Stiegler discovered philosophy in prison for robbery and was mentored by Derrida. His 3-volume Technics and Time, evoking Heidegger’s Being and Time, takes up the grammatological rather than deconstructive path taken by Derrida in the 1970s. Stiegler’s research on intergenerational care, phamakology, and algorithmic governance continue with his colleagues at the IRI in Paris and around the world. I first met Bernard when he visited Madison in 2015, and I gave him a tour of DesignLab. At the suggestion of collaborator Ana Vujanovic, we reached out to him and were collaborating on a lecture performance over the past year or so. I had tickets and hotel reserved to Paris when COVID struck. Disappointed, we Zoomed and discussed how to proceed and possible workshops, still being pursued with IRI. He passed away last summer, due to cancer. In this 2-hour interview with Zero Books, Stiegler discusses Marx and Greenspan on the proletarianization of intellect achieved by IT, his rejection of defunding the police, and COVID and the positions taken to it by Zizek and Agamben. Throughout the interview, Bernard’s patient passion and clarity of thought shine through. “Making a Mouk” is a short, accessible text; https://www.dropbox.com/…/Bernard_Stiegler_Making_a… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd-9LPVilmM
recent book Le siècle du populisme (‘The Century of Populism’) (1), Pierre Rosanvallon
“populism consists in opposing a ‘pure people’ to a ‘corrupt elite’ and conceiving of politics as an immediate expression of the ‘general will’ (2) of the people.”
“There are only populisms, which explains why the notion produces so many interpretations and contradictory definitions.”
The left’s populist strategy appears particularly pertinent in the context of an exit out from the Covid-19 crisis which has been touted as a prelude for building a new social contract. This time, unlike in the 2008 crisis, a space could open up for the clash of opposing projects. A mere return to business as usual seems unlikely and the state will probably play a role that is both central and more prominent. We may witness the arrival of a ‘state capitalism’ that uses public authorities to rebuild the economy and restore the power of capital. It could take more or less authoritarian forms depending on the political forces at its helm. This scenario would signal either the victory of right-wing populist forces or neoliberalism’s defenders last-ditch attempt to ensure the survival of their model.
contrary to what Rosanvallon argues, far from threatening democracy, today left-wing populism is the best strategy if we want to orient the forces resisting a post-democratic, neoliberal order in an egalitarian direction.
p. 169 Marxism, humanism, and literature in the university
Marx was a student if economic and political forces who believed he was conducting scientific inquiries into social political and economic structures; yes his works, students complain, are not taught at all in the Brown economics and political science departments. Students committed to post modern ways of thinking discover conspiracy in this phenomenon, but it is more likely that the omission is owning to the fact that professional economists do not respect marks as an economist. Those who pursue the study of economics essay science do not consider Marxist economic theories sufficiently scientific, and on the basis of what Dusty a risk of done to the economics of the Soviet union in the peoples Republic of China, which claim to be Marxist states, who can blame the process for being skeptical?
A similar situation exists with regard to Freud. Just as marks is very little taught in political science or economic departments, sort throat is not crowded these days in Department of psychology or psychiatry, and for similar reasons. Though what Freud dead in his own time may have passed for science and though he may have considered himself a scientist, he is not a scientist at all by contemporary standards. If Marxist economics has not produced utopias in Marxist states, so, by the same token, Freudian techniques of analysis have not consistently demonstrated the power to cure the more serious ( or even the most trivial) psychological disorders.
p. 170 If Marxist economics is no longer perceived is a tool that can be used to help solve economic problems, and Freudian analytics techniques are no longer applicable in helping to cure patients with mental disorders, what residue of Marxism and Freudianism remains?
p. 171 though they find an inhospitable climate in the social sciences and in the heart sciences, Marks in Freud have been given a warm home in certain humanities departments committed to postmodern ways of perceiving the world. But they have not found a home there is scientists. They have found a home, rather, as profits, or perhaps more accurately, as gods. And those who espouse Marxian in Freudian views become the “true believers.”
what happens to Marxist and Freudian ideas when they lose their empirical grounding in their power to explain events in the physical world? Free-floating Marxist and Freudian ideas have been fused to established at least one of the foundations of post modernist literature theory and to promulgate an image of the human form it’s a robot controlled by “ideology.”
p. 172. Because ideology works most effectively through its unconscious hold on subjects, it resists being made conscious or explicit. And ideology structures ‘seeing’ in ‘feeling’ before it structures ‘thinking,’ and appears to have no historical or social specificity but to be simply the natural way of perceiving reality.
Other residues of do descientizied Marx and Freud are “the class struggle” in “sublimation.” But the class struggle is Marx conceived it never really took root in American culture.
Even know, empirical sociologists have difficulty in defining what constitutes “a class” in American culture, and in determining where one class ends and another begins.
It is well known that the vast majority of Americans define themselves as middle-class, which then makes it necessary for a sociologist interested in arriving it finally distinctions to divide the middle glass itself into upper, middle, and lower, and so on.
p. 173. Post modern Freudians are forced into similar absurdities. Freud based his theory of sublimation (neurosis-as-the-price-of-culture) on the very rigid Austro-German family, constituted by a strict, punishing, disciplinarian father, a submissive mother, and obedient son, and a subservient daughter. p. 174 Marks in Floyd analyzed Austro-German culture and thought they were analyzing the universe. For them Austro-German culture was universal culture, as it consequently becomes for believing Marxists and Freudians.
p. 179. And what are you, reader?
the humanities are in flux. Liberal democracy, on which the humanities real life for 16 ounce and which day in Torrance sustain, is under attack by ‘humanists”; literary criticism has nothing only become politicized, but politicized against the Vallas of liberal humanism.
p. 190. The Marxist-Gramscian thesis depends on a conspiracy theory according to which the “dominant classes” exert their influence over the “subordinate classes covered” the by means of educational, religious, and other institutions, and ‘ruling groups preempt the high ground of universal morality in truth.” Because the dominant classes dominate the oppressed classes in secrecy, by means of social institutions, de artist must respond to this dominance with symbolic representations.
Besides writing prize-winning fiction, the Nobel Laureate has fought tirelessly for civil liberties. With his new book, ‘The Call of the Tribe,’ he promotes liberal thought and pays tribute to seven authors who embrace it. We talk to him about liberalism, intellectual blindness and the dangers facing democracy today
liberalism defends some basic ideas: freedom, individualism, the rejection of collectivism and nationalism – in other words, all the ideologies or doctrines that limit or annihilate freedom within society.
Nationalism is present, but my impression is that, as with Catalonia, it’s a minority and the strength of democratic institutions is going to gradually undermine it until it’s derailed.
I wanted to be a communist. I thought communism represented the antithesis of a military dictatorship, corruption and, above all, inequality.
But the communism in Latin America was pure Stalinism, with parties subject to the Comintern in Moscow.
Fidel invited myself and a dozen other intellectuals to speak to him. We spent the whole night, 12 hours, from eight in the afternoon to eight the next morning, basically listening to him speak. It was impressive, but not very convincing.
In the case of misinformation and manipulation, communism was incredibly clever at distorting things, undermining honest people and masking lies with false truths that came to substitute reality.