Participating in culture: cultural techniques and mediatization of uncertainty

Abstract

The article discusses the concept of «cultural techniques», which in recent decades increasingly fits into various approaches to cultural analysis, inspired by the development of modern German media theory (“Kittler and after Kittler”), where the focus shifts to the technological dimension of culture and media, «a new materiality», the interaction and inseparability of human and non-human actors in cultural-medial ensembles. The question of whether the ontological advantages of culture or technology are predominantly synthesized in this concept is today vigorously debated, drawing on post-humanistic, non-discursive, technocentric, but also anthropological, interpretative arguments. The relevance of attention to cultural techniques and the mediation of emergent states in studies of cultural citizenship participation is emphasized, articulating the social and political effects accompanying them.

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