Contemporary culture, today's capitalism - our global information society - is ever expanding, is ever more extensive. And yet we seem to be experiencing aparallel phenomenon which can only be characterised as intensive. This thought provoking, innovative book is dedicated to the study of such intensive culture. Whilst extensive culture is a culture of the same: a culture of fixed equivalence; intensive culture is a culture of difference, of in-equivalence - thesingular. Intensities generate what we encounter. They are virtuals or possibilities, always in process and always in movement. We thus live in a culture that is both extensive and intensive. Indeed the more globally stretched and extensive social relations become the more they simultaneously seem to take on this intensity. Ours is a relational world where each intensity - whether human, technological or biological - provides a distinct, specific window onto the whole. Lash carefully defines and distinguishes the intensive from the extensive tracking this change through key areas of social life including sociology, religion, philosophy, language, politics and communication. In so doing he redefines the work of Leibniz, Benjamin, Simmel, Durkheim and Marx and introducesthe reader to the ontological structures of our contemporary social relations. INDICE: 1. Introduction : What is Intensive Culture? Ontology and ReligionOverview Social Theory / 2. Intensive Sociology: Georg Simmel's Vitalism : Forms: from cognitive a priori to social a priori. Value: Simmel, Nietzsche, thecommodity Social substance: from labour to life Monadology: Simmel, Bergson, metaphysics Flow or flux?: towards a global politics / 3. Intensive Philosophy: Leibniz and the Ontology of Difference : Leibniz, Aristotle, Ontology Sensation, Perception, Knowledge Intensive Causation Language: Intrinsic PredicationSubstance and System: From Exchange of Equivalents to Exchange of Difference / 4. Intensive Language: Benjamin, God and the Name: Leibniz and Benjamin: from the monad to the word Intensive Methodology: Benjamin's critique of epistemology Language of Man, Language of things, Language of God / 5. Intensive Capitalism: Marxist Ontology: From Physical Capitalism to Metaphysical Capitalism Four Contrasts Causation in Metaphysical Capitalism De Lillo's Cosmopolis and the New Finance Capital / 6. Intensive Politics : Language: Power becomes Ontological Two Types of Power From Norm to Fact From Representation to Communication Cultural Studies: First and Second Wave / 7. Intensive Religion: Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms: Durkheim's Cultural Ontology The Totem: Clan, Emblem,Communion Energy: Durkheim's vitalism The Soul: The Totem Individualized Practice: Collective Assembly and Institutionalization Experience: Sensory and Religious / 8. Intensive Communication: Philip K. Dick's Information Theology : Transmigration: The Will to Divine Knowledge (a) Faith versus knowledge: Dick versus Badiou and Agamben (b) Dick's St. Paul: against law and the messianic (c) Christ and the mushroom: salvation through eating the real (d) The fated entropy of the will to knowledge Vast Active Living Intelligence System (a) The Gnosticism of Philip K Dick (b) Horselover Fat: healing the subject (c) Divine invasion (d) The Grail: time into space (e) VALIS: the movie / 9. Epilogue: Intensity and Beyond
- ISBN: 978-1-4129-4516-5
- Editorial: Sage Publications
- Encuadernacion: Cartoné
- Páginas: 280
- Fecha Publicación: 01/06/2010
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés