Table of Contents

Foreword

Of Symbolic Misery, the Control of Affects, and the Shame that Follows

As Though We Were Lacking or How to Find Weapons in Alain Resnais’s Same Old Song

Allegory of the Anthill

The Loss of Individuation in the Hyper-industrial Age

Tiresias and the War of Time

On a Film by Bertrand Bonello

Afterword

About the Author

Bernard Stiegler is Director of Cultural Development at theCentre Pompidou in Paris.

Reviews

"In this decisive contribution to a critical understanding ofcontemporary life, Stiegler demonstrates how mass exclusion fromcultural production constitutes a form of generalizedimpoverishment, threatening to reduce our existence to meresubsistence. Typically though, he also suggests how we might buildalternatives to this 'symbolic misery'. This work forms a vitalpart of Stiegler's essential project." Martin Crowley, Queen s College, University ofCambridge "Expanding on Deleuze s idea of 'control societies', BernardStiegler provocatively diagnoses the 'misery' of contemporarysociety as a collective exclusion from the creation of symbols. Awar is being waged, he argues: capitalistic marketing is theinstrument of choice, the battleground is aestheticsand the fightis for the control of affect. Recommended for anyone interested inthe contemporary cultural condition." N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University