Derrida and Technology: Life, Politics, and Religion

This book is the first monograph that takes a comprehensive approach to Jacques Derrida as a philosopher of technology. It refines and complements his mainstream image as a philosopher of language and deconstructionist of classical literary and philosophical texts. This volume outlines the key features of Derrida's alternative philosophy of technology, a philosophy which Sjöstrand argues, avoids the problems associated with, on the one hand, a Heideggerian orientation, which completely separates thinking and technology and, on the other, an empirically oriented "post-phenomenology" that can be said to be hegemonic within the field today. Based on a sustained interpretation of Derrida, and a robust, coherent philosophy of technology, a phenomenology of technology is developed that, in a radical way, extends the concept of technology to cover the entire field of phenomenology. This places the technological not in opposition to humanity, but rather always already in close proximity to man and, consequently, to life, ethics, politics, democracy and religion. Strikingly, this important aspect of Derrida's thinking is only rarely analyzed or discussed by his many exegetes. This text appeals to graduates and researchers working on Derrida, phenomenology, and the philosophy of technology.

Autorentext

Björn Sjöstrand studied philosophy at Södertörn University, Stockholm, from 2002 and obtained his PhD at Uppsala University in 2016. In his early career, he studied electronics at Chalmers Technical University in Gothenburg and obtained his MSc in Electrical Engineering. He has a solid technical background with more than 30 years of experience in various leading positions within the telecommunications and information industry in Sweden.

As a phenomenologist, he is presently interested in the question of technology and its relation to the human and to society. He has previously published Ethics and Politics in Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida (2008), Derrida and the Phenomenology of Technology in Fenomenologi, Teknik och Medialitet (2011) and The Phenomenology of Technology: The Technology that Saves in Modern Filosofi (2016). Since 2009 he is a member of The Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT) and The Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NoSP).

Inhalt
1Introduction2The Philosophy of Technology Tradition2.1The Historical Background2.2Phenomenology and Transcendental Philosophy of Technology2.3Postphenomenoloy and Empirical Philosophy of Technology2.4SummaryReferences3Derrida and the Phenomenology of Technology3.1Introduction3.2Derrida's Engagement with the Question of Technology 3.3Husserl and the Technological Origin of Geometry3.4Husserl and Writing as Telecommunication3.5Technology as a Relation3.6Heidegger and the Question of Technology3.7SummaryReferences4Technology and Time as Event4.1Introduction4.2The So-Called Vulgar Concept of Time4.3Heidegger's Time4.4Derrida's Deconstruction of Time4.5The Artifactual Production of Time as Event4.6Technology puts Time out of Joint4.7Stiegler versus Derrida: Technological or Messianic Time?4.8Summary References5Humanity's Technicity5.1Introduction5.2Technology's Inscription in Life5.3Scriptual Subjectivity5.4SummaryReferences6Ethics and Technology6.1Introduction6.2The Electronic Revolution6.3Total Nuclear War6.4Global Terrorism6.5SummaryReferences7Politics and Technology7.1Introduction7.2Derrida on Politics7.3The Transforming of Democracy, Politics, and Citizenship by Technology7.4Violation of the Inviolable: Surveillance and Control7.5Archival Politics the Central Issue of Politics7.6Derrida versus Stiegler: Messianic Ethics or Politics of Memory?7.7SummaryReferences8Religion and Technology8.1Introduction8.2Derrida on Religion8.3Religion as Abstraction8.4The Two Sources of Religion and Their Relation to Technology8.5Life, Sacrifice, and Technoscientific Violence8.6Religion and Media8.7On Atheism and Deconstruction8.8SummaryReferences9Conclusion