Intensive Culture

Social Theory, Religion & Contemporary Capitalism

AvScott M Lash

Häftad, Engelska, 2010

Del i serien Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society

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Beskrivning

Contemporary culture, today's capitalism - our global information society - is ever expanding, is ever more extensive. And yet we seem to be experiencing a parallel phenomenon which can only be characterised as intensive. This thought provoking, innovative book is dedicated to the study of such intensive culture. Whilst extensive culture is a culture of the same: a culture of fixed equivalence; intensive culture is a culture of difference, of in-equivalence - the singular. Intensities generate what we encounter. They are virtuals or possibilities, always in process and always in movement.

We thus live in a culture that is both extensive and intensive. Indeed the more globally stretched and extensive social relations become the more they simultaneously seem to take on this intensity. Ours is a relational world where each intensity ? whether human, technological or biological ? provides a distinct, specific window onto the whole.

Lash tracks the emergence and pervasion of this intensive culture in society, religion, philosophy, language, communications, politics and the neo-liberal economy itself.

In so doing he redefines the work of Leibniz, Benjamin, Simmel, and Durkheim and inititates the reader into the ontological structures of our contemporary social relations. In the pursuit of intensive culture the reader is taken on an excursion from Karl Marx's Capital to the 'information theology' in the science fiction of Philip K. Dick.

Diverse, engaging and rich in detail the resulting book will be of interest to all those studying social and cultural theory, sociology, media and communication and cultural studies

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2010-06-14
Mått:156 x 234 x 19 mm
Vikt:400 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society
Antal sidor:256
Upplaga:1
Förlag:SAGE Publications
ISBN:9781412945172

Utforska kategorier

Sociologi inom Samhälle och politik

Mer om författaren

Professor Scott Lash is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, as well as a a project leader in the Goldsmiths Media Research Programme. He is a leading name within sociology and cultural studies, has written numerous books and articles over the last twenty years, and is currently the managing editor for the journal Theory, Culture and Society.

Recensioner i media

This book makes a vital contribution to our understanding of contemporary culture. It re-reads key thinkers such as Nietzsche, Leibniz, Simmel, Benjamin, Bergson in order to assert the primacy of the vital and the social against the closed mind of instrumental reason. It develops an innovative theoretical platform to account for the place of the informational, the intensive, and the religious for re-thinking the fundamental questions of life, and how to live today. It is a fitting summation of Scott Lash′s challenging reorganization of critical and sociological theoryCouze VennNottingham Trent UniversityThis book is an engagement with the continuing dissolution of the symbolic in contemporary communication, in a critical reflection on thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Leibniz to Luhmann. It is a provocative archaeology of today′s ′cultural capitalism′ and of its metaphysical baggage. For Scott Lash the opposition between ′intensive′ and the ′extensive′, i.e. Leibniz′s distinction between ′substance′ and ′system′, is eroded in the age of informational capitalism, as words become things and things become data. For Lash the future of capitalism is one in which this intensity takes over the logic - as ′intensive materialism′ - of the economy itself. Yet this very process entails the dissolution of both intensity and with it of the singular. Lash pursues this compelling line of thought through encounters with Simmel, Benjamin, Durkheim and Philip K. Dick (!)Bernard StieglerDirector of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Georges-Pompidou

Innehållsförteckning

IntroductionCulture: Extensive and Intensive What is Intensive Culture?Ontology and ReligionOverviewSocial TheoryIntensive Sociology: Georg Simmel′s Vitalism Forms: From Cognitive a priori to Social a prioriValue: Nietzsche and SimmelSocial substance: from Labour to Life Monadology: Simmel, Bergson, MetaphysicsConclusions: Towards a Global Politics of FluxIntensive Philosophy: Leibniz and the Ontology of Difference Leibniz, Aristotle, Ontology Sensation, Perception, Knowledge Intensive CausationLanguage: Intrinsic PredicationSubstance and System: From Exchange of Equivalents to Exchange of DifferenceIntensive Language: Benjamin, God and the NameLeibniz and Benjamin: From the Monad to the WordIntensive Method: From Epistemology to TruthLanguage: Things, Man and GodIntensive Capitalism: Marxist OntologyIntroduction: From Commodity to DifferenceCausation and value: Aristotle and Marx Externalities: Intensive Capitalism and Neo-Liberalism Financialization The Intensive-material: Machines of Predication Intensive Politics: Power after HegemonyLanguage: Power becomes OntologicalTwo Types of PowerFrom Norm to FactFrom Representation to CommunicationCultural Studies: First and Second WaveIntensive Religion: Emile Durkheim′s Elementary FormsThe Soul: From Rite and Totem to Myth and AncestorThe Totem: Clan and EmblemAlimentary CommunionTotemic Vitalism: Durkheim and FreudExtensive Religion: Sociological CategoriesThe Social Fact: Metaphysical ThingsInformation Theology: Philip K. Dick′s Will to KnowledgeTransmigration(a) Faith versus knowledge (b) Dick′s St. Paul: Against Law and the Messianic(c) Christ′s mushroom: Salvation by Eating(d) Vast Active Living Intelligence System The Gnosticism of Philip K. DickHorselover Fat: Healing the SubjectValis: The MovieConclusionsIntensity: Ontology and ReligionIntensity′s Outside: Chinese Social Theory?