(Colonial) Technology: The Contribution of Lotmanian Culturology to Digital Coloniality Studies

Abstract

This article examines the intellectual milieu that challenged Yu. Lotman to think about technological progress in culturological terms. The discussion focuses on the Tartu scholar’s critical theory of technology, which emerged from contact with two specific intellectual projects of the Soviet period, advanced by cybernetics and the Cosmist movement, respectively: the machine-driven ordering of the world and the planetarisation of technology. The article then discusses the contribution of Lotman’s technocriticism to current research on digital coloniality, as an emerging field of study arising from the critique of today’s technological “colonisation” of culture(s) through the core ideas of post/decolonial theory.