The Good, The Bad and the Grimdark: Why Technological Mastery Precludes Collective Self-Mastery

Abstract

This paper argues that a modern technological society devoted to socially determined ends is impossible. This “Grimdark Thesis” assumes a posthumanist “New Substantivist” theory of technology whose upshot is that modernity renders technical entities abstract and highly repeatable. Abstract technology is functionally indeterminate and counter-final, lacking either intrinsic or extrinsic teleology. In particular, I argue that extrinsic teleology – e.g., socially determined ends – is foreclosed by modelling a technological society as a Hyperagent – a maximally mutable being capable of arbitrary changes to its technical or material substrate. Finally, I consider whether this technological “Outside” can be reintegrated into the normative space of reasons as lack or negation, along the lines explored in contemporary Hegelian/Lacanian theories of the Subject. I argue that there are no grounds for assuming that the barred subject assumed by Hegelians/Lacanians is a transcendental invariant, implying the Technological Outside is a subtracted but not a constitutive lack.