Papers by Arto Artinian
Marxism & Sciences, 2024
SIYAVEŞ AZERI (SA): The year 2024 marks the centennial of independent Soviet philosopher, Evald I... more SIYAVEŞ AZERI (SA): The year 2024 marks the centennial of independent Soviet philosopher, Evald Ilyenkov. The following questions below were sent via email to the authors.
1) The first question will be a very general one. It seems as if we are experiencing a “revival” of Ilyenkov’s ideas; there appears to be a growing interest in his philosoph- ical conceptualizations and methodology. What is so significant about Ilyenkov’s ideas that may be responsible for such a revival?
2) The next question will be in a sense the continuation of the previous; in what sense and how relevant/actual is Ilyenkov’s take on philosophical questions? Does he have anything to offer in the face of contemporary philosophical and/or social and political issues and crises?
3) In his philosophical work, Ilyenkov addresses several problems that traditionally belong to different fields of philosophical study, from machine-thinking and the AI to the questions concerning the relation between philosophy and sciences, the “uni- versal,” the “ideal,” problems of epistemology, methodology, the relation between ethics and science, Marxism, humanism, general education and the education of peo- ple with disabilities, to the criticism of positivism, so on and so forth. What in Ilyen- kov’s philosophical approach keeps together these apparently different fields and questions? Does he suggest that there is an essential bond between these diverse problems? If so, what that would be in his formulation?
Situations, 2023
How are we to imagine a movement towards communist society? This is a fundamental question and on... more How are we to imagine a movement towards communist society? This is a fundamental question and one posing inherent difficulties in answering. Among Marxists, when asked this question, we often reply
automatically: Marx himself did not offer detailed answers or outlined blue- prints. Such is the nature of the problem posed by this question: the answer will present itself during an actual political movement towards commu- nism. To liberals and other determined anti-communists such “non-answer” exposes the untenability of communist politics as a whole: it’s very premise is “utopian”, because it is impossible to clearly outline in a mechanistic way a cause-and-effect chain “from here to there”.
What about the Soviet Union? Couldn’t the history of that society offer a con- crete answer to our opening question?
Marxism & Sciences, 2023
What are the implications of the current fundamental transformations in capitalist society? Above... more What are the implications of the current fundamental transformations in capitalist society? Above all, there is the emergence of a new form of political subjectiv- ity. The dominant forms of liberal subjectivity are being replaced by the emerging sub- jectivity of digital social objects (DSOs). What are consequences of this? Succinctly, there is a shift from neo (or, ordo) liberalism to socialized cybernetics as the new ideo- logical grounding of current capitalist society. The imposition of socialized cybernetics is transforming generalized proletarianization, leading to the further radical impover- ishment and reduction of human life, and its transformation into new political catego- ries. This new phase of capitalism (or perhaps, a moment where capitalism is approach- ing its systemic limits?) is centered on biological beings with human capacities, rather than human beings, a condition of stunted, dependent subjectivity more accurately de- scribed as Homo Datum. Capitalism is moving into a condition, where human beings are collapsed, reduced to, and made interchangeable with cybernetic digital social ob- jects. The political is now the pseudo-political, having been incorporated into the posi- tivist (non-dialectical) logic of the capitalist economic structures. Homo Datum denotes the now-nominally human, biological being with human capacities, which for the pur- poses of the capitalist economy functions as a particular instance of a digital social ob- ject. Crucially, social relations are now not necessarily human-to-human relations (even in their alienated forms) but are approached by capitalist economic structures and their subservient political forms, as particular cybernetic (mathematical) functions “adapted” in their application to social life: as datum. What are the consequences of this for polit- ical struggle? One approach centered on Soviet Marxists like Evald Ilyenkov suggest we must think of politics through the fundamental political question: what does it mean to be human? Centering our thinking about the political through this question, and from within this Ilyenkovian approach, can help in our struggle against the ideological struc- tures that make sense of Homo Datum pseudo-subjectivity, and the related society of digital social objects under capitalist class control.
Sociological Problems, Jun 2021
(This is a draft English translation of the article, which was published in Bulgarian, by the jou... more (This is a draft English translation of the article, which was published in Bulgarian, by the journal "Sociological Problems", in its 2021/1 issue.)
What are the consequences of the foreclosure of the political in an un-free form during the epoch of supermodern capitalism? The mature form of the society of control contain fundamental transformations: the socialization of the formal-mathematical logic, digital social relations, and Homo Datum, as a new type of political subjectivity.
Institute for the Radical Imagination, 2020
Manifesto co-authored by the editorial collective of the Institute for the Radical Imagination: M... more Manifesto co-authored by the editorial collective of the Institute for the Radical Imagination: Michael Pelias, Peter Bratsis, Bruno Gullì, Josh Kolbo, Kristin Lawler, Jeremy Glick, Arto Artinian, Tony Iantosca, Dominic Wetzel.
This reply speaks to Robert Latham's " arc of capitalism " frame by confronting ideological intra... more This reply speaks to Robert Latham's " arc of capitalism " frame by confronting ideological intransigence as a barrier to Left augmentation. It suggests a focus on " warlike relations " as a way to move past this. Politics as war is a lens that incorporates the everyday, " events on the street, " within questions of labour power, more specifically by linking abstract systemic flows of the reproduction of capital and its political apparatuses. The focus on politics as war is a terrain over which to more deeply contemplate the potential for a revolutionary politics against the " total liberal-capitalist hegemony. " The prism of war opens up the possibility for confronting the strategic elements of this hegemony, by attending to the mechanisms through which hegemony emerges, forms and asserts itself .
Leonardo Music Journal, 2017
Music improvisation is an act of human-becoming: of self-expression—an articulation of histories ... more Music improvisation is an act of human-becoming: of self-expression—an articulation of histories and memories that have molded its participants—and of exploration—a search for unimagined structures that break with the stale norms of majoritarian culture. Given that the former objective may inhibit the latter, we propose an integration of human musical improvisers and deliberately flawed creative software agents that are designed to catalyze the development of human-ratified minoritarian musical structures
Conference Presentations by Arto Artinian
Paper delivered at the Western Political Science Association Conference, San Diego, May 22, 2008.
Uploads
Papers by Arto Artinian
1) The first question will be a very general one. It seems as if we are experiencing a “revival” of Ilyenkov’s ideas; there appears to be a growing interest in his philosoph- ical conceptualizations and methodology. What is so significant about Ilyenkov’s ideas that may be responsible for such a revival?
2) The next question will be in a sense the continuation of the previous; in what sense and how relevant/actual is Ilyenkov’s take on philosophical questions? Does he have anything to offer in the face of contemporary philosophical and/or social and political issues and crises?
3) In his philosophical work, Ilyenkov addresses several problems that traditionally belong to different fields of philosophical study, from machine-thinking and the AI to the questions concerning the relation between philosophy and sciences, the “uni- versal,” the “ideal,” problems of epistemology, methodology, the relation between ethics and science, Marxism, humanism, general education and the education of peo- ple with disabilities, to the criticism of positivism, so on and so forth. What in Ilyen- kov’s philosophical approach keeps together these apparently different fields and questions? Does he suggest that there is an essential bond between these diverse problems? If so, what that would be in his formulation?
automatically: Marx himself did not offer detailed answers or outlined blue- prints. Such is the nature of the problem posed by this question: the answer will present itself during an actual political movement towards commu- nism. To liberals and other determined anti-communists such “non-answer” exposes the untenability of communist politics as a whole: it’s very premise is “utopian”, because it is impossible to clearly outline in a mechanistic way a cause-and-effect chain “from here to there”.
What about the Soviet Union? Couldn’t the history of that society offer a con- crete answer to our opening question?
What are the consequences of the foreclosure of the political in an un-free form during the epoch of supermodern capitalism? The mature form of the society of control contain fundamental transformations: the socialization of the formal-mathematical logic, digital social relations, and Homo Datum, as a new type of political subjectivity.
Conference Presentations by Arto Artinian
1) The first question will be a very general one. It seems as if we are experiencing a “revival” of Ilyenkov’s ideas; there appears to be a growing interest in his philosoph- ical conceptualizations and methodology. What is so significant about Ilyenkov’s ideas that may be responsible for such a revival?
2) The next question will be in a sense the continuation of the previous; in what sense and how relevant/actual is Ilyenkov’s take on philosophical questions? Does he have anything to offer in the face of contemporary philosophical and/or social and political issues and crises?
3) In his philosophical work, Ilyenkov addresses several problems that traditionally belong to different fields of philosophical study, from machine-thinking and the AI to the questions concerning the relation between philosophy and sciences, the “uni- versal,” the “ideal,” problems of epistemology, methodology, the relation between ethics and science, Marxism, humanism, general education and the education of peo- ple with disabilities, to the criticism of positivism, so on and so forth. What in Ilyen- kov’s philosophical approach keeps together these apparently different fields and questions? Does he suggest that there is an essential bond between these diverse problems? If so, what that would be in his formulation?
automatically: Marx himself did not offer detailed answers or outlined blue- prints. Such is the nature of the problem posed by this question: the answer will present itself during an actual political movement towards commu- nism. To liberals and other determined anti-communists such “non-answer” exposes the untenability of communist politics as a whole: it’s very premise is “utopian”, because it is impossible to clearly outline in a mechanistic way a cause-and-effect chain “from here to there”.
What about the Soviet Union? Couldn’t the history of that society offer a con- crete answer to our opening question?
What are the consequences of the foreclosure of the political in an un-free form during the epoch of supermodern capitalism? The mature form of the society of control contain fundamental transformations: the socialization of the formal-mathematical logic, digital social relations, and Homo Datum, as a new type of political subjectivity.