "Negotiating Sustainability in Post-Digital Life-Politics." The abstract of the panel and the presentation slides are available for download here.