Symbolic Mysery

Discussion

Simon Licelles:

(translated from the Delirium project by DeepSeek)

"This concept was coined by Bernard Stiegler and, according to the vocabulary of Ars Industrialis compiled by Victor Petit, we read today that symbolic misery is the loss of individuation resulting from the loss of participation in the production of symbols; it is the diminution of the intellectual and sensible life of individuals.

Symbolic misery is therefore a problem that appears in bio-techno-sociological individuation, when biological individuals lose technical skills and see their participation in intellectual and social life diminish.

Symbolic misery is a consequence of proletarianization. That is to say, the externalization of knowledge into a technical system deprives the individual of their participation in the production of symbols and in cultural life.

This diminution of participation in symbolic life perhaps began with the automation of the means of production in factories, the proletarianization of know-how. However, it became widespread above all with what Nicolas Donin and Bernard Stiegler called "the machinic turn of sensibility," meaning the extension of the uses of photography and audio recording from the 19th century onward. Indeed, with the mechanical capture of image and sound, it became possible to produce images without knowing how to draw or paint, and to listen to music without knowing how to play it. Sensibility was mechanized.

These new technologies (photography, the phonograph, and film) brought new ways of feeling, producing works, and making others feel. But the economic models that developed around them in the 20th century led above all to the massification of behaviors and the passivity of individuals. Analog mass broadcasting technologies (TV and radio) allowed citizens a passivity in their cultural lives and turned them from actors into consumers, provoking a painful disindividuation that borders on symbolic misery.

Industrial production externalizes cultural and symbolic practices: we watch television rather than conversing with our loved ones or neighbors; we eat a ready-made meal instead of cooking; we listen to music rather than attempting to play it.

Symbolic misery is thus linked to proletarianization, as externalization and loss of knowledge. It is also linked to pulsionelle dis-binding (drive unbinding): if individuals no longer participate, or participate much less, in the production of works and their socialization, that is a missed opportunity to bind their drives.

This, moreover, is perhaps what makes symbolic misery so painful: the fact of not evacuating drive pressure. When one does not sublimate one's drives, one ends up suffering from them and can become violent, with oneself and with others. And we observe that the fact of not participating in symbolic and social life does indeed make people unhappy.

Finally, let us note again that if the action of television and radio has been so harmful, it is mainly due to the economic models that developed around them. TV is not bad in itself; it could even be a cultural vector. It is therefore the more or less conscious will of a few among us to turn it into a commercial weapon and to massively enrich themselves that has ruined the intellectual and cultural life of Western countries.

Mediatically produced symbolic misery damages the individuation of millions of individuals and would, moreover, be entirely linked to the environmental crises of which we are the passive spectators and consumers.

It would seem, however, that this miserable situation, produced by centralized cultural industries (TV and radio), is on the verge of evolving with the digitization of society and networked cultural industries, meaning the internet and the web, which are recreating participation."

(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rQ1hP-3IH_jTWnUE0KKX-z-70ePy2w2dBm22PGHroL8/)