Do We Still Have Time?

I, We and They in Bernard Stiegler’s Theatre of Individuation

Abstract

Stiegler thinks that the Anthropocene as an entropy-producing process alone is not enough to understand the current situation we are in; life also has the power to produce negative entropy. In order to understand negentropic forces, it is necessary to demonstrate that human beings are individuated with technical organs and social organizations in addition to biological organs, in other words, that they are organological beings. The idea that the relationship between technique and human beings is one-sided renders the role of technique in individuation invisible. This study examines how Stiegler attempts to construct a scene of individuation based on the philosophies of Heidegger and Simondon. According to Stiegler, although Simondon succeeds in revealing the pre-individual field established through technical externalization, he does not dell enough on deindividuation. Stiegler thinks that we can fill this gap with Heidegger’s conceptualization of the they (das Man) in Being and Time.