Thank you for sending Yuk Hui's tribute, Ingrid. And thanks to Yuk for writing it.
I am sad about Stiegler's death. I read in Paul Jorion's blog that he had a serious health condition and knew that the next time it came back, he would not survive. So, until further and clearer word comes, I will think of him as a Stoic who chose the moment of his passing. I found nothing interesting in the film, the Ister, which introduced most people in the Anglo-Saxon world to Bernard Stiegler. From my viewpoint that film had far too much to do with the Eighties version of Heideggerean deconstruction, which had been far too popular in the American academy. But in the mid-2000s I discovered the work of Ars Industrialis - a Marxist critique of digital political economy, and a proposal to transform it at European scale. I subsequently read almost all of Stiegler's books, while in the meantime he had very interesting debates with Maurizio Lazzarato, bringing him into the orbit of the journal Multitudes. Alone among French philosophers on the left, Stiegler understood contemporary technology in detail, and he explored its effects on the social psychology of democratic societies, showing how individuals become the targets of powerful industries. Behind his politics, and behind his pedagogical practice which extended far beyond the university, was the conviction that technology, especially communications technology, could be produced and used in such a way as to open up each participant's capacity to engage with the ideas of others, transforming them from target to contributor. Stiegler did not preach the gospel of total revolt - he was at antipodes from Giorgio Agamben - yet nor did he give up on the critique of capitalism. Rather he showed that through public participation in philosophical collectives one could restore psychic health, regain autonomy and offer constructive proposals in the face of whatever is happening at the time. Rather than exalting the resistant individual, he tried to help build up the individual's capacity to co-create social institutions, in order to come to grips with and ultimately transform neoliberal capitalism. Many of Stiegler's books will be hard to read in the future, because they responded in the moment to whatever new episode of political decay that was currently agitating French society. But the question is, will there be a future in which to read those books, if democratic societies are not able to escape the twin traps of stupefying commercial culture and stove-piped disciplinary intellectualism? Whatever Stiegler's work may have lost in the confrontation with the day-to-day, we all gained through his example of how and why to do it. It's beautiful that his last published book is about, and addressed to, the generation of Greta Thunberg. I never met Bernard Stiegler but I gradually absorbed his ethos and it made me who I am today. He was right to say that contemporary state and corporate leaders are incapable of dealing with climate change: they do not have the concepts, even when they recognize they are in the face of a mortal threat. His life's work was about inventing those concepts - and building them out into both psychic and social reality. All of you who care, let's pursue that pathway. Brian On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 4:52 AM Hoofd, I.M. (Ingrid) <i.m.ho...@uu.nl> wrote: > Hi all, here's a nice short obit from Yuk Hui: > https://www.urbanomic.com/document/in-memory-of-bernard/. > > Very sad to see Bernard leave like this... And fear the authoritarian > technocracy that accelerated during this pandemic may have something to do > with his suicide. > Best, Ingrid. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org <nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org> > On Behalf Of Patrice Riemens > Sent: zaterdag 8 augustus 2020 11:22 > To: nettim...@kein.org > Subject: <nettime> Bernard Stiegler R.I.P. > > Aloha, > > It is not to me to write an obit for Bernard Stiegler, who passed away > the day before yesterday. Many nettimers can do that much better, and I > hope some will do. > > But his death by suicide - now in the public domain: > > > https://www.leberry.fr/epineuil-le-fleuriel-18360/actualites/bernard-stiegler-le-grand-philosophe-francais-d-epineuil-le-fleuriel-est-decede_13821251/ > > does make me reflect that we, 'intellectuals' (whether public or not), > should be much nicer to, and more careful with, each other. Even in the > midst of strong dissenssions and disputes, we should remember that we > all are fragile human beings, and always remember that our (close) > relations might potentially be or become desperate enough to take their > own life. That they have the full and unconditional right to do so (*) > must not preclude us to try to keep them among us by showing that our > solidarity will always overrule our differences. > > For now: "La oss ære de døde ved å gledes over livet" > > Keep well, and try to be happy, > p+7D! > > > (*) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/p-m-bolo-bolo -->> 'nugo' > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
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