Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise

Technics and Time #3

by Bernard Stiegler, Stephen Barker (Translator)

In the first two volumes of Technics and Time, Bernard Stiegler worked carefully through Heidegger's and Husserl's relationship to technics and technology. Here, in volume three, he turns his attention to the prolematic relationship to technics he finds in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, particularly in the two versions of the Transcendental Deduction. Stiegler relates this problematic to the "cinematic nature" of time, which precedes cinema itself but reaches an apotheosis in it as the exteriorization process of schema, through tertiary retentions and their mechanisms. The book focuses on the relationship between these themes and the "culture industry"— as defined by Adorno and Horkheimer—that has supplanted the educational institutions on which genuine cultural participation depends. This displacement, Stiegler says, has produced a malaise from which current global culture suffers. The result is potentially catastrophic.

Genres: Philosophy, Technology, Theory, Nonfiction, Film

276 pages, Paperback

Published December 15, 2010

About the author

Bernard Stiegler heads the Department of Cultural Development at the Pompidou Center in Paris and is co-founder of the political group Ars Industrialis. Stanford University Press has published the first two volumes of Technics and Time, The Fault of Epimetheus (1998) and Disorientation (2008), as well as his Acting Out (2008) and Taking Care of Youth and the Generations (2010).

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

No reviews is crazy and at the same time understandable. I had to read it for university. It's interesting if you really care about that stuff. Everything above is MY reading of the book, still mostly close to the truth, could be explained better.

Few simple and interesting takeaways that could help other readers in the future:
- television creates global consciousness; television kills the "spirit" and the "culture"

- Americans are obsessed with creating fictions unlike Europeans who are more concerned with the unfolding reality; American directors treat the created (by them) fiction as the reality unfolding

- television (in a way) and cinema (for certain) work just like our consciousness works; this is why they can be dangerous tools in the arms of certain people (Benjamin, "The Work of Art..." tackles this really well)

- we (whoever that we is, the working people/class) serve the machines at this moment, it's not machine helps the person, but person helps the machine - the machine is the individual

- the tertiary retention (which is like a THIRD type OF MEMORY [first two are the memory of the "just has been" or just happened and the second is some long perceived/lived moment; iirc] that takes form in "temporal industrial objects"; basically an object which is "objective" and exists for certain outside our own mind - think of film, picture, literature/books, record of audio and other stuff) could be industrialized, these temporal industrial objects can change the way we perceive things even if they are already perceived; even more simply said - the way we export or create memory/knowledge outside our mind is through these objects, they can alter how our consciousness works

- i already said that TV and cinema work just like our consciousness and that temporal industrial objects can influence how we perceive time and reality - here's the interesting thing - The way our mind works basically has turned into merchandise or something for sale, because of the usage of the way our mind works (TV & Cinema) as a way to sell/advertise something literally means we're being sold our own way of grasping reality. Simply said our consciousness is being sold. Fast forward a bit and there's politics of consciousness which is just politics of technics - 1:1 - it's the same for Stiegler. Using politics as a way to create/form/use technics means also that politics can alter/form our consciousness. Seems obvious but does it?

- the industrialization of "culture" and fabrication of symbols for the sake of culture can turn symbols into something diabolical; a spiritual catastrophe; it's a matter of when, not if

- example of cinema and television shaping our consciousness is how the American way of living and Hollywood have exploited our consciousness (this is possible because our consciousness works like that, like a film or television) - and we know the American life, it's been glorified, it's been shown already; think about Apple devices or the existence of Coca-Cola; they're already "given", established, existing - they are there and we are here, and they are here for us already

There are other 10414 things Stiegler talks about, mostly technoscience, technics, etc.

This volume, and possibly the others, are best read if you've tackled other people before. I haven't.
Also this book is very un-ChatGPT-able, you'll get very little of it if you go for the prompts.

Authors you should maybe (at least) read a little about before reading this book: Kant, Husserl, Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer (together), Heidegger, Simondon

[Steen Ledet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps because I'm a film scholar, I found this volume more engaging than Disorientation. The best chapters are the early ones explicitly devoted to cinema while the rest feel more like setting up volume four. Still, highly recommended if dense work.

[Kevin Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you can: read it.