Blame

I’d like to address the issue of (talking about) culpability. Black’s project in “IBM and the Holocaust” is one of apportioning blame, although we’re also made to see how mere machines, in and of themselves, produce incredibly lethal knowledge-power. Still, it’s clearly IBM’s fault for supplying Germany with this technology, without which, Black implies, they might not have been able to complete the “final solution.” (It’s interesting to think about the emphasis often placed on German culture as the origin of the orderliness and punctuality that proved so effective for carrying out genocide). Reading Heidegger’s description of “the gathering together of that setting-upon that sets upon man…to reveal the real…as standing-reserve,” in relation to the Holocaust, Heidegger doesn’t address the burning question—if the Nazis are the men who created—and did away with—the Jews as a “standing reserve,” who challenged them forth to do so (302)? I wonder what Heidegger’s answer would be to how did this happen?, and it would compare with Black's focus on the enabling power of punch-card machines (or their distributors)?

And while the question of culpability has been integral to the readings this week, I wonder from the outset how we can/should frame it in theoretical discourse. If we’re trying to read Heidegger’s argument for a way to look at Nazism and information/technology, his move to “art will save us” at the end of the article seems kind of pathetic. Why does he go there? Is that (arguably evasive) move ethically-politically-morally questionable when thinking in terms of such catastrophe?

Also, personally, I'd benefit from a brief unpacking of the Heidegger before we begin tomorrow.