Intensive Culture

Professor Scott Lash is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, as well as a a project leader in the Goldsmiths Media Research Programme. He is a leading name within sociology and cultural studies, has written numerous books and articles over the last twenty years, and is currently the managing editor for the journal Theory, Culture and Society.

Introduction Culture: Extensive and Intensive What is Intensive Culture? Ontology and Religion Overview Social Theory Intensive Sociology: Georg Simmel's Vitalism Forms: From Cognitive a priori to Social a priori Value: Nietzsche and Simmel Social substance: from Labour to Life Monadology: Simmel, Bergson, Metaphysics Conclusions: Towards a Global Politics of Flux Intensive Philosophy: Leibniz and the Ontology of Difference Leibniz, Aristotle, Ontology Sensation, Perception, Knowledge Intensive Causation Language: Intrinsic Predication Substance and System: From Exchange of Equivalents to Exchange of Difference Intensive Language: Benjamin, God and the Name Leibniz and Benjamin: From the Monad to the Word Intensive Method: From Epistemology to Truth Language: Things, Man and God Intensive Capitalism: Marxist Ontology Introduction: From Commodity to Difference Causation and value: Aristotle and Marx Externalities: Intensive Capitalism and Neo-Liberalism Financialization The Intensive-material: Machines of Predication Intensive Politics: Power after Hegemony Language: Power becomes Ontological Two Types of Power From Norm to Fact From Representation to Communication Cultural Studies: First and Second Wave Intensive Religion: Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms The Soul: From Rite and Totem to Myth and Ancestor The Totem: Clan and Emblem Alimentary Communion Totemic Vitalism: Durkheim and Freud Extensive Religion: Sociological Categories The Social Fact: Metaphysical Things Information Theology: Philip K. Dick's Will to Knowledge Transmigration (a) Faith versus knowledge (b) Dick's St. Paul: Against Law and the Messianic (c) Christ's mushroom: Salvation by Eating (d) Vast Active Living Intelligence System The Gnosticism of Philip K. Dick Horselover Fat: Healing the Subject Valis: The Movie Conclusions Intensity: Ontology and Religion Intensity's Outside: Chinese Social Theory?

This book makes a vital contribution to our understanding of contemporary culture. It re-reads key thinkers such as Nietzsche, Leibniz, Simmel, Benjamin, Bergson in order to assert the primacy of the vital and the social against the closed mind of instrumental reason. It develops an innovative theoretical platform to account for the place of the informational, the intensive, and the religious for re-thinking the fundamental questions of life, and how to live today. It is a fitting summation of Scott Lash's challenging reorganization of critical and sociological theory Couze Venn Nottingham Trent University This book is an engagement with the continuing dissolution of the symbolic in contemporary communication, in a critical reflection on thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Leibniz to Luhmann. It is a provocative archaeology of today's 'cultural capitalism' and of its metaphysical baggage. For Scott Lash the opposition between 'intensive' and the 'extensive', i.e. Leibniz's distinction between 'substance' and 'system', is eroded in the age of informational capitalism, as words become things and things become data. For Lash the future of capitalism is one in which this intensity takes over the logic - as 'intensive materialism' - of the economy itself. Yet this very process entails the dissolution of both intensity and with it of the singular. Lash pursues this compelling line of thought through encounters with Simmel, Benjamin, Durkheim and Philip K. Dick (!) Bernard Stiegler Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Georges-Pompidou