''Acting Out'' is a book by French philosopher

Bernard Stiegler Bernard Stiegler (; 1 April 1952 – 5 August 2020) was a French philosopher. He was head of the Institut de recherche et d'innovation (IRI), which he founded in 2006 at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. He was also founder of the political and c ...

. It is composed of two short works, "How I Became a Philosopher", and "To Love, To Love Me, To Love Us: From September 11 to April 21", which were published separately in French in 2003 as ''Passer à l'acte'' and ''Aimer, s'aimer, nous aimer: Du 11 septembre au 21 avril''. ''Acting Out'' was published by

Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It is currently a member of the Ass ...

in 2009, and the translators were David Barison, Daniel Ross, and Patrick Crogan.

How I Became a Philosopher

This section of the work was originally delivered as an oral presentation, a kind of "confession" à la

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Republic of Geneva, Genevan philosopher (''philosophes, philosophe''), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment through ...

, in which Stiegler admits for the first time that he became a philosopher while incarcerated for a period of five years. Stiegler tells the story of his transformation in prison, a transformation which took the form of rediscovering the world in a quasi-phenomenological fashion. The chapter draws from the work of

Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938) was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology. In his early work, he elaborated critiques of histori ...

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

, and

Epictetus Epictetus (, ; , ''Epíktētos''; 50 135 AD) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was born into slavery at Hierapolis, Phrygia (present-day Pamukkale, in western Turkey) and lived in Rome until his banishment, when he went to Nicopolis in ...

To Love, To Love Me, To Love Us: From September 11 to April 21

This section of the work is a discussion of the ways in which modern society is leading to a loss of a sense of existence, thus a destruction of what Stiegler calls " primordial narcissism", resulting in the proliferation of all kinds of individual and collective pathological behaviours. He outlines his theory of

individuation The principle of individuation, or ', describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinct from other things. The concept appears in numerous fields and is encountered in works of Leibniz, Carl Jung, Gunther Anders, Gilbert Simondo ...

(drawn in part from the work of Gilbert Simondon), and the compositional relation of synchronic and diachronic processes, in order to argue that a consumer society founded on television advertising produces hyper-synchronising and hyper-diachronising processes which threaten human desire and therefore human existence. Examples discussed of the consequences of these processes include the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, the success of the French National Front, and the

Nanterre massacre The Nanterre massacre was a mass shooting that occurred on 27 March 2002, at the Hôtel de Ville (town hall) in Nanterre, France. Gunman Richard Durn opened fire at the end of a town council meeting, resulting in the deaths of eight councillor ...

perpetrated by Richard Durn.

References

Secondary literature

*Heckman, Davin
Review of ''Acting Out''
*Hui, Yuk, "Individualization and the Play of Memories" (review of ''Acting Out''), ''Parallax'' 16 (2010): 117–20. *Rajski, Brian, "Review of ''Disorientation'' and ''Acting Out''," ''

Radical Philosophy ''Radical Philosophy'' is a triannual peer-reviewed academic journal of critical theory and philosophy. It was established in 1972 with the purpose of providing a forum for the theoretical work which was emerging in the wake of the radical movemen ...

'' 158 (2009): 50–3. {{Bernard Stiegler 2003 non-fiction books Philosophy books Works by Bernard Stiegler Stanford University Press books