“A technique of existence is a technique that takes as its ‘object’ process itself, as the speculative-pragmatic production of oriented events of change. Techniques of existence are dedicated to ontogenesis as such. They operate immediately qualitatively-relationally. They make no gesture of claiming ‘objectivity,’ nor do they pride themselves on their grasp of common sense. At the same time, they reject being characterized as ‘merely’ subjective. They are inventive of subjective forms in the archivist sense: dynamic unities of events unfolding. So implicated are they with the politicality of event-formation that they qualify whatever domain in which their creativity is operative as an occurrent art.” (Brian Massumi, Semblance and Event, p. 14)
I believe C. Wright Mills was advocating a technique of existence in The Sociological Imagination–particularly in his appendix (“On Intellectual Craftsmanship“).
