Theory Culture & Society最新文献

{"title":"Bernard Stiegler and the Internation Project: An Introduction","authors":"Ryan Bishop","doi":"10.1177/02632764221141804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221141804","url":null,"abstract":"This article serves as the introduction to the Annual Review special section entitled ‘Bernard Stiegler and the Internation Project: Computational Practices and Circumscribed Futures’. As such, it introduces the collective undertaking of the Internation Project in relation to Stiegler’s long career as a thinker, educator and community organizer. The introduction pursues a number of themes addressed in the section’s contributions, including pharmacological logic, transindividuation, computational practices, bifurcation and negentropy (means of slowing entropic processes at individual and collective levels). All of these themes pertain to the climate crises the world collectively faces and posit means by which futures can be conceived in less detrimental and destructive economic, social, technological and intellectual ways. The Internation Collective as represented and furthered in this special section responds to the demands of climate crises through a macroeconomic model designed to combat entropy at various scales, from the bio-chemical to the biosphere.","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"34 1","pages":"5 - 17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88675304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Notes on Structuralism: Introduction","authors":"S. Manghani","doi":"10.1177/02632764221141823","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221141823","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary introduces a section of the journal titled ‘Notes on Structuralism’. It centres around two interviews. The first, from 1987, is with the structural anthropologist Mary Douglas (who speaks on various aspects of her work, including on Purity and Danger). The second is an interview with Roland Barthes, who, speaking in 1965, was at the height of his structuralist phase. The interview focuses upon the structural analysis of narrative and prefigures the well-known volume of Communications on the subject. The interviews are supplemented with introductions and: a commentary on Barthes’ interview by Jonathan Culler, who contextualizes the development of Barthes’ thinking around narrative (as it leads to the publication of S/Z), The article concludes with reflections on structuralism with regards to contemporary practices of big data, AI and large language models.","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"117 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90055771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Megamachines, Forms of Reticulation and the Limits of Calculability","authors":"B. Stiegler","doi":"10.1177/02632764221141811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221141811","url":null,"abstract":"Many works by those who wish to strike a pose as being at the forefront of thinking about theory, culture and society end with a gesture, more or less rhetorical, that consists, in one way or another, in calling for the new – whether in philosophy, or politics, or in some sense that exceeds these old terms altogether. Such a call is incontestably legitimate, because the reasons for it have become obvious to all: all of the old (Western) theoretical, cultural and social systems and understandings seem only to have brought us to a hypersystemic crisis. By ‘hyper-systemic’ is meant a convergence of crises, where numerous systems seem to be reaching their limits at the same time and in a mutually reinforcing way, and where the way out of this hyper-systemic crisis seems blocked from all sides. Given this crisis of crises, all of our old understandings seem to leave us floundering, if not directly responsible for this crisis, with no sight of any exit. But the problem is that this gesture, this call for the new, should not appear at the end of such a work, but at the beginning: the whole point is to know how to take real steps that can possibly increase our chances at actually happening upon new pathways, not simply to content ourselves with perpetually reiterating its necessity. In short, if there is such a hyper-crisis, then it requires a hyper-critique – a critique founded in the recognition that what also makes this crisis ‘hyper’ is the fact that there is a crisis in the very possibility of critique itself, and in the possibility for critique to serve its proper end: to make possible judgments and proposals, and, on those bases, actions. It is towards the elaboration of such a hyper-critique, and the proposals that should follow from it, that all of Bernard Stiegler’s work aimed, and this remained the case in one of his final works, ‘Elements of a New Economic Foundation Based on a New Foundation for Theoretical Computer Science’, the first part of which was published as ‘Noodiversity, Technodiversity’ (Stiegler, 2020: 67–80). What distinguishes Stiegler’s work is the depth and clarity with which he sees and describes the fundamental source of our contemporary hyper-crisis, and in what follows we will briefly outline the argument put forward in the first part of this work, the better to elucidate the second part presented here.","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"3 5 1","pages":"19 - 33"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83666787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Narrative: An Interview with Roland Barthes","authors":"P. Fabbri, M. Sassatelli, S. Manghani","doi":"10.1177/02632764221141819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221141819","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a dialogue between Roland Barthes and Paolo Fabbri, which took place on 18 December 1965 in Florence, Italy. Barthes offers an engaging account of his structuralist approach to narrative, as was later published in essay form, ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative’, included in a special issue of Communications (Issue 8, 1966). In a cordial exchange with Fabbri, Barthes provides a more candid presentation of method than found in print, along with critical reflection of the underlying importance of the structuralist approach, as perceived at the time. The interview took place as part of a small conference on narrativity. Participants included Algirdas Julien Greimas, Claude Bremond, Umberto Eco, Jules Gritti, Violette Morin, Christian Metz, and Tzvetan Todorov. Subsequently, a number of these participants contributed articles to the same issue of Communications, on the structural analysis of narrative.","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"159 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76534916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Adorno on Philosophy and Sociology","authors":"Gabriel O. Apata","doi":"10.1177/02632764221141088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221141088","url":null,"abstract":"Philosophy and sociology appear to belong to separate spheres of thought, which might explain why they exist as separate academic disciplines. But in what way, if any, are philosophy and sociology different from, or related to, each other? In these series of lectures delivered at Frankfurt University in 1960, Adorno examines the relationship between philosophy and sociology and concludes that the subjects do not belong to separate spheres of thought. But Adorno has a bigger aim in mind. His attempt to reconcile philosophy and sociology takes the form of a wholesale attack on positivistic sociology, followed by a critique of philosophical idealism. There is, however, a debate as to whether the origins of Adorno’s critical sociology lie in Marx’s critique of political economy or philosophical idealism. These lectures throw further light on this question as they show the development of Adorno’s social philosophy and the critical theory.","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"18 1","pages":"331 - 343"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74118664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Analyzing Narrative: Roland Barthes’ Forgotten Interview","authors":"J. Culler","doi":"10.1177/02632764221141820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221141820","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary reflects upon an interview with Roland Barthes from 1965 in which he discusses the structural analysis of narrative. The presentation prefigures the publication of Barthes’ well-known essay, ‘Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits’, which appeared shortly after in Communications, No. 8, in 1966. A close reading of both interview and essay shows that the interview differs from the published essay, notably in following more explicitly the steps of Saussure’s attempts to work out the units of the linguistic system, using a criterion called commutation. Consideration is also given to the next phase of Barthes’ work on narrative in S/Z (published in 1970), raising the question of what might have transpired had Barthes chosen to remain with an exploration of the actantial and narrational levels identified in his early interview.","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"21 1","pages":"175 - 180"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85005013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Computer Science to ‘Hermeneutic Web’: Towards a Contributory Design for Digital Technologies","authors":"Anne Alombert","doi":"10.1177/02632764221141684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221141684","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to connect Stiegler’s reflections on theoretical computer science with his practical propositions for the design of digital technologies. Indeed, Stiegler’s theory of exosomatization implies a new conception of artificial intelligence, which is not based on an analogical paradigm (which compares organisms and machines, as in cybernetics, or which compares thought and computing, as in cognitivism) but on an organological paradigm, which studies the co-evolution of living organisms (individuals), artificial organs (tools), and social organizations (institutions). Such a perspective does not compare human capacities to machine performances but studies the way in which the evolution of material and technical supports affects and transforms psychological, cognitive or noetic faculties (intuition, memory, understanding, imagination, sensibility, reason, etc.), as well as the constitution of different kinds of knowledge. This new theoretical paradigm implies a new ‘design’ for digital technologies, which considers their social role and their impact on psychological, cognitive or noetic faculties.","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"136 1","pages":"35 - 48"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77472891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Politics of Clinic and Critique in Southern Brazil.","authors":"Dominique P Béhague","doi":"10.1177/02632764221076430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221076430","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Drawing on a historical ethnography of how Brazil's post-dictatorial psychiatric reforms have shaped young people's lives, this paper builds on Eve Sedgwick's analysis of the hermeneutics of suspicion to show that narrow applications of Foucault's <i>biopower</i> concept nurture forms of resistance to bio-reductionism centred primarily on epistemic deconstruction. To unsettle this hermeneutic, I put young people's theories of power into conversation with Georges Canguilhem's concept of the <i>milieu</i> and with feminist scholars' work on prefigurative politics. I introduce the concepts of <i>threading</i> and <i>unthreading</i> to consider how one subject of biopower, the child-like biobehavioural figure, was continuously being <i>threaded</i> within a specific milieu and in relation to another key figure: the elite angst-ridden 'storm-and-stress' adolescent. Young people's subsequent <i>unthreading</i> and <i>reweaving</i> politics, flourishing in co-construction with what I call the politicizing clinic, illustrate how decolonial pedagogies can incrementally change the patterning of social life.</p>","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"39 6","pages":"43-61"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9557846/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33514243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The ‘Optimistic Cruelty’ of Hayek’s Market Order: Neoliberalism, Pain and Social Selection","authors":"Carla Ibled","doi":"10.1177/02632764221126305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221126305","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that cruelty, as a willingness to see or orchestrate the suffering of others, is not an unfortunate side-effect of neoliberal theories put into practice but is constitutive of the neoliberal project from its theoretical inception. Drawing on Lisa Duggan’s concept of ‘optimistic cruelty’ and treating the canonical texts of neoliberal economic theory as literary artefacts, the article develops this argument through a close reading of one of the central architects of the neoliberal project, the philosopher and economist Friedrich Hayek. The first part of the article examines how Hayek attempts to justify the brutality of the market order he imagines – the catallaxy – by arguing that this brutality is the natural consequence of the spontaneous evolutionary processes that move civilisation forward. The second part brings to the fore the eugenicist undertones that suffuse this vision, despite Hayek’s apparent rejection of Social Darwinism. I analyse how Hayek’s market order operates through a series of disciplinary and biopolitical technologies that use pain, frustration, punishment and stigmatisation to eliminate bad habits, practices and subjectivities. These cruel mechanisms enable the catallaxy to sort between productive and unproductive lives to ensure that available resources are directed towards the former – even if it means that the others might be left to die. As such, cruelty is an affective atmosphere that permeates the catallaxy.","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"43 1","pages":"81 - 101"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84106478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reflections on the Turn to Ageism in Contemporary Cultural Discourse","authors":"Margaret Morganroth Gullette","doi":"10.1177/02632764221113732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221113732","url":null,"abstract":"Distinguished gerontologists, ‘guardians of later life’ who had long kept age and ageism at the heart of their work, were asked by the author why the turn to ageism had not been able to raise age consciousness more effectively in the media or the public. Their frank responses constitute a valuable archive of reflections about how intersectional concepts and activist passions develop in an emerging and contentious multi-disciplinary field. The essay further situates their learned critiques in the history of age studies over the last 30 years. Among the sorrowful and galvanizing revelations provoked by the Eldercide of the COVID-19 era is this: ‘ageism’ has become widely recognized as a keyword not only good to think with but necessary to act on.","PeriodicalId":48276,"journal":{"name":"Theory Culture & Society","volume":"29 1","pages":"237 - 251"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85445057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}