Qualia Extinction
The Formatted Self and the Permanent Foreclosure of Experiential Possibility
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Beschreibung
A book-length work of contemporary philosophy that asks what happens when the social and cultural structures that make rich experience possible are quietly dismantled. Drawing on phenomenology, critical social theory, and meta-ontology, the author develops the concept of qualia extinction: the permanent loss of specific forms of human feeling when the practices, institutions, and traditions that constitutively enable them disappear. The book connects large-scale processes – bureaucratic rationalisation, algorithmic governance, the optimisation of life according to metrics – to the formation of a formatted self whose emotional horizon has been narrowed without its knowledge. Through analyses of digital media, soft totalitarianism, and everyday forms of alienation, it shows how capacities for resonance, play, and meaningful encounter can be structurally foreclosed rather than simply psychologically blocked. In its final part, the book turns constructive: it argues that play, experiential consent, and a discourse theory revised for a formatted world offer normative resources for keeping spaces of genuine experience open. Written for a general readership with an interest in philosophy, culture, and the impact of technology on subjectivity, it requires no specialist background but presupposes a willingness to think slowly about what it still means to have a human life.
Autor*in
Merlin Bittlinger
Themen in »Qualia Extinction«
Qualia extinction soft totalitarianism formatted self experience-conducive structures affective topology phenomenology subjectivity in the digital age bureaucratic rationalization critical social theory discourse theory algorithmic governance