A European condition Patrick Jones
permapoesis 2011
Slow Text
What follows is a translated transcript of Bernard Stiegler speaking in the film The Ister. This text, the result of documentation by filmmakers David Barison and Daniel Ross (who have come to Stiegler’s home to ask questions concerning his book Technics and Time), is a fundamental work of philosophy that historicises why there exists today a monumental ‘crisis of reason’, to cite Val Plumwood; why European man, and those under his technical spell, have become increasingly insane. I have transcribed Stiegler’s thoughts – the line breaks corresponding to his pauses for more oxygen – centred them on the page and subjected them to a ‘slow text’ procedure. A slow text occurs when individual letters on a page begin to mimic more typical diversities found in life, attending to the monological nature of standard printed text. This particular slow text has been formed using the surname ‘Stiegler’, taking each of the seven individual letters that make up the eight-lettered word – s, t, i, e, g, l, r – and giving each a specific font character. The ‘s’ is therefore superscripted. The ‘t’ is subscripted. The ‘i’ is italicised. The ‘e’ is bolded. The ‘g’ is small capitalised. The ‘l’ is made 14-point type. And the ‘r’ is made 10-point type. The logic behind a slow text is to use chance, not design, to attend to the speeding, imposing, forgetting eye. In using technical applications to produce a slow text ‘print’ of Stiegler’s spoken account, I aim to fuse the biophysical breath that forms Stiegler’s utterances with the nonhuman entities of letters and pages, while at the same time show how technics can work to attend to the ‘problem of divorce;’ of separation. This offers, or encourages, a slower reading and thus potentially an awareness of an environment that’s not strictly human, but rather one where many entities exist. What Stiegler identifies in the following pages is man’s difference – technics, but he knows this difference has not always made us separate.
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“One day Zues said to Prometheus, ‘the time has come for you, ‘for us Gods, to brinG into s the day the non-immortal .’ he non-immortals beinG animals and men. T
Prometheus, who is put in charGe of this task, has a twin brother named Epimetheus. Epimetheus resembles Prometheus; he is his double. But in fact Epimetheus is his brother’s opposite. Epimetheus is the God of the fault of forGettinG. Prometheus is a fiGure of knowledGe,
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of absolute mastery, total memory. Prometheus forGets nothinG, Epimetheus forGets everythinG. Epimetheus says to his brother: ‘Zues has Given you this task – I want to do it! ‘Me me me! I’ll take care of it.’ Epimetheus is a rather s imple-minded brother and Prometheus is fond of him. He dares not refuse and says, ‘OK, you take care of it.’ o Epimetheus distributes the qualities.
S
He will Give the Gazelle its speed, for example. Gazelles run very fast.
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o the lion he Gives force and endurance. T
T
o the turtle the shell, etc.
He distributes the qualities in equilibrium. Epimetheus’ distribution of the qualities describes the ecoloGical balance of nature. T
he lion chases and eats the Gazelle, but Gazelles run fast, s s o ome escape and reproduce. And all the species Are in equilibrium. Now as Epimetheus is distributinG the qualities, he suddenly notices somethinG… He looks in his basket…
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‘There are no qualities left! ‘I forGot to save a quality for man!’ he basket is empty. ‘I still have to brinG mankind, mortals, into the day.’ T
T
here was still this species to brinG into the day,
but there are no qualities left to Give him a form. S
o Prometheus Goes to the Workshop of the God Hephaestus, o steal fire.
t
Fire, which is obviously s s the ymbol of technic , but which is also the symbol of the power of God. Zues. Man and technics
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are indissociable. T
he phenomenon of hominization is the phenomenon of the technication of the livinG. Man is nothinG other than technical life. But for thousands and even millions of years, man did not sense s s thi technical dimen ion, which constitutes his life and existence,
which makes him a sinGular and oriGinal livinG beinG in the kinGdom of livinG beinGs. Over a very lonG period of time, man has not felt this difference, inasmuch as technics
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has evolved with man, more or less in harmony with him. Until the industrial revolution at the start of the 19th century, man lives in a technical milieu which is normally stable, but which is transformed from time to time. T
T
he historian Bertrand Gille calls these periods of ‘technoloGical rupture.’
here have been technoloGical ruptures s ince the beGinninG of humanity. Initially they are very far apart. Many hundreds of thousands of years apart, I think, in prehistory. hen in the proto-historic epoch, from the Neolithic period onwards, T
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he Gap between technoloGical s s s s s rupture i thou and of year ,
t
and from the Greeks onwards s s s the Gap i in the hundred of year . T
hen, startinG from the classical period, s s s the Gap become dozen of year . he Great industrial revolution of the steam enGine beGins in 1780. T
T
his provokes Great transformations in manufacturinG activity.
Indeed this transformation constitutes the industrial revolution. Now, two thinGs happened in the industrial revolution. First, the duration of technical systems becomes shorter and shorter. hey become so contracted s s s that there i almo t no tability T
in technical systems.
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Until the 18th century. S
cience on the one hand, which includes philosophy, and technics on the other are two worlds which barely communicate. It is necessary to wait for h the end of the 18t century and the beGinninG of the 19th century, for the arrival of industry before a new relation between cience and technics is constituted,
s
a relation which completely upsets the philosophical order established since Plato and Socrates. Greek science, Greek philosophy
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ay fundamentally
s
hat technics has no ontoloGical depth, no ontoloGical meaninG.
t
T
echnics is nothinG other than artifactuality,
makinG it necessary to distinGuish artifice from ontoloGy, from beinG. Appearance must be s eparated from essence. BecominG must be eparated from beinG.
s
From then on, science and technics are fundamentally separate. At the end of the 18th century s thi relation will chanGe. And what was a relation of opposition between science and technics becomes a relation of composition.
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T
he result is a new dynamism in technics. Which leads to what I call ‘permanent innovation,’ whereby technics tends to s s tran form it elf continually. And where, moreover, in the industrial realm, competition will arise between enterprises. T
his competition will lead
o a process of Globalisation,
t
with the development of railways and shippinG openinG up enormous new markets. T
hus we leave the national sphere. We pass quickly into a process of competition
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fouGht essentially throuGh technical innovation, hat is, throuGh optimisation of machine productivity.
t
And this economic war will translate into s techno- cientific war. Now this poses a problem of divorce between social orGanisation, piritual orGanisation,
s
linGuistic, political, economic, reliGiou , s
epistemic, or epistemoloGical,
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leGal, metaphorical, bioloGical even. All these spheres are systems. And in one fell swoop s they are truck, overturned, exploded, by the technical system hrouGh the dynamism of electronics and the internet. t
his process beGan in the 19th century. T
But now we experience it with an extraordinary, brutal force. It beGan in the 19th century because at that time here arose a new process,
t
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whereby industry, in its economic struGGle, needed to create new objects every day, o open new markets for new objects.
t
All sorts of objects. T
he car.
Mineral water. Plastic. T
oys for babies. Electricity.
Always new, new, new, new. And this is an enormous chanGe for society. Enormous because until the 18th and 19th centuries,
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for most people, s s the world remained alway the ame. Always stable. Most people thouGht the world had always been the way it was in their time, and that it will always s remain the ame. hey didn’t understand s that they lived in hi toric time. T
Before HeGel there was no historical consciousness. A consciousness believed it was livinG in a world identical to itself. A stable world, the world of beinG. And for this consciousness, ‘becominG’ is exceptional and monstrous. All western philosophy
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until the 19th century houGht that stability wa the essence of reality. t s
ChanGe, revolution, was quite accidental. Absolutely accidental. In the 19th century, s uddenly one says no: actually stability is the exception. It is chanGe that is normal. T
his is Marx.
It is Marx via industry, via technics. Nietzsche says, in Human, All To Human: ‘Man still has no historical consciousness.’
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‘The philosopher still has no historical consciousness.’ ‘He thinks the mind has always been what it is…’ He speaks here of ss Rou eau and Kant. But, Nietzsche says, we now discover prehistoric men, fossils, and we realise man has not always been what he is, and that the process of becominG is fundamentally what must be thouGht. Reality
is becominG, s ays Nietzsche.
But if Nietzsche can say that, it’s because he is at the end of the 19th century,
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and he is witnessinG before his eyes he Growth of technoloGy, and already he understands t
hat man will be carried away by this technoloGical Growth.
t
At the same time, s
omethinG is in the process of developinG around the world, hrouGh archaeoloGy, throuGh palaeontoloGy, t
hrouGh all these sciences which study traces, fossils. t
And what is discovered by science in the West and then Globally, is that technics has evolved over time, as have animals and plants, and thus technics is cauGht up
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in the evolutionary process. Which leads Marx to say in Das Kapital hat we must elaborate a theory of technical evolution, t
just as Darwin elaborated a theory of the evolution of livinG beinGs. T
his takes me back to what I was sayinG at the start.
Earlier I said that man is an essentially technical livinG beinG, and that the becominG of man and technics are the same thinG. It’s true. But at the same time between man and human production (technics) here’s a perpetual risk of divorce.
t
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Because technics forms a system, and this system has its own dynamic, which leads us s to ay today: ‘We must do away with jobs s o that technoloGy can develop.’ In Europe this is often said. S
o we’re forced to put people on the dole. he historian Bertrand Gille names s s ss thi phenomenon ‘di jointedne .’
T
Which relates to what Shakespeare called… ‘Time out of joint.’ Disjointedness. S
ometimes time comes off its hinGes. Fundamentally because of a
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process of technical becominG. T
his is the Great difficulty for thouGht: man is fundamentally a technical beinG,
and yet technics is always unsettlinG man, who like all other beinGs seeks to conserve himself as he is.
Life is fundamentally conservative, yet it is also neGentropic. In other words: s tran formation, becominG, alteration. In so far as man is a technical beinG who in order to survive, must fabricate protheses artifical apparatuses of defence and attack an apparatus of prostheses,
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first the flint, then the arrow hen finally the car, the rocket, the computer, whatever you like. t
All this forms a system, because this appliance, the computer, can’t exist without this accessory, and this socket, which feeds the computer, s s relie on a tran former,
linked to a network, linked to turbines. And it is necessary to alter the flow of water and stop the river in order to Generate electricity. All this forms a system,
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a system that upsets nature, which transforms nature, and which leads us to ask today: ‘Well, what is nature?’ Does nature exist? Physis. Natura. What is that? Maybe it doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s a phantasm. Be that as it may, prehistoric man develops prostheses which lead to systems, s s s s to an enormou Global indu trial y tem. Globalisation is the Globalisation of technics. But what is essential about this process is that technics,
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as it develops s
s
Give ri e
o a third kind of memory for livinG beinGs. t
When a prehistoric man cuts a flint, o cut meat, s s to u e aGain t predator , s
t
to trap prey or to use aGainst other men,
obviously he doesn’t cut s s the flint to pre erve hi memory. But the act of cuttinG the flint preserves in the stone s the Ge ture of cuttinG, permittinG the inscription of his Gestures on the flint and in fact constitutes a new memory-support
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for the livinG beinG, man. Until man, life rests on the combination of two systems of memory: Genetic
memory, DNA,
and on the other hand, the memory of the individual, in the nervous system, the brain, etc. T
hese two memories,
which exist in all superior, s exed, vertebrate beinGs endowed with a nervous system‌ hese two memories do not communicate with each other. t
T
hey are completely autonomous,
and consequently when an animal acquires an individual experience,
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omethinG vital to it,
s
his experience can’t be tran mitted to the next Generation, s
t
because the memory of the nervous system has no way of communicatinG with Genetic memory. In other words when the livinG beinG dies, all the experience it has accumulated individually are lost by the species. In contrast, after technics appears, very limited transmission is made possible, of vital acts, of tool fabrication.
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And then increasinGly vast dimensions of memory devlop, dimensions of memory which throuGh technics become transmissible from Generation to Generation. And that camera which is recordinG me now is a system of memorisation: s s the late t development, the late t avatar of a system which beGins with the first carved flint, and which allows life to preserve the s trace of it individual experience, and to transmit that trace between Generations. his is the appearance of what we call culture. T
And obviously this is also the
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beGinninG of the possibility of conservinG the past of a social Group, hrouGh ‘supports,’ s upports of all kinds. t
T
his Glass is a support.
It’s not made to preserve memories, it’s made to drink water. And you have not had a drink. But this Glass, which is made for drinkinG water, will for an archaeoloGist in 1000 years be a trace of civilisation, which will permit him to understand how people lived at the beGinninG of the 21st century. o it will become a memory-support.
S
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ArchaeoloGy makes use of s s tool , of everyday object , which were not intended to aid memory, in order to reconstitute s s the pa t of a ociety. In essence: s technic i memory- upport. s s
And this means s s technic i the condition of the constitution of the relation to the past. o, Prometheus will steal fire, in other words technics,
S
and also the intelliGence of Athena. And man will be a mortal livinG beinG condemned to fabricate prostheses.
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In other words he has no qualities. He is obliGed o endlessly equip himself
t
with new artifices for survival. And since they have no quality defined in advance men enter into conflict with one another, o decide on their quality, on their future.
t
S
ome say ‘we should do this,’ others say ‘no, we should do that.’ T
he animal, the zebra,
he Gazelle of which I spoke a moment aGo, the cow, the lion, t
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hey have no question to pose concerninG ‘who are we?’
t
Who are we? Is not a question for an animal. But for man, it’s an eternal question. Who are we? hould we develop computers?
S
hould we land on the moon?
S
Raze
hat forest?
t
Build that dam on Hölderlin’s river? hould we do that?
S
T
echnics is the question.
As soon as I am technical, I am questioninG
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