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Copyright

Robert Rosenberger

Published On

2024-10-16

Page Range

pp. 97–120

Language

  • English

Print Length

24 pages

4. The Activist Potential of Postmodern Phenomenology of Technology

  • Robert Rosenberger (author)
Chapter of: Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology(pp. 97–120)
In this chapter, Robert Rosenberger suggests that one of the implicit or explicit tasks of a phenomenological philosophy of technology should be to contribute to the goals and aims of political activism. In this sense, his chapter concurs with more general developments in the phenomenology tradition towards a critical or activist phenomenology. He argues that postphenomenology provides a fruitful starting-point for an activist phenomenology because it proves three avenues that can be mode directly relevant to political debates in general and political activism in specific: (1) the notion of technological mediation enables to understand how the political context as well as the relevant political actors are co-shaped by technological developments, (2) the notion of multistability helps revealing the alternative ways in which technologies can be used other than their dominant stability, and (3) by investigating how our perception in general is mediated by the hidden political assumptions of the technologies that we use routinely.

Contributors

Robert Rosenberger

(author)

Robert Rosenberger is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and is currently serving as the President-Elect of the Society for Philosophy & Technology. His research in the philosophy of technology explores the habitual relationships people develop with everyday devices, with applications in design and policy. This includes lines of research into the driving impairment of smartphone usage, the educational advantages of computer-simulated frog dissection, the roles of imaging devices in scientific debates, and the critique of hostile design and architecture (especially anti-homeless design). His edited and co-edited books include Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human-Technology Relations (Lexington Books, 2015), Postphenomenology and Imaging: How to Read Technology (Lexington Books, 2021), and the interview book Philosophy of Science: 5 Questions (Automatic Press / VIP, 2010). His polemical mini-monograph is entitled Callous Objects: Designs against the Homeless (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).