Reconstruction 9.1 (2009)




Stiegler, Bernard. Acting Out. Trans. David Barison, Daniel Ross, and Patrick Crogan. Stanford University Press, 2009, 112 pp. US$19.95 (paperback).

 

<1> The recent English-language translation of Bernard Stiegler's Acting Out, at first glance, appears as a side note to his Technics and Time series (of which two volumes have been translated into English, three have been published in French, and two more are in the works). For readers unfamiliar with Stiegler's work but who are looking to become familiar, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Empimetheus (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998) is arguably the best place to begin, as it represents the most detailed discussion of "technics," which is what Stiegler is known for. For those philosophers who might otherwise never read Stiegler, Acting Out should be approached as a brief introduction to his big ideas couched in more general reflections on the life of a philosopher. For those who are already reading Stiegler's work, Acting Out is an indispensible supplement. Acting Out is a reprint of two shorter works: "How I Became a Philosopher" and "To Love, to Love Me, to Love Us: From September 11 to April 21," the first a reflection on his transformation from convict to philosopher and the second a meditation on the relationship between "individuation," love, and violence. For the sake of this review, I will address each section separately.

<2> To clarify my characterization of Acting Out, I can only describe my experience reading "How I Became a Philosopher." On the one hand, the extremely personal nature of the narrative, describing the years in prison, makes for a compelling personal biographical note. Reading many of Stiegler's key terms (like individuation, hypomnesis, and anamnesis) in relation to such personal experience provided me with new and concrete ways of understanding Stiegler's work. Take for instance, the distinction between anamnesis and hypomnesis. From the root mnesis, we have one word which refers to "remembering" or "not forgetting," anamnesis, and another word which refers to another kind of "remembering," accomplished through artificial forms of memory (such as, writing), hypomnesis. Stiegler describes the interplay of anamnesis and hypomnesis in the context of self-education in philosophy while incarcerated. Cut off from society, he was forced into a new relationship with knowledge that came about through the application of ideas stored in the prison library alongside the social and material deprivations of his environment. In this autobiography, the present Stiegler recounts (anamnesis) the process of his own phenomenological experiments supplemented by philosophical texts (hypomnesis), and posits a process of individuation that cannot be extracted from the technical, and thus illustrates his ideas with an intimacy and personability that is absent from his more traditionally philosophical works. Adding to the fecundity of this encounter is the process of individuation which I undertook myself, while reading the essay. Reading the essay after working through his more dense texts provides a fantastic illustration of anamnesis or, as Stiegler puts it, "the hypomnesis, as that which gives place to anamnesis" (15). As I tried to understand, I found myself caught in the process of recognizing the interplay of memory, forgetting, and technics that is at play in being.

<3> Which brings me back to my original point: Had I read this piece before struggling with Technics and Time, 1, there would be nothing for me to remember, to recognize, and to know. I imagine that many of the ideas that are crucial to understanding Stiegler would have receded into the background, and what I would have taken away from the essay was simply an appreciation of how one man went from being a convict to a philosopher--which is an impressive story in its own right--but which isn't the key contribution that this particular man makes to the field of philosophy.

<4> "To Love, to Love Me, to Love Us: From September 11 to April 21," appears, at first, as something quite distinct from the earlier essay. Stiegler begins with a dedication to the constituents of the French far-right political party, The National Front, whose candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen placed second in the in the April 21, 2002 general election, assuring him a runoff against Jacques Chirac the following May 5th. And then proceeds to draw a line back to September 11, 2001, through Richard Durn's March 26, 2002 killing spree in which he murdered eight members of the Nanterre city council.

<5> Stiegler unites these three events by beginning with a discussion of the type of incident which is quickly coming to characterize our era--the apolitical, apersonal, social massacre (like Columbine, Virginia Tech, Dunblane, Port Arthur, etc.) in which an individual or group of individuals decides to annihilate as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Referring specifically to Durn's atrocity (incidentally, Durn was apparently most closely affiliated with France's Green Party), Stiegler highlights the feelings of anomie that seem to permeate such acts. According to Durn's own account, he killed "to have the feeling of existing" (qtd in Stiegler 39). From here, Stiegler moves towards a critique of a culture which increasingly casts individuals in the role on consumers who forge their relationship to the larger community through industrial media. In Stiegler's assessment, this process frustrates the ability of individuals to engage in the construction of meaning in collaboration with a community of peers. The result is the "de-composition of idiomaticity and sign-making in general" (55). Hence, individuals feel "insignificant." As such, they have no community with which and for which they can become significant. With no responsibility to the self or their communities, senseless acts of violence become possible.

<6> In addition to painting a compelling picture of the hopelessness that leads to the impotent rage underlying the events alluded to in the title, this essay also offers a procedural link from thought to action. At once, united with this philosopher as a we (we who share a common interest and understanding our social malaise), I found myself in dialogue with another individual (the two Is struggling over the supposed common interest and understanding), arriving again at an unstable concept of the we. From its melancholic dedication to its thought-provoking conclusion, the text is pervaded with a humane character that is immediately recognizable, but which also begs to be understood.

<7> Though I have elected to devote particular attention to these two essays as discrete entities, there is a larger purpose to their publication together under a single title, Acting Out. The dedication, which appears in the middle of the book, builds a bridge between the two essays. Stiegler's willingness to feel for, even while rejecting their politics, those who voted for the National Front, suggests that he sees in his own passage from a disenchanted young radical to a convicted criminal, a reflection of the widespread malaise which infects the lives of xenophobic nationalists, terrorists, and killers like Durn. But here, also, is the kernel of hope which resides in the text, for it is this same capacity for "acting out" which also allows Stiegler, the convict, to become Stiegler, the philosopher. In fact, the title of the French edition, Passer `a l'acte, evokes the sense of transformation which takes place when one moves from thought into action, when one "becomes" what one had imagined [1]. Beyond the sort of banal attempts at "reform" that appear in popular culture (from the individual to the collective level), there exists the capacity for deep and radical change on the individual (I) and collective (we) levels.

<8> The difference between a volume like Technics and Time, 1 and an essay like "How I Became a Philosopher" are significant, one strives towards abstraction and universality and the other is rooted in biography, yet between the two we see the paradox of philosophy. Stiegler identifies this tension: "The existential dimension of all philosophy, without which philosophy would lose all credit and sink into scholastic chatter, must be analyzed through the question of the relation of the I and the we, in which consists the psychic and collective individuation" (3). Stiegler reiterates this claim with respect to Socrates' death and its integral role in philosophy: "the philosophy of the philosopher only makes sense when it is illustrated through his way of life--that is, of dying" (7). In other words, the relation between theory and practice is twofold. Philosophy, which by its nature strives for an uncovering of universal knowledge, must engender appropriate action by its philosophers, or else it loses its credibility as truth. And, the philosopher who must first be true to him or herself, pursues this truth through "philosophy" because he or she must be able to discern this truth beyond the personal, or else it ceases to be knowledge.

<9> In this text, Stiegler presents a vision of philosophy that leads to action and action that leads to philosophy.

 

Davin Heckman

 

Notes

[1] Special thanks to Daniel Ross for alerting me to the significance of this phrase, passer `a l'acte, which literally means, roughly means "acting out," but which is also used in psychoanalysis to refer to the link between thought, action, and becoming. [^]

 

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