Metabasis N. 39
digital edition
peer review
Each essay of this journal is reviewed by two anonymous referees and their comments are sent to the authors .
Technoscientific imaginaries 2:
Artificial intelligence, creativity and imaginary
May 2025 - Year XX - Number 39
Political reflections
Techno-utopias and techno-phobias – The myth-making of the technocratic ideal in modern socio-political thought.
Giuseppe Maria Ambrosio
DOI: 10.7413/18281567277
Starting from the beginning of XVI century, political utopias managed to structure models of escape/redesign of social arrangements by proposing a new interweaving of freedom of knowledge and scientific implementation of power in which the technocratic element was declined in contradictory ways, sometimes as emancipation from particularisms, sometimes as a censurable stigma of control. The result is an imaginal production that will develop, over the last four centuries – through both a literary and visual narratives – into a worth-exploring, intertwined nature-technology relationship, running along a dual and fascinating line, in limine between perfection and dystopia, hope and catastrophe, praxis and ideology.
Intelligence between Nature and Artifice
Giulio M. Chiodi
DOI: 10.7413/18281567281
This essay examines the differences between artificial intelligence’s quantitative, monologic processes and the dialogic, symbolic, and empathetic nature of human intelligence. It highlights the indispensable role of humanistic education in fostering hermeneutic and imaginative faculties that sustain humanitas – the ethical and interpretive essence of human cognition. Emphasizing the significance of language and rhetoric, the text cautions against excessive dependence on AI and calls for a balanced integration that safeguards human intellectual autonomy and cultural plurality .
The Prince and the Automaton: Imaginaries of Cybernetic Power.
Jean-Jacques Wunenburger
DOI: 10.7413/18281567282
The widespread adoption of digital technologies increasingly takes over the sphere of socio-economic and political life, aiming to avoid or eliminate its instabilities and disruptions. Over time, utopia, urban planning, and democratic processes have been designed to replace architects and rulers, whether autocrats or democrats. Today, the mythical position of the Prince, the supreme magistrate and holder of sovereignty, is increasingly threatened by cybernetic management, reducing politics to the paradigm of an automaton.
Philosophical Horizons
Technoscientific Imaginaries Between Utopia and Apocalypse: A Perspective from Christian Anthropology.
Ionel Buse
DOI: 10.7413/18281567279
The transhumanist utopia is not the fruit of the unity between science and philosophy, but between scientism and various modern and postmodern ideologies. Paraphrasing Heidegger, science and technology must develop as an extension of thought and not against it. Otherwise, in alliance with certain so-called progressive ideologies, they can become instruments of manipulation, domination and even destruction of man. Jean Boboc has no doubt that at least two realities will dominate future eras and change human beings. For this reason, it is more necessary than ever to be protected by your roots. Otherwise, the risk is its uprooting by a totalitarian domination which will throw the baby out with the bathwater in the name of freedom and immortality. Technoscientific intelligence does not think. She acts. If it falls under the control of utopias/distopias, technosciences lose their ontological and human foundation. To the completely materialist anthropology of transhumanism, Jean Boboc opposes a theoanthropology based on the passage from the soul man to the spiritual man, in other words the transformation of man within his ontological data.
Rethinking the nietzschean imaginary. Tips for the anthropotechnics to come.
Massimo Canepa
DOI: 10.7413/18281567280
This intervention takes into consideration Sloterdijk's reflection on anthropotechnics. The intent is not so much to verify the coherence of the author, as to reveal the misunderstanding of nietzschean thought at the basis of the notion of anthropotechnics. In fact, although he recognizes that “Nietzsche places himself at the beginning of the modern and non-spiritualistic theory of asceticism”, Sloterdijk still remains too “humanist” – that is to say linked to the anthropotechnics of writing and documentality – and this prevents him from understanding the “work on one's own vitality” which Nietzsche carried this forward practically throughout his life as a philosopher, and resulting from the obsession with an image that reverberated in all his writings. The image behind Nietzsche's thoughts and works is a painting by Raphael: the Transfiguration. We will therefore try to show how the correct understanding of the plastic and active effect that the depicted image had on nietzschean thought can give new impetus to an anthropotechnics that is thus up to the new challenges of contemporary techno-sciences.
Postmodern and post-truth. Some remarks on an uncertain filiation.
Silvia Dadà
DOI: 10.7413/18281567283
This essay analyzes the concept of "post-truth," popular since 2016. Unlike “fake news” or “filter bubble”, post-truth describes a cultural and social atmosphere linked to widespread irrationalism, enabled by the technological revolution in information and communication. Extensive theoretical debate has identified its main characteristics and historical genesis, often tracing its origins to the postmodern philosophical movement. However, this connection is problematic and requires careful examination to establish points of continuity and key differences. The essay argues that postmodern skepticism and pluralism offer a potential ethical response to post-truth rather than being its cause.
Thematic paths
Between abstraction and presence: Eugenio Battisti’s critical perspective on automata and self-moving machines.
Giulia Ferrara
DOI: 10.7413/18281567284
«The automaton is, in many ways, the means by which man projects himself beyond his existential limits, multiplies his forces, and carries out in reality, not just simulates or describes, the marvellous» (Battisti 1989:249). This paper explores Battisti's cross-disciplinary approach to automata, which, starting from art history, defines the automaton as a mythological, theatrical, technical, and historical phenomenon, while also questioning its dual essence: both mimetic and fantastical. Drawing on various examples, the discussion follows a trajectory from antiquity to the twentieth century. Battisti examines the evolving relationship between human beings and automata, highlighting the twentieth-century loss of their magical value and their transformation into passive and servile mechanisms. The paper also emphasises the parallel that Battisti draws between the contemporary automaton and modern art, which abandons traditional painting in favour of subtle allusions to a reality embodied in conceptual or interchangeable figures, “zombies”.
Artificial intelligence and creativity: a matter of style.
Florjer Gjepali
DOI: 10.7413/18281567278
Text-to-Image (TTI) models – such as OpenAI’s DALL·E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney – that generate images from natural language prompts have immersed us in an unprecedented iconic landscape, where a fundamental question in the field of aesthetics has resurfaced: can machines truly be said to possess creative capacities? This paper approaches the issue from the perspectives of image theory and visual culture, before turning to the ongoing debate over whether AI should be considered as an autonomous creative agent or merely as a tool. The answer I propose here is grounded essentially in a phenomenological framework. Rather than asking whether AI is capable of creating genuinely creative artifacts, I suggest shifting the focus toward those who deploy these systems in the creative process, asking whether the people behind them are truly creative. The more pertinent question, then, becomes: Are our creatives truly creative? This way of framing the question ultimately leads to a discussion of the problem of style in the wider context of the history of representation.
XR and magic lantern shows: a media archaeology study between images, performance, and new media.
Francesco Melchiorri
DOI: 10.7413/18281567285
Today's development of XR, particularly accentuated on a commercial level by the growing investor interest in an admittedly not very new technology (Lanier 2019), sees at its core the meeting of algorithmic (Eugeni 2021) images-environments, and gestural (Grespi 2019) and performative bodies, in a highly original and also innovative, technoscientific, expression. In order to investigate through a media archaeology approach such a particular relationship between these elements, an attempt will be made to approach a specific case study, namely that of the magic lantern performances of the 19th century in Central European fairgrounds. Such performances, indeed, produced projected images through particularly innovative forms for the time, through shows between the theatrical and the cinematic, in which the performers' bodies played a central role (Wynants 2020). Often, moreover, through such performances, the fairground became a place for experimentation and communication of science, and/or the latest development of new media and technologies. Through research on specific sources, a comparison of the suggested elements will be proposed in order to underline a wider look at the current production of immersive images, to also reevaluate their current social and techno-aesthetic function (Simondon 1992, Montani 2014).
God-Emperors and their mankind: Warhammer 40K, Dune and power imaginaries in modern sci-fi.
Valerio Moccia
DOI: 10.7413/18281567286
This paper examines the god-emperor archetype in science fiction through two prominent incarnations: Leto II from Herbert’s God Emperor of Dune (1981) and the Emperor of Mankind from the narrative universe of Warhammer 40,000, a miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop. These figures represent reimagined versions of Frazer’s sacred king concept (1915), transformed into posthuman/transhuman rulers. Both preside over totalitarian regimes that relate to contemporary concerns including bureaucratization, religious extremism, and technological ambivalence. The analysis explores the socio-political structures underlying these depictions and their visual representations in canonical texts. Additionally, the paper investigates how American Alt-Right groups have appropriated these figures by depicting Donald Trump as both the God-Emperor of Mankind from Warhammer 40,000 and characters from Dune, demonstrating how these science fiction archetypes influence modern political discourse and function as cultural critiques of power centralization.
Metabasis N. 39
digital edition
peer review
Each essay of this journal is reviewed by two anonymous referees and their comments are sent to the authors .
