Gestell
{{Short description|Philosophical term coined by Heidegger}}
{{Italic title}}
{{Lang|de|Gestell}} (or sometimes Ge-stell) is a German word used by twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger to describe what lies behind or beneath modern technology.{{Citation
| last = Mitcham
| first = Carl
| author-link = Carl Mitcham
| title = Thinking Through Technology
| publisher = University of Chicago Press
| year = 1994
| isbn = 0-226-53198-8
| page = 52}} Heidegger introduced the term in 1954 in The Question Concerning Technology, a text based on the lecture "The Framework" ("Das Gestell") first presented on December 1, 1949, in Bremen.{{Cite book|title=Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil|last=Safranski|first=Rüdiger|date=1999|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=9780674387102|location=Cambridge, MA|pages=391}} It was derived from the root word stellen, which means "to put" or "to place" and combined with the German prefix Ge-, which denotes a form of "gathering" or "collection".{{Cite book|title=Heidegger on Technology|last=Wendland|first=Aaron|last2=Merwin|first2=Christopher|last3=Hadjioannou|first3=Christos|publisher=Routledge|year=2018|isbn=9781138674615|location=New York}} The term encompasses all types of entities and orders them in a certain way.
Heidegger's notion of ''Gestell''
Heidegger applied the concept of Gestell to his exposition of the essence of technology.{{Cite book|title=Being and Technology: A Study in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger|last=Loscerbo|first=John|date=2012|publisher=Martinus Nijhoff Publishers|isbn=9789400982246|location=The Hague|pages=109}} He concluded that technology is fundamentally Enframing (Gestell).{{Citation
| last = Godzinski
| first = Ronald
| title = (En)Framing Heidegger's Philosophy of Technology
| journal = Essays in Philosophy
| volume = 6
| issue = 1
| pages = 115–122
| date = January 2005
| doi = 10.5840/eip20056120
| url = http://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1179&context=eip
| access-date = 2011-08-26
| archive-date = 2010-06-13
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100613084128/http://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1179&context=eip
| url-status = dead
}} As such, the essence of technology is Gestell. Indeed, "Gestell, literally 'framing', is an all-encompassing view of technology, not as a means to an end, but rather a mode of human existence".
{{cite web |url=http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/rojc/mdic/martin1.html |title= Martin Heidegger |access-date=2006-01-12 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060110153844/http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/rojc/mdic/martin1.html |archive-date=2006-01-10 }} Heidegger further explained that in a more comprehensive sense, the concept is the final mode of the historical self-concealment of primordial φύσις.
In defining the essence of technology as Gestell, Heidegger indicated that all that has come to presence in the world has been enframed. Such enframing pertains to the manner reality appears or unveils itself in the period of modern technology and people born into this "mode of ordering" are always embedded into the Gestell (enframing).{{Cite book|title=Gendered Bodies and New Technologies: Rethinking Embodiment in a Cyber-era|last=du Preez|first=Amanda|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|year=2009|isbn=9781443813235|location=Newcastle upon Tyne, UK|pages=40}} Thus what is revealed in the world, what has shown itself as itself (the truth of itself) required first an Enframing, literally a way to exist in the world, to be able to be seen and understood. Concerning the essence of technology and how we see things in our technological age, the world has been framed as the "standing-reserve." Heidegger writes,
Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological.Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper, 1977), p. 20.
Furthermore, Heidegger uses the word in a way that is uncommon by giving Gestell an active role. In ordinary usage the word would signify simply a display apparatus of some sort, like a book rack, or picture frame; but for Heidegger, Gestell is literally a challenging forth, or performative "gathering together", for the purpose of revealing or presentation. If applied to science and modern technology, "standing reserve" is active in the case of a river once it generates electricity or the earth if revealed as a coal-mining district or the soil as a mineral deposit.{{Cite book|title=Heidegger and the Work of Art History|last=Boetzkes|first=Amanda|publisher=Routledge|year=2016|isbn=9781409456131|location=Oxon|pages=106}}
For some scholars, Gestell effectively explains the violence of technology. This is attributed to Heidegger's explanation that, when Gestell holds sway, "it drives out every other possibility of revealing" and that it "conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences come forth into appearance."{{Cite book|title=Heidegger's Later Philosophy|last=Young|first=Julian|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2002|isbn=0521809223|location=Cambridge|pages=50}}
Later uses of the concept
Giorgio Agamben drew heavily from Heidegger in his interpretation of Foucault's concept of dispositif (apparatus).{{Citation
| first = Giorgio| last = Agamben
| author-link = Giorgio Agamben
| title = What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays
| publisher = Stanford University Press
| year = 2009
| isbn = 978-0-8047-6230-4 }} In his work, What is an Apparatus, he described apparatus as the "decisive technical term in the strategy of Foucault's thought".{{Cite book|title=A Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality, Biopolitics and Discipline in the New Millennium|last=Binkley|first=Sam|last2=Capetillo|first2=Jorge|date=2009|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|isbn=9781443804448|location=Newcastle upon Tyne|pages=110}} Agamben maintained that Gestell is nothing more than what appears as oikonomia.{{Cite book|title=Agamben's Philosophical Lineage|last=Kotsko|first=Adam|date=2017-07-14|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|isbn=9781474423632|location=Edinburgh|pages=70–71}} Agamben cited cinema as an apparatus of Gestell since films capture and record the gestures of human beings.{{Cite book|title=Cinema and Agamben: Ethics, Biopolitics and the Moving Image|last=Gustafsson|first=Henrik|last2=Gronstad|first2=Asbjorn|date=2014-01-16|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA|isbn=9781623561253|language=en}}
Albert Borgmann expanded Heidegger's concept of Gestell by offering a more practical conceptualization of the essence of technology.{{Cite book|title=Rethinking Machine Ethics in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology|last=Jeffrey|first=White|date=2015|publisher=IGI Global|isbn=9781466685925|location=Hershey, PA|pages=132}} Heidegger's enframing became Borgmann's Device paradigm, which explains the intimate relationship between people, things and technological devices.{{Cite book|title=Moral Fragments and Moral Community: A Proposal for Church in Society|last=Rasmussen|first=Larry|publisher=Fortress Press|year=1993|isbn=0800627571|location=Minneapolis|pages=[https://archive.org/details/moralfragmentsmo0000rasm/page/78 78]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/moralfragmentsmo0000rasm/page/78}}
Claudio Ciborra developed another interpretation, which focused on the analyses of the Information System infrastructure using the concept of Gestell.{{Citation
| first = Claudio | last = Ciborra
| author-link = Claudio Ciborra
| title = Labyrinths of Information
| publisher = OUP
| year = 2002
| isbn = 0-19-927526-2 }} He based his improvement of the original meaning of "structural" with "processual" on the etymology of Gestell so that it indicates the pervasive process of arranging, regulating, and ordering of resources that involve both human and natural resources.{{Cite book|title=Organizational Innovation and Change: Managing Information and Technology|last=Rossignoli|first=Cecilia|last2=Gatti|first2=Mauro|last3=Agrifoglio|first3=Rocco|date=2015|publisher=Springer|isbn=9783319229201|location=Cham, Switzerland|pages=92}} Ciborra has likened information infrastructure with Gestell and this association was used to philosophically ground many aspects of his works such as his description of its inherent self-feeding process.