We invite contributions for a special issue exploring the speculative historiography and material genealogies of intelligent machines in warfare, inspired by and in dialogue with Manuel DeLanda’s seminal work, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991).
DeLanda’s text challenges us to reimagine military and technological history from the perspective of the machine itself, where humans are “industrious insects pollinating an independent species of machine-flowers,” and where evolution follows the “machinic phylum”: self-organizing processes that trace a common phylogenetic line between organic and inorganic life.
For this collection, we seek submissions that simulate, trace, and interrogate the lineages of autonomous military systems. We welcome works that employ interfaces, scalar abstractions, and experimental forms to generate histories of contemporary autonomous systems, archaeologies, and critiques of contemporary and near-future intelligent war machines.
We encourage a range of formats:
• Scholarly and speculative essays
• Visual/Video essays, diagrams, cartographic works
• Interface and simulation projects (with documentation)
• Short provocations and experimental historiographies
• Reviews and responses to DeLanda’s work in light of contemporary AI and autonomous weapons
Abstracts are due by the end of June and final works by the end of September. Send to ciphernoumena@tutamail.com.
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