[D66] Infinite Mobilization

[R.O.]

https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509518470

Infinite Mobilization
Peter Sloterdijk
Translated by Sandra Berjan

The core of what we refer to as ‘the project of modernity’ is the idea 
that human beings have the power to bring the world under their control, 
and hence it is based on a ‘kinetic utopia’: the movement of the world 
as a whole reflects the implementation of our plans for it.


But as soon as the kinetic utopia of modernity is exposed, its seemingly 
stable foundation cracks open and new problems appear: things don’t 
happen according to plan because as we actualize our plans, we set in 
motion other things that we didn’t want as unintended side-effects. We 
watch with mounting unease as the self-perpetuating side-effects of 
modern progress overshadow our plans, as a foreign movement breaks off 
from the very core of the modern project supposedly guided by reason and 
slips away from us, spinning out of control. What looked like a steady 
march towards freedom turns out to be a slide into an uncontrollable and 
catastrophic syndrome of perpetual mobilization. And precisely because 
so much comes about through our actions, these developments turn out to 
have explosive consequences for our self-understanding, as we begin to 
realize that, so far from bringing the world under our control, we are 
instead the agents of our own destruction.


In this brilliant and insightful book Sloterdijk lays out the elements 
of a new critical theory of modernity understood as a critique of 
political kinetics, shifting the focus of critical theory from 
production to mobilization and shedding new light on a world facing the 
growing risk of humanly induced catastrophe.

More Info

     April 2020
     240 pages
     152 x 229 mm / 6 x 9 in