On the Use and Misuse of Deleuze and Guattari’s Concepts in Bernard Stiegler’s Philosophy

Abstract

In my view, Bernard Stiegler continues Félix Guattari’s exploration of the post-media era ushered in by the digital revolution. In his way, Stiegler focuses on the psychological and societal effects of this revolution, such as attention deficit disorder and intelligence decline, which could not be fully anticipated by Guattari. Stiegler’s philosophy updates Deleuze and Guattari’s work on voluntary servitude and by combining his concepts with Deleuze and Guattari’s, he contributes a new form of post-media thought in the Anthropocene, challenging nihilistic interpretations. Guattari’s three ecologies thesis is relevant to Stiegler’s philosophy but he rejects the “resistance” and advocates invention and the creation of therapeutic tools, proffering the concept of bifurcation in the context of the Anthropocene, as a new concept of transformation. Stiegler’s work also contributes to updating Deleuze’s Marxism, reapplying concepts such as proletarianization, immaterial labor, the culture industry, and the critique of marketing in the era of computational capitalism, and his work prompts a reassessment of reason in the face of calculation's dominance in a post-truth age. All in all, Stiegler's philosophy is consistent with the immanent, atheist, and this-worldly perspective of Deleuze and Guattari.