Technical civilisation’s new hero is restrained mastery, not liberation
Evidence
Literary energy, abstract and nourished on the rhetoric of generalisation, is no longer in a position to understand technical energy, which is increasingly sharp and individual, a highly original fabric of singular will and specialised education. The literature of energy is still at the stage of its Prometheus Unbound —far too facile an image. The hero of technical civilisation is not a man unchained: he is a man of silence, who can carry his iron chains up to the heavens. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1130
Categorization
- DEFINE: Gramsci’s contrast of ‘literary energy’ with ‘technical energy’ defines two rival hero-types of modernity.
- XREF: connects to: Technological mastery extinguishing nature and cultures is dominated by men by design — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 55; Technical progress becomes a liberating force only beyond automated material necessity — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 142; The technical hero embodies disciplined study rather than liberation — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1130 (+6 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Technological mastery extinguishing nature and cultures is dominated by men by design — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 55; Technical progress becomes a liberating force only beyond automated material necessity — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 142; The technical hero embodies disciplined study rather than liberation — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1130 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- The technical hero embodies disciplined study rather than liberation
#corroborates(0.95) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1130 - Technology’s liberating or enslaving character is decided politically, not intrinsic
#complicates(0.78) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 63 - Machine mastery perpetuates rather than ends enslavement
#complicates(0.76) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 635 - Techno-capitalism’s wealthiest winners seek transgressive cool rather than esteem
#complicates(0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 717