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    AE Ee) ETT An International Journal of Contemporary Philosophy g 7 7 SESE Nye a ee eA ErA EWC rel era a ere eM ed CHRISTOPHER WATKIN Ricceur and the Autonomy of Philosophy: A Reappraisal SPECIAL TOPIC: LEVINAS TODAY re LGL Uy ETN eM CUE IN ReM RAV eOoie Mele aCe Re aed pre catty Levinas on Language and the Ethical Status of the Philosophical Question JENNIFER ROSATO Seu eu ee eae snc BOOK REVIEWS GIOVANNA BORRADORI ease eae Mee aOR Ree) og joer Tera DOI: 10.5840/philtoday20145224 Responsiveness and Technology: On Touch and the Ecotechnie— From Aristotle to Jean-Luc Nancy KASPER LYSEMOSE Ansrract: The line drawn in this paper is a long one, even far-fetched. It goes all the way from a phenomenology of touch beginning with Aristotle, and from there it will not be finished before it arrives at our present technological condition —a condition for which the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy has given us the word ecotechnie. The title of this drawing will be responsiveness and technology’ as it connects exactly these two phenomena, Not in such a way, however, that the paper begins with respon- siveness and ends with technology. Rather, the line will begin with their intricate and intimate connection and then unfold until this connection is wholly exposed. And so the paper begins with a technical responsiveness to be found in touch; and it'ends with a worldwide responsive technology—which will in a sense prove to be without end. Key worns: Responsiveness, technology, touch, ecotechnics, Aristotle, Jean-Luc Nancy I. TECHNICAL RESPONSIVENESS et me begin with the notion of technical responsiveness’ and pose two ob- Le questions to unravel it: What is responsiveness? Howis it technical? ‘To the first question we will seek an answer in a phenomenology of touch taking its point of departure in Aristotle’s De Anima. In this treatise on the soul—or on life, as we should perhaps say today in order to avoid certain assumptions we have come to think of as ‘Cartesian’—in this treatise, then, we find a number of significant claims about touch. I begin with two of these claims.! a. Animal life in general is constituted by touch.” b. Human life specifically is characterized by an exact touch. © 2014. Philosophy Today, Volume 58, Issue 3 (Summer 2014). ISSN 0031-8256. 345-365 346 Kasper lysemose [Aristotle claims that the sense of touch i the sole necessary sense forall animal life. Ifone of the other senses is over-stimulated the seuse vigan will be destroyed. “Too much light destroys the eyes; sounds that are too loud destroy the ear I, how- ever, something similar happens to the sense of touch, the whole orgunism dies." For an animal to be alive’ therefore means ‘to be in touch: This pertains also to thurman beings who may be regarded as a specific type of animal. However, the touch of human heings is exact as is no touch of any other animal, says Aristotle. ‘Of course in saying this, Aristotle ventures into that familiar mode of anthro- ology which thinke the human an hacic of the animal. This is a theoretical field ‘with many pitfalls. In this battlefield, the repeated drawings and erasings of the line of dernarcation have left behind a long—and, I should probably add, vio- lent—trajectory. New attempts will undoubtedly remain in dispute. But there will be new attempts. We can be fairly sure ofthis. Our being with-the-animal seems constitutive for us humans—perhaps even more so than being thinking thing. In profound meditations on the animal—or rather ou'the animot —Derrida has thus paraphrased Descartes to the effect of saying: [follow the animal, therefore I ‘am. follow it meaning at the same time that | am behind It, chasing it; hat T walk by its side, together with it; and that I am in front of it, succeeding it. In ‘sum,‘the animal and P’afe all around each other. And itis a question whether T can be at all, without following ‘the animal? Can ‘T let‘the animal be? 1 donot want to explore this delicate question further here. Let it suffice to say that the way Aristotle follows the animal is atleast not without some sophistica~ tion, We will notice that he does not distinguish the human being from it as is usually done. He des iut say that the human beingis an animal with something added on top of a common animality, something which specifies and dignifes it ‘as human—be it reason, freedom, language, morality or some such. No, Aristotle says thatthe difference lies in that basic dimension which is most common toll animals. The difference in other words lies in touch. In consequence, the straightforward hierarchical structure of life-functions that we quickly perceive upon a first reading of De Amina is strangely iutet~ rupted This hierarchy implies that lower functions condition higher functions. But there are some important intersections in this continuum. The fist one 1s between vegetative and animal life. These two life-forms share the basic func- tion of nutrition, As animal life, however, has this function in another way—by locomotion rather than by roots—everything which comes on top is modified. ‘And itis similar at the second intersection, that between animal and human life. ‘They oo share a basic function, namely touch. But the human touch is exact. BY implication the human lifeform is, although still animate through and through, altered pervasivety. 10 the extent that it Itss die sane funetiono ao other animals. ithas them in a different way because it already touches differently. And since Responsiveness and Technology 347 touch is the element of being-alive, we can say that human beings are in fact dif- fercntiated not duc to some on top quality, but in their very mode of being alive Notably, thisis a universal claim. Aristotle is speaking about ‘the human be- ? Needless t aud, such universalism will encounter scepticism—for instance from contemporary cultural anthropologies which have highlighted the vast dif- ferences in particular human societies. What nevertheless encourages us to stil speak bluntly about ‘the human being’is that we can do so, following Aristotle, on the strength simply of the human being’s being alive. Surely all human beings share being alive! The proliferation of human life-forms does not contest this On the contrary, perhaps this proliferation is exactly due to a specific form of, being-alive,ie..a specific form of being-in-touch. Perhapsit is the exact touch of human beings that opens this life-form tothe diversity so meticulously described in empirical forms of anthropology? To sense how this may be, we will of course have to consider more closely: what is an exact touch? Whats it that exactitude does to touch? There is no reason to hide that the short answer will be that it makes touch responsive. In order to make this conclusion tenable, we will have w proceed a lite slower diough Let us first of all not interpret Aristotl’s claim about the exact touch as an empirical claim about acertain number ora specific design of nerves and cells.Letus rather interpret it as a phenomenological claim. What then does it mean? Maybe we are inclined to think that it isa matter of differences. And T think itis. However, not in the sense of an ability to differentiate in a very detailed way on the continuum, of traditional tactile registers such as those of cold and hot, wet and dry,soft and hard. rongh and smooth. and soon. Why should we think that humans excel in this respect? And even if they do, why should it be important? No, I would suggest that the difference at stake is that between toucher and touched.’ Its this difference that the exact touch makes explicit. And let me add that with this claim, we have already travelled all the way from Aristotle to a thinking of touch in proximity to Jean-Luc Nancy. So let me pause and qualify this claim little. In all touch there is both a touching on something and a being-touched by something. This is equally so whether the toucher touches himself or touches something else, Accordingly, the toucher is otfered to himsett both as the one touching and the one touched. I is important to notice, however, that he is not offered as a two-in-one. That isto say he is not frst a toucher which then brings about a difference between touching and being-touched. There is no such prior toucher who could ever be in touch before this difference. The reason for this is the phenomenological evidence of reversibility we just quoted: in touch there is. lays both touching and being-touched. Accordingly, we will have to say that the touchr is offered to himealf in an originary deferral between touching and being-touched.* Now we use this word deferral, instead of difference, in order to ‘mark out that touching nd being, touched are separated, yes,but stillheld together 348 Kasper lysemose in a tension. We need to stress this, as itis not two different experiences—the experience of touching and the experience of being-touched—but one, in tsell deferred experience.” If we were to interpret it as two different experiences, we ‘would again violate the claim of reversibility. Touching and being touched there- fore come together, but they never coincide. This deferral or non-coincidence is not what is specific to human beings, though. It is constitutive of touch as such and belongs in a general phenomenology of touch. The specification is that the exact touch of human beings makes this deferral explicit. I therefore ask again: ‘what dues it nicau w make such an explication? In order to answer this question we will need to take one step further in the phenomenology of touch we have just embarked upon. If touch does not come from within—from a being-in-touch prior to its taking place—then it happens always on the outside. Even more, it happens not only on the outside, but also always from the outside. And so touch is pervasively in exteriority. This at any rate is the idea we find in Nancy's Corpus when he writes: ‘To begin with, have to be in exteriorty in order to touch myself.And what | touch remains on the outside. | am exposed to myself touching myself, And therefore—and this is the difficult point—the body is always outsideon the outside. Its from the outside... The sul is the being outside of a body." In touch there is only outside then, never any inside. Let us entertain this idea. It suggests that no matter how deeply touch may penetrate into a body, al it will ‘encounter s very convoluted exteriors." And this, valid for all touch, will be what the exact touch makes explicit. Itunfolds convoluted exteriors—drives them out and measures their extension." In this way the exact touch apens the body to the exteriority of itself And if being-in-touch is being-alive, as Aristotle claims, then the exact touch puts life in the open. However, what this explicated being in-the-open—or being in-exteriority—amounts to is still not altogether clear. Maybe we can approach the matter with the observation that Nancy’ think- ing of touch is @ deconstruction of touch, This would seem a mere classificatory and somewhat peripheral observation. But we find ourselves right atthe heart of the matter, as soon as we appreciate that decomstructiuns hese is not a theoretical discourse opposed to other theoretical discourses, for instance a phenomenology of touch. The suggestion is—and to my mind we may still call this suggestion phenomenological —that touch itself deconstructs touch when itbecomes exact. “To follow this suggestion, we must note that touch is a phenomenon that veils itself And what it veils is its own exteriorty. This is why we usually think of touch as interior and immediate. Touching with exactitude, however, unveils ‘exactly thie exteriority Itie a deconstruction in the precise sense that everything comes apart." But itis not a deconstruction in the sense that it somehow anni- hilates the phenomenon in question. On the contrary it only shows that in touch Responsiveness and Technology 349) everything is outside of everything. It shows, in a phrase often used by Nancy, the partes extra parte. ‘This immediately gives rise to the question of unity. What holds touching and being-touched together as one experience? After all, do we not need here a being-in-touch which differentiates itself into touching and being-touched as soon as it touches something? Or, to paraphrase Kant, must I not presuppose a being-in-touch capable of accompanying all my touching? At least, if this is not granted we are surely justified in asking what then holds touching and being- touched together. And to this fair question Nancy gives the most obvious and ‘most difficult answer: nothing. Indeed, this to my mind is the core of Nancy's thinking of community. ‘Acommunity is always community of those who have nothingin common." Having nothing in common is the strong reason for being together—if we dare call it a reason. Perhaps we should rather call it a passion. In any case, it is the predicament of having nothing in common which exposes us to each other as we could never be exposed had we a given and secure reserve of sense in common, ‘What weare exposed w licteis precisely each oder’ predicainent This ucaus that none of those who have nothing in common knows what to give toeach other. And ‘when someone nevertheless gives something —a word, a smile,a blow or whatever ‘gift —he sill always aso gives this: that he does not know what to give. Whatever sense is communicated, what is also communicated therefore isthe interruption of sense. And thisis what makes for community —not the operative sense which signifies something, but rather the inoperative openness to sense.'*I cannot of course pursue Nancy's ontology of community or of being-with here—let alone its implications for political thinking. I merely want to make the observation that for Nancy this thinking apparently begins already in touch, as strange as it may sound. And, I might even add, it also never leaves touch. Rather, it extends it.” ‘The thingis that for Nancy being outside ofeach other partes extra partes does not pose the problem of community, but shows exactly what itis. The co- of community is implied in the ex- of exteriority as he writes at une point" And this is precisely what is at stake in the exact touch. The exact touch deconstructs touch, as we just said. It shows that there 1s no prior being-in-touch which unites touching and being- touched. What unites them in experience and as experience is their interruption. And what their interruption interrupts is exactly any prior sense that could have prevented their falling apart. Asitis,they are apart.And this iswhat makes them come together in a community that will always be coming,” Interesting for uss that Nancy goes on to describe this mode of community as responsive.” The exact touch is responsive to the interruption of sense. What- exactitude alwaye alco moacures this: that no measure is exact ‘enough. It therefore exposes us to the immeasurable, And what it promises when 350 Kasper lysemose it touches is the communication of this interruption of all measures. As Nancy ‘writes, there is a response from one touch to another This response ... might be described, with the etymology of re-spondere, asa pledge, promise given in response qo a deinand, to an appeal: the different touchings promise each other the ‘communication of theit interruptions. ... This “co-respondence” disengages itself from signifiation.” 1 do not pretend to have spelled out this notion of responsiveness, But a rough idea will suffice for nove. We will have the opportunity to speak more about it shortly The next thing to consider is why and in what sense we should qualify this responsiveness as technical. And here we find some clues in Derrida’s On ‘Touching —Jean-Luc Nancy. In ‘eed view Nancy is the greatest thinker of touch since Aristotle, What in patticular distinguiches him in this respect is that he places éxvn at the hheart of touch:® The relation even to our own body is technical from the very outset —which firstof all uzcaus that there ia no body which is properly‘onr own? ‘Onthe onehand, there is no proper body preceding the intervention of téxvn-On the other hand, the appropriation of the body succeeding this intervention will remain haunted by it. No touch can make the body return to itself in interiority. Rather, it will always defer the body again. Every touch puts the body outside itself in still new ways. ‘What Derrida undoubtedly recognizes in this approach is that Togic of the upplemen’ which he himself had previously developed in much celebrated readings of Husserl, Rousseau and Plato.” Let us take Rousseau, Whereas the ‘dangerous supplement Rousseau had spoken of implied an origin lost in adrift of supplements, Derrida logic entails an originary supplementation’ The para~ ox of such a logic—if we state tin abstracto to begin with—is that the second comes first, but nevertheless remains second. We easily recognize this logic in the very expression ‘an originary supplement? For a supplement is something ‘added. It is added to something which was there before it. Here, however, there is nothing atthe origin and thus no origin to add w. The supplement is thus added to nothing, Nevertheless it does not itself become an origin. It does not occupy this vacancy, but remains a supplement. By implication this logic invites us to re-conceptualize our notion of origin. "To speak of an originary supplement is an attempt to do just that. It means that there is not some origin that is lost or enriched in a process of supplementa- tion. Itis rather that inthis abandonment of any origin there isan abandonment to abundance. To give a hint in this direction. let me draw attention toa passage where Nancy addresses that being, according to Aristotle, is said in many ways (ToNanéie, Aeyerax). Nancy writes: “Tt so happens that ‘abandon! can evoke Responsiveness and Technology 351 a profusion of possibilities, just as one abandons oneself in excess, for there is no other modality af ahandan”™ If we try to follow this hint. we arrive at the idea that what makes room for excess is exactly that there is no origin, Such an ‘excess, then, will not grow forth from an origin. In this sense it will not be an ‘excess of something. Unlike in Plotinus there is no ‘One’ which spills over, but just spilling over, Os to use Derrida’s word here: there is dissemination—there is a'spreading out’™* If we go on naw and consider touch by this logic ofthe supplement,a téxvr) here would mean that the body supplements itself originarily in every touch. The ody therefore is not an origin. Rather, touching is a spreading out which makes the body. Every touch is a téxvn of the body. It brings it forth in a profusion of still new ways, And if we ask what the sense of this téxvn is, we will have to an- swer that there is no the sense of téxvn. There are as many techniques as there are senses. And the reason for this is that téxvn precisely isthe dissemination of sense—the dissemination of every sense and in all senses of sense.” Accord- ingly, these technically created senses have no common sense. However, we can also say that dhs is cxactly what all theae aenace have in common. Even if there is no common sense, there might stil be a common sense of having nothing in common. And thiss in fact what I would lke to call responsiveness. Responsive- ness is responsive to having nothing in common. Being responsive means being, passionately drawn by this withdrawal of a common origin. To respond here will always be a téxvn, It will be so because téxvn is precisely the power that oper~ ates—no, I should rather say itis the power that in-operates—in that space lelt open by a withdrawal of something in common. And if the exact touch is where this withdrawal happens, then the body, constituted in such a touch, must be, as Derrida writes,“open and essentially friendly to the techné:”® Tadmit that as of now all this is, on my part at least, still only an attempt to catch the drift of certain ideas in Nancy's and Derridas difficult discourse. In order to get a better grip, find it helpful once again to go back to Aristotle and pursue another line of thought from here on. ‘Ata certain point in De Anima Aristotle introduces a thought experiment.” ‘At stake is the mediation of all senses. That mediation iy aevesout yin the vase of sight is clear. Vision is obstructed if we put the sense-object directly on the sense-organ. In the case of touch, however, we are easily Ied to believe that there is no mediation. Here | apply my skin directly on some other surface so that noth- ing comes in between. Aristotle thinks contrary to this appearance. In order to ‘make this tenable he asks of us to imagine our body tightly covered ina very thin artificial skin. Obviously we will beable to touch through this skin, What we need to da in arder ta comprehend the mediation of touch. according to Aristotle, isto think of our own body as sucha skin. The body is a medium of touch through and through. The difference is of course—and this is aso the reason why touch hides 352 Kasper lysemose its own mediation—that the medium here is not external to the body, as is the ‘case in the other senses, The body is a medium that has grown wether with us. Having arrived at this notion, Aristotle speculates further: what would happen if the external medium surrounding the body, namely ai, should grow together with us in a similar way? In that case, Aristotle says, it would appear to us as if ‘we perceived all sense qualities—sound, colour, smell etc —with the same sense organ. That is to say, if there were no exterior medium, we would not be able to differentiate between the different senses, It would beas if we had butone sense- tigauby which all kinde of cence were perceived As itis, we can differentiate the senses that have an external medium. Regarding touch, however, we cannot locate the sense organ because itis not differentiated from the medium. From this thought experiment we can draw two implications. The first one, which Aristotle himself addresses, is that we actually cannot tell whether touch is ‘one sense or many senses. Itis very possible that what we call the sense of touch is the undifferentiated rest of sense. Indeed, the fact that we perceive so many different qualities by this sense may indicate just that. This would imply touch to be a kind of proto-sense. It would be a sensible substrate out of which the senses have developed. Or perhaps it would not even be a sense at all, but rather ameta-sense: the very sensibility ofall the senses then, ie.,our very ability to be affected? As Nancy writes: “In a sense ye ‘but what sense—sense is touching’ ‘Bearing these considerations in mind, the second implication—an implica- vn Aristotle docs not mention—is a further step in the thought experiment, For it seems now that a certain question almost suggests itself, What would happen af the medium of touch were cateinalized? What would happen ifthe rest that sve still call'the sense of touch’ were differentiated into a profusion of senses? Is this what has happened to us today? Indeed, this is the cue I wish to take from [Aristotle here in order to return to it in due time. For now,we will ust emphasize the tollowing, The exact touch makes explicit that touch is mediated from the very outset. It makes explicit that the touching part and the touched part can never coincide—even in the case of the so-called self-tanch Tn this way. the exact touch opens the body to its own exteriority. Or, as we might also say it opens the body to the réxvn, Because what this equally ‘means is that the exact touch opens the body to the possibility of externalizing the ‘medium of touch. It does so because it finds that the body itself is already outside itself Pursuing this possibility and no longer just asa thonght experiment, but as an actual historical development—we will come to witness the unfolding of the technical responsiveness’ which we have now found in touch, into a‘respan- sive technology? Our guiding questions will be: What happens to touch in this process? What happens to senses And perhaps ultimately. what happens to"? Responsiveness and Technology 353 II. Responsive TECHNOLOGY As we have just heard, the body is “open and essentially friendly to the techné” We might even say that the body isthe first technical object. It would he frst then in the; sense: that it is due to the technical relation to “our own” body that we can entertain technical relations to extra-bodily objects —and thus extend the creation of sense, Speaking of extension, it will be necessary to note, however, that the extension at stale here isnot the straightforward one that we have become accustomed to associate with philosophy of technology. Thus, already in 1877 Evuot Kepp viewed telnical objects essentially as a projection of boy organs. And this idea has remained the same, even if it has meanwhile been transposed {nto mote cognitive domains such as in Andy Clarks theory of extended mind.” Itstill comes down to the suggestion that technological objects enable us to do what we already do—only better, faster and more of it. ‘The extension we are speaking of here is not an extension in that sense— neither of body nor mind. Itis rather an extension of a technical relationship that the body has to itself. And this elation isnot one nfextensinn Qnite the contrary, it is a relation of exclusion if by exclusion we understand literally an exit from the closed. As we have seen, this is what happens already in touch. Already here the body is excluded from itself in a touching and a being-touched with noth- ing in common—with ao common ground. What sat stake in the question of -téxyn is the extension of this exclusion. As Nancy writes: “Technique extends a withdrawal of the‘ground;"and to this he adds that“the most visible part of our history consists in this extension.”® This suggests that the exclusion of the body 1m touch 1s extended with technical objects; and further, that this extension has a history that unfolds before our eyes as these technical objects themselves undergo an evolution, What I would like to do now is to address the contemporary state ofthis process. ‘To do this I draw attention to Gilbert Simondon's book On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects published in 1958. At that time the discussion of technology took place under the general impression of cybernetics.” A widespread notion wae that technical objects would become automata atthe pinnacle oftheir evolution. We find this notion in Arendt, Gehlen and Adorno just to mention a few prominent figures from different corners of the Uneoretical landscape. The German proto-cybernetician Hermann Schmitt gave a concise account of the shared assumption when he wrote: Inthe frst [stage], that of the tool, the physical energy necessary for labour and the required intellectual input still depends on the subject. In the sec- ‘ond, that of the machine. physical energy hecomes abjectified hy means of technique. Finally in the third stage, that of automata, technical means make dispensable also the intellortval input ofthe subject. With each ofthese steps, 354 Kasper lysemose the objectification of goal attainment by technical means advances until the goal we have set ourselves is accomplished, inthe case of wate, withowt ‘ur physical or intellectual participation. In automation technique attains its ‘methodical perfection.* \Whathappens when machines becomes automatais that not only physical labour but also thinking is delegated to the machine—if by thinking we allow ourselves to denote for a niument the ability to navigate by way of self-regulation. What automata do according to the standard cybernetic account is that they enter into 4 feedback loop with their envirounient. To stick with the text book: example: a thermostat programmed to keep 20 degree Celsius ina room reacts to temperature changes in the environment. The environment then changes accordingly. upon ‘which the thermostat reacts again and so forth. This is of course a very simple principle. But itis possible for it to assume complex forms when the kine! of in- formation to be processed is multiplied and the program diversifies into various sub-programs. Then we get cybernetic machines and cybernetic systems. Duc to their alleged tenvlency to automation such machines and systems animate utopic as well as dystopic scenarios. Either they set man free as they ‘unburden him from labour —cognitive as well as manual—or man will become their slave. While Schmitt himself highlighted emancipation, the dominant view ‘undoubtedly is the Rousseauian one: man loses himself in the technical and hence dlangerous supplement. What willbe left of man isa replaceable—peshaps even a ‘wholly superfiuous—appendix o the great machinery. When it comes finding harsh ways of expressing this, we are not overly surprised that Adorno takes the prize, for instance when he writes:"Even what difes from wealuivlogy in man ie how being incorporated into it as a kind of lubrication’ Be that as it may with this bleak depiction—the point is that we find the dispute about technology typically sitmated between the utopicand dystopic extremes. And this is precisely where Simondon's intervention takes place. ‘What Simondon detects i that the underlying notion of automatism fails to capture the evolutionary tendency of technical objects. Surveying these objects {n 1958 lic proposes instead a notion of indeterminacy: What has happened to technical objects in the course oftheir evolution is that their indeterminacy has become prevalent. Hitherto technical objects have concealed this indeterminacy. ‘And as long as this was the case, the traditional conception of technical objects ‘could be maintained. In essence this conception amounts to the strict separation between sense and téxvn, The corresponding interpretation of technical objects is the instrumentalist one. Technical objects are utensils. They are basically just ‘supposed to serve a purpose. And we devote attention to them only when they are broken, Accordingly, they are inferior toa sense which comes from outside of the technical ahject. When technical objects become full-blown automata what are en rani “the anal we have set ourselves, as Responsiveness and Technology 355 Schmitt writes. We are thus left with the impression that sense ultimately relies neithci vt wook ns on thinking but on pure decision. Techntcal objects Dindly carry out orders which are in fact issued just as blindly. And again, the perfection of these automata lies only in that they work. Granted,a technical object that does not workis frustrating. Butas frustrating asitis, Simondon counters that itis not the technicity of the technical objects that reveals itself here by its absence. In fact there is nothing less technical than an object that just works! The perfection of the technical object lies on the contrary in indeterminacy. And the restriction of this indeterminacy is samethingimpaced on technical objects from the outside, for instance out of economic, social or pragmatic considerations. Simondon writes: ‘Automatism, and that use of it inthe form of industrial organisation which we call automation, has an economic or social, rather than a technical, sig- nificance, The real perfecting of machines, which we can say raises the level of technicality, has nothing to do with an increase in automatism but, on the contrary, relates to the fact that the functioning of the machine conceals a certain margin of indetermination. If this notion of indeterminacy seems strange, itis because we usually think of technical objects as basically transparent. We think we ought to know them since itis afterall we who have created them. This'ought; however,is dubious, Not only does it shortcut the complicated relation between the'we’ who may very well know in some sense and the individual user of whom itis safe o say thathe does in fact know very little if anything at all about how a given technological object works. What he perhaps does know is what tis tor. But also it we focus on this knowledge instead, the determinate character of the technical object here relies on a context ‘of use. To consider the technical objects purely as such means that these objects become obscure and ambiguous rather than transparent and ready-to-hand. If they are perceived in a true mentalité technique, as Simondon calls it, they do not have the perfection of Zeug. bu rather the openness of Halbzeug.” ‘To sum up: what we learn from Simondon is that the evolution of technical objects occurs as a suspension of constraints on their indeterminacy. According, to his prediction, therefore, technical objects will increasingly come to expose their indeterminacy. Meanwhile this prediction has become an obvious state of affairs, whereas the idea of automatism has become obsolete.” Indeed, if ‘we louk at it in retrospect, this idea appears as the last attempt to think along the traditional separation of sense and téxvn—ie,, to insist on the technical ‘object as being “merely” technical, as it were. But there is nothing “mere” about the technical objects underscoring the contemporary technological condition. ‘They are not automata leaving to their user just the role of a dictator who may only decide to switch them on or off. The objects in question do not come with. A fivad menaram Th Ihincte Ard nat 356 Kasper lysemose such objects, as Simondon emphasizes. They do so because contrary to automata, ‘which just run their course, indeterminacy allows precisely tor connections. The ensuing ensembles therefore assign rather the role ofa conductor to the one en- gaging with them, writes Simondon. And, as he depicts it, far less than just using, hhis ensemble, a conductor enters into a co-responsive engagement with it.” We need not decide here how appropriate this suggestive metaphor realy is. What {s important is tha it makes us consider the fllowing: what is going on when a technical responsiveness, uch as we have found itn the hurnan body, enters into co-responsiveness wih a 1espuusive technology? Tnorder to address this question, we need to remember thatthe body isitself the first technical object. It is the paradigin of an open object. This openness is what the exact touch of human beings makes explicit. For it makes explicit that the body is always outside itslt his has immediate consequences for the ‘meaning of being alive. If touch constitutes the being alive of the body, then the exact touch discovers that life cannot contain itself in the immanence of itselt Discovering this inability to contain itself, we can say that the exact touch—which accordingto Aristotle isthe hallmark of beinghuman—is equally the experience ‘of bcing in excess.” Even in what we might conceive as the most intimate and private self-touch imaginable, the human body is exposed to this excess.* And the inevitable determinations of what iti that itis exposed to always come too Tate to absorb it. The excessive character of excess means precisely that it is not an excess of something. Let me elaborate alittle on this latter point. Every living body is impassioned. Life imposes itself as needs, desis, wishes, wauts aud sv forth, Dut the human body has opened itself exactly to the inability of wholly capturing what itis im- passioned by,and by that same token also to the inability tobe whully captured by anything. Itis impassioned by an origin that withdraws always when we try to point it out. Its impassioned therefore always from somewhere else, as Bern- hhard Waldenfels says. If being impassioned means being alive, then this kind of passion can be described as being excessively alive, Using a well-coined term fivin Arnold Gchlen, wo ean say that life imposes itself as an Antriebsiberschuss, ie, as an abundance of incitement. This entails that life imposes itself without giving direction or orientation. Accordingly such an abundance i the abandon- ‘ent of the human being to its primary and most peculiar predicament: that of rot knowing what to do with itsell. And this is what calls for a response. Or, tn be more precise, this experience of being addressed by a'too much’ is already to be responsive. To be responsive isto have experiences like‘Thave to do something, Tknow not what and'T have too much to give, I know not where to put it? As a genuine open object, the human body thus comes with an irreducible indstcs ‘minacy. Iris impassioned, but abandoned to the -xéxvn of making sense of this, Responsiveness and Technology 357 This is why we find that the indeterminacy of the body is usual une ngs tage orentaton net begs een appeaningl Naan beings and things. Fora thing —a npéyjta—is essentially what unburdens one from the sheer perplexity of not knowing what to do with oneself. Itis somethi youcan do something with, an affordancein recent idiom. Aharnmer for instance isa material inscription of possible gestures and actions: hold here, strike in this ‘way hit this, repeat! And the ensemble of such things which refer to each other prscfbessequncsof tion In Being and Time such a mutual reference forms jogether the context of significance that amounts to a world, In a later phrace from the “Letter on “Humanism,” being in such a world is described as ‘eingin an lent that enables The corresponding experience wl be one of pore Marked however notin the sense of doing what one needs, desire, alee wishes to do. This is not the power at stake lere. Rather, itis the power of bein able to need, desire, want or wish something at all. In all these and ether casei about giving the'too much of affecta direction and an orientation. And although this in a sense does not accomplish or fulfil anything yet, itis by far the great accomplishment and fulflment. Indeed it isthe greatest accomplishment and fulfilment pertaining to being human. A little tongue-in-cheek, we can perhaps say that itis nt the ability todo something but the ability tobe someone, What should be emphasized, however is not who or what we come tobe, bat that we came tobe someone—that i to say, we are addressing here simply the ability to exist. In Sein und 7et Heidegger spoke of this ability which in German he called Seinkonren potently el inthe English trensation).*Letusremember here that the analyoio of Da. sein iain fact the meticulous aud uuuplea anialysi uf cone single and very simple action, the action of being-there. Davin nahing perform this action—to succeed or to fail. Da-sein is the being-enabled to being- there and cannot ose this ability. And yet being there isan action Iis something thats always enacted, When all our actions fi, when they do not accomplish hat we et out to dois the one action we cannot bu aecomplish. And thi ‘heessence of power tis Seinkonnen i “ we question is what happens to this Seinkénn ings beg dost echniiy which acarngtoSimonon manera Will they stl form an enabling element It seems rather tat they wil simply por ran beings ight back thir prdicament‘Tothe question what do? open objects donot give a straight ansver. They are something like dispose of indeterminacy. What we have therefor i situation whet hun bags pa ier to corespond and co-appear together wih objet as indeterminate =. will have to ask, what can possibly come out ot such mutual 358 Kasper lysemose In order to addrecc this question it might seem appropriate to be more explicit about the technical objects we are talking about. However, pointing to specitic Objects will easily lead s astray if we do not remember that what is of interests the openness of these objects. Indeed, one could say that open objects are more pen than they are ubjects, What this more precisely means is thatthe interests jn the networks in which open objects appear together with other open objects in configurations and re-configuratious made possible precisely by their inde- terminacy. And so, whatever specific device we might focus on it will not be an isolated abject whichis of intrest tous. we might say tat tis rather what we can ‘do with it But that is not exactly it either. This would be the interest we have in a technical object to the extent that it precisely does not disclose its openness, for jnstance the hammer as we typically perceive it. No, what is of interest is whatever device_or indeed just: thing—as long as it is regarded as an open object, And this means in a mentalitétechniqueto consider that about the thing which invites toa doing without saying what itis we can do, Open objects are objects which Seem tay, me an you togothor we will able! This is normally enough for us to engage with them. But if someone should happen to pause and ask what iis Wewall beable to do, the only answer they give is: come on already. let us find out! 1 would like now, in a terminological sense, to call this kind of invitation design. In doing s0 invoke the catchphrase of the Dutch Sloterdijscholar Henke ‘osterling who said “Dasein is design’™* And indeed, what is design® Design is, alluring, shiny and appealing surtaces. These surfaces do not say what itis they invite us to do. They simply invite. Dasein, then, is design in the sense that Dasein. theans always being addressed in this way. Design 1s n every instance a Kind of portal which lads into the element that enables.Or,t finally use Nancy’s word at this point where it seems to me most appropriate, it is a portal to the ecorechnie (Of course Dasein is never outside of this element. We will have to imagine these portals therefore as so many passages within the ecotechnie, The ecotechnie set reustbe vuusidered ubiquitous. But even thongh ubiquity isnormally inconspicu- ‘ous, it is precisely this ubiquity that has become so obvious today that no one can help but notice I. [Atleast a part of the phenomenon in question is what is sometimes called “ubiquitous computing? And contrary to being inconspicuous this has become major theme in contemporary, so-called new media theory.One ofthe prominent aandastute observers ofthe new media, Mark B.N. Hansen, clescribes an important feature of what is currently happening as“the exposition of the general ability to be affected {Empfindungsvermgen|” He explains that “media no longer mediates ur conses, rather they mediate —if mediate is til the right concept at all—the very ability to be affected and he calls this “the elementary technical creation of the ability to be affected” Responsiveness and Technolog chnology 359 _ilmotose mys in the highly inicte and daboate discourse in new ‘media theory nor am Tin a position to make a qualified wontiibution.° What I souk odo tof a perspectit on this scours allowing my ntl emir ft oritsesto me—reingon Hansen exertse— tat ‘we are witnessingis in. way the becoming eal of Aristotle’ thought experi- ‘ment. fnew media are ndeed“the exposition ofthe general ability tobe affected” they seem precisely to be the artificial skin we encountered here. Aristotle had suggested such askin inorder for us to comprehend the body as the medium of touch. Think ofthe body as if t were an artificial skin! That was the challenge. Now, having learned to think of the body in this way, what seems to be the task today is the reverse. What we have to da isto think of the artificial skin, hich has meanwhile become ubiquitous and abl asthe téxvy of bodies . agatha extended the median of uch beyond the bod Make amount oa simulation of touch. What we ae talking about is nota digitally enhanced glove and a robot hand on the other side ofthe globe pou ‘cup of coffe and transiting back eneations similar vo those I fel when 1 Pour a cup of coffee with my own hand. What is at stake isa dissemination of the sense of touch. New media have made explicit that theres no the sense of touch, but rather a profusion of touchings. They have extended the inter-surface of touch, and thats to say the surface between touching and being, touched. If we thought that this surface ran along the skin ofthe body so that this was always the border Between inner and ote we can now se that ts in fat th iter src sel that bios awe he wonder perhaps Bete: sth In the ecotechnical world the various ways in which bodies can be inter- rupted-in-contact—and that eto say the various ways they can be in touch—is exe the body icons in ou tres Huse in then the cena nd et bods rl of wh. Tis ho ‘The ecotechnical functions with technical apparatuses, to which our every partis connected, But what it makes are our bodies, which it brings i Wold and inst the sytem, thereby cetng ous bodies a more ite mor proliferating. more polymorphic.morecompressed.ore“amassd” and more “zoned” than ever befor... [T]he tchndis one ofa sharing of bodies, or of their compearance: the varions ways ta make room for the tracings of reality along which we are exposed together, in other words, neither presup- posed in some oer subject, nor pos: posed in some particular andor universal end Bat exposed, body tbody edge wedge touched and spaced eri 0 longer having « common assumption Dua having only the betweenus of ur tracings partes extra partes? 60 Kasper lysemose Let me try w Lonlade. Touch, for Nancy always figure of partes extra partes ‘And this means that touch does not come from within, collide with something in order then to return to ilsell. It does in fact not come from anywhere at all Nor does it ever return. It comes from nothing. Andit disseminates. Of course, we must insist that from nothing comes nothing, These is no thing that could ever be Created from nothing, No one would be so foolish as to deny this. However, what tomes from nothing is a world, And that is exactly it! What the +éxyn of touch rreates from nothing is a world. That the world is created from nothing is pre- Cisely the reason itis an ecotechnical world. For the ecotechnical world is word “where everything is outside of everything, The creation of this world, therefore, ‘ould never be a work if work means to make something out of something. Its {ite simple: you cannot make something out of something where everything s sutside of everything, The only way to create here is by being exposed together. ‘The lesson (o be learned is that being together does not rely on working and is not a piece of work. It might have appeared so for a very long time. But today it is almost impossible o yo on being deceived by this appearance The contemporary ensembles of open objects have made the ecotechnical character of the world plain to see. Here touch is extended with open objects connected in ¢lobal networks. And this does not produce something, Rather it exposes us toa ‘Worldwide withdrawal ofa common ground. Accordingly, itexposes us w nothing burt our being exposed to each other—sharing having nothing in common. We ‘might say it lke this: téxyn in-operates nothing between everything that exists. If thie should be an conclusion. we should perhaps add to it the observation that what is left when working does not produce something anymore (works of ait, as it were) is traditionally called labour. But labour changes its sense in the ecotechnte, Iv is not mere biological life preserving itself in a self-enclosed circle of labour and corisumption.* It could not be, since in the ecatechnie there is no mere life. In the ecotechnie there is the non-immanence of life, and that is to say there is existence. And the sense uf labour corresponding to existence is self- preservation of a different kind than that preserving mere life.* “Ecotechnics ‘pens labour to sense, inoperates labour to the infin uf suse? writes Nancy ‘And so what goes on inthe ecotechnical world is not that we have begun to pro- duce sense instead of producing things. Surely this change has happened in the So-called Age of Information. But even 50, that will till be a matter of work. No, at stake is us becoming responsive to the infinity of sense—and by that same token becoming infinitely responsible for sense. Perhaps ital comes down to this: exvn isnota noinjarg,buta mpakic.” But iv laburious praxis. And ifwe should ack what it accomplishes, we would have to say the following: réxvn is no longer separated from sense as ithas been by long trajectory technol- a gesture reaching atleast from Plato to Husserl In Responsiven 1e55 and Technology 361 ‘ends. What meanwhile has become obvi i lle has become obvious is that téxvm inscribe it heat of sense Hwee notin such way tht vy Becomes pein senee ‘Texvn is not the praxis of making some operative sense. Despite 10 milion emails circumscribing the earth per minute and one billion dollars being transferred every day. what so-called communication technology and a worldwide monetary system umately do is thatthe n-operate or un-work ene befor or eyes nh In a world where every surface invites us to experience sense without telling us hat sens illome outfit, wearexposed tthe infinity of senseTexvn isthe praxis of this exposition. Du Leiig capuscd in th sis way is simply what existence means. Itis the sense of existence, And so, far from paralyzing our eink in a mutual indeterminacy, contemporary té omer , contemporary téxvn delivers us more so than before tothe element that enables. This s what it accomplishes. And therefore oxy the nal analysis isthe pra of existence. As Nancy writs and shall conclude with this clea to what ts we must think"ILisamater of getting at the sense of ‘technology’ as the sense of existence?” Aarhus University Nores ‘The author wishes to thank the Danish Counc ba lhe Danish Coun fo Independent Research, Humanities, aa antl sipport an he eseach-roup taster Anthropology. Ingiring Human, Ronen Thome Sa Want Lie henge asm yng) ‘th Ue al oss Tin om te ats aber To develop these claims in the context of De Ania vile take themras blunt cin seringasa pomotdeprtre neh! See iste, DeAnimaseg «35 For Deanna lah , eB.» \nima I rely on Uber die Seele (Griechisch- Deutch), trans. Horst Seidl (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1995), ‘ * See Aristotle, De Amima 421a. For a further analysis of the exact touch, see Kasps Lysemose, “The Exact Touch: Some Remarks or \”. 27 (ortheoming Yrenoee 7 m the Soul” Iride 27 (forthcoming 4. SeeArsoe, De Anima 35 5 We : cay el ere Hass famous teen“ Bod erga ental En Hse es Perainn arehre cians enone Pipi in Rd Re and André Schuwer, vol. III of Edmund Husserl Collect anh r Academic Publishers, 1989), 158, aces Vis Dosceshe aves ‘ See Jacques Derrida, The Animal Thai See Jacques Detida, The Animal That Therefore Am.trans, Davi Wil (New York: Kasper lysemose (362 eed 4. Ntahy this difference applies to all tactile registers—even beyond the traditional cones as Iwill try to convey below. : . 8. Theword feral is used here terminologically to designate the figure of wo that ‘elong together but donot coincide Alternatively one might speak «gf ispats- ment, time lag or syncope. 7 9, See Bernhard Waldentls, Phenomenology of the Alin, trans. Alexander Kozin and “anja tle Franson IL Northwestern Univesity Pess2011) 31) to, Jean-Luc NancyOnthe Soin Gorpustrans Richard A. Rand (New York Fordham Univesity Prose, 2008), 128-29. : 11, See Jacques Derrida, On Toudhing —Jan-Luc Nene, trans. Christine hizarty (Sten ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 297 vas 12, Theve are the two connotations of exact thatthe reader should have in mind: div- Ing something out in the open, exposing it, and measuring someting relents arsting t tothe point ees Cee, The Galland te Repose wan. Anne A Davenport Ne York: Fordham University ress, 2004), 87. ; 1. See Jean-Luc Nancy," Vou des Strultion?in Di ecvnnlagerhe Redingung, 4. Erich Hod (rnkfort am Main: Sohekamp Verleg 201) 38-72, __-Thephrase heres taken no rout Nancy bt from Alphonso Lingis, The Community of 2 feng Cnn Sonn nda Ue Ps sr Naney’s concept ofthe inoperative’ in general, see Jean-Le Nancy, The Inapera- Dress 1991) specfaly related w the question of téxen and sens, see Jean Li Mtge Gente of te Wray ibret (Minneapolis: Univers of Maan cota ess 1997),41, 98,102, 2 wo Joan Luc Nancy, A Finite Thinking Simon Sparks (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 26. 17. I shall return fo ths extension in moment. 18. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Creation ofthe World or Globalization, trans, Francois Raffou! went David Pettigre (Albany State University of NewYork Pres, 2007),73 As we Shall son se, the ideas, farther, that the re- of responsivness is implied in the sp-of community. It seems tome that with these two implications we have a helpful idactical formula when approaching Nancy’s thinking 7 19, See Giorgio Agamben, The Comung Lommunty, xs Mishecl Hard (Minneapeti University of Minnesota Pres, 1993). “nepontas 29, Nancy addresses the concept of responsiveness most expliily in “Responding to Existence” in Finite Thinking, wherehe also connectsitto community or being with (pp. 288-29), OF tremendous hep in geting a the esponsivencs in community fied Roberto Esposito, Communitas The Origin and Destiny of Community, ans. Timothy Campell (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univesity Press, 2010), especially introduetion entitled “Nothing in Common? 1-19. “cena 2a, Jean Lue Nancy, The Muses, ans Peggy amut (Stand, CA, Stanford University Press, 1996), 23. be A vir hino—Ioan-Luc Nancy, 96-97, 286-87. Kesponsiveness and Technology 363 23. See, respectively, Jacques Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, trans. Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, IL: Northern University Press. 2011): “Plates Pharmacy in Derrida Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 61-17 ;and Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). For encouragement to recognize the‘ logic of the supplement in Nancy see Roberto Esposito, mmunitas: The Protection and Negation of Lif, trans, Zakiya Hanafi (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 150-51. 24, Jean-Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence, trans. Brian Holmes et al. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University ress, 1993), 37 25. would lke toheartwo thines in the term'spreating onthe diccominatinn Nerrida speaks of, ean unreserved expenditure, wastefulness and excess, andthe idea of|

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