Abstract
A modest piece of experimental writing, Ghost of Revolution is intended as a methodological tool to question the form and function (tactics) of self-critique at the interface between art and science. Half fictional, half real, the “story” revolves around a speculative, biological connection between a mother and her son in an age of genetic manipulation. The speculation adopts a mode of writing that deviates from conventional story-telling in the sense that the characters are no longer leading roles in a piece of animated theatre; instead, the act of writing focuses on the conscious movements of the textual fabric as a constitutive environment that contracts and expands, pushes and pulls discrete forces dia-logically.
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Notes
Weber, Karsten. 2022. In-vitro-Gametogenese (IVG) und artifizieller Uterus (AU) – Problemauslöser oder Problemlöser? https://www.oth-regensburg.de/fakultaeten/angewandte-sozial-und-gesundheitswissenschaften/forschung-projekte/institut-fuer-sozialforschung-und-technikfolgenabschaetzung/veranstaltungen/klausurtagung-ivg-au-pp.html. Accessed 3 May 2022.
Here, I wonder to what extent a machine’s memory functions in a way that resembles a human one, or vice versa. One of the perspectives that interests me is the interplay between aesthetics and political economy. For example, when the invention of an automaton (a chess player) inspired the invention of a textile machine, how the elements of the former’s design (e.g., the hand of the chess player, the ingenuity of the mechanical arm that moves pieces across the chess board) were translated into the latter (the automatic “weaving hand” of mechanical power looms, the picking arm that throws the shuttle backwards and forwards). In the case of the Turkish chess player, the secret later disclosed reveals a kind of pretension—“a magnificently arranged device in which a human pretended to be a machine that was pretending to be a human, a vision of fluidity, the ambiguity that characterizes the boundary between humanity and technology, between people and machines” (Simon Schaffer). This pretension also characterizes the authorship of this text, that is, it is open to interpretation whether this text might simply be a human author pretending to be an algorithm pretending to be a human. Behind this pretension, what is actually at stake? Human creativity? Job security? Or is there a potentiality of disruption that could be exploited for the good of the society? And if so, how? Is the knowledge that has been produced through the creation of machines “true knowledge” that could guide humanity for the better? Or is it misleading? For instance, the model of machine learning and neural networks—like hands that have shaped and are shaping today’s political and economic structure, they have already designed a pattern for the mobilization, distribution, and valuation of cognitive labors. This obsession with “brain-ness,” on the contrary, does not lead to the betterment of the human brain (cognitive function, the capability of reflexive reason)—the transhumanistic assumption—but through abstraction gradually boils down the social-organic fabric (the term organic here is polemic). For sure, this pretension is destructive, or a form of the self-destruction of human beings (Günther Anders). Then the question is: is it an ontological problem with technology itself? Is it like an original sin? Take digital media for example. The digitally generated image of a heroic president, a human being sitting, lying, or standing in one location, pretending to be in another location or many locations where he could speak close to the people, while in the meantime elevating himself to a position that is remote, noble, transcendental, and glorious like a god. What kind of future vision (of political economy) does this god-like avatar promise for its audience when mobilizing the totality of the brains and the bodies: to die for something glorious? Why do humans need this kind of mediation for communication, that is, designing a device in which a human pretends to be an automaton that is pretending to be a human?
The statement is a rebellion against social Darwinism which was strategically used by the early revolutionary Chinese intellectuals (from Yan Fu to Liang Qichao) to “strengthen the nation,” save the old China from backwardness, and eradicate feudal and superstitious values and customs. In the campaigns against the foot binding of women in early twentieth-century China, Qiang Qichao proposed a theory modified from social Darwinism that argued that the practice weakened the nation, since enfeebled women (who practiced foot binding) supposedly produced weak sons. Other voices from the Christian missionaries advocated and promoted equality between genders based on Christian teaching—the divine incarnation of the body. By the end of the last century, the practice of foot binding among Chinese women had been almost completely eradicated, but the debate continues whether Neo-Confucianism, a revitalization of Confucianism during the Song Dynasty, contributed to the popularity of foot binding among women. If Confucianism prohibits mutilation of the body, stating that people should not “injure even the hair and skin of the body received from mother and father,” how could the kind of perversity of foot binding be done to the mother (or daughter) who gave birth to natural bodies (with divine hair and skin) of the next generations that followed? The use of social Darwinism for anti-foot binding campaigns was perhaps the most effective, but it further stigmatized the female body and the values of mothers and daughters. In the end, with the “Chinese characteristics” of social Darwinism (as a form of socially adapted scientific faith), nobody is actually liberated. The valuation of the labor of human reproduction entered a new paradigm, tailored to the grand narrative of modernization, industrialization, globalization, and ideological propaganda. Scientism as a religious faith mediates between statecraft, political economy, and ethics. In the meantime, what changes have been observed in the perception of the body? How do the new perspectives and new sensibilities brought about by techno-science position themselves and participate in the dynamic of a revolutionary process that seems more surreal than real? Does the confident assumption that, since we have accumulated so much data from the past, we will definitely be able to advance further, provide the sense of security needed in the current time of crisis?
German Ethics Council. 2013. Opinion. The Future of Genetic Diagnosis — From Research to Clinical Practice. P.138.
Wortzel, Adrianne. Loren Baker,Damon. 2011. Place in Mind: Towards a Dynamic Memory Palace. ISEA Symposium Archives. https://isea-archives.siggraph.org/presentation/place-in-mind-towards-a-dynamic-memory-palace/. Accessed 16 April 2022.
“Levinas rejects the rationalist perspective of a bodiless mind, a person reduced to her cognitive capacities, no less than the empirical version of a mindless body, a person reduced to the external stimuli of sensations and impressions registered by the mind.” Dell’Oro, Roberto. 2022. Can a Robot Be a Person? De-Facing Personhood and Finding It Again with Levinas. Journal of Moral Theology 11: 132–156.
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This paper (including related research and its production) has been made possible under the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s German Chancellor Fellowship Programme 2021-22.
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Lin, N. Ghost of Revolution. Nanoethics 16, 323–330 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-022-00432-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-022-00432-z