The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism
Heidegger, Marx, Nietzsche
- Publisher
- University of Toronto Press
- Initial publish date
- Dec 2004
- Category
- Cultural, Criticism, Social Aspects
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780802087867
- Publish Date
- Mar 2004
- List Price
- $74.00
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780802085733
- Publish Date
- Mar 2004
- List Price
- $43.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781442658660
- Publish Date
- Dec 2004
- List Price
- $37.95
Add it to your shelf
Where to buy it
Description
In The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism, Arthur Kroker explores the future of the 21st century in the language of technological destiny. Presenting Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche as prophets of technological nihilism, Kroker argues that every aspect of contemporary culture, society, and politics is coded by the dynamic unfolding of the 'will to technology.'
Moving between cultural history, our digital present, and the biotic future, Kroker theorizes on the relationship between human bodies and posthuman technology, and more specifically, wonders if the body of work offered by thinkers like Heidegger, Marx, and Nietzsche is a part of our past or a harbinger of our technological future. Heidegger, Marx, and Nietzsche intensify our understanding of the contemporary cultural climate. Heidegger's vision posits an increasingly technical society before which we have become 'objectless objects'– driftworks in a 'culture of boredom.' In Marx, the disciplining of capital itself by the will to technology is a code of globalization, first announced as streamed capitalism. Nietzsche mediates between them, envisioning in the gathering shadows of technological society the emergent signs of a culture of nihilism. Like Marx, he insists on thinking of the question of technology in terms of its material signs.
In The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism, Kroker consistently enacts an invigorating and innovative vision, bringing together critical theory, art, and politics to reveal the philosophic apparatus of technoculture.
About the author
Arthur Kroker is an emeritus professor and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Victoria. He is the director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (PACTAC).