On Freedom: Technology, Capital, Medium

Description

How do we challenge the structures of late capitalism if all possible media through which to do do is inescapably capitalist? This urgent political question is at the heart of Peter Trawny's major new work. With searing precision Trawny demonstrates how our world has become wholly determined by technology, capital, and the medium. In this world of the 'TCM', we universal subjects remain in a state of apathy that is temporarily punctuated, but also reinforced, by the phantasmatic dream of difference offered us by the 'Hollywood machine.' Our sole motivation is to gain money and the power it brings. The only meaningful difference in the world of the TCM universal is the difference between wealth and poverty. Freedom is then only the freedom to dispose of things (particularly technological objects) and to gain pleasure. It makes our relation to our surroundings essentially 'touristic,' and our relation to the earth an essentially exploitative one. The notion of personal or societal freedom has never been more controversial or, seemingly, more far from our grasp. While exploring in details the difficulties we face in our attempts to be free, Trawny builds a vision of how to break out of the mediums in which we operate and experience a new kind of freedom. Escape from the TCM universal is impossible. Yet philosophy itself is the impossible. So when Trawny writes that “escape-the other-is impossible,” we can read this both as “escape is impossible” and as “escape is the impossible," that is, the only possible escape is through philosophy. FC ......Page 1 Half title......Page 2 Also available from Bloomsbury......Page 3 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 Preface......Page 9 1 The double topology......Page 16 2 The idea-matter-matrix......Page 28 3 What is......Page 32 4 The Universal and the Universal Topology......Page 98 5 The universal subject......Page 102 6 Pragma-politics......Page 122 7 The last revolution......Page 126 8 Anachronisms......Page 130 9 The double topology and the museum......Page 134 10 Patho-topo-logy......Page 138 11 The differentiated subject/violence......Page 156 12 Intimacy and freedom......Page 160 13 Philosophy as impossibility......Page 166 Note on the Wittgenstein epigraph......Page 176 Bibliography......Page 178 Index......Page 184