ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the way in which Bernard Stiegler conceives the globally disorientating power of contemporary technological programmes; his identification of the unforeseen effects of hospitality, desire and recognition that arise from the capitalization of human life; and his orientation to contemporary political, philosophical and sociological debates on the technoscientific future of humanity. It examines the manifesto of the Ars Industrialis project, through which Stiegler has broadcast the demand for aesthetic participation in the symbolic order of society. The book also examines the relationship between aesthetic technique and new media technologies, the emergence of programming industries that seek to control the reproduction of desire, and the return of a particular Freudian affect that sustains the individual's capacity to express the damage done to him/her it by the loss of its affective attachments.
