Catastrophic Technology in Cold War Political Thought

In the mid-twentieth century, a certain idea of technology emerged in the work of many influential political theorists: a critical, catastrophic concept of technology, entangled with the apocalyptic fears fuelled by two all-consuming world wars and the looming nuclear threat. Drawing on the work of theorists such as Hannah Arendt, Jacques Ellul, Martin Heidegger and Herbert Marcuse, Catastrophic Technology in Cold War Political Thought explores the critical idea of technology as both a response to a dramatically changing world, and a radical political critique of Cold War liberalism.

Questions of technology, and its catastrophic potential, are pivotal to modern social and political life. This book brilliantly reconstructs a series of pressing debates among a cohort of highly original thinkers who explored the nature and causes of the modern technological mindset. Through a sequence of cogent and compelling analyses of major figures including Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, Caroline Ashcroft excavates the intellectual origins of one of the most challenging issues to impinge on the politics of our time.--Richard Bourke, University of Cambridge

Caroline Ashcroft is a Lecturer in Politics at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. She works in twentieth century political theory and history of political thought, particularly German and Anglo-American. She has previously published widely on Arendt's political ideas, including Violence and Power in Hannah Arendt's Political Thought (2021). Her current research focuses primarily on the intersection of science and technology with politics in the twentieth century, particularly in the work of radical critics of technology and within environmental political theory and movements.