https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/stieglers-memory-tertiary-retention-and-temporal-objects/
created by The_Pharmak0n on 23/01/2020 at 10:09 UTC
210 upvotes, 2 top-level comments (showing 2)
Comment by selfware at 23/01/2020 at 21:21 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It's a shame such a good piece gets so little recognition.
Comment by [deleted] at 24/01/2020 at 00:58 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Let me see if I understand Stiegler's work correctly. He argues that the definition of "consciousness" is more broad, so as to include extensions of our mental processes (memory; temporal processing) via technology. For example, at a very low-tech level, my memory doesn't just include my individual memory of the groceries I need to pick up, but also includes the checklist I wrote to help me remember. He also views consciousness as collective; therefore, "memory objects" of past events are not just my own, but also shared between all individual's who experienced it. Combining both ideas, at a grander scale, the one Stiegler is concerned with, in our highly connected and global modern society, we all collectively experience and synthesize events, which we propogate as memory objects. Even when we do not personally experience the events (say, the Civil War, the holocaust, the 60s anti-war movement), these are depicted in mass media (television, the internet, phones), which we collectively consume and relate to others. Given that this is true, Stiegler takes it one political step further. Because mass media "memory objects" are manufactored within a capitalist system, it is subject to capitalist criticisms. Likewise, Marxist philosophy should be updated to include these concepts which are largely modern in their origin.
Though I find this type of philosophy interesting, I feel like it is saying the much of the same stuff as memetic theory (which was alluded too a little bit in the first couple paragraphs when referencing epigenetics) in a much more complicated way. How messages spread and change within a culture is analogous to many precepts of evolutionary theory, where the messages are genes (memes). I suppose Stiegler's radical take is that this results in an expanded form of consciousness, and his working this into a critique of capitalism.