Within the grimdark future of 41st millennium technology is a relatively occult force, often operating in ways that both pervert physics and subvert expectations. While the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus may have a relatively nuanced understanding of technology when compared to the Imperial laity, the praxis of the red-robed priests goes beyond the quotidian practices of care and repair. In order to enact the Emperor’s will the Martian monks venerate, exhort, and cajole the very souls of their technologies, the machine spirits that undergird and support the infrastructure of every world in the Imperium. This tradition of veneration has roots in contemporary and historical human/infrastructural relations, and arguably serves to make occult infrastructures more predictable in their relation to the anthropic.
Humans have always already had relations towards occult infrastructures. As infrastructures become more occult, relative to the human, we require more expansive predictive frameworks in order to predict the outcome of human/infrastructural relations. This presentation examines the use and presence of machine spirits in Warhammer 40,000 through the lens of philosopher Daniel Dennett, and examines how such praxis can make occult infrastructures more predictable in their relation to the anthropic. Through doing so I argue that the Adeptus Mechanics, in taking a phenomenal stance towards technology, are not only enacting a practice that is reflective of (diegetic) reality, but also reflective of human relationships towards infrastructures which are relatively occult. In a historical context, this approach has been an effective and recurrent framework for dealing with occult infrastructures, ranging from the elemental and cosmic infrastructures of antiquity to the technical and virtual frameworks that undergird our present.
Author bio
Dr Richard Aubrey Slaughter has a degree in Informatics from the University of California, Irvine. He currently teaches ethics in information science, and uses Warhammer as a teaching tool.
