On the Recapturing of Possibilities Lost: Technology, Potentialisation and Psychotechnics

As the modern politico-economic system of nationalistically organised capitalism was crashing into the crisis of the two World Wars, a keen awareness grew amongst philosophers and social theorists about a) the fragmented and contradictory condition of humanity’s self-knowledge, and b) the ambivalent role of technoscience. A direct connection was observed between the collapse of self-knowledge and the triumphant advance of technoscience: the more the material world was placed at humanity’s disposal by technology, the less was humanity ready or competent to grasp and manage these new powers. In the second half of the 20th century the conviction grew that self-knowledge and cognitive insight can themselves be manipulated technologically by altering biochemical structures and processes or augmenting with AI and cybernetics. But ‘psychotechnics’ need not be understood exclusively on this model (i.e. of technological manipulations to ‘humaneer’ the capacities considered lacking). Under the header of ‘potentialisation technologies’ we discuss the nature, development, and pros and cons, of a form of psychotechnics that is oriented directly toward subjectivity and the expansion of possibilities.