Derrida and Technology: Life, Politics, and Religion

ISBN-13: 9783030834098 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022

Björn Sjöstrand

Opis

This book is the first monograph that takes a comprehensive approach to Jacques Derrida as a philosopher of technology. It refines and complements his mainstream image as a philosopher of language and deconstructionist of classical literary and philosophical texts. This volume outlines the key features of Derrida’s alternative philosophy of technology, a philosophy which Sjöstrand argues, avoids the problems associated with, on the one hand, a Heideggerian orientation, which completely separates thinking and technology and, on the other, an empirically oriented ”post-phenomenology” that can be said to be hegemonic within the field today.

Based on a sustained interpretation of Derrida, and a robust, coherent philosophy of technology, a phenomenology of technology is developed that, in a radical way, extends the concept of technology to cover the entire field of phenomenology. This places the technological not in opposition to humanity, but rather always already in close proximity to man and, consequently, to life, ethics, politics, democracy and religion. Strikingly, this important aspect of Derrida’s thinking is only rarely analyzed or discussed by his many exegetes. This text appeals to graduates and researchers working on Derrida, phenomenology, and the philosophy of technology.

Spis treści

1 Introduction

2 The Philosophy of Technology Tradition

2.1 The Historical Background

2.2 Phenomenology and Transcendental Philosophy of Technology

2.3 Postphenomenoloy and Empirical Philosophy of Technology

2.4 Summary

References

3 Derrida and the Phenomenology of Technology

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Derrida’s Engagement with the Question of Technology 

3.3 Husserl and the Technological Origin of Geometry

3.4 Husserl and Writing as Telecommunication

3.5 Technology as a Relation

3.6 Heidegger and the Question of Technology

3.7 Summary

References

4 Technology and Time as Event

4.1 Introduction

4.2 The So-Called Vulgar Concept of Time

4.3 Heidegger’s Time

4.4 Derrida’s Deconstruction of Time

4.5 The Artifactual Production of Time as Event

4.6 Technology puts Time out of Joint

4.7 Stiegler versus Derrida: Technological or Messianic Time?

4.8 Summary

       References

5 Humanity’s Technicity

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Technology’s Inscription in Life

5.3 Scriptual Subjectivity

5.4 Summary

References

6 Ethics and Technology

6.1 Introduction

6.2 The Electronic Revolution

6.3 Total Nuclear War

6.4 Global Terrorism

6.5 Summary

References

7 Politics and Technology

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Derrida on Politics

7.3 The Transforming of Democracy, Politics, and Citizenship by Technology

7.4 Violation of the Inviolable: Surveillance and Control

7.5 Archival Politics – the Central Issue of Politics

7.6 Derrida versus Stiegler: Messianic Ethics or Politics of Memory?

7.7 Summary

References

8 Religion and Technology

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Derrida on Religion

8.3 Religion as Abstraction

8.4 The Two Sources of Religion and Their Relation to Technology

8.5 Life, Sacrifice, and Technoscientific Violence

8.6 Religion and Media

8.7 On Atheism and Deconstruction

8.8 Summary

References

9 Conclusion

O autorze

Björn Sjöstrand studied philosophy at Södertörn University, Stockholm, from 2002 and obtained his PhD at Uppsala University in 2016. In his early career, he studied electronics at Chalmers Technical University in Gothenburg and obtained his MSc in Electrical Engineering. He has a solid technical background with more than 30 years of experience in various leading positions within the telecommunications and information industry in Sweden.

As a phenomenologist, he is presently interested in the question of technology and its relation to the human and to society. He has previously published Ethics and Politics in Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida (2008), “Derrida and the Phenomenology of Technology” in Fenomenologi, Teknik och Medialitet (2011) and “The Phenomenology of Technology: The Technology that Saves” in Modern Filosofi (2016). Since 2009 he is a member of The Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT) and The Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NoSP).