Löffler, Davor. 2018. „Distributing Potentiality. Post-capitalist Economies and the Generative Time Regime,“ Identities, Vol. 15 (1-2): 8-44.

PDF

This article is a precise of my PhD-thesis on the transition from Modernity to the Technological Civilization, focused solely on the coevolutionary relation between the depths of operational chains, complexity of technologies, economies, and structure of temporality. It contains a summary of the main concepts such as the „model of expansion of cultural capacities“ (Haidle et al., 2015), civilizational capacities and the principle of recursion in the evolutionary formation of techno-cultural systems. The aim is to sketch out the constraints and directions for a system transition in economy from a cultural-evolutionary point of view.

The PhD-thesis on which this article is based on was handed in at the Institute of Sociology at Free University Berlin in 2016 under the title „Rekursion zivilisatorischer Kapazitäten als Entwicklungsmuster in der Zivilisationsgeschichte. Untersuchung der Möglichkeit einer Verknüpfung des paläoanthropologischen Modells der Erweiterung kultureller Kapazitäten mit Arno Bammés Theorie axialer Zäsuren“ (English title “Recursion of Civilizational Capacities as Developmental Pattern in Civilizational History. A Study on the Potentials of a Synthesis of the Cognitive Archeological Model of the Expansion of Cultural Capacities and Arno Bammé’s Theory of Axial Caesurae”)

It will be published in two parts as „Generative Realitäten I. Die Technologische Zivilisation als neue Achsenzeit und Zivilisationsstufe. Eine Anthropologie des 21. Jahrhunderts”, and “Generative Realitäten II. Zeitform, Bewusstseinsstruktur und Metaphysik der Technologischen Zivilisation. Eine Kosmologie des 21. Jahrhunderts”.*
(English title “Generative Realities I. The Technological Civilization as new Axial Age and Stage of Civilization. An Anthropology of the 21^st Century” / “Generative Realities II. Temporality, Cognition and Metaphysics in the Technological Civilization. A Cosmology of the 21^st Century.”)

* All references to the book in the article are referring to part I, except for references to Chapter 10, which is in part II.

A general introduction to the thesis can be found in this recording of the first session of my seminar Archeology of Abstraction (Reconstructing Futures I) held at the New Centre for Research and Practice:

A more specific introduction to the thesis can be found in this recording of the first session of my seminar Layers of Generativity: Axial Age, Modernity, Technological Civilization (Reconstructing Futures II) held at the New Centre for Research and Practice:

Keywords of the arcticle: cultural evolution, cultural capacities, civilizational capacities, coevolution, cumulative culture, recursion, evolutionary contingency, evolutionary convergence, technological syntax, operational chains, posthumanism, economy theory, post-capitalism, linear time regime, generative time regime, noosphere, post-cartesianism, post-cybernetic metaphysics, generative processes, genetic spaces, passive informationalism, active informationalism, system transition.