Bernard Stiegler

Career

In 1987–88, with Catherine Counot, Stiegler commissioned an exhibition at the Centre Georges-Pompidou, entitled Mémoires du futur: bibliothèques et technologies. Stiegler earned his doctorate from the EHESS in 1993 under the direction of Jacques Derrida, and obtained his Habilitation in 2007 at the université Paris Diderot-Paris 7 under the direction of Dominique Lecourt. He was a Director at the Collège international de philosophie, and a professor at the Université de Technologie at Compiègne, as well as a visiting professor at Goldsmiths, University of London. He held the positions of Director General at the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA), and Director General at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM).

In June 2005 Stiegler founded a political and cultural group, Ars Industrialis, the manifesto of which calls for an "industrial politics of spirit." The manifesto was signed by Stiegler and the other co-founders of the group, George Collins, Marc Crépon, Catherine Perret and Caroline Stiegler. An updated manifesto was released in 2010.

On 1 January 2006 he became Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. He was Director of the Institut de recherche et d'innovation (IRI), which was created at his initiative in April 2006.

On 18 September 2010 Stiegler opened his own philosophy school (called pharmakon.fr) in the small French town of Épineuil-le-Fleuriel, in the department of Cher across multiple disciplines. The school ran a public course for people in the region, a seminar for doctoral students and junior researchers conducted by video conference, and a summer academy that involves activists, researchers, artists, writers and both groups as well as interested inhabitants from the surrounding area. At a philosophical level, the school was engaged in research, critique and analysis in line with Stiegler's pharmacological approach.

Personal life and death

Stiegler was at one time involved in a relationship with Catherine Malabou. Later he married Caroline Stiegler (née Fayat), who had been his lawyer.

Stiegler had a daughter Barbara Stiegler born 1971, who is also a philosopher and professor at the Université Bordeaux-Montaigne.

Stiegler died by suicide on 5 August 2020. Stiegler is survived by his wife, Caroline Stiegler, and four children.

Work

Stiegler's work is influenced by, among others, Sigmund Freud, André Leroi-Gourhan, Gilbert Simondon, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Valéry, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, Gilles Deleuze, Donald Winnicott, Georges Bataille, and Jacques Derrida.

Key themes are technology, time, individuation, consumerism, consumer capitalism, technological convergence, digitization, Americanization, proletarianization, education and the future of politics and human society.

Stiegler was a prolific author of books, articles and interviews, with his first book being published in 1994. His works include several ongoing series of books:

• La technique et le temps (3 vols.). The Technics and Time series outlines the heart of Stiegler's philosophical project, and in particular his theses that the role of technics has been repressed throughout the history of philosophy, and that technics, as organised inorganic matter, and as essentially a form of memory, is constitutive of human temporality. The series contains extensive readings of the works of André Leroi-Gourhan, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Immanuel Kant. It also contains his explication of the "cinematic constitution of consciousness," as well as his thesis that human beings are essentially "adoptive" and "prosthetic" creatures. All three extant volumes have been published in English translation by Stanford University Press.
• De la misère symbolique (2 vols.). This series is concerned in particular with the ways in which cultural, symbolic and informational technologies have become a means of industrialising the formation of desire in the service of production, with destructive consequences for psychic and collective individuation. Stiegler outlines his concepts of "general organology" (a way of thinking the co-individuation of human organs, technical organs, and social organisations) and "genealogy of the sensible" (a way of thinking the historicity of human desire and aesthetics). It contains extensive readings of Sigmund Freud and Gilles Deleuze, as well as of the works of Alain Resnais, Bertrand Bonello, Andy Warhol, and Joseph Beuys. Both volumes have been published in English translation.
• Mécréance et Discrédit (3 vols.). The Disbelief and Discredit series is concerned with the way in which the industrial organisation of production and then consumption has had destructive consequences for the modes of life of human beings, in particular with the way in which the loss of savoir-faire and savoir-vivre (that is, the loss of the knowledge of how to do and how to live), has resulted in what Stiegler calls "generalised proletarianisation." In this series Stiegler makes clear his view that, in the light of the present state of the global technical system, it is not a matter of overcoming capitalism but rather of transforming its industrial basis to prevent the loss of spirit from which it increasingly suffers. In the second volume Stiegler introduces the concept of the "Antigone complex," to describe the psychosocial effects of the destruction of authority—that is, the destruction of the superego—on politics and youth. The series contains extensive readings of Paul Valéry, Max Weber, Aristotle, and Herbert Marcuse, as well as analyses of the crisis of May 1968 and the crime of Patricia and Emmanuel Cartier. The first volume was published in English translation by Polity Press in 2011, the second in 2012 and the third in 2014.
• Constituer l'Europe (2 vols.). In this series Stiegler is concerned with the effects of the destruction of psychic and collective individuation on Europe. He argues for the necessity of inaugurating a new individuation process at the continental level, itself embedded in an individuation process operating at a global level. At stake, he says, is the creation of a new European "motive" which will enable the reinvention of industrial civilisation.
• Qu'appelle-t-on panser? (2 vols.).

Cinema and television

Stiegler features prominently in a number of works of film and television, and appeared on French television numerous times.

• The Ister (2004), directed by Daniel Ross and David Barison, a feature documentary about Heidegger in which Stiegler plays an important part.
• An Organization of Dreams (2009), directed by Ken McMullen, an experimental thriller inspired by Stiegler's work, and in which he appears.
• Le temps de cerveau disponible (2010), directed by Jean-Robert Viallet, a documentary about television in which Stiegler is the main participant.
• Après la gauche (2011), directed by Jeremy Forny, a documentary about the problems of the political Left, featuring Stiegler.

Awards

• Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters (2016)