Machinic Extimacy (Paperback)

"The machine is neither an intimate part of me, nor is it other. Instead: it is that within me which belongs to the other. The machine is ex-timate." This book attempts to challenge traditionally held theories of technology assuming a clear-cut distinction between the machine and the human. Heralded by both instrumentalism and determinism alike, the belief in technology as a radical other to subjective becoming has seduced current debate into an apocalyptic deadlock that ultimately presents us with a false choice between salvation and destruction, technophilia and technophobia. Here, a psychoanalytic theory, derived from the work of Jacques Lacan, may be introduced as a method of critical intervention. The machine is re-imagined as no longer the fantastic locus of final overcoming, but an originary supplement to the negotiation of being. Not least Martin Heidegger's famous lecture "Die Frage zum Wesen der Technologie" as well as its profound influence on thinkers such as Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard may thus be critically explored from a Lacanian vantage point.