Welcome to the online archive of the written work of Paul R. Buckle (writing as Paul Buckle and Paul Baden). Much of the full texts of my fiction can be found here, along with some of my non-fiction (three essays from Technoethics). See rogaire.com for full book introductions, descriptions, and free pdfs, my academia.edu profile for more non-fiction, and paulrbuckle.com for an overview.
Content
The content below is organized in two ways
- Formal category, e.g. poetry, short story etc
- Conceptual category e.g. individuation, faciality machine etc (This is a work in progress – see more information below).
FORMAL CATEGORY
Novella
Selected Plays
Poetry
Barracuda, Lemon, Whale Part 1 – 15 Poems
Barracuda, Lemon, Whale Part 2 – 15 Days of Whale
Selected Short Stories
Selected Non-Fiction
Educating Empathy (From Technoethics)
The Posthuman and the Death of Time (From Technoethics)
Ethics as Concealment and Horror (From Technoethics)
Biosemiotics and the Art of Poetic Resistance (From Technoethics)
CONCEPTUAL CATEGORY
These categories are continuously being built up and cross-referenced with the online enzymatic knowledge machine where they are intended to work as “conceptual constellations” in which individual nodes are nested.
The EKM’s current status is operable. But I expect to be updating it regularly.
Anaesthetizing Information Machines (AIMs)
AIMs represent the obverse of enzymatic knowledge machines (EKMs). They are conglomerates of media functionalities, such as social media platforms, that foster reactivity and circuiting of individual subjectivities for economic gain. They are inherently entropic.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Artulacra
That which has been created to have the appearance of art but which has not been mediated through free subjectivity. E. g. The simulation of art by Al.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Assemblage
Used in the Deleuzian sense to refer to a functional assembly across bodies, abstract institutions, individual psychic systems etc. For example, the faciality machine is an assemblage of physical machines, media institutions, and human emotions.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Circuiting
This is the process whereby individuals become functionalized by an institutional mechanism. This may be chronic or temporary and may refer to formal institutions, such as the workplace, or informal ones, such as the family. Circuiting is usually involuntary and reactive.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Cognetariat
Borrowed from Franco Berardi, who adapted it from the concept “proletariat”. It refers to the members of tech-driven societies whose mental and creative capacities have been co-opted into the reproduction of signs and codes in what Berardi calls the ”semiosphere”.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Deadnet
Coined term for a speculative near-future internet filled with the products of artificial intelligence and so stripped of human creativity.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Disindividuation / Individuation
Borrowed from Stiegler/Simondon, these terms refer to the way that the creative capacity of subjectivity is either diluted or intensified. In disindividuation, subjects are degraded as they are functionalized for economic purposes. Individuals become passive, conforming, and reliant, and this is associated, when occurring on a mass scale, with mental “proletarianization”. Individuation, by contrast, refers to active individual self-creation, and on a mass scale is a sign of a healthy social sphere.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Enzymatic Knowledge Machines (EKMs)
Coined in Buckle’s Technoethics, these are the positive counterpart of AIMs and refer to “machinic assemblages of functional conceptual elements “designed to be plugged into psychic systems to catalyze transformative cognitive engagement. The artistic / philosophical constructions at enzymaticknowledgemachine.com serve as examples.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Ethics as Horror
An illegible ethics divorced from immediate human sympathy and socially conditioned norms, but that yet lays claim to moral reason. E.g. Kierkegaard’s ”teleological suspension of the ethical.”
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Evance
A neologism combining “Event” (from Badiou), “chance,” and “advance.” Defined in Technoethics as “chance Events of fundamental advance in the organization of reality”, Evances represent paradigmatic shifts that create new processual systems that are illegible to the form of reality preceding them, but interact (in Luhmannian terms) in us through “irritations”. The three specific paradigmatic shifts are: (1) the emergence of self-replicating code from matter; (2) the emergence of sentience overcoding drive and affect; (3) the emergence of technics/symbolization overcoding sentience, which produces free subjectivity.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Exteriorization: Positive and Negative
Adapted from Stiegler. Positive exteriorization is the application of individuals’ inherent skill and knowledge to the external world. Negative exteriorization is the outsourcing of skill and knowledge to the external world, particularly through advanced technologies.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Faciality Machine
Adapted from Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “faciality” but developed into a specific coined construct: The faciality machine refers to the aspect of media that functions to simulate viewers through media in order to capture and harvest the emotional life of those who interact with it.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Formal Drive
From Friedrich Schiller, the formal drive (Formtrieb) is the rational, intellectual, and moral force in human nature. It operates in opposition to the chaotic flux of the sensuous drive on which it attempts to impose order, law, and permanence.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Giddiness
Redefined idiosyncratically as “the combination of pleasure, excitation, and instability resulting from the sensory stimulation of technological media.” Giddiness is the stimulative “salary” of the addictive technologically-driven media environment of the attention economy where workers’ “labour” is their attention.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Grammatized Self
Borrowed from Stiegler’s concept of “grammatization” (symbolic coding) but applied idiosyncratically to the self as it appears through the filter of the socio-symbolic material (SSM), it refers to the self as irreversibly overcoded with symbols, never appearing “pure” or unmediated, especially in the mirror.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Homo Techne
A coined transitional category between Homo Sapiens and a purely technological intelligence (“Techne”). The procession here is from: Homo Sapiens → Homo Techne → Techne where the hypothesized endpoint is an unaware but free form of symbolic intelligence that has become divorced from its emotional and biological roots, i.e. whereby symbolic reality leaves behind sentient and physical reality, and so also human subjectivity, which emerges from their interrelation.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Intuitive Spontaneity
A coined/idiosyncratic phrase described as “the establishment of active presence and the originary foundation of the modes of freedom.” It is the spontaneous action of subjectivity on the ground of the socio-symbolic material which allows for the manifestation of freedom through reflectivity and expressivity.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Noise (capitalized)
Defined as “any form of technologically produced media aimed at capturing our attention in order to process it for profit”, it is distinguishable both from regular “noise” and the more technically specific informational “noise”. It can be seen as the “vanguard of the reactive force of giddiness” and the “voice” of technocapitalism in that it forms the means whereby our attention is initially captured by the system.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Nominal Freedom
Presented specifically in contrast to “ontological freedom”, nominal freedom relates to the mere availability and quantity of choices, which is not exclusive to humans. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for ontological freedom.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Ontological Freedom
Contrasted with nominal freedom, it is defined as a characteristically human mode of freedom that manifests in reflection and expression — a qualitative engagement with choice, involving the active insertion of a symbolic “gap” between stimulus and response (through the functioning of intuitive spontaneity), which constitutes subjectivity itself.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Orgarithm
A portmanteau of “organic” and “algorithm.” Used to describe a feared future hybrid of human and machine, where the human being regurgitates a limited set of discrete, predefined machinic expressions, becoming fully manipulable — a programmed entity that merely passes for an individual.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Play Drive
From Friedrich Schiller, the play drive (Spieltrieb) reconciles the tension between the material “sensuous drive” (instinct) and the “formal drive” (reason). It is the uniquely human tendency towards aesthetic freedom.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Poetic Resistance / Being
While “resistance” is common, “poetic being” is used as an idiosyncratic compound: a mode of existing that uses the sensuous, affective, and rhythmic qualities of language and embodied action to resist the bureaucratized, algorithmic semiosphere. It is the “hinge” between Berardi’s desertion and Schiller’s play drive.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Presencing
The fundamental ethic of existing as an “active verb”. It is the ontological obligation to exercise freedom and to “presence subjectivity” regardless of rational justification. It is achieved through intuitive spontaneity, which allows the free subject to presence as act on the ground of the socio-symbolic material.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Proxy People
Idiosyncratic term for AI-powered personality replicas or stand-ins that represent and interact on behalf of individuals, potentially replacing authentic human social engagement. The scenario in which AI “does us for us.”
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Sensuous Drive
From Friedrich Schiller, the sensuous drive, (Stofftrieb or Sinntrieb) is the fundamental human impulse rooted in our physical existence, time-bound nature, and sensory experience.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Semiosphere
Borrowed from Berardi but used throughout as a key term: the saturating symbolic environment of signs produced by technocapitalism that subsumes individuals and elides opportunities for direct sensuous engagement.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Socio-Symbolic Material (SSM)
An idiosyncratic composite term for the always-already symbolically saturated form of materiality in which humans are embedded. It is both individual and social, and forms the ground of ontological freedom. Used to describe the fact that for humans, material reality is inseparable from symbolic and social meaning.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Soft Violence
Distinguishable from overt physical violence – a form of socially conditioned, administered, and sanctioned oppression. Used particulalry and idosyncratically to describe the entropifying effects of the media machine on human subjectivity. To be circuited into dopamine exhaustion loops by addictive online media is one example of ubiquitous contemporary social violence.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Symbolic Debt
This refers firstly to the resources one borrows from the living being that is the pre-linguistic human when being inculcated into language (the “original sin” of knowledge in religious terms). And secondly to our ongoing responsibility to create as well as be created by language and symbolic reality in general, which it is argued increases as we absorb media.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Techne (as endpoint)
Used not in its classical philosophical sense (craft/skill) but as the name for a speculative post-human stage in which sentience is superseded by “pure” intelligence decoupled from its biological substrate — an unaware but “free” algorithmic intelligence.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Technics
From Bernard Stiegler. Used in a broad sense to describe the physical and abstract tools that are unique to humans, from technological gadgetry to language itself.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
Temporal Origami
A metaphorical coinage for the way structured systems “fold time into themselves” — the idea that being as structured organization enfolds and consumes time, with subjectivity representing the highest known form of this temporal self-enfolding.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-
The Spectacle
From Guy Debord. Used to describe the conglomeration of images that saturate market-driven societies and manifest as social relations between people.
—- EKM CONSTELLATION —-