Echographies of Television

Filmed Interviews

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by Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler

Polity Press

Due/Published September 2002, 182 pages, paper

ISBN 074562037X

In this volume of recorded interviews, Bernard Stiegler discusses with Jacques Derrida the role of technology in modern societies. Our homes have always existed in the shadow of "the other" and inviting guests has always carried the threat of usurpation. In these interviews Derrida argues that today we are witnessing a new expropriation of our home by "teletechnologies," whose intrusion seriously endangers our ability to feel "at home" in the world.

Television, for example, introduces the outside world into our homes at every instant. Our lives are more isolated, more privatized than ever, even as our homes are permanently intruded, at our own choosing, by strangers, by faraway things, by other languages. The feeling of being at home is in danger of being eroded forever, as is the distinction between public and private space.

However, in discussion with Stiegler, Derrida argues not that we should fight against the teletechnologies, but that these media should accommodate the norms rhythms of communication which are the norms for scientists, artists, writers, philosophers and intellectuals. They discuss the role of the law in the circulation of real or virtual images, and present an argument for the citizen's right to consult the State's audio-visual archives; they examine the process of "delocalization" in which the accelerated growth of teletechnologies deconstructs the traditional concept of the State and the citizen in relation to an actual territory. This, Derrida warns, can give rise to a form of return to oneself and one's home that we call "little nationalism"whose potential endangers all our societies.

Contents

List of Illustrations
Translator's Note
Artifactualities: Jacques Derrida
Echographies of Television: Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler
1 Right of Inspection
2 Artifactuality, Homohegemony
3 Acts of Memory: Topolitics and Teletechnology
4 Inheritances – and Rhythm
5 ‘Cultural Exception': the States of the State, the Event
6 The Archive Market: Truth, Testimony, Evidence
7 Phonographies: Meaning – from Heritage to Horizon
8 Spectrographies
9 Vigilances of the Unconscious
The Discrete Image: Bernard Stiegler
Notes