The purpose of this essay is to provide an interpretive and evaluative introduction to Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s critical media theory and to situate it with a view to understanding but also thinking beyond the limitations of an aesthetic practice rooted almost exclusively in conscious, language-based thought. It begins by examining the way in which Berardi conceptualizes the techno-social paradigm emerging in the passage from late industrial society to semiocapitalism (a form of capitalism based on immaterial labour and the explosion (...) of the infosphere), connecting this to the ecological-aesthetic concerns of Félix Guattari. It concludes by questioning the prospects of poetry to forge lines of escape from the determinism of techno-linguistic governance, suggesting, by way of N. Katherine Hayles and Donna Haraway, that extra-linguistic, nonconscious resources may provide a broader and more viable theoretical palette for conceiving of indeterminability beyond, behind, and in the interstices of a complex digital ecology. (shrink)

This article explores the shadow side of transhumanist aspirations to transform humanity using cognitive enhancement technologies (CET). The central problem concerns how the desired transhuman anthropogenesis alters the ethical capacities of the human person. Focusing on the intersection between autonomy and equity, the article posits that inequity enhances individual autonomy for some at the expense of others, hence degrading collective autonomy. This process is already unfolding under neoliberalism, as analyzed via Byung-Chul Han’s theory of psychopolitics. Han’s psychopolitics reveals how the (...) imagined increases in autonomy brought by CET would not yield an authentic enhancement of autonomy, but rather result in further undesirable permutations of humanity. It would erode autonomy while increasing inequity, thus degrading empathy and solidarity. Franco Berardi’s critique of semiocapitalism nuances Han’s theory in support of collective autonomy and an anthropogenesis guided by contemplative empathy. Conjoined, they amplify the possibilities for alternative therapeutic forms of transformational CET. (shrink)

Transversality occupies a central place in Guattari's thought, appearing in his early writings on institutional analysis and on through to his final work, Chaosmosis. Transversality is thus particularly pertinent to understanding Guattari's critique of semiocapitalism and his goal of re-imagining forms of institutional subjectivisation as a way to free the unconscious from structures of lack and the desire for punishment, the very structures upon which capitalism relies for its reproduction. If there is one institution that has taken advantage of (...) semiocapitalism's ability to mask its role in the reproduction of capitalist subjectivity, however, it is the contemporary neoliberal University. This essay thus brings transversality to bear upon the question of the University in semiocapitalism, focusing on the discourses that speak in defence of the humanities. Though defences of the humanities are intended to argue for the humanities’ usefulness in contemporary society, transversality exposes such discourses as the speech of a ‘subjugated group’ whose only effect is to reinforce existing structures of lack and punishment. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 1, Page 55-66, February 2022.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 1, Page 55-66, February 2022.