Description
Book SynopsisIn this important new book, the leading cultural theorist and philosopher Bernard Stiegler re-examines the relationship between politics and aesthetics in our contemporary hyperindustrial age.
Trade Review"In this decisive contribution to a critical understanding of contemporary life, Stiegler demonstrates how mass exclusion from cultural production constitutes a form of generalized impoverishment, threatening to reduce our existence to mere subsistence. Typically though, he also suggests how we might build alternatives to this 'symbolic misery'. This work forms a vital part of Stiegler's essential project."
Martin Crowley, Queen�s College, University of Cambridge "Expanding on Deleuze�s idea of 'control societies', Bernard Stiegler provocatively diagnoses the 'misery' of contemporary society as a collective exclusion from the creation of symbols. A war is being waged, he argues: capitalistic marketing is the instrument of choice, the battleground is aesthetics and the fight is for the control of affect. Recommended for anyone interested in the contemporary cultural condition."
N. Katherine Hayles, Duke UniversityTable of ContentsForeword
Of Symbolic Misery, the Control of Affects, and the Shame that Follows
As Though We Were Lacking or How to Find Weapons in Alain Resnais’s Same Old Song
Allegory of the Anthill
The Loss of Individuation in the Hyper-industrial Age
Tiresias and the War of Time
On a Film by Bertrand Bonello
Afterword
