Philosophy, Technology, and the Body—Toward Justice
I am a philosopher of media and technology, focusing on the intersections of body, politics, and technology. Currently an Acting Professor at the Ruhr Universität Bochum at the Department of Media Studies, I am also an associate researcher at KWI (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen, Germany) and SFB Virtuelle Lebenswelten (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany).
My current research examines the ways in which contemporary algorithmic rationality shapes knowledge, subjectivity, and sociality. Whereas earlier forms of algorithmic rationality sought to eliminate human judgment by reducing interpretation and decision to computation and by presenting machine outputs as neutral, model training in the age of generative AI functions as a normativizing process. I analyze how generative AI, as a socio-technical system, produces new forms of power and subjectivity and regulates machine and human behavior through implicit and explicit norms. By unilaterally deciding on seemingly self-evident values and bypassing democratic deliberation, I contend that Big Tech claims “interpretative sovereignty” (Deutungshoheit) and authority over knowledge and normativity.
My work has appeared in AI & Society, Philosophy & Technology, Social Text, Big Data & Society, Appareil, and Revue des sciences humaines.
My first book, Theorie des graphischen Feldes, was published by Diaphanes in 2020. My second book project, Toward a Hauntology of Touch, takes as a starting point what Jean-Luc Nancy calls the “Law of Touch” as the law of sociality. Toward a Hauntology of Touch analyzes touch as a set of culture-technical operations that shape the space between bodies; operations by which bodies become subjects for one another, form communities, and enter into the political realm. By critically discussing a selection of concepts fundamental to modern and contemporary Western political philosophy in terms of touching operations, the book casts a new light on issues pertaining to appropriation, (self-)possession, self-determination, affectability, dispossession, and exclusion. It advances haunting as a form of touch that, invisibly yet significantly, shifts boundaries and borders. A haunting touch toward which the book is oriented designates a form of ethics and politics that would acknowledge the necessity for self-determination while simultaneously unsettling identity and self-possession.
Recent Papers
“Ruled by the Representation Space: On the University’s Embrace of Large Language Models.” arXiv, 2025. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.03513.
with Alexander Campolo. “‘Desired Behaviors’: Alignment and the Emergence of a Machine Learning Ethics.” AI & Society, 2025, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-025-02272-3.
“From Enclosure to Foreclosure and Beyond: Opening AI’s Totalizing Logic (Preprint, currently under review at AI & Society).” https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHFET-6.
CfP ACLA 2026 (Montreal) for the Panel/ Seminar “The Politics and Ethics of Translation in the Age of Large Language Models”
This seminar/panel aims to critically reflect on translation as the original problem of AI and as an operative concept for what AI seeks to become today (translation between languages but also between language and image, image and the physical world, language and the physical world). ACLA is the American Comparative Literature Association, which generally attracts researchers in literature, theory, and continental philosophy. Applicants should therefore be open to an interdisciplinary context. The decision on whether the seminar is accepted is made by the ACLA committee after the entire program of the seminar has been submitted. The Secretariat will send status notifications on December 1, 2025. If you are interested, please submit your proposal through the ACLA website. The site accepts paper proposals from August 26 to October 2, 2025.
