Ich fühle, dass ich nichts fühle: Eine Gefühlspolitik für den Weltzustand Technik

This article tracks the wider politics of emotion that run through the work of Günther Anders. It conceptualises the emergence of “anaesthetic violence”, a feelgood, or even unsensed form of power that configures around userfriendly devices. Anders’ mapping of the sense of inferiority, obsolescence and humiliating dependency our devices can invoke is gaining scholarly traction, but his work also exposes anaesthetic structures of feeling that merit further consideration. To open this perspective, the first part develops the quasiSocratic formula “I feel that I feel nothing” through a detailed reading of the politics of emotion in Anders’ work. This provides the pretext for an outlook on the anaesthetic dimension of humanmachine interaction in the context of digital technologies.