The Accident in Being

Michel Serres’s work traces a historical transition where technologies of mediation replace a framework of life formerly managed by an economics of production. Readings of Serres tend to affirm in this transition the opening to an ecology (econarratology or media-ecology) or towards a replacement o...

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Main Author: John W P Phillips
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Simon Dawes, Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines (CHCSC), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) 2021-09-01
Series:Media Theory
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Online Access:https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/902
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author John W P Phillips
author_facet John W P Phillips
author_sort John W P Phillips
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description Michel Serres’s work traces a historical transition where technologies of mediation replace a framework of life formerly managed by an economics of production. Readings of Serres tend to affirm in this transition the opening to an ecology (econarratology or media-ecology) or towards a replacement of the human in trans- or post-humanism. In this article I analyse the terms of the transition in Serres’s affirmation of a philosophy grounded in the potential for connection between the traditions of storytelling and the sciences of connection. The article rediscovers within his overt Hellenism a figure of the Anthropos affirmed in the Sophist philosophies that Plato had set out to destroy. If science proceeds, first in its Hellenic dawn, and more recently in seventeenth century arithmetic, then it must be disabused of its war-game attitude. Serres affirms science (almost singularly) as the condition on which the species might continue its adventure into the future, and in the process he establishes a position that may challenge ecologically oriented discourses.
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publishDate 2021-09-01
publisher Simon Dawes, Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines (CHCSC), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)
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spelling doaj-art-9e0b6b1ff8cd42e699c6bca27b364e3e2025-08-20T02:41:10ZengSimon Dawes, Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines (CHCSC), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)Media Theory2557-826X2021-09-015110.70064/mt.v5i1.902The Accident in BeingJohn W P Phillips Michel Serres’s work traces a historical transition where technologies of mediation replace a framework of life formerly managed by an economics of production. Readings of Serres tend to affirm in this transition the opening to an ecology (econarratology or media-ecology) or towards a replacement of the human in trans- or post-humanism. In this article I analyse the terms of the transition in Serres’s affirmation of a philosophy grounded in the potential for connection between the traditions of storytelling and the sciences of connection. The article rediscovers within his overt Hellenism a figure of the Anthropos affirmed in the Sophist philosophies that Plato had set out to destroy. If science proceeds, first in its Hellenic dawn, and more recently in seventeenth century arithmetic, then it must be disabused of its war-game attitude. Serres affirms science (almost singularly) as the condition on which the species might continue its adventure into the future, and in the process he establishes a position that may challenge ecologically oriented discourses. https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/902AccidentAlgebraCommunicationCosmologyFractalsInformation
spellingShingle John W P Phillips
The Accident in Being
Media Theory
Accident
Algebra
Communication
Cosmology
Fractals
Information
title The Accident in Being
title_full The Accident in Being
title_fullStr The Accident in Being
title_full_unstemmed The Accident in Being
title_short The Accident in Being
title_sort accident in being
topic Accident
Algebra
Communication
Cosmology
Fractals
Information
url https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/902
work_keys_str_mv AT johnwpphillips theaccidentinbeing
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