Ekin Erkan

Ekin Erkan Ekin Erkan is a Turkish philosopher, a researcher in art history, and an art and cinema critic. Erkan's research in philosophy primarily concerns Kant & Hegel's theoretical philosophy, the philosophy of mind/perception, and aesthetics/the philosophy of art. Erkan's area of concentration in art history is currently on revisionist histories of 20th century Abstract Expressionism and how the story of the State Department's co-optation of Abstract Expressionism relates to the utopian (viz. “California Ideology") self-conception of nascent internet art (see: NetTime listservs of the late 1990s and early aughts) and its eventual co-optation by commodity capital (e.g., NFTs, the uniform flat aesthetics of ”corporate Memphis", and the machinations of the “big five” digital oligopolies). Erkan also works on the art of Gerda Wegener and Lili Elbe.

Background

Erkan's work examines the collective closure between neural networks, predictive processing, and perceptual faculties as they relate to machine intelligence, perception, memory, and consciousness. Erkan has a background in German Idealism, the philosophy of mind and aesthetics, supplemented by graduate research in perception and memory. Despite originally publishing primarily within aesthetics and the philosophy of art/film, Erkan's more recent work has squarely been in philosophy of cognitive science, mind, perception and Kant/post-Kantian German Idealism. Erkan pursued post-graduate study in Critical Philosophy at The New Centre for Research & Practice, researching under the tutelage of Iranian theory fiction pioneer Reza Negarestani while working on Bayesian neuro-inference and AGI. Erkan also is a columnist and critic at the art and literature journal AEQAI, publishing monthly contributions on contemporary art and cinema. Amongst Erkan's published articles, Erkan has written extensively vehicle externalism, Andy Clark and David Chalmers' extended mind, Ned Block's non-iconic memory and phenomenology of perception and mental paint, Robert Brandom's strong inferentialism vs. Paul Redding's weak inferentialism, and, more broadly, the Right-wing Sellarsian vs. Left-wing Sellarsian philosophical debates. Erkan's writing, drawing from an eliminative materialist tendency and the neurophilosophy of the Churchlands and Ann-Sophia Barwich, comports with Right-wing Sellarsian naturalism; however, Erkan is deeply interested in Hegel (specifically's Hegel mature philosophy), and in this regard, also engages with left-Sellarsian thought. Erkan's articles have been published in peer-reviewed publications including Axiomathes, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Perception, Philosophy in Review, pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, New Formations,Theory, Culture & Society, The Journal of Value Inquiry, The Review of Metaphysics, Radical Philosophy, Theory & Event, Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture,Cosmos & History, Alphaville, Cultural Studies, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Chiasma, Rhizomes, Labyrinth, Cultural Logic: A Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice, Media Theory, Philosophy East and West, and The Cincinnati Romance Review.

Global Research

Erkan worked with Giacomo Gilmozzi on Bernard Stiegler’s United Nations 2020 World Summit initiative “Internation.World.” With the support of the New Centre of Research & Practice, Erkan contributed to research on Bayesian cognitive architecture in the Summer of 2020.

Activism

Erkan has published extensively on Oktay Ince, a video activist/filmmaker whose work, spanning the last twenty years, was recently confiscated by Turkish authorities after being taken into police custody on May 30, 2019. Ince had raised suspicions after attempting to organize a protest in front of a courthouse in the capital of Ankara concerning the arrest and imprisoning of leftist activists, teachers, and artists in Turkey; Ince was quickly arrested. A month prior to his arrest, Ince had organized a protest in Izmir with a local feminist collective and was arrested once again, labelled a “terrorist” and charged with “insulting the president.” Following his most recent arrest, Ince has had his entire video archive confiscated by the Turkish state. Erkan’s writing on the unwarranted arrest, activism, and video art of Incay can be found here.

Works

Academic Articles

• "Katharina T. Kraus: Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation: The Nature of Inner Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Xiii, 306 pp. ISBN: 978-1-108-87430-4", Kant-Studien vol. 114, no. 2, 2023, pp. 388-395. https://doi.org/10.1515/kant-2023-2020
• "Art and Posthistory: Conversations on the End of Aesthetics.", The British Journal of Aesthetics 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayac068
• "Review of David Papineau, The metaphysics of sensory experience.", Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09891-5
• "Charles Ray and the Uncanny at the Met.", White Hot Magazine June 2022.
• "Kant’s Metaphysics of the Self: The Self as a “Clear” Representation.", Philosophia 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00595-9
• "Charles Ray and the Uncanny at the Met.", White Hot Magazine June 2022.
• "Nellie Mae Rowe's Story of Freedom.", Hyperallergic December 22, 2022.
• "A Hero.", Cineaste Vol. XLVII, No. 3, 2022.
• "Life and Actuality: On Placing Possibility in Hegel's Modal Metaphysics.", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 17.3, 2021, pp. 171-195.
• "Anja Jauernig, The World According to Kant: Appearances and Things in Themselves in Critical Idealism. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press 2021, xii+380 pp.", Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 65.4 vol. 103, no. 4, 2021, pp. 764-769. https://doi.org/10.1515/agph-2021-2023
• "Reason and Experience in Mendelssohn and Kant by Paul Guyer, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, viii + 361 pp., €41.85 ($50.00) (hbk), ISBN: 9780198850335 Ekin Erkan Pages 268-274", International Journal of Philosophical Studies 29.2 (2021), pp. 268-274.
• "Étienne Balibar, On Universals: Constructing and Deconstructing Community", Philosophy Today 65.4 (2021), pp. 971-978.
• "Reason and Experience in Mendelssohn and Kant", International Journal of Philosophical Studies 29.2 (2021), pp. 268-274.
• "Barwich, A. S. (2020). Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind", Perception (2021), pp. 1-3.
• "Westphal, Kenneth, Kant’s Critical Epistemology: Why Epistemology Must Consider Judgment First", Argumenta 12 (2021), pp. 366-373.
• "Béatrice Longuenesse and Ned Block Vide Kant", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 17.1 (2021), pp 405-452.
• "Kant's Transcendental Deduction: A Cosmology of Experience", Philosophy in review 14.1 (2021), pp. 29-36.
• "Mentality and Object: Computational and Cognitive Diachronic Emergence", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 16.2 (2020), pp. 296-356.
• "A Promethean Philosophy of External Technologies, Empiricism, & the Concept: Second-Order Cybernetics, Deep Learning, and Predictive Processing", Media Theory Journal 4.1 (2020), pp. 87–146.
• "Nahum Brown, Hegel on Possibility: Dialectics, Contradiction, and Modality", pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy 32 (2020).
• "The Post-Cinematic Gesture: Redhack", Zapruder World: An international journal for the history of social conflict 6 (2020).
• "The Inhuman Overhang: On Differential Heterogenesis and Multi-Scalar Modeling", La Deleuziana 11 (2020), pp. 202–235.
• "Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals by Pamela Hieronymi (review)", The Review of Metaphysics 74.1 (2020), pp. 150-153.
• "The First Person in Cognition and Morality by Béatrice Longuenesse (review)", The Review of Metaphysics 73.4 (2020), pp. 846-848.
• "Béatrice Longuenesse, I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant and Back Again", Croatian Journal of Philosophy 20.3 (2020), pp. 513-516.
• "Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurement to Artificial Brains", Chiasma: An international journal of theory and philosophy 6:1 (2020), pp. 248-260.
• "Cinema/politics/philosophy", New Review of Film and Television Studies 18:3 (2020).
• "Yuk Hui’s Axio-Cosmology of the Unknown: Genesis and the Inhuman", New Formations 100-101, pp. 209-213 (2020).
• "Analytical vs Ontological: Gilbert Ryle & the Question of Behaviorism", Triple Ampersand (2020).
• "The Post-Human Media Semblance: Predictive Catastrophism", Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 36 (2020).
• "Post-Continental Naturalism: Equipollence between Science and Ontological Pluralism", Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 36 (2020).
• "Tristan Garcia’s Electric Ontology: Thought and its Deracinated Image", Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 36 (2020).
• "Physics Avoidance & Cooperative Semantics: Inferentialism and Mark Wilson’s Engagement with Naturalism Qua Applied Mathematics", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 16:1 (2020), pp 560–644.
• "Against the Virtual: Kleinherenbrink’s Externality Thesis and Deleuze’s Machine Ontology", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 16:1 (2020), pp 492–559.
• "Apperceptive Patterning: Artefaction, Extensional Beliefs and Cognitive Scaffolding", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 16:1 (2020), pp 225–278.
• "Jonathan Gilmore: Apt Imaginings, Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind", The Journal of Value Inquiry (2020), pp 1-9.
• "From organic subjectivity to internal reality", Radical Philosophy 2.7 (2020), pp 119–122.
• "Review of Alain Badiou, The Pornographic Age", Theory, Culture & Society (2020).
• "The Depth Conditions of Possibility: The Data Episteme", Theory & Event 23.2 (2020), pp 496–500.
• "Jean-Louis Schefer's The Ordinary Man of Cinema", Comparative Cinema 8:14 (2020), pp 82–85.
• "Dependence, Addiction and Arrest: A Eulogy to Stiegler by Ekin Erkan", Media Theory Journal (2020).
• "On New Authoritarianism and its Historical Ontology: A review of David Renton's The New Authoritarians: Convergence on the Right", Barricade (2020).
• "Review of Failure, and Discussion with Neta Alexander, by Ekin Erkan", Media Theory Journal (2020).
• "Animality, Metaethical Judgments and Predictive Justice", Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture (2020; online).
• "The Call of Being: On Pure Phenomenality and Radical Immanence", Labyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics 21.2 (2020), pp 197–203.
• "On Action-Oriented Predictive Patterning", Plutonics: A Journal of Non-Standard Theory 13 (2020), pp 91–97.
• "Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and Future-in-Delirium (review)", Philosophy East and West 69.4 (2020), pp 3–6.
• "Laruelle Qua Stiegler: On Non-Marxism and the Transindividual", Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture 16.1-2 (Summer - Winter 2019), pp 48–66.
• "European Cinema and Continental Philosophy: Film as Thought Experiment", Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media 18 (2019), pp 232–238.
• "On Laruelle and the Radical Dyad: Katerina Kolozova's Materialist Non-Humanism", Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice 23 (2019), pp 72-82.
• "Technology as the God-Command", Labyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics 21:1 (2019), pp 201-206.
• "David Lapoujade’s Powers of Time", Media Theory (2019)
• "Psychopower and Ordinary Madness: Reticulated Dividuals in Cognitive Capitalism", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 15:1 (2019), pp 214-241.
• "Unveiling Thomas Moynihan's Spinal Catastrophism: The Spine Considered as a Chronogenetic Media Artifact", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 15:1 (2019), pp 564-571.
• "Review of Media heterotopias: digital effects and material labor in global film production", New Review of Film and Television Studies,(2019).
• "Control societies and machine ecology", Cultural Studies, 33:6 (2019).
• "Societies of Disindividuated Hyper-Control: On the Question of a New Pharmakon", Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 35 (2019).
• "Cryptophasia and the Question of Database", Triple Ampersand, (2019).
• "The Generic Unmasked: Reproducibility and Profanation", Triple Ampersand, (2019).
• "Review of François Laruelle's A Biography of Ordinary Man: On Authorities and Minorities", Cincinnati Romance Review, 46 (2019).
• "Arrest: the Politics and Transcendence of Aesthetic Arrest Qua Protest", AEQAI.
• "Aleatory Aesthetics: Appraising the Aesthetics of Change in Gerhard Richter's Cage Paintings", AEQAI.
• "Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle", AEQAI.
• See author's website
• See author's art criticism

Translations

• "Infinite Judgements and Transcendental Logic", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 16.2 (2020), pp 391-415.

Art Criticism

• "Jonas Wood: Drawings 2003-2023", The Brooklyn Rail July 2023.
• "Chronicles of an American Abyss (review of "Model Home (New York), After Wisconsin Death Trip" at Carriage Trade (277 Grand Street, Chinatown, Manhattan))", Hyperallergic 7 May 2023.
• "Edward Hopper's View of Isolation (review of "Edward Hopper’s New York" at the Whitney Museum of American Art (99 Gansevoort Street, Manhattan))", Hyperallergic 16 February 2023.

Tribute to Thomas Elsaesser

• "In tribute to scholar and professor Thomas Elsaesser (1943-2019)", New Review of Film and Television Studies (2020).