Call for Papers: A Techno-Aesthetics for Contemporary Philosophy

Technophany. A Journal for Philosophy and Technology

CFP – A Techno-Aesthetics for Contemporary Philosophy

Edited by Mauro Carbone and Andrea Zoppis

As is well known, the notion of techno-aesthetics, which this special issue aims to investigate, was first elaborated by Gilbert Simondon in a free meditation responding to a circular issued by Jacques Derrida in 1982 for the foundation of the Collège International de Philosophie. The extended letter was never finalized and sent. Only after Simondon’s death did his wife Michelle transmit the manuscript to Derrida, who arranged for its publication in 1992. Despite its “zetetic” character, the text remains significant in several respects. For the purpose of this issue, it is especially relevant that the formulation of this notion emerged from the explicit demand to «revitalise contemporary philosophy». As Simondon asked at the time: «If our fundamental aim is to revitalise contemporary philosophy, […] why not think about founding and perhaps even provisionally axiomatising an aesthetico-technics or techno-aesthetics?». With the notion of techno-aesthetics, Simondon thus suggests an ontogenetic ground more originary than that provided by aesthetics and technics considered separately, pointing towards a possible path for the regeneration of philosophy itself.

The question we aim to raise in this call is therefore the following: what does it mean to take techno-aesthetics as a conceptual and ontogenetic operator for “revitalising” contemporary philosophy? Rather than framing techno-aesthetics as a specialised subfield of a pre-established philosophical tradition, this issue aims to approach it as a transversal notion capable of reconfiguring central philosophical problems concerning experience, embodiment, imagination, technicity, and culture. Within this horizon, multiple philosophical trajectories become possible.

For example, if we take seriously the encounter between Merleau-Ponty’s ontological turn and Simondonian reflections on individuation, as documented in some of Merleau-Ponty’s late working notes, phenomenology can provide a fertile field of inquiry for techno-aesthetics. From another angle, traces of what could be read as a techno-aesthetic reflection can be found in Bernard Stiegler’s work, where technics is understood as a constitutive condition of temporality, memory, and experience. In resonance with these lines of inquiry, other genealogies of techno-aesthetic thought emerge within contemporary philosophy. Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the technical reproducibility of artworks, for instance, articulate an early analysis of how technical mediation reshapes aesthetic experience and perception. From a pragmatist perspective, then, the relation among technics, aesthetics, and experience can be traced back to John Dewey’s reflections on art and experience, in which perception, action, and environment form a continuous and operative whole. From a different philosophical perspective, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s account of machinic assemblages offers a specific framework for thinking the productive entanglement of technics, aesthetics, and experience. Building on and reworking these lineages, more contemporary approaches, such as Pietro Montani’s attempt to rethink sensitivity and imagination through the interplay of technics and aesthetics, provide further developments of techno-aesthetic inquiry. From the standpoint of anthropology and cognitive archaeology, Tim Ingold and Lambros Malafouris, each from a distinct perspective, show how technical gestures and material engagements actively shape cognitive and embodied structures as well as cultural forms. Media theory and visual studies further radicalise the embodied stakes of techno-aesthetics, as demonstrated by Mark Hansen’s and Vivian Sobchack’s analyses of how technological mediation reorganises corporeality and perception. Finally, ecological and normative dimensions of technics come into view through Susanna Lindberg’s reflections on technological environments and Jean-Hugues Barthélémy’s Simondonian-inspired rearticulation of life, milieu, and individuation.

This issue of Technophany seeks to explore how techno-aesthetics can contribute to a broader reconfiguration of contemporary philosophy. What are the consequences of such a reconfiguration for how philosophy conceives experience, embodiment, imagination, invention, technical mediation, and culture? How might it reshape traditional Western distinctions between subject and object, organism and milieu, perception and action? And, in a complementary sense, how might it invite a renewed understanding of what we usually call subjectivity—whether in its individual, dividual, or collective dimensions? Through different philosophical traditions and beyond their inherited limits, this special issue welcomes contributions that engage techno-aesthetics as a critical lens through which to interrogate contemporary transformations in our relations to ourselves, to others, and to the world.

Submissions

We welcome contributions in the form of academic articles. Interested contributors are asked to submit a 300–500-word abstract together with a short biography of approximately 100 words to technoaesthetics.cfp@gmail.com

Full articles should be written in English and should be between 5,000 and 8,000 words, including notes and references. They should be submitted through the journal’s OJS platform following the selection of proposals.

For formatting requirements and the article template, please consult the Technophany submission guidelines.

Provisional Timeline:

31 January 2027 — Abstracts due

28 February 2027 — Notification of abstract selection

15 June 2027 — Full papers due

30 October 2027 — Peer review results communicated

15 January 2028 — Revised papers due

Publication of the issue — according to the journal’s production schedule