alterities of the non-inhuman being
a lecture by Bernard Stiegler
The primary and secondary identification processes through which the psychic individual constitutes him/herself are today re-appropriated and deeply altered by the psychopower exercised by marketing. This state of things ruins the individuation process in general, and it is in this context that the fantasy of identity puts its foot down everywhere in the world – to the point where France offers itself a Ministry of National Identity. However, Freud as well as Kant have shown that it is only because there is no identity that the individual, through processes of identification that form the grid of its libidinal economy, can transform him/herself and become the other who he always remains, and who is always yet to come – given that he/she will not become inhuman.
The French philosopher Bernard Stiegler has been the director of the
Institut de recherche et d'innovation (IRI) at Centre Georges-Pompidou
since 2006. Stiegler has been prolifically publishing books, articles,
and interviews since 1994. His works include several ongoing series of
books. The book in three volumes Techniques and Time outlines the heart
of Stiegler's philosophical project, and in particular his theses that
the role of techniques has been repressed throughout the history of philosophy,
and that techniques, as organised inorganic matter and an essential form
of memory, is constitutive of human temporality. The key themes of his
entire work are technology, time, individuation, consumerism, consumer
capitalism, technological convergence, digitisation, Americanisation,
and the future of politics and human society.
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 George Collins,
Marc Crépon, Catherine Perret and Caroline Stiegler.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Stiegler
Public lecture in English on Tuesday 7 July 2009 at 6.30 p.m. at Casino
Luxembourg.
Free entrance.