This new translation of four revised radio interviews, conducted in December 2002 at France Culture with Elie During, is the best introduction to Stiegler's Time and Technics series. This collection includes a new interview conducted specially for this volume and an interview with Artpress from 2001. In Philosophising By Accident, Stiegler introduces some of the key arguments about the technical constitution of the human and its relation to politics, aesthetics and economics. He reads philosophical texts from the perspective of his (...) controversial thesis about the three types of memory and speaks about concepts central to his later works, such as synchrony/diachrony, grammatisation and the industrial temporal object. (shrink)

New materialists have challenged our thinking about matter in important and meaningful ways. Building a critique of the work of Diana Coole, Samantha Frost, and Jane Bennett, this article introduces a special section which challenges the direction of their work in a constructive manner. We provide a four-fold critical appraisal here: of the historical, posthumanist, technological and emancipatory facets of the new materialisms. Our central claim is that the new materialisms are plural and that they need to be understood in (...) a wider sense than is claimed in much of the literature. This article addresses the question: to what extent can a pluralism of new materialisms be compatible with the radical and emancipatory agenda of its founding theorists? Our answer is that it is not only possible to achieve such radical emancipation, but also necessary to address these concerns. (shrink)

When on the last page of What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari (1995: 218) claim that philosophy needs a non-philosophy, this statement is the result of a long engagement with the problem of thinking in society. It is this engagement that we intend to reconstruct in this article. By developing an original definition of thinking after Heidegger, Deleuze is able to claim that philosophy is not the only ‘thinking’ discipline. Our point of departure is Deleuze's constant reference to a phrase (...) from Heidegger's lecture course What Is Called Thinking?: ‘We are not yet thinking’ (Deleuze 1988: 116, 1989: 167, 1994: 144, 2002: 108; Deleuze and Guattari 1995: 56). This phrase points to the demand for a new distribution of the relation between philosophy and its outside. The purpose of this article is to trace Heidegger's influence on Deleuze's definition of thinking and to raise two points. First, Deleuze borrows some elements of Heidegger's definition of thinking to further his own understanding of politics as an involuntary practice. For both, the question of thinking is political. Second, by departing from Heidegger, Deleuze can democratise the definition of thinking, beyond its confinement to philosophy, by turning to cinema. Deleuze calls cinema the art of the masses because it brings the masses in contact with external signs. Finally, in the last part of this article, we will discuss how Deleuze raises stupidity (and not error) as a transcendental problem that should be constantly fought. In this way, we hope to shed light on how Deleuze moves from Heidegger's question ‘what is called thinking?’ to the problem of stupidity and shame. (shrink)

The Prometheus myth has long now provided inspiration for those who envision solutions to environmental issues. Prometheus is the figure par excellence of human forethought and progress in the anthropocene. In this article, we introduce the concept of ambient Prometheanism to describe the way of thinking that foregrounds foresight and anticipation and advances technological solutions developed by capital and energy-intensive projects. We question this stance, arguing that ambient Prometheanism, with its emphasis on technofix, leads to the economisation and depoliticisation of (...) planetary environmental issues. Following Bernard Stiegler, we recover from the myth the figure of Epimetheus, Prometheus’ brother, as well as his associated faculty, epimetheia to theorise what we call an ‘Epimethean politics’. Thinking the anthropocene from the perspective of ambient Prometheanism and Epimetheanism means to consider the role of technology in climate politics, and in particular to make the case for the importance of afterthought in face of unintended consequences and accumulated errors. To substantiate our argument, we outline the challenge posed by emerging solutions focussed on technological intensification and socio-economic acceleration. An Epimethean politics of the climate requires to use reflexivity as a capacity to anticipate, but also to mobilise epimetheia to account for accidents and past mistakes. Such a politics builds from an alternative conception of technology, one that radically differs from ambient Prometheanism. Finally we read as actualisations of Epimethean politics contemporary eco-political struggles and their imperatives for multispecies living and convivial livelihoods. (shrink)

The object of this study is the presence and the operation of space in the films of the Dardenne brothers. In this paper, we will examine three films - Rosetta , The Child and The Silence of Lorna - and present the argument that they depict an original account of the contemporary European city as a totality (in this case an eastern Belgian steel town). The construction of the characters, their relationships, and the moral implications of their actions are usually (...) the most discussed aspect of the Dardennes' cinema. Instead, we want to shift focus to the city, focusing on its concrete, visceral materiality. The aim of this paper is to chart out the leaden landscape of these films, by tracing the movements of the protagonists in two particular kinds of recurring spaces: the woods that lie next to motorways in Rosetta and The Silence of Lorna , and the motorways that feature prominently in The Child . Even though these spaces are the left-over spaces of the city, cut out and discarded from the inner spaces of the city, they are still heavily inscribed and symbolic sites. Not only do they move the plot forward and are expressive of the characters that inhabit them, they also engage in a sustained, though understated, political critique. (shrink)

This book discusses the work of four different kinds of artists from four different countries to examine how they create a space for politics in their work.

This book discusses the work of four different kinds of artists from four different countries to examine how they create a space for politics in their work.

A book review of Janae Sholtz, The Invention of a People.