Re-Enchantment of the World

Bernard Stiegler is Director of the Institute of Research and Development at the Georges Pompidou Center, France and Associated Professor at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. He is the author of a prolific and growing body of work, including the three volume Technics and Time.Trevor Arthur is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York, USA.

Expounding and developing the work of his think tank and pressure group, Ars Industrialis, this book offers a close-up of Stiegler's philosophy in its engagement with our contemporary world. Exposing the toxic short-termism of our runaway economics, Stiegler offers us an alternative: the repurposing of technologies of control and consumption towards an economy of contribution. His analyses ring profoundly true, and his urgency is unparalleled: this is a project we cannot afford to ignore. Martin Crowley, Reader in Modern French Thought and Culture, Queens' College, University of Cambridge, UK Stiegler offers penetrating philosophical analyses of our contemporary information society and of the industrial model of consumer capitalism that underpins it. He writes with an urgency and vision that challenges us to reclaim our freedom and knowledge and to recreate a world that would not be subordinated to the exigencies of consumption, production and limitless growth. Stiegler tells us that there can be another way and that there are futures which can be different from the present we have now. His insight and originality make him one of the most important and indispensable philosophers living and writing today. Ian James, Lecturer in French, Downing College, University of Cambridge, UK The interventions brought together in The Re-Enchantment of the World work superbly as a point of entry into the increasingly important philosophy of Bernard Stiegler. It is also a major work in its own right, the most strident example of current French philosophy's return to political activism. Stiegler argues that consumer capitalism is deleteriously eroding the processes of sublimation that gives rise to desire, leading to emotional exhaustion, social atomism, apathy and a lethal short-termism. Ars Industrialis offers not just a critique, but a remedy for this demise. By harnessing technology to generate meaningful participation, to create an 'economy of contribution' rather than emotional exploitation, we can invent ourselves a future in which there is an alternative to immiserating acquiescence. Dr Gerald Moore, Director, MA in Culture and Difference, Lecturer in French, School of Modern Languages & Cultures, Durham University, UK This small volume functions well as an introduction to [Stiegler's] thought over the last decade -- Christian Lotz Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

• Introduction: What is to be done?Manifesto of ... Ars IndustrialisPart I: Refounding Society1. The Industrial Age as Service Capitalism2. The Consumer Discharged of his Existence3. Hyperindustrial Service Societies as the Destruction of Individuation by Controlling Adoption Procedures4. Re-Enchanting the World in the Face of the Unhappy Destiny of Consumption5. 'R' Technologies and the New Apparatuses of Spirit6. Overcoming the Capitalism of Drives and Fighting Against its Becoming-Barbaric7. Startled, We Begin Again Differently (!) / The Sudden Surge: a Nw Beginning8. Grammatization and Individuation - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow9. The Revolution of Capitalism10. A European Way of Life11. The Plan that Enchants MePart II: Investing in the Augmentation of the Value of the 'Human Spirit' Against the Reign of Ignorance12. From the Informatization of Society to "Information Society"13. From the "Information Society" to the "Society of Knowledge" - or, On the Possibility of the Re-Enchantment of the World14. Companies, Public Power, and Industrial Populism15. Changing the Industrial Paradigm16. Information Society, Disenchantment, De-Motivation and Control of Knowledge17. The Re-Instrumentation of Knowledge, the Future of Hyperindustrial Society18. Knowledge and Information19. Knowledge and Memory, or Reign of Ignorance?20. The Risk of Disindividuation as the Growth of Ignorance Rather Than Knowledge21. Cognitive Saturation and Knowledge Management22. Instruments of Knowledge and the Criteria of Selection That They Produce23. Being and Becoming in Technoscience24. The Crisis of Education25. Practical ConsequencesMotion adopted by Ars Industrial on the eve of the Tunis summitBibliographyIndex