finishing up Stiegler's "What makes life worth living: On pharmacology"

I wanted to write a bit more about the central idea of a pharmakon, but then realized that Wikipedia doesn't really do this term service, so I started a new draft article to define the term properly. I also encountered a relatively short article that may be a useful introduction to Stiegler in the "phatics" context, namely Relational Ecology and the Digital Pharmakon, published in 2012. As a general comment on his 2010 book, I found it really profound -- in places -- and I'm glad that I read it.

However I regret that I would have a hard time recommending it to anyone who isn't relatively steeped in post-structuralist French philosophy. There are too many long snowclone-style sentences with the form "if A of B and C, then C of B to A". These just come across as waffling around. And there are also too many places (for my taste) where Stiegler uses terms without any definition, but which casual readers aren't likely to know.

OK, with this comment I'm sure I come across as a bit lazy, and this sort of thinking could be taken as a prime example of the short-circuiting of attention that the truly profound and poetic passages point to as a contemorary ailment: the tl;dr effect. Even so, I must admit that I'd like to see a much shorter version of the book (which is why I have high hopes for the "Relational Ecology" paper that I mentioned) which keeps the thoughtfulness and some of the poetry, but dispenses with some of the gymnastics. I think that could be easily done, and I marked some of the passages that might form part of a "redacted" version of the book.

Perhaps I'll add some of those in attached comments later on. For now, I'll just make a few remarks, mostly in my own words. Firstly, I think Stiegler is clear that discussion can create a "thing" which can then be attended to. What's particularly interesting is the temporal nature of this thing. One possibility is that whatever is created is a momentary connection -- but another possibility is that what is created endures beyond the initial constituents. The enduring form is what Stiegler refers to a "long circuit". Only within long circuits is it possible to exercise care for a next generation. This is especially interesting because the "next generation" does not necessarily need to denote the next biological generation, but can be any form of selection that is based on care or attention. The opposite effect is what happens when these circuits of long-term care are interrupted or "short circuited" -- and Stiegler makes a case that contemporary forms of capital and media do just that. He is particularly concerned about "marketing" as a sort of programming that removes the ability (and even the time) to think.

This could be generalized to any form of communication that "short circuits" or pre-judges a selection process -- for instance, yesterday I watched a short talk by Cathy O'Neil about big data algorithms that  make decisions that can have a huge effect on the lives of their targets, but which are "secret" and which no one can get access to. That seems like a perfect (if scary) example. Nevertheless, as Steigler's organization Ars Industrialis remarks elsewhere, "a pharmakon should always be considered in the three meanings of the word: as poison, as a remedy, and as a scapegoat (or outlet)". (They cite Bateson's analysis of the role of "alcohol" as understood by Alcoholics Anonymous.)

This means (for example) that even if we are inclined to see big data algorithms as "poisonous", we should also remember to consider the way they function as a "remedy" and as a "scapegoat". For instance, O'Neil points out that the secret algorithms that compute the "Value Added Model" of a teacher's performance are meant to remedy the earlier un-apt way of judging teacher performance (based only on how many students pass or fail). [UPDATE: the late Aaron Swartz wrote an essay that describes how this sort of economizing has been going on for a long time, and that claims that the whole activity of public education serves as a smoke-screen for more nefarious machinations.]

The basic Derridean view on the pharmakon is that we should not try to "resolve" this dilemma one way or another, or we will end up doing violence to the underlying philosophical situation. Here's a quote that shows how Stiegler views the situation:

Rather than opposing the 'bottom-up' to the 'top-down', it is a matter of constituting systems for producing metadata that organize and create political technologies encouraging the emergence of psychic and collective individuation processes of a new kind. These systems must be grounded in the representation of differing perspectives, polemics and controversies, as well as convergences of interest or perspective enabling re-groupings, that is, ultimately, transindividuations that recognize themselves in meanings, thereby constituting collective individuations, and establishing, at the heart of digitalized public life, argued and analysable critique that counters the murmurings that abound in a falsely consensual digital world lacking instruments for enhancing collective singularities. - p. 95, "What makes life worth living"

An example of a statement that is at once relatively profound and, in my opinion, far too acrobatic. A shorter version of the quote might just say: "Rather than opposing the 'bottom-up' to the 'top-down', it is a matter of constituting systems for producing metadata[.]" and then let the reader think about who has access to this metadata and what they can do with it. (I.e. is it used to form a political discussion, to create new institutions, or is it used to create markets? Why, or why not, in each case?) For our purposes, another quote from a couple of pages later helps to show what else the metadata might do:

The new metalanguage that metadata forms constitutes a new epoch of the grammatization process that globally trans-forms the conditions of transindividuation. A psychic process is translated at the level of a collective individuation through which psychic individuation is marked, inscribed so to speak in the real, and is recognized by other psychic individuals: this work of collective individuation by psychic individuation, and conversely this inscription of collective individuation in psychic individuation, is formed by the process of transindividuation. Now it is precisely this circuit formed by the process of individuation that can be seen in 'social networks' -- however poor they may seem at first sight, just a few years after their appearance. p. 97, ibid.

This quote again seems somewhat overladen and snowclone-like, but at least it is relatively explicit. It illustrates quite nicely how a Saussure- or Hjelmslev-style "semiotic division" can be inserted between the psychic and the social. Now, I'm not sure that's such a grand conclusion, but it's something.

I might rather conclude with the thought that the "metalanguage that metadata forms" could be seen not as new but as old and universal -- something that the phatic function (in its various guises) can help to understand and theorize. In any case, together with the other quote, I think this note shows the relevance of Stiegler's thinking to theorizing phatics. He fleshes out some of the Simondon ideas with contemporary examples and shows connections with the idea of the pharmakon (referencing Derrida, but also Husserl, Freud, and Winnicott). Quite a lot for one small book to do.