The writings of David Bates involve a rich engagement with the concept of disruption as a historical condition in the ‘cybernetic era’, from State of War (2012), where he does so with respect to modern political philosophy, to ‘The Political Theology of Entropy’ (2020) in which he creatively re-articulates Carl Schmitt’s political theology through a cybernetics vocabulary. This workshop will focus on his essay ‘Unity, Plasticity, Catastrophe’ (2012) in which he deploys affirmative conceptions of catastrophe and shock propounded by thinkers of the cybernetic movement and its broader milieu. Bates turns the system of thought of our historical condition against itself, and in so doing opens up a space for thinking it with, in particular, the philosopher Bernard Stiegler. Stiegler who in States of Shock (2012) construes our 'age of disruption' to be defined by the unfolding of a neoliberal shock doctrine.
In the workshop, we discussed to what extent the space between Bates and Stiegler on concepts such as disruption, shock and catastrophe inheres the possibility to begin thinking of new possibles (or compossibles) in a world defined by cybernetics and conditions of disruption.