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Bernard Stiegler

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Bernard Stiegler
Born (1952-04-01) 1 April 1952 (age 72)
Era21st-century philosophy
RegionWestern Philosophy
SchoolContinental philosophy
Main interests
Philosophy of technology · Individuation

Bernard Stiegler (born 1 April 1952) is a French philosopher and Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. His best known work is Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus.

Influences and themes

Stiegler's work is influenced by, among others, Sigmund Freud, André Leroi-Gourhan, Gilbert Simondon, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Valéry, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida.

Key themes are technology, time, individuation, consumerism, consumer capitalism, technological convergence, digitization, Americanization, and the future of politics and human society.

Incarceration

Between 1978 and 1983 Stiegler was incarcerated for armed robbery, first at the Prison Saint-Michel in Toulouse, and then at the Centre de détention in Muret. It was during this period that he became interested in philosophy, studying it by correspondence with Gérard Granel at the Université de Toulouse-Le-Mirail. His transformation in prison is recounted in his book, Passer à l’acte (2003; the English translation of this work is included in the 2009 volume, Acting Out).

Career

In 1987–88, with Catherine Counot, Stiegler commissioned an exhibition at the Centre Georges-Pompidou, entitled Mémoires du futur: bibliothèques et technologies. Stiegler defended his thesis at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 1992. He has been a Director at the Collège international de philosophie, and Professor at the Université de Technologie at Compiègne. He has held the positions of Director General at the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA), and Director General at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM).

On 1 January 2006 he commenced as Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. He is also Director of the Institut de recherche et d'innovation (IRI), which was created at his initiative in April 2006. The IRI is affiliated with the Department of Cultural Development.

Stiegler has, since 2009, been a Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Works

Stiegler has been prolifically publishing books, articles, and interviews since 1994, and in particular in the last several years. His works include several ongoing series of books:

  • La technique et le temps (3 vols.). This series outlines the heart of Stiegler's philosophical project, and in particular his theses that the role of technics has been repressed throughout the history of philosophy, and that technics, as organised inorganic matter, and as essentially a form of memory, is constitutive of human temporality. The series contains extensive readings of the works of André Leroi-Gourhan, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Immanuel Kant. It also contains his explication of the "cinematic constitution of consciousness," as well as his thesis that human beings are essentially "adoptive" creatures.
  • De la misère symbolique (2 vols.). This series is concerned in particular with the ways in which cultural, symbolic and informational technologies have become a means of industrialising the formation of desire in the service of production, with destructive consequences for psychic and collective individuation. Stiegler outlines his concepts of "general organology" (a way of thinking the co-individuation of human organs, technical organs, and social organisations) and "genealogy of the sensible" (a way of thinking the historicity of human desire and aesthetics). It contains extensive readings of Sigmund Freud and Gilles Deleuze, as well as of the works of Alain Resnais, Bertrand Bonello, Andy Warhol, and Joseph Beuys.
  • Mécréance et Discrédit (3 vols.). This series is concerned with the way in which the industrial organisation of production and then consumption has had destructive consequences for the modes of life of human beings, in particular with the way in which the loss of savoir-faire and savoir-vivre (that is, the loss of the knowledge of how to do and how to live), has resulted in what Stiegler calls "generalised proletarianisation." In this series Stiegler makes clear his view that, in the light of the present state of the global technical system, it is not a matter of overcoming capitalism but rather of transforming its industrial basis to prevent the loss of spirit from which it increasingly suffers. In the second volume Stiegler introduces the concept of the "Antigone complex," to describe the psychosocial effects of the destruction of authority—that is, the destruction of the superego—on politics and youth. The series contains extensive readings of Paul Valéry, Max Weber, Aristotle, and Herbert Marcuse, as well as analyses of the crisis of May 1968 and the crime of Patricia and Emmanuel Cartier.
  • Constituer l'Europe (2 vols.). In this series Stiegler is concerned with the effects of the destruction of psychic and collective individuation on Europe. He argues for the necessity of inaugurating a new individuation process at the continental level, itself embedded in an individuation process operating at a global level. At stake, he says, is the creation of a new European "motive" which will enable the reinvention of industrial civilisation.

Politics

Stiegler has founded a political group, Ars Industrialis, the manifesto of which calls for an "industrial politics of spirit." The manifesto is signed by Stiegler and the other co-founders of the group, George Collins, Marc Crépon, Catherine Perret and Caroline Stiegler.

Cinema

Stiegler features prominently in the film The Ister (2004), directed by Daniel Ross and David Barison.

Stiegler also appears in An Organization of Dreams (2009), directed by Ken McMullen, an experimental thriller inspired by Stiegler's work.

Barbara Stiegler

Stiegler's daughter Barbara (born 1971) is also a philosopher. She attended the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-St-Cloud, and in 2003 obtained her doctorate from the University of Paris IV: Paris-Sorbonne. Barbara Stiegler is the author of Nietzsche et la biologie (2001) and Nietzsche et la critique de la chair: Dionysos, Ariane, le Christ (2005). She is not to be confused with the German sociologist of the same name.

See also

Bibliography

Books in French

  • (1994) La technique et le temps. Tome 1: La faute d’Epiméthée. ISBN 2-7186-0440-9
  • (1996) La technique et le temps. Tome 2: La désorientation. ISBN 2-7186-0468-9
  • (1996) Échographies de la télévision. Entretiens filmés (with Jacques Derrida). ISBN 2-7186-0480-8
  • (2001) La technique et le temps. Tome 3: Le temps du cinéma et la question du mal-être. ISBN 2-7186-0563-4
  • (2003) Passer à l'acte. ISBN 2-7186-0616-9
  • (2003) Aimer, s'aimer, nous aimer: Du 11 septembre au 21 avril. ISBN 2-7186-0629-0
  • (2004) De la misère symbolique: Tome 1, L'époque hyperindustrielle. ISBN 2-7186-0635-5
  • (2004) De la misère symbolique: Tome 2, La Catastrophè du sensible. ISBN 2-7186-0634-7
  • (2004) Philosopher par accident: Entretiens avec Elie During. ISBN 2-7186-0648-7
  • (2004) Mécréance et Discrédit: Tome 1, La décadence des démocraties industrielles. ISBN 2-7186-0660-6
  • (2005) Constituer l'Europe: Tome 1, Dans un monde sans vergogne. ISBN 2-7186-0689-4
  • (2005) Constituer l'Europe: Tome 2, Le motif européen. ISBN 2-7186-0690-8
  • (2005) L'attente de l'inattendu. ISBN 2-9700474-8-9
  • (2006) Mécréance et Discrédit: Tome 2, Les sociétés incontrolables d'individus désaffectés. ISBN 2-7186-0706-8
  • (2006) Mécréance et Discrédit: Tome 3, L'esprit perdu du capitalisme. ISBN 2-7186-0715-7
  • (2006) Des pieds et des mains: Petite conférence sur l'homme et son désir de grandir. ISBN 2-227-47566-8
  • (2006) Le théâtre, le peuple, la passion (with Jean-Christophe Bailly & Denis Guénoun). ISBN 2-8468-1170-9
  • (2006) La télécratie contre la Démocratie. ISBN 2-08-210569-5
  • (2006) Réenchanter le monde : La valeur esprit contre le populisme industriel (with Marc Crépon, George Collins & Catherine Perret). ISBN 2-08-210585-7
  • (2007) De la démocratie participative: Fondements et limites (with Marc Crépon). ISBN 2-7555-0033-6
  • (2007) Avril-22 : Ceux qui préfèrent ne pas (with Alain Jugnon, Alain Badiou & Michel Surya). ISBN 2-9164-9231-3
  • (2008) Economie de l'hypermatériel et psychopouvoir. ISBN 2-8420-5945-X
  • (2008) Prendre Soin: Tome 1, De la jeunesse et des générations. ISBN 2-0812-0736-2
  • (2009) Pour une nouvelle critique de l'économie politique ISBN 2-7186-0797-1
  • (2009) Pour en Finir avec la Mécroissance. ISBN 2-0812-2492-5
  • (2009) Faut-il interdire les écrans aux enfants? (with Serge Tisseron). ISBN 2-9184-1412-3

Online texts

Other translations

  • (1993) "Questioning Technology and Time," Tekhnema 1: 31–44.
  • (1996) "Persephone, Oedipus, Epimetheus," Tekhnema 3: 69-112.
  • (1998) "The Time of Cinema. On the 'New World' and 'Cultural Exception'," Tekhnema 4: 62–114.
  • (1998) Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus (Stanford: Stanford University Press). ISBN 0-8047-3041-9
  • (2001) "Derrida and Technology: Fidelity at the Limits of Deconstruction and the Prosthesis of Faith," in Tom Cohen (ed.), Jacques Derrida and the Humanities (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press). ISBN 0-5216-2565-3
  • (2001) "New Industrial Temporal Objects," in Rae Earnshaw, Richard Guedj, Andries van Dam, & John Vince (eds.), Frontiers of Human-Centred Computing, Online Communities and Virtual Environments (London: Springer-Verlag). ISBN 1-85233-238-7
  • (2002) Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews (Cambridge: Polity Press), with Jacques Derrida. Including Stiegler, "The Discrete Image." ISBN 0-7456-2036-1
  • (2002) "Transcendental Imagination in a Thousand Points," New Formations 46: 7–22.
  • (2003) "Technics of Decision: An Interview," Angelaki 8: 151–67.
  • (2006) “Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: The Memories of Desire,” in Louis Armand & Arthur Bradley (eds.), Technicity (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006): 15–41.
  • (2006) "Philosophising By Accident," Public 33: 98–107, an extract from Passer à l'acte.
  • (2007) "Technics, Media, Teleology: Interview wth Bernard Stiegler," Theory, Culture & Society 24 (7–8): 334–41.
  • (2007) "Technoscience and Reproduction," Parallax 13 (4): 29–45.
  • (2007) "The True Price of Towering Capitalism: Bernard Stiegler Interviewed," Queen's Quarterly 114: 340–350.
  • (2009) "Teleologics of the Snail: The Errant Self Wired to a WiMax Network," Theory, Culture & Society 26 (2–3): 33–45.
  • (2009) Technics and Time, 2: Disorientation (Stanford: Stanford University Press). ISBN 0-8047-3014-8
  • (2009) Acting Out (Stanford: Stanford University Press). ISBN 0-8047-5869-7

Secondary literature (English)

Secondary literature (French)

  • Jean-Hugues Barthélémy, "De la finitude rétentionnelle. Sur La technique et le temps de Bernard Stiegler", in P-E. Schmit et P-A. Chardel (dir.), Phénoménologie et technique(s), Le Cercle Herméneutique Editeur (2008).
  • Online paper about Stiegler's link to Simondon, by Jean-Hugues Barthélémy et Vincent Bontems
  • Pierre-Antoine Chardel, "De l'écriture aux téle-technologies (ou le jeu de la difference en question)", in P-E Schmit et P-A Chardel (dir.), Phénoménologie et technique(s), Le Cercle Herméneutique Editeur (2008).

Barbara Stiegler

  • Nietzsche et la biologie (2001). ISBN 2-1305-0742-5
  • Nietzsche et la critique de la chair: Dionysos, Ariane, le Christ (2005). ISBN 2-1305-4376-6
  • La raison dévoilée: Etudes schopenhaueriennes (with Christian Bonnet, Vincent Stanek, & Peter Welsen, 2005). ISBN 2-7116-1779-3
  • Dionysos on condition: Apollo's knife and Ariadne's ear.
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