Towards a Theory of ‘Ambitopia’

The Politics of L’avenir in Dave Eggers’ The Circle and Calvin Kasulke’s Several People are Typing

Abstract

Emphasizing the need to scrutinize the division between thought and technology, this paper examines how Derrida revisits Martin Heidegger's 'question concerning technology' under the framework of originary technicity. The term is discussed as an alternative expression for Derrida's earlier concepts of 'writing' or 'archi-writing,' with a focus on its alignment with practical technology, exemplified in everyday writing facilitating ideal concepts and scientific precision. The paper delves into emerging approaches to signification, including programmed language input into machine learning, and their impact on intelligibility. It emphasizes the augmentation required in conditions constituting discreteness, and illustrates archi-writing's role in facilitating comprehension despite lacking inherent meaning. Derrida's view of technology and machines as fundamentally unintelligible is highlighted, with case studies from two novels, namely The Circle and Several People Are Typing. In Several People Are Typing, ambitopic disruption occurs in bodily functions post-transcendence, while in The Circle, it manifests in the enigmatic nature of a comatose individual's thoughts, suggesting potential future innovations.

The paper introduces the concept of "Ambitopia" as a response to ambiguity in archival spacing and temporalization, emphasizing liberation over confinement. Derrida's dichotomy between "le futur" and "l'avenir" is applied to underscore the unforeseeable future's open realm, embodied by Ambitopia's disruptive forces agitating events and questioning their feasibility.