Delirium Project on Bernard Stiegler
Description
Simon Licelles:
"The DELIRIUM
A compendium of Post Stieglerian concepts:
"Last Year, I published The DELIRIUM. It was a youtube playlist of 14 audio short podcasts in which I tried to explain several concepts, from Stiegler and also more personal ones.
To sum up : In this work, I start again by the very beginning of Stiegler work : the fact that human being would be the result of bio-techno-sociological individuation. Then I took over the fact that, in a human society, mnémotechnics, technics of the spirit, like writing, have a special place, and a spacial “power”, in human developments. It makes me propose a new concept, I call : H-STIR, the acronym for : Hypomnesic Systems of Transindividuation of Reference.
The H-Stir, would designate technical systems, as they are specifically developed to memorize, economic, symbolic, and intellectual productions, and those technics would be massively used in a given society, to the point that these systems of hypomnesis would overdetermine the organization of the society that implements them, and this is why we call them techniques of reference.
Then in the delirium, I described several H-STIR, like :
- cuneiform-writing,
- hand-writing,
- printed-writing,
and I remark that for each period of use of those mnemotechnics, correspond to an historical period. That is to say that : depending of the mnemotechnic of reference that is used for a certain time, it shaped or over-determines the societies in which they are used.
In other words : Political institutions evolve with the evolutions of the mnemotechnics.
(These historical remakes remain to be confirmed by historians.)
Anyway, they could be interesting for us, in our removing period, in which digital technologies are taking over the previous mnemotechnics of printed writing. we would be in an apochal turn, cold be Stiegler : epochal redoubling.
It would lead to a revolutionary period, a period of transformation (transition) of society in which every institution, based on printed books (the ancient H-STIR), will have to transform, or disappear, to get adapted to the new system of individuation that will be digital (The new H-STIR).
In other words : the societies based on printed books, and that were controlled by the bourgeoisies, would be transformed in a society based on digital technologies and that would be, in our views, more democratic and popular, because digital technologies are used by the “whole” population, more than the previous H-STIR, based on books.
We have to rethink all the institutions in this epochal transition, it would be the project of the second part of the DELIRIUM. We try to write this nowadays."
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Discussion
Background: "Bernard Stiegler and I" (Simon Licelles)
Simon Licelles:
"In 1994, Bernard Stiegler published : “Technique and Time, Volume 1 - The Fault of Epimetheus”. This book is based on the thesis he defended under the supervision of Jacques Derrida in 1993. Derrida is said to have remarked: "This is a thesis that will cause a stir."
In this book, Stiegler introduces, to our mind, a totally brand new way to think about humanity, in the fact that he considers humanity as a process linking : biological, technological and sociological individuations. He is often to be said a “philosopher of technic”, but introducing techniques in the very earth of hominisation, he proposed, in our views, a crucial new theoretical approach, and we just start to draw the consequence of such a spiritual gesture.
He committed after that two more books for technique and time series, in which he explore the problematics of human kind, "struggling" with their artificial prosthesis, mnemotechnics, and tools in general.
In 2004 Stiegler founded Ars Industrialis, with 5 other philosophers, ARS INDUSTRIALIS FOR THE PROMOTION OF AN INDUSTRIAL POLITICS OF SPIRIT. He tried by this association to gather people in the project of producing concepts, to think the hyper-industrial societies in which we are, and also to think the technical chocs, provoked by digitalisation of our societies. In this period Stiegler created and developed concepts that could be said to be more “political” than “theoretical”.
Personally, I met him in 2000, at the UTC in Compiegne (engineering school) and I became one of his students, then his assistant and friend. I was quite involved in all his projects.
During this period he tried to develop and implement concretely the contributive economy. It would be a way to redefine the whole economy considering the capabilities offered by the digitalization of society. Those thesis are very close or compatible with the peer to peer society proposed by Michel Bauwens.
I was also interested in other philosophers ; Nietzsche, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, Deleueze, Gattari, Foucault, Derrida.
Stiegler commited suicide in 2020. I progressively lost my links with the Ars industrialis Association, but I continue the work in a personal way. Following this work, I started to develop more personnel concepts, on the heritage of what Stiegler left us."
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Directory of Post-Stieglerean 'Delirium' Concepts
Simon Licelles:
"Among the concepts I’ve tried to explain or develop in BELIRIUM I, hear are the main :
- Concept 1 – Bio-Techno-sociological Individuation - the Stieglerian fundamental thesis
- Concept 3 – Libidinal Economy and Society
The term libidinal economy refers to the fact that an individual (or group of individuals) can redirect a portion of their impulse energy—sexual desire, hunger, aggression, etc.—and postpone the satisfaction of those impulses, using that biological energy instead to perform non-sexual, non-aggressive, socially acceptable activities.
- Concept 4 – Proletarianization
Proletarianization is what happens when an individual loses a form of knowledge in their relationship with a technique or technology.
- Concept 7 – Bourgeoisification
The Bourgeoizification refers to the phenomenon where, because of a techno-sociological transformations, individuals from the lower classes, gain access to cultural practices, that were formerly reserved to an higher social classes, or reserved to the bourgeoisie,.
- Concept 9 – The H-STIR
The H-Stir, would designate technical systems, as they are specifically developed to memorize, economic, symbolic, and intellectual productions, and those technics would be massively used in a given society, to the point that these systems of hypomnesis would overdetermine the organization of the society that implements them, and this is why we call them techniques of reference."
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More information
Other entries about Simon's and Stiegler's work:
- Media and Power Epochs
- Proletarianization of Knowledge
- Symbolic Mysery
- Bio-Socio-Technical Individuation
- Hypomnesic Transindividuation Systems of Reference
- Libidinal Economy
See also: