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Large Language Models, Parrots, and Children:Modelling Speech, Text, and Learning Processes
Full text linkThis essay discusses some aspects of large language models (LLMs) in 2023 that model human speech and text. Analogies between modelling language in current AI applications and learning processes in children appear in discussions of human versus machine intelligence and creativity. The anthropomorphizing perspective employed in these debates is the legacy of the ‘Turing Test’, but also the notion that animals, formerly colonized people, and machines supposedly only imitate ‘correct’ language
Scale Critique and the Subject of Technoscience
Full text linkPost-structuralism argues for the dissolution of the modern subject, especially the subject’s individuality, interiority, and abstraction from embodiment. The subject is a knot in strings of language, driven by external and unconscious forces, less the free origin of ideas and actions than a site where bodies meet flows of information. For Felix Guattari, ‘rather than speak of the “subject”, we should perhaps speak of components of subjectification’ and distinguish between the concepts of the individual and subjectivity. If the subject of technoscience bound up with issues such as the authority of climate modelling is a processual subject in this sense, then how should one think the role of scaling and scale critique in its formation? How does scalar subjectification influence the politics of scientific truth in today’s context of corporate capitalism, anti-colonial critique, and post-truth media? This talk addresses the relationship between subject formation in contemporary technoscience and the theoretical problems of scale at work in ICI’s lecture series. Drawing on the ontology and media theory of Gilbert Simondon, Woods understands scientific subjectification in terms of a tension between at least two qualitatively different scales such as weather and climate. His central example is computational climate modelling — especially the use of grids, time steps, and parameters to establish a model’s resolution. In such knowledge-political contexts, scale theory and scale critique have taken the subject’s integrity for granted in their various ways of conceptualizing ‘the human scale’ and opposing it to the imperceptible, nonhuman phenomena that lie beyond it. One viable alternative can work with post-structuralist theories of subjectivity to complicate the relation between human and nonhuman scale domains. Derek Woods is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts at McMaster University in Canada. Woods works to create dialogue between the sciences and humanities for the sake of anti-capitalist climate politics. He studies the human condition in a time of accelerating ecological crisis, including how environmental damage and restoration intersect with the production of inequality and efforts to redistribute wealth and power. With Joshua Schuster, he is the author of Calamity Theory: Three Critiques of Existential Risk (University of Minnesota Press, 2021). He has published articles about scale in relation to climate, film, and ecology in journals like New Formations and The Minnesota Review. With Karen Pinkus, he co-edited a special issue of diacritics on terraforming, which was the topic of an ICI colloquium organized by Alison Sperling in 2019. His other recent publications appear in journals like New Literary History, CR: The New Centennial Review, and Symplokē. Currently, Woods is completing a book manuscript about the ecosystem and earth system concepts entitled Trophic Time: A Media Theory of the Ecosystem. His other ongoing research takes up the cultural politics of symbiosis and eco-Marxist critiques of green technology/carbon markets. Before starting at McMaster, he worked in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia and the interdisciplinary Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College.00:00
Introduction by Marietta Kesting06:24
Talk by Derek Wood
Bildungsroman for the Baby Noosphere
No full textFor centuries, people — both misanthropes and humanists alike — have compared Earth’s life to a ‘sludge’ clinging to our planet’s crust. Stephen Hawking memorably called the human race ‘chemical scum’ clinging cravenly to a spinning rock. Is biology merely a mold or planetary fungal infection? Answering this question depends on the evaluation of the stature of sludge. After all, some slime has potentials. The Earth’s organic coating, after all, has — for aeons now — drastically transformed its planetary environment, bringing forth the unprecedented from the precedented. So far, however, this process would be best called planetary stupidity, rather than planetary sapience. However, how could it have been otherwise? No one is born wise: this is a status that can only ever be earned, and this takes time and tribulation. So, too, with any baby intelligence, no matter the scale. Folly is part of growing up. This talk, thus, asks the question: can our planet’s infant noosphere, spawned from upstart chemical slurry, ever leave its infancy? Thomas Moynihan is a UK-based author. Holding a PhD from Oriel College, Oxford University, he is currently a Research Affiliate at Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk as well as a Affiliate Researcher for the Berggruen Institute’s Antikythera thinktank. Thomas Moynihan writes about the history of ideas, which he takes to be the study of the ways worldviews transform — in often radical ways — as we learn more about ourselves and our position within the universe. Moynihan is the author of X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction, published with MIT Press and Urbanomic in 2020, as well as Spinal Catastrophism, published also with MIT Press and Urbanomic, in 2019. His writing has appeared in publications including the BBC, The New Scientist, The Guardian, Aeon, Big Think, Noema Magazine, Independent, Vice, amongst many others. He has keynoted at institutions ranging from MIT’s Media Lab to Luxembourg’s Museum of Modern Art, and has been interviewed on platforms ranging from BBC Radio 4 to The Atlantic’s Re:Think podcast.00:00 Introduction by Magdalena Krysztoforska03:10 Talk by Thomas Moynihan59:30 Discussio
Persistence:Model Asylum Narratives and a Recognizable ‘Transgenderness’
Full text linkIn recent years, autobiographical narratives by transgender migrants and refugees from Africa have emerged, such as Farah Abdi’s Never Arrive, Neo Sandja’s Right Mind, Wrong Body, and Rizi Xavier Timane’s An Unspoken Compromise. This chapter examines these texts’ geographical focus and the resurgence of the ‘wrong body’ trope, considering what the transgender asylum narrative offers to the ‘trans travel narrative’. A key difference is the lack of a safe return — what I term the ‘unsafe return’
Tyranny Is Dead, Long Live the Tyrant
Full text linkIn On Violence, Hannah Arendt argued that the eruption of violence on campuses in 1968 could be partly understood as a frustrated reaction to the excessive bureaucratic and technological mediation of (then) contemporary society. Arendt described this situation as ‘tyranny without a tyrant’. Compromised by its incapacity to recognize the experience of racially marked subjects and its condemnation of African creolity, the question animating Arendt’s analysis, namely whether bureaucratization and mass mediatization changes the nature of tyranny, nonetheless remains relevant. That question had been posed by Leo Strauss in 1948, in his reading of Xenophon’s Hiero, or Tyrannicus, which would later be debated by Alexandre Kojève. There, Strauss asserted the persistence of tyranny, which is nonetheless transformed in modernity by the capacity for totalization inherent in technology. Contemporary political theory, dominated by questions of sovereignty and the question of the decision, now finds itself in need of a theory of tyranny distinct from sovereignty — which is no longer operative. This talk attempts to contribute to that project, drawing on the Strauss-Kojève debate, as well as the anthropological archive, to ask why it is that contemporary tyranny is so obsessed with the question of private life, and especially the sexed and gendered basis of ‘family’, and the norms that might govern it. To explore that issue, it asks: What happens to tyranny in a media context defined by public intimacy, and the collapse of love and recognition? What does technocapitalism want? And how can one think about relation and recognition in a manner that can escape the pitfalls of melancholia for a once and future tyranny?Rosalind C. Morris is a writer, cultural critic, documentarian, and Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Her most recent publications are: Unstable Ground: The Lives, Deaths, and Afterlives of Gold in South Africa (Columbia University Press, 2025), and For Lack of a Dictionary: poems (Fordham University Press, 2025).00:00 Welcoming by Christoph F. E. Holzhey03:05 Introduction by Jasmine Pisapia10:46 Talk by Rosalind C. Morris1:07:33 Discussio
Autoritäre Männlichkeit/en
Full text linkDer Film Stau (Thomas Heise, 1992, 85 min) dokumentiert in schonungsloser Direktheit die Realität rechtsextremer männlicher Jugendlicher in Halle-Neustadt. Im anschließenden Gespräch widmet sich Klaus Theweleit dem Thema autoritäre Männlichkeiten. Dabei werden Geschichte und Perspektiven der Männlichkeitsforschung erörtert, die er im deutschsprachigen Raum mit seinem Buch Männerphantasien (1977) mitbegründete. Theweleit untersuchte die Selbstdarstellungen nationalistischer Freikorpssoldaten in den 1920er Jahren mit Fokus auf die Männerkörper des ‘soldatischen Typs’ und die gewaltvollen Beziehungen, in welchen sie zu sich selbst und zu Anderen stehen. Diese ‘faschistischen Körperzustände’ und ihre Bedeutung für gegenwärtige politische Debatten werden in Bezug auf den Film diskutiert. Klaus Theweleit ist Kulturtheoretiker und Autor, der mit seiner Dissertation und späterem Buch Männerphantasien (1977/78) die Männerforschung und Gewaltforschung entscheidend prägte. Sein psychoanalytisch geschulter Blick auf Körperpolitiken und die in ihnen eingeschriebenen Machtverhältnisse verbindet Literatur-, Film- und Musikgeschichte(n). Weitere Positionen in seinem vielfältigen Werk eröffnen die mehrbändigen Studien Buch der Könige (1988-1994) über Machtverhältnisse in der Kunstproduktion und Der Pocahontas Komplex (1999-2020), welche Mythenforschung im Rahmen der Kolonialgeschichte thematisiert. Thomas Heise (1955-2024) war ein renommierter deutscher Dokumentarfilmer und Autor, dessen Arbeiten sich mit Geschichte, Erinnerung und gesellschaftlichen Bruchlinien auseinandersetzen. Seine über 20 Filme – darunter Vaterland (2002), Material (2009) und Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit (2019) – verbinden persönliche Geschichten mit historischen Entwicklungen. Die Geschichte der DDR und der Nachwendezeit, das Verhältnis von Individuum und Staat sowie die Dynamik von Erinnerung und Vergessen werden beobachtend, wenig wertend und besonders eindringlich erzählt. Seit 2007 lehrte er als Professor für Film an der HfG Karlsruhe und wurde 2013 zum Honorarprofessor der Filmuniversität Babelsberg ernannt. Claudia Bruns ist Professorin am Institut für Kulturwissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Sie forscht zur Kulturgeschichte des Politischen, zur Geschichte des Männerbunds und (prä)faschistischer Bewegungen sowie zur zentralen Rolle, die der Sexualität in der Moderne zukommt. Die Verschränkungen zwischen kolonialen Rassismen und Antisemitismen in Geschichte, Film und Erinnerungskultur sind wichtige Themen für sie, aber auch eine kritische Genealogie von Europas Grenz- und Raumdiskursen. Ihre vielfältigen Publikationen umfassen u.a. die Monographie Politik des Eros. Der Männerbund in Wissenschaft, Politik und Jugendkultur (1880–1934) (2008). Xenia Müller beschäftigt sich als Kulturwissenschaftlerin mit Kritischer Theorie, utopischem Denken und Erlösungsvorstellungen und hegt eine große Faszination für Speculative Fiction als Medium zur Erkundung von alternativen Welten. Gerade bereitet sie als Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Kulturwissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin ein Seminar über Monster, Teufel und Dämon:innen vor, mit besonderem Fokus auf die subversiven Potentiale, die in Repräsentationsfiguren des Anderen stecken. Sie arbeitet außerdem an einem Promotionsprojekt zur Kulturgeschichte der Schlange im Spannungsfeld der Symbolismen von Widerstand und Herrschaft. Justus Karl Heitzelmann ist Kurator und Produzent kultureller Projekte, denen er sich als Kulturwissenschaftler mit einem besonderen Fokus auf das Medium Film widmet. 2024 kuratierte er die Veranstaltungsreihe ‘Villainous Legacies’ im TRAUMA, in welcher die Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der Rezeption queerer Berliner Filmklassiker im Vordergrund standen. Er arbeitete in der letzten Zeit mit der Boros Collection, dem Schwulen Museum, dem Kunstverein Göttingen, GSL Projects und dem Whole Festival zusammen sowie mit Caique Tizzi für das HAU Berlin, die Julia Stoschek Collection, die Neue Nationalgalerie und den Kunstverein München
Autoimmunity and Sexual Difference in Todd Haynes’s Films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Poison, and Safe
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La ragione delle Erinni:Pasolini e la «scandalosa dialettica del Terzo Mondo»
No full textIl saggio interroga il grande tema pasoliniano del rapporto tra «mondo della ragione» e «antico mondo magico» alla luce di due opere: L’aigle (1965) e gli Appunti per un’Orestiade africana (1969). Tra le due esiste un rapporto di complementarietà rovesciata. La prima è impostata su una tesi anti-eurocentrica corrispondente all’esaltazione del «pensiero selvaggio». La seconda invece parte da un’ipotesi propriamente eurocentrica: interpreta la situazione dell’Africa in analogia all’ Orestea, proponendo la sintesi tra mondo ancestrale e modernità. La contraddizione tra le due opere è apparente. Gli Appunti in realtà seguono un’impostazione logico-antilogica che ne delegittima l’ipotesi. Pur in assenza di conclusione, l’opera prelude al periodo in cui Pasolini esplicitamente ritratta il modello razionalista
Les Cahiers du cinéma face à Pasolini:Différends et embarras
No full textCet article retrace la réception de l’œuvre et de la figure de Pasolini dans les Cahiers du cinéma. D’abord considéré inclassable, Pasolini se retrouve vite soupçonné de manipulation esthétique et d’insincérité politique, malgré l’intérêt pour ses travaux sémiologiques. Entre recensions contradictoires sur un même film et silence sur la dernière partie de son œuvre, l’embarras des Cahiers du cinéma face à Pasolini révèle, entre malentendus et hantise, l’impureté provocatrice de son œuvre