''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 the founder in 2005 of the polit ...

. 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 was among the presses officially ...

in 2009, and the translators were David Barison,

Daniel Ross Daniel Ross may refer to: * Daniel Ross (actor) (born 1980), American actor, voice actor, and producer * Daniel Ross (philosopher) (born 1970), Australian philosopher and filmmaker * Daniel Ross (marine surveyor) (1780–1849), president of the Bom ...

, 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 Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...

, 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 , thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations) , thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view , thesis1_year = 1883 , thesis2_title ...

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

, and

Epictetus Epictetus (; grc-gre, Ἐπίκτητος, ''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 ...

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 Psychiatrist Ernst Simmel first defined primordial narcissism in 1944. Simmel's fundamental thesis is that the most primitive stage of libidinal development is not the oral, but the gastro-intestinal one. Mouth and anus are merely to be considered ...

", 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 Gustav Jung, Gunther Anders, Gilbert Sim ...

(drawn in part from the work of

Gilbert Simondon Gilbert Simondon (; 2 October 1924 – 7 February 1989) was a French philosopher best known for his theory of individuation, a major source of inspiration for Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour and Bernard Stiegler. Career Born in Saint-Éti ...

), 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, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

, the success of the French National Front, and the

Nanterre massacre The Nanterre massacre was a mass murder that occurred on 27 March 2002, in Nanterre, France. Gunman Richard Durn opened fire at the end of a town council meeting, resulting in the deaths of eight councillors and the injury of nineteen others. Du ...

perpetrated by Richard Durn.

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 movement ...

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