Katechon in the age of cybernetic systems’ rage

The article argues that one of the main characteristics of modernity is the underlying paradox that could be labeled as an attitude of securitization through catastrophe. The author shows how the aspiration to overcome catastrophes and crises forms the attitude to their utilization, i.e. to create apparatuses or devices that guarantee safety and successful transformation of catastrophes into a benefit or advantage. An analysis of the polemics around Carl Schmitt’s concept of the katechon is offered, as it has become the center of disputes about the guarantees of containment of catastrophic events in connection with the challenge posed by new technologies and the latest representatives of the powerful wave of techno-optimism represented by the cybernetic movement. Katechon proves to be an extremely convenient subject for analytical endeavors, since it, while retaining reference to the biblical tradition, ties modern theories of large political spaces, empire as a force of containment, sovereignty, and the political into a single problematic knot.

Emphasis is placed on the analysis of the catechumen by representatives of the cybernetic movement, since it was they who mainly insisted on the possibility of creating systems of automatic control and overcoming crises and catastrophes. It is argued that the increasing automation of the technological universe does not shrink the space of political decision-making, but transforms politics and makes it difficult to identify. It is demonstrated that one of the obstacles to the identification of the political in the contemporary digital age is the image of politics inherited from Schmitt, formed on the basis of the opposition between legalism and decisionalism, the significance of which disappears within the new technical systems. The crisis-proofing katechon is as difficult to identify as the political or the sources of threats.