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Anthropotechnical practising in the foam-world
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Davis, Oliver (2021) Anthropotechnical practising in the foam-world. Angelaki : Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 26 (1). pp. 109-123. doi:10.1080/0969725X.2021.1863600 ISSN 0969-725X.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2021.1863600
Abstract
I begin by acknowledging the profusion of Peter Sloterdijk’s published work, the suggestion by Bruno Latour that it may be on the side of design, and Sloterdijk’s pugnacious aversion to professorial critique. I focus on what I consider to be the crucial and vexed relationship between the general immunology of the Spheres trilogy [1998–2004] and the general ascetology of You Must Change Your Life [2009]. I present an analytical reconstruction of Sloterdijk’s account of originary spheric being-with in the trilogy, focused on its culmination in the foam-world; I suggest this account is too ambiguous on key matters of basic ontological structure and I question whether the foam metaphor is adequate as a description of intersubjectivity today. Against the backdrop of this discussion I consider whether the general ascetology of Sloterdijk’s second anthropotechnics involves practising in, or practising on, the shells of symbolic immunity and conclude the latter. Setting this alongside the trilogy’s insistence that cells in the foam are “co-fragile,” I argue that anthropotechnical practising in the foam-world is suffused with a violence which Sloterdijk is reluctant to theorize. Registering one significant undeclared context of his discussion of self-enhancement, in postmodern management theory, I suggest that successful anthropotechnical practising in the foam-world requires the capacity to ignore other people and their interests. I note that Sloterdijk’s one-eyed embrace of competitive self-enhancement in You Must Change Your Life has since been qualified in brief remarks in What Happened in the 20th Century? [2016] but not substantively reconsidered. In conclusion, I pay tribute to the anthropotechnical lesson of Sloterdijk’s theoretical project, notwithstanding its design flaws and continuity errors.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BD Speculative Philosophy |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Sloterdijk, Peter, 1947-, Intersubjectivity, Anthropomorphism , Philosophical anthropology, Latour, Bruno , Self (Philosophy) | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Angelaki : Journal of the Theoretical Humanities | ||||||
Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||
ISSN: | 0969-725X | ||||||
Official Date: | 26 January 2021 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 26 | ||||||
Number: | 1 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 109-123 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/0969725X.2021.1863600 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | “This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Angelaki on 26/01/2021, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0969725X.2021.1863600 | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 19 March 2020 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 26 July 2022 | ||||||
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