Article ID: CBB832332235

Automatic Leviathan: Cybernetics and Politics in Carl Schmitt’s Postwar Writings (2020)

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This article questions the current vogue of Carl Schmitt among political theorists who read him as an antidote to the depoliticizing force of economics and technology in the age of neoliberalism and its algorithmic rationalities. It takes Schmitt’s sparse reflections about cybernetics and game theory as paradigmatic of the theoretical and political problems raised by any theory positing the autonomy of the political. It suggests that this ultimately misunderstands the role of cybernetic representations of political decision-making in shoring up in the 1960s and 1970s the autonomy of the political that Schmitt so vehemently defended.

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Article Stefanos Geroulanos; Leif Weatherby (2020) Cybernetics and the Human Sciences. History of the Human Sciences (pp. 3-11). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB832332235/

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Authors & Contributors
Erickson, Paul A.
Amadae, S. M.
Bates, David W.
Bruin, Boudewijn de
Engelbrekt, Kjell
Gerovitch, Slava
Journals
History of the Human Sciences
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
European Legacy
History of European Ideas
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Perspectives on Science
Publishers
Princeton University
Cambridge University Press
Aracne
Johns Hopkins University
MIT Press
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Concepts
Cybernetics
Game theory
Science and politics
Social sciences
Cold War
Models and modeling in science
People
Schmitt, Carl
Ashby, W. Ross
Hobbes, Thomas
Latour, Bruno
Mach, Ernst
Nash, John
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
20th century, early
17th century
19th century
Places
Soviet Union
United States
British Isles
France
Germany
Russia
Institutions
Universität Kiel
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