1 July 2026
Machinic Normativity
Prof. Dr. Henning Schmidgen
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, DE
"Machinic normativity" refers to the biologically based and socially mediated ability to use interactions between humans and machines to shape our social life. This paper spells out how psychoanalyst, philosopher, and political activist Félix Guattari (1930–1992) developed this idea across his publications—from his early commitment to radical psychiatry to his collaboration with Gilles Deleuze and his plea for new forms of ecology. In these contexts, Guattari highlighted the importance of the quasi-cinematic interplay between perception and movement, reflection and action, observation and design. The paper shows why this thinking is particularly relevant for the analysis and critique of an increasingly digitalized capitalism.
About the Speaker
Henning Schmidgen is Professor of Media Studies and History of Science at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. He studied psychology as well as philosophy and linguistics in Berlin (Free University) and Paris (Université de Paris-VII). In 1996, he obtained his PhD in psychology at the Free University Berlin with a study dealing with the „Unconscious of Machines.“ From 1997 to 2011, he was postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Dept. III, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger). Among his books are The Helmholtz-Curves (2014), The Guattari Tapes (Leipzig 2019) and Horn, or The Counterside of Media (Durham 2022).
photo credit: private, cropped
Lecture Time and Location
Wednesday, 1 July 2026
18:15–19:45 (CEST)
Flügelbau Ost, 2. OG, Raum O 221
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1
20146 Hamburg
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