The Temporal and Material Dimension of Creative Work: Against “Automatic Society”

Abstract

The main focus of Bernard Stiegler’s critique of automatic society is the threat that automatic systems pose to human creative work in undermining possibility by eliminating the available time that it takes human beings to think and work through problems posed by the relative independence of the material world. When humans work creatively, they do not automatically translate ideas into reality. Instead, the object constantly poses unexpected challenges that must be reflected upon and worked through. Surprisingly, even Marx ignored the temporal dimension of work involving the material world. Through the example of artistic work, this essay illustrates and begins sketching a solution to the threat that automatic society poses to creative work. Against Marx, it shows that artistic work is never a case of simply imprinting an idea on a passive material substratum but is always a struggle through which the idea changes in the process of its realization.