Half a century ago Adorno and Horkheimer argued, with great
prescience, that our increasingly rationalized world was witnessing
the emergence of a new kind of barbarism, thanks in part to the
stultifying effects of the culture industries. What they could not
foresee was that, with the digital revolution and the pervasive
automation associated with it, the developments they had discerned
would be greatly accentuated, giving rise to the loss of reason and to
the loss of the reason for living. Individuals are now overwhelmed by
the sheer quantity of digital information and the speed of digital
flows, resulting in a kind of technological Wild West in which they
find themselves increasingly powerless, driven by their lack of agency
to the point of madness.
How can we find a way out of this situation? In this major new book,
Bernard Stiegler argues that we must first acknowledge our era as one
of fundamental disruption and detachment. We are living in an absence
of _epokh_x0013__ in the philosophical sense, by which Stiegler
means that we have lost our path of thinking and being. Weaving in
powerful accounts from his own life story, including struggles with
depression and time spent in prison, Stiegler calls for a
new _epokh_x0013__ based on public power. We must forge new circuits
of meaning outside of the established algorithmic routes. For only
then will forms of thinking and life be able to arise that restore
meaning and aspiration to the individual.
Concluding with a dialogue between Stiegler and Jean-Luc Nancy, this
book will be of great interest to students and scholars in social and
cultural theory, media and cultural studies, philosophy and the
humanities generally.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781509529292
Publisert
2019
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Polity
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter