Epistemological decoloniality in times of monotechnologization of life

A task to the thinking

Abstract

become the truism that is most often resorted to when it comes to understanding technological advances, at the same time that these are linked to the increasingly successful control of bodies and now of attention. “Cognitive capitalism” (RULLANI, 2004; VERCELLONE, 2006; BOUTANG, 2007a, 2007b) for some, “technobiocapitalism” (HARAWAY, 1991; NEGRI, 2015; PRECIADO, 2018) for others, the fact is that we have witnessed a transformation of social relations and productive forces since the 1970s in all areas of life, which has demanded from us not only a political and cultural, but also an ontoepistemological and somatic-cognitive (FOUCAULT, 2000, 2016) analysis of the world economy, in the face of the new dynamics of technocratic capitalism (SANTOS, 2015; HAN, 2018). In this scenario, the pandemic has become one of these biopower laboratories, bringing an almost cyborg deepening of the technobiocapitalist episteme, either with the algorithmic sentience of Big Tech learning machines (MOROZOV, 2018), or with the verticalization of forms of subjective identification guided by standardized monotechnical modulations (DELEUZE, 2008). Thus, in taking as a theoretical and methodological basis, we will discuss in this paper how the concept of “technodiversity” (HUI, 2016, 2020) can provide an important decolonial questioning of the episteme and practices of technobiocapitalism, putting us before the task of reinforcing, elaborating or contemplating other alternative cosmologies, in the face of the monotechnical epistemology of capital.