Yuk Hui on Qi and Concretisation

Yuk Hui is Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he holds the Chair of Human Conditions. Hui studied computer engineering at the University of Hong Kong, before writing this PhD thesis at Goldsmiths University London under French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, and later obtained his Habilitation in philosophy from Leuphana University, Lüneburg. Hui is author of several monographs that have been translated into a dozen languages, including On the Existence of Digital Objects (2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics (2016), Recursivity and Contingency (2019), Art and Cosmotechnics (2021), and the soon to be published, Machine and Sovereignty. In this podcast we discuss the Chinese philosophical notion of Qi, breath, Chinese materialism and their relation to Gilbert Simondon’s notion of “concretisation“.