Ekin Erkan

Ekin Erkan is a Turkish writer in science, technology and philosophy living in New York City, notable for researching with and developing Reza Negarestani's research on artificial general intelligence. Erkan's work is situated around a critique of Bernard Stiegler and Jacques Derrida's conception of media as giving form to language, proffering a model of Brandomian inferentialism that applies to media objects and media writ large; Erkan has more recently (inspired by those such as Negarestani, Fabio Gironi, Daniel Sacilotto, Brandom and others collapsing analytic/continental distinctions) been working on Catarina Dutilh Novaes' concept of de-semantification and its compatibility with theories of extended mind and Meillassoux's subtractive time as absolute becoming qua contingency.

Background

Erkan's work examines the collective closure between neural networks, predictive processing, and perceptual faculties as they relate to machine intelligence and algorithmic governmentality. Erkan has a background in both analytic and continental philosophy, supplemented by graduate research in medialogy, media archaeology and film philosophy. Despite originally working within the continental tradition of philosophy of art, aesthetics and media, Erkan's more recent work has been associated with the post-continental school of thinkers, influenced by philosophers such as Carl Sachs, Ray Brassier, Reza Negarestani and Thomas Moynihan. Erkan is currently pursuing 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 intermedia. In addition to Erkan's work on Stiegler and Rouvroy, Erkan has published writing on Andy Clark and David Chalmers' extended mind, Ned Block's non-iconic memory and phenomenology of perception and mental paint, François Laruelle’s non-ethics and non-aesthetics, Robert Brandom's inferentialism, Negarestani's neo-rationalist turn, Catherine Malabou's "neuroplasticity" and "creative non-calculation," and post-Deleuzian film philosophy in publications including 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.

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 will be contributing to a book on the collective closure between non-anthropomorphic perceptual processes and neuro-inferential 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

Articles

• "Mentality and Object: Computational and Cognitive Diachronic Emergence", Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 16.2 (2020), pp 296-356.
• http://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/111/97 "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.
• "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.
• "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.
• 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.