Disbelief and discredit / Bernard Stiegler ; translated by Daniel Ross and Suzanne Arnold.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stiegler, Bernard.

Standardized Title:

Mécréance et discrédit. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Technological innovations--Social aspects.

Technological innovations.

Consumption (Economics)--Social aspects.

Consumption (Economics).

Physical Description:

3 volumes ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Decadence of industrial democracies

Uncontrollable societies of disaffected individuals

Lost spirit of capitalism

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Polity Press, 2011-

Language Note:

Translated from the French.

Summary:

Bernard Stiegler is one of the most original philosophers writing today about new technologies and their implications for social, political and personal life. Drawing on sources ranging from Plato and Marx to Heidegger and Derrida, he develops a highly original account of technology as a way of writing time and memory, analysing 'grammatization' as an open system through which social reproduction is carried out, regulated and transformed.

In the three volumes of Disbelief and Discredit, Stiegler explores the process of grammatization in relation to the development of industrial technologies and the prospects for human growth. Challenging the optimistic view of new technologies as facilitators of learning and progress, he argues that technologies are interwoven with intelligence, temporality and desire in ways that are more profound and sinister than is commonly appreciated.

In this opening volume, Stiegler argues that the industrial model implemented since the beginning of the twentieth century, which rests on the separation of production and consumption, has become obsolete, leading capitalist democracies to an impasse. A sign of this impasse and of the decadence to which it leads is the banalization of consumers, who become caught up in mediated networks that are concerned with the creation and reproduction of desire - a libidinal economy that ensnares individuals in a perpetual cycle of consumption. This is the new proletarianization of the technologically infused, hyper-industrial capitalism of today. It produces a society cut off from its past and its future, stultifying individual development and turning democracy into a farce in which disbelief and discredit inevitably arise. Book jacket.

Contents:

v. 1. Decadence of industrial democracies.

v. 2. Uncontrollable societies of disaffected individuals.

The lost spirit of capitalism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9780745648095

0745648096

9780745648101

074564810X

9780745648125

OCLC:

682095551