Mediation and metaxý: the interval between analog animality and digital humanity
Mediation and metaxý: the interval between analog animality and digital humanity
This article examines Plotinus’ conception of metaxý – the human as interval between animals and gods – and its resonances in the work of Jacques Lacan, who implicitly retains and reconfigures the notion of the human being as a mediator. Lacan replicates this ancient narrative (humanity as caught in between divinity and animality), but does so within the context of a cyberneticism that replaces gods and angels with symbolic computation. Humanity, according to such a conception, is tacitly regarded not only as a mediator, but as that which is mediated, the subject caught within a significative network modelled on the basis of then-new systems of digital computation.
continental philosophy, media theory, Plotinus, Jacques Lacan, animality
Sutherland, Thomas
a9a8e23c-232e-47ca-9be6-abeac690bfb2
27 September 2016
Sutherland, Thomas
a9a8e23c-232e-47ca-9be6-abeac690bfb2
Sutherland, Thomas
(2016)
Mediation and metaxý: the interval between analog animality and digital humanity.
Ctrl-Z: New Media Philosophy.
Abstract
This article examines Plotinus’ conception of metaxý – the human as interval between animals and gods – and its resonances in the work of Jacques Lacan, who implicitly retains and reconfigures the notion of the human being as a mediator. Lacan replicates this ancient narrative (humanity as caught in between divinity and animality), but does so within the context of a cyberneticism that replaces gods and angels with symbolic computation. Humanity, according to such a conception, is tacitly regarded not only as a mediator, but as that which is mediated, the subject caught within a significative network modelled on the basis of then-new systems of digital computation.
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Published date: 27 September 2016
Keywords:
continental philosophy, media theory, Plotinus, Jacques Lacan, animality
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Local EPrints ID: 495013
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/495013
ISSN: 2200-8616
PURE UUID: c856d3bf-7096-4cb2-88e0-eaf5fdbde10c
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Date deposited: 25 Oct 2024 16:47
Last modified: 26 Oct 2024 02:11
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Author:
Thomas Sutherland
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