Contemporary Emotions in Art, Technology and Politics

According to Stiegler, contemporary toxic technologies have led to aesthetic disindividuation and aesthetic ‘conditioning’, substituting aesthetic ‘experience’ and amounting to its exploitation. Stiegler, however, also contends that the loss of individuation can be restored because of the pharmacological nature of technology. Moreover, he believes in the possibility of a “renaissance of the symbolic” in which art, artists and amateurs play a role. First, Stiegler considers the repeated encounter with works of art as a cure for symbolic misery and as an opportunity for individuation. Second, the role art and artists can play is part of the larger process of ‘adoption’ of contemporary forms of technology. More in particular, Stiegler points out that digital media occasion the restoration of the intimate connection between artistic production and aesthetic reception. Even though Stiegler is well aware that symbolic misery will not be lifted on the basis of artistic activity alone, he may be too optimistic about art’s possibility for deproletarianization and for adopting contemporary technologies.

Source: Azimuth. Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age (Special issue: Actual Philosophy. Critical Thinking at the Crossroads of Technology, Aesthetics and Politics, and the History of Culture).(Eds. Cristina Basili, Federica Buongiorno, Marco Carassai, Simone Guidi, Antonio Lucci, Igor Pelgreffi, Libera Pisano, Alberto Romele), 11(21), pp. 101-114.

Author(s): Helena De Preester

Year of publication: 2023

This contribution focuses on the topic of attention and sets forth the main points of Bernard Stiegler’s analysis of the interplay between capitalist consumer society, the destruction of attention and the consequences for individual and collective life. We look at how current digital technologies in service of the needs of the market are a major factor in the destruction of attention and discuss two counterforces that do not destroy but form attention: education and meditation. If life is what you fill your attention
with, then focusing or directing attention is one of the most valuable abilities for knowing how to live. Instead of letting our attention be hijacked by the market and the economic needs of neoliberal
capitalism, being in charge of what happens to our attention may be a basic right that needs protection given the current conditions of the attention economy.

Source: Phenomenology and Mind 20, 102-116.

Author(s): Helena De Preester

Year of publication: 2021

This contribution focuses on one member in particular of the anthropocenic triad Earth – technology – humankind, namely the current form of human subjectivity that characterizes humankind in the Anthropocene. Because knowledge, desire and behavior are always embedded in a particular form of subjectivity, it makes sense to look at the current subjective structure that embeds knowledge, desire and behavior. We want to move beyond the common psychological explanations that subjects are unable to correctly assess the consequences of their current technological lifestyle or unable to change their lifestyle because
well-intended behavior is modified by factors such as laziness, lack of knowledge, seduction by convenience, etc. Instead, we will argue from a philosophical point of view that transcendental illusions play a central role in a contemporary account of subjectivity. Consumerism is considered as a means of not becoming a subject and framed in a profound
ambivalence at the heart of our acting (consuming) against better knowledge. We appeal to collective transcendental conditions of subjectivity in the Anthropocene in terms of illusions without owners – a term borrowed from Robert Pfaller’s work on interpassivity. Central in our account is the idea that illusions without owners are the conditions of possibility for the disconnection between knowledge and behavior – the characteristic par excellence of the Anthropocene.

Source: Foundations of Science. DOI: 10.1007/s10699-020-09733-6

Author(s): Helena De Preester

Year of publication: 2021