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The Fiction of a Thinkable World: Body, Meaning, and the Culture of Capitalism
In the culture of the modern West, we see ourselves as thinking subjects, defined by our conscious thought, autonomous and separate from each other and the world we survey. Current research in neurology and cognitive science shows that this picture is false. We think with our bodies, and in interaction with others, and our thought is never completed. The Fiction of a Thinkable World is a wide-ranging exploration of the meaning of this insight for our understanding of history, ethics, and politics
Ambitious but never overwhelming, carrying its immense learning lightly, The Fiction of a Thinkable World shows how the Western conception of the human subject came to be formed historically, how it contrasts with that of Eastern thought, and how it provides the basic justification for the institutions of liberal capitalism. The fiction of a world separated from each of us as we are separated from each other, from which we make our choices in solitary thought, is enacted by the voter in the voting booth and the consumer at the supermarket shelf. The structure of daily experience in capitalist society reinforces the fictions of the Western intellectual tradition, stunt human creativity, and create the illusion that the capitalist order is natural and unsurpassable.
Steinberg’s critique of the intellectual world of Western capitalism at the same time illuminates the paths that have been closed off in that world. It draws on Chinese ethics to show how our actions can be brought in accord with the world as it is, in its ever-changing interaction and mutual transformation, and sketches a radical political perspective that sheds the illusions of the Western model. Beautifully conceived and written, The Fiction of a Thinkable World provides new ways of thinking and opens new horizons.
Ambitious but never overwhelming, carrying its immense learning lightly, The Fiction of a Thinkable World shows how the Western conception of the human subject came to be formed historically, how it contrasts with that of Eastern thought, and how it provides the basic justification for the institutions of liberal capitalism. The fiction of a world separated from each of us as we are separated from each other, from which we make our choices in solitary thought, is enacted by the voter in the voting booth and the consumer at the supermarket shelf. The structure of daily experience in capitalist society reinforces the fictions of the Western intellectual tradition, stunt human creativity, and create the illusion that the capitalist order is natural and unsurpassable.
Steinberg’s critique of the intellectual world of Western capitalism at the same time illuminates the paths that have been closed off in that world. It draws on Chinese ethics to show how our actions can be brought in accord with the world as it is, in its ever-changing interaction and mutual transformation, and sketches a radical political perspective that sheds the illusions of the Western model. Beautifully conceived and written, The Fiction of a Thinkable World provides new ways of thinking and opens new horizons.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
4 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
About the author
Michael Steinberg
60 books4 followersMichael Steinberg was an American music critic and musicologist closely associated with the San Francisco Symphony.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 24, 2019
A mumbo-jumbo mashup of rehashed Foucault and Derrida.
Argues that we confuse linguistic conceptions with thought and separate "the thinking mind from the social process on the other" (27). Cites Bourdieu's critique of this, in which B. "pointed out that the gift exchanges that were so important in Kabyle culture could not be understood as aspects of a synchronic social structure. They were, instead, activities in which human beings created meaning in the context of a 'logic of practice.' the value of hte initial gift compared with the response, the timing and manner o fits delivery, the status of the givers and recipients -- all of these played important roles in defining the nature of the exchange. What is more, at each step of the interaction the relationships involved were open to change. Each gift was an opportunity to redefine crucial aspects of the way villagers thought about and treated each other. One could say that for Bourdieu a proper analysis showed us a world in which _everyone_ is a subject (27).
There was a huge section making generalizations about the degree to which Marxist analysis may not apply to all societies but does seem to apply to "a modestly regulated corporate capitalism," which appears to have broad appeal globally. He argues this can't be attributed to particular factors in England and may have been enhanced by the deplorable conditions of capitalism that immediately preceded it.
The most interesting thing he said, for me, was simply an extended quote from Marx:
Marx understood that the reduction of all workers to their individual labor power under capitalism led to the delusional separation of human beings from the transformative life of the body:
'Estranged labor therefore turns man's species-being -both nature and his intellectual species-powers -into a being alien to him and a means of his individual existence. it estranges man from his own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, his human essance.
'An immediate consequence of man's estrangement from the produt of his labor, his life activitiy, his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man . . .
'In gneeral, the proposition tha tman is estranged from his species-being means that each man is estranged from the others and that all are estranged from man's essence.
'Man's estrangement, like all relationship of man to himself, i srealized and expressed only in man's relationship to other men.'
Capitalism does not and cannot abolish the actual processes of human self-constitution, the embodied dialogue through which we bring forth and maintain the world. It merely renders that process opaque by sustaining a form of experience in whcih each isolated consciousness confronts the incomprehensible demands of a foreign world "I, a stranger, and afraid, in a world I never made." (Similarly, Marx does not argue that 'man's species-being' has ben abolished, only that we are estranged from it.)
'The role in which one partiicpates in teh economic life of capitalism is always that of a self-sufficient entity facing a separated power in the form of a marketplace' for jobs, commodities, politics, or ideas.
'In every case the actual social process that generates and sustains people and factories, apartment blocks, subway systems, political parties, and television news channels alike is concealed behind a purported rationality o finstitutions on the one hand and an even more specious faculty of choice on the part of the individual" (160).
Argues that previous systems were sustained by argument (myths about x, y, or z) while capitalism is sustained by lived experience (161). This is absurd. Those living through witchcraft trials certainly did not themselves experience their lives as an argument, but as a lived experience that disciplined both body and thought, just as capitalism does.
Does interestingly say that "The vaunted pluralism of the modern capitalist world neither stigmatizes social expression nor allows it to be effective. [These forms of diversity] contribute to the thick texture of discourse in which we confine ourselves. Political and social debates are endless by their very nature; they function not to resolve anything but to reinforce the unspoken presuppositions shared by both parties (164).
Argues that we create our own oppression (hence Occupy's insistence that we must live as if we are already free) (170).
Quotes Benasayag and Diego Sztulwark "The only genuinely serious thing is the construction of a true anticapitalist revolt, of new solidarities within situations"
Argues that we confuse linguistic conceptions with thought and separate "the thinking mind from the social process on the other" (27). Cites Bourdieu's critique of this, in which B. "pointed out that the gift exchanges that were so important in Kabyle culture could not be understood as aspects of a synchronic social structure. They were, instead, activities in which human beings created meaning in the context of a 'logic of practice.' the value of hte initial gift compared with the response, the timing and manner o fits delivery, the status of the givers and recipients -- all of these played important roles in defining the nature of the exchange. What is more, at each step of the interaction the relationships involved were open to change. Each gift was an opportunity to redefine crucial aspects of the way villagers thought about and treated each other. One could say that for Bourdieu a proper analysis showed us a world in which _everyone_ is a subject (27).
There was a huge section making generalizations about the degree to which Marxist analysis may not apply to all societies but does seem to apply to "a modestly regulated corporate capitalism," which appears to have broad appeal globally. He argues this can't be attributed to particular factors in England and may have been enhanced by the deplorable conditions of capitalism that immediately preceded it.
The most interesting thing he said, for me, was simply an extended quote from Marx:
Marx understood that the reduction of all workers to their individual labor power under capitalism led to the delusional separation of human beings from the transformative life of the body:
'Estranged labor therefore turns man's species-being -both nature and his intellectual species-powers -into a being alien to him and a means of his individual existence. it estranges man from his own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, his human essance.
'An immediate consequence of man's estrangement from the produt of his labor, his life activitiy, his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man . . .
'In gneeral, the proposition tha tman is estranged from his species-being means that each man is estranged from the others and that all are estranged from man's essence.
'Man's estrangement, like all relationship of man to himself, i srealized and expressed only in man's relationship to other men.'
Capitalism does not and cannot abolish the actual processes of human self-constitution, the embodied dialogue through which we bring forth and maintain the world. It merely renders that process opaque by sustaining a form of experience in whcih each isolated consciousness confronts the incomprehensible demands of a foreign world "I, a stranger, and afraid, in a world I never made." (Similarly, Marx does not argue that 'man's species-being' has ben abolished, only that we are estranged from it.)
'The role in which one partiicpates in teh economic life of capitalism is always that of a self-sufficient entity facing a separated power in the form of a marketplace' for jobs, commodities, politics, or ideas.
'In every case the actual social process that generates and sustains people and factories, apartment blocks, subway systems, political parties, and television news channels alike is concealed behind a purported rationality o finstitutions on the one hand and an even more specious faculty of choice on the part of the individual" (160).
Argues that previous systems were sustained by argument (myths about x, y, or z) while capitalism is sustained by lived experience (161). This is absurd. Those living through witchcraft trials certainly did not themselves experience their lives as an argument, but as a lived experience that disciplined both body and thought, just as capitalism does.
Does interestingly say that "The vaunted pluralism of the modern capitalist world neither stigmatizes social expression nor allows it to be effective. [These forms of diversity] contribute to the thick texture of discourse in which we confine ourselves. Political and social debates are endless by their very nature; they function not to resolve anything but to reinforce the unspoken presuppositions shared by both parties (164).
Argues that we create our own oppression (hence Occupy's insistence that we must live as if we are already free) (170).
Quotes Benasayag and Diego Sztulwark "The only genuinely serious thing is the construction of a true anticapitalist revolt, of new solidarities within situations"
July 8, 2011
In one of the more exciting intellectual works I have read in a while, Steinberg chips away at some fundamental presumptions we have about what it means to be a person in and of the world. Crudely stated, his main thesis is that our bodies, our societies, and our ‘independent’ thoughts are inherently tied together. There is no thinking Self which can gaze upon the world and rationalize it outside of our embodied connections to everything else. Ultimately, and convincingly, he shows how the modern fetish of the individual, a building block of the capitalist world, is a deep denial and abstraction of what human life—and human thinking—really are.
This book found me at the perfect moment. Already writing on how we come to think of ourselves as members of communities, Steinberg blew my mind with the question of how we come to think of ourselves as individuals, and only then as communities. Interestingly, he seeks to do so without treating the world as purely a construction of discourse. The early chapters merge neuroscience, psychology, and political philosophy. He convincingly dismantles the world of Cartesian thinking with a breathtaking range of sources and ideas, from ancient Greek thought, to modern philosophers, to literature, Chinese spirituality, and Steinberg’s own charming life examples, particularly in the chapter ‘Do our pets love us?’. The final few chapters make the argument less forcefully and become something more of a coda against what Steinberg sees as an increasingly disembodied and alienated world. I liked the entire book, but the latter half did not quite maintain the pace of the beginning.
The jacket claims that this book is jargon free. That may be, but it is far from “accessible” material. While he may not use the buzzwords of academic philosophy, even with a good knowledge of the ideas pursued, this book still requires careful reading. And even then, some of the quotations he chose to illustrate his points with simply left me scratching my head. Bottom line, The Fiction of a Thinkable World is stimulating, ambitious, and well worth the time.
This book found me at the perfect moment. Already writing on how we come to think of ourselves as members of communities, Steinberg blew my mind with the question of how we come to think of ourselves as individuals, and only then as communities. Interestingly, he seeks to do so without treating the world as purely a construction of discourse. The early chapters merge neuroscience, psychology, and political philosophy. He convincingly dismantles the world of Cartesian thinking with a breathtaking range of sources and ideas, from ancient Greek thought, to modern philosophers, to literature, Chinese spirituality, and Steinberg’s own charming life examples, particularly in the chapter ‘Do our pets love us?’. The final few chapters make the argument less forcefully and become something more of a coda against what Steinberg sees as an increasingly disembodied and alienated world. I liked the entire book, but the latter half did not quite maintain the pace of the beginning.
The jacket claims that this book is jargon free. That may be, but it is far from “accessible” material. While he may not use the buzzwords of academic philosophy, even with a good knowledge of the ideas pursued, this book still requires careful reading. And even then, some of the quotations he chose to illustrate his points with simply left me scratching my head. Bottom line, The Fiction of a Thinkable World is stimulating, ambitious, and well worth the time.
March 6, 2010
A first rate and epic tour of the locus where cognitive science, biology, history, and anti-capitalism meet. Sounds quirky or oddball, but Steinberg is erudite and masterful, and expresses much that is deeply worthwhile on the human condition under bourgeois social conditions. This is not an eccentric book for eccentrics but rather an interdisciplinary work knitting together wide-ranging fields of knowledge that are decidedly relevant to each other and work to cohere in a vision of a more expansive understanding of ourselves as social beings. Brilliant, eclectic scholarship and a top notch debut.
January 24, 2020
I didn't finish reading this. The premises were really interesting, and parts of the book were too, but I couldn't follow all the discussion of the views what I am guessing are postmodernist academic writers.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews