Podcast Summary:

New Books Network

Guest: Dr. Madeleine Chalmers

Book: French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

Host: Gina Stam

Date: October 13, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Gina Stam interviews Dr. Madeleine Chalmers about her groundbreaking book French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn. The conversation delves into the unexpectedly deep connections between French technological and philosophical traditions, Catholic theology, and the so-called “nonhuman turn” in theory. Chalmers explores how figures from the late 19th-century French Catholic revival, overlooked literary authors, and canonical French theorists (like Deleuze and Simondon) converge in their treatment of technology, spiritual motifs, and materiality. Throughout, she challenges neat divides between literature and theory, technology and theology, and human and nonhuman agency.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Book’s Central Argument: Uncovering the Theological Roots of the Nonhuman Turn

• Dr. Chalmers reveals how the lineage of French technological philosophy often begins in a context rich with Catholic theological ideas, contrary to the usual assumption that the “nonhuman turn” is a purely secular or materialist movement.
  • “The lines of influence that I trace… actually lead us to what might seem a very unexpected source for that tradition of vitalist thinking—late 19th century French mystic, Catholic revival.” (02:42, Dr. Chalmers)

2. Intellectual Trajectory and Research Methodology

• Chalmers’ fascination with representations of technology in literature began in undergraduate work and grew via immersion in contemporary posthumanist theory.
  • She describes her approach as “literary detective work," following footnotes and intertextual references.
  • “I realized that they were actually part of one ongoing conversation… that was really the genesis… of this book.” (03:51, Dr. Chalmers)
  • Many key authors (e.g. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Alfred Jarry, Marcel Schwob) are now obscure yet played vital roles in shaping the philosophical terrain discussed by later thinkers.

3. The Notion of Technologos

• Chalmers introduces the term “technologos” as a way to conceptualize the intertwining of technology with both rational (logos) and divine (Logos) frameworks.
  • “Technologos is my own coinage to try to describe a particular configuration… in the fin-de-siècle in France… describing the overlaying of Catholic theology, sometimes acknowledged, sometimes subverted… with the emergence of new technological forms.” (07:29, Dr. Chalmers)
  • The book itself (as material technology) is part of this dynamic.

4. Sacramentality and Secularization

• The concept of “sacramentalism”—material signs pointing to an inward grace—is traced even among atheists and agnostics who retain Catholic forms and motifs.
  • For writers like Ernest Hello and Zola, technology and its effects (e.g., the steam powering a train) are reimagined spiritual symbols.
  • “Writers are not Catholic, they can even be avowedly anti-Catholic. But there's something about the forms, the motifs, the ideas of Catholicism that is effective, that does read in that time and place… manifest even in agnostic or atheistic works.” (09:12, Dr. Chalmers)

5. Theological Concepts in Technological Fictions

• Fiat (“let there be”) is explored in both its Old and New Testament forms: divine action and human acceptance (Genesis and the Annunciation) become templates for reflecting on agency and technological creation.
  • “What those two sides of the fiat introduce are these ideas not just of agency… but also of its opposite… patience, understood in its etymological sense as suffering or having things done to you.” (11:57, Dr. Chalmers)
• Typology (the idea that Old Testament figures prefigure New Testament fulfillment) is discussed as a structure for both theology and the emergence of new technological “post-figures.”
  • “In biblical scholarship, typology is the notion that the Old Testament prefigures the new… these writers are doing retrospective typologies using… biblical motifs in order to think about technology…” (14:57, Dr. Chalmers)

6. Technology, Temporality, and Virtuality

• Through figures like Charles Cros—an inventor-poet who conceptualized but did not build inventions—Chalmers examines the temporality of technology: inventions and ideas that exist “virtually” before material realization.
  • “What fascinated him was the ideas themselves… at what point can they be said to exist? At what point can they be said to have been discovered? And thinking about the temporality of that.” (18:13, Dr. Chalmers)

7. Apocalyptic Imagination: Technology and Revelation

• The apocalyptic (“revelation”) motif threads through technological and religious imaginations—Chalmers finds in fiction not necessarily predictions of dystopian ends, but meditations on revelation, temporality, and the emergence of the new from the old.
  • “The Apocalypse… is not a full stop. It's a kind of comma, and then on into eternity.” (20:54, Dr. Chalmers)
  • Even non-religious works draw on the structure and affect of apocalyptic revelation.

8. Algorithmic Temporality and Roussel

• Raymond Roussel’s literary algorithms and text-generating procedures offer a secular, “ecological” counterpoint to the theological “logos” analogy in software theory.
  • “Whereas the code is logos… about authority and about command. With Roussel we have an almost ecological kind of code… using notions of algorithm to be creative, to be ceaselessly inventive…” (23:27, Dr. Chalmers)
  • Roussel’s approach challenges the model of sovereignty, instead modeling ongoing, distributed creativity.

9. Simondon, Surrealism, and Undoing Disciplinary Boundaries

• Gilbert Simondon is reconsidered through his deep attention to spirituality and his engagement with Surrealist concepts (noting explicitly that “the technical object is a Surrealist object”).
  • Chalmers brings Simondon into the genealogy of the nonhuman turn by tracing this spiritual and literary thread.
  • She also critiques the academic compartmentalization of “literature” versus “theory,” and periodization, arguing for messier, more interconnected intellectual histories.
  • “By coming into Simondon via Surrealism… it’s also a sort of statement about making that transition from thinking of literature and thought as separate things, to seeing thought… as literary, and to seeing literature as itself a mode of thought.” (26:29, Dr. Chalmers)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Hidden Catholic Influences:

  • “All of a sudden those references to Nicholas of Cusa or De Hexeity in Deleuze no longer seem accidental… They start to point back to what I think is a quite distinctive movement in French thought, a kind of entanglement of philosophy with… avant-garde literature.” (02:42, Dr. Chalmers)

• On Method and Joys of Literary Genealogy:

  • “There was a great delight in finding those extraordinary coincidences that aren't really coincidences… where you come across a name you don't expect to see… It was a little bit of literary detective work.” (05:12, Dr. Chalmers)

• On Technologos:

  • “Within the corpus I’m looking at, all of those seemingly unrelated elements intermesh very closely—technology, not just as a subject matter… but as a form through which they're thinking about what it means to be in the world.” (07:29, Dr. Chalmers)

• On the End of Time and Revelation:

  • “The Apocalypse, as some of these writers conceive of it… is not a full stop. It’s a kind of comma, and then on into eternity.” (20:54, Dr. Chalmers)

• On Blurring Theory and Literature:

  • “By coming into Simondon via Surrealism… we are getting a holistic view… Those distinctions are actually blocking our view, our view of periods that are much more complex, and of relationships between forms, genres, or modes of thinking that are actually much more complex.” (26:29, Dr. Chalmers)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:42]: Roots of the nonhuman turn in French theological currents
• [03:51]: Chalmers’ academic journey and selection of obscure authors
• [07:29]: Definition and significance of technologos
• [09:12]: Sacramentality in technology—beyond just religious writers
• [11:57]: Biblical fiat’s duality; agency and patience
• [14:57]: Theological typology and its narrative temporalities
• [18:13]: The virtual existence of inventions and technological temporality
• [20:54]: Apocalypse as revelation, not just destruction
• [23:27]: Roussel’s algorithmic text and alternative computational theology
• [26:29]: Simondon, spirituality, and breaking disciplinary boundaries
• [30:14]: Upcoming project on DIY and marginalized knowledge traditions

Closing & Upcoming Work

Dr. Chalmers mentions her next project: a genealogy of DIY and alternative intellectual traditions in France, focusing on marginal, esoteric, and non-sanctioned forms of knowledge (“esotericism, indigenous thought, bricolage, neurodivergence…”). (30:14)

This episode is a rich, layered conversation revealing new intersections of technology, theology, and literature in the French tradition, appealing to theorists, literary scholars, and anyone interested in the deeper histories behind today’s debates about the nonhuman.