How to Make a Difference in the Anthropocene? On Stiegler’s Call for Bifurcation

Abstract

Characterizing the contemporary world as massively entropic and pointing to the proletarianization of human beings, Bernard Stiegler claims that we need to “bifurcate”. This paper clarifies what he means by bifurcation and examines the conditions necessary for its occurrence. After explaining how Stiegler’s general organology provides a framework for his assessment of our present, the paper focuses on how humans can become capable of producing bifurcations. Emphasizing that bifurcation must occur in relation to technology, the paper identifies it as an inventive dis-closure of a current system that transforms both technology and us through the creation of knowledge. It then shows that although the problem of our time is primarily one of automatization, we must deal with it through internalization rather than disautomatization. Our very humanity is being disrupted because we are not realizing the possibilities offered by the development of technology, and this can only be achieved if we internalize technology. The process of internalizing technology is itself bifurcative and enables us to overcome our proletarianization.