September 30

You can now watch this seminar for fee on our Youtube Channel here

In 1989, Félix Guattari wrote an essay entitled The Three Ecologies in which he attempts to account for changes in subjectivity that have come about due to scientific and technological advances which, as he sees it, has brought about an “ecological disequilibrium” that has deteriorated individual and collective modes of being. Guattari also considers political and other establishments as incapable of adequately comprehending and dealing with these shifts. To address this, he proposes a kind of holistic therapy – an ethico-political articulation or ecosophy – between three ecological registers: environmental ecology, social ecology and mental ecology.

Since the publication of The Three Ecologies, the rise of social media and its attendant technological architecture has – it seems almost facile to state – influenced the ways in which people think, communicate, live and do politics in unprecedentedways. Algorithms are used to rapidly spread disinformation and misinformation at a vast scale and because social networks are often homophile, many people infrequently encounter critical disagreement and debate. The increase in excessive media and digital communications usage has also led to new forms of social inclusion and exclusion, the most exacerbated form of which is probably the phenomenon first identified in Japan and known as hikikomori – acute, prolonged social withdrawal, which is linked to other societal variables, such as the prevalence of precarious contract and part-time work, low skill-sets and truancy. Taking hikikomori as the focus of our symptomatology, we describe in this talk what we see as a general set of symptoms of society and etiologically trace it to algorithmic ubiquity – the new form of control following on Foucault’s disciplinary societies and Deleuze’s control societies, and the new ecology of our times.

(Chantelle Gray and Aragorn Eloff)