Cyberpunk Worlds, Accelerationist Imaginaries, and Posthuman Transformations: The politics of AGI in Weird Times

The VMU Vytautas Kavolis Transdisciplinary Research Institute invites the academic community and the broader public to attend a lecture, „Cyberpunk Worlds, Accelerationist Imaginaries, and Posthuman Transformations: The politics of AGI in Weird Times” by Prof. Dr. Şevket Benhür Oral.

• Date – 13 May 2026 at 3 PM – 4:30 PM.
• Language – English.
• Venue: Room 202, K. Donelaičio str. 52, Kaunas.
• Please register for the lecture here.  A few days before the lecture, we will send you a reminder.

About the lecture

We live in weird times. It is not clear where we are headed. In the midst of ecological crisis, cultural disorientation, intensifying geopolitical instability, and technocapitalist acceleration, are we to turn to localized forms of life, reduced energy consumption, and deliberate deceleration as strategies of survival and repair, or are we better off letting technology supercede human biological limits through cybernetic integration and machinic intelligence? Put differently, are we to become anarcho-primitivists or TESCREALists (transhumanism, Extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and longtermism)? The options are not limited to these two, of course. Regardless, what is at stake is a fundamental reconfiguration of what it means to be alive within a world whose very conditions of existence are undergoing rapid transformation.

This seminar brings together cyberpunk fiction, accelerationist theory, and posthumanist philosophy to discuss the politics of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Our starting point is clear: AGI should be understood as a present reality rather than a speculative future event. Contemporary narratives surrounding AGI tend to oscillate between techno-utopian promises of universal problem-solving and catastrophic visions of human obsolescence. Drawing on some of the canocial works in the cyberpunk genre such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix trilogy, Blade Runner and its sequel Blade Runner: 2049, alongside the visionary graphic art of Jean Giraud (Moebius) and Enki Bilal, we engage with both left and right accelerationist imaginaries and explore the contested visions of the posthuman future at stake. The struggle over AGI is not merely a technical or regulatory challenge. It is a deeply cultural and political confrontation over the boundaries of the human and the very material trajectories of a world in crisis. What to do? How to be?

Prof. Dr. Şevket Benhür Oral serves as a chief researcher at Vytautas Kavolis Transdisciplinary Research Institute at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. His primary research interests include the social, political, and philosophical foundations of education and the educational implications of contemporary continental philosophy. Additionally, he explores Chinese Buddhist ontologies, particularly Tiantai Buddhism. Among his notable publications are two monographs, entitled Granularity: An Ontological Inquiry into Justice and Holistic Education, released by Springer Nature and Existential Intelligence: The Ontology of Ambiguity and Education, from Bloomsbury Academic.

For more information about the lecture, please email vki@vdu.lt.

Please be advised that the event may be filmed and/or photographed, and you may appear in photos or videos, which may be published in various media outlets.

This lecture is one of the activities of the project “Strengthening of R&D activities of the Vytautas Kavolis Transdisciplinary Institute of Social and Humanities Sciences (SOCMTEP)”. The project is financed by the Lithuanian Science Council and the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports of the Republic of Lithuania, contract no. S-A-UEI-23-13 (12/27/2023).