Poetic Sadness Digital Butterflies w/ M. Beatrice Fazi
Mar 16, 2026
M. Beatrice Fazi, philosopher of computation and Professor in Digital Humanities, explores abstraction as a world-making activity. She discusses digital vs analogue, computational aesthetics and indeterminacy. Conversations touch on prompts, interfaces, synthesis, and whether machines can produce novelty. The talk closes on writing, collaboration, and the politics and poetics of theorizing.
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Prioritize Clarity By Defining Your Theoretical Terms
- Be Clear And Define Your Terms When Theorizing.
- Fazi insists theory must define its predicates and offer working definitions, treating clarity as the communicator's duty not the reader's responsibility.
Writing Reveals Thought Through Iterative Weaving
- Writing Is The Moment Fazi Understands Her Own Thinking.
- She compares her daily writing practice to Penelope's weaving: iterative, painful and joyous, and arriving at definitions through the act of writing.
Rejecting Romanticized Analog Authenticity
- The Analogue Versus Digital Romanticism Is Misleading.
- Fazi rejects claims that analog is inherently superior and insists representation always involves discretizing cuts, so 'analog authenticity' is often ideological nostalgia.
