Inside Philosophy: Bernard Stiegler’s Prison Melete
In his confessional essay, “How I Became a Philosopher,” Bernard Stiegler exhibits a philosophical fidelity to his past by revealing that his philosophical vocation began in prison. He describes his time in prison as an “interruption” and “suspension” of action (“How I Became a Philosopher (HBP), in Acting Out, p. 12). Prison was like an extended Sabbath or Lent, of sorts – “an asceticism without end (HBP, p. 19).” During his five years in a French prison, Stiegler developed an “ensemble of disciplines” that he called his melete (HBP, p. 20). Pierre Hadot has discussed the Greek understanding of a melete as a “spiritual exercise” in which the practitioner makes “an effort to assimilate an idea, notion, or principle, and make them come alive in the soul (Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 85, and n.38, p. 112).” Michel Foucault has also discussed these practices as “technologies of the self” (Foucault, Michel, “Technologies of the Self” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, pp.223-251).”
Stiegler’s prison melete was an instrument of self-transformation. He describes the process of assimilating ideas as anamnesis – cognition as remembrance—and the practice of making these ideas “come alive in the soul,” as hypomnesis – forgetting through supplementarity (HBP, 20). This process involved the back-and-forth of remembering and forgetting through psychotechnics like reading and writing, which formed a melete that turned the social tomb of prison into a philosophical womb for Stiegler. By engaging in the intentional suspension of action for the purpose of individuation, Stiegler recreated himself from the inside out.
Stiegler’s prison melete is worth considering for anyone seeking self-transformation, inside or outside prison. His melete was as follows:
- Read and reread a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, or a prose text for 30 minutes every morning, in order to understand it completely.
- Responsive writing exercises in various modes that became hypmnemonic linkages with texts.
- Read novels in the evening.
- Spoke rarely, and lived in written language.
- Listened and took notes on everything heard or read.
- Fought against the “bad soliliquy” (negative self-talk) through experimenting with an inner dialectic with oneself.
Negative self-talk. It’s the worst.
January 9, 2012 at 4:47 am
This is wonderful and seems to be what I’ve been doing since nov 09. I read my first book of Foucault and decided to only think of what he had written. 24/7 and I read almost all of his books and interviews and refused to read anything critical about him until I felt grounded in him. From Foucault I went to Baudrillard. Now I think if one doesn’t go to Baudrillard through Foucault, then something vital gets missed. I am just now seeing how Foucault’s grid leads directly to Baudrillardian implosion. The movie Moneyball is an excellent example to read through.
January 15, 2012 at 4:22 am
This is really neat to know! I want to hear more about hypomnesis – I haven’t heard of this. What exactly is being forgotten?
February 23, 2012 at 5:57 pm
Stiegler is drawing on Derrida’s analysis of Plato’s Phaedrus, an essay titled “Plato’s Pharmacy”. Hypomnesis is a forgetfulness in so far as we are using technologies like writing or digital networks (iPhones!) as external memory devices.
February 23, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Baudrillard quotes Canetti from the Human Province that if he speaks, he does not write, and if he writes, he does not think. Not quite correct but that’s the correct sequence I think.
Foucault said that one of the reasons he wrote was so he would stop thinking about it.
You might like L’Immoraliste for the recent post on deconstructing Derrida. It’s on my blog roll list. I’m on a Hackintosh and haven’t fully learned it yet, so it is more difficult for me to go back and forth for links. If you want it email me.
February 23, 2012 at 11:25 pm
The author of L’Immoraliste and I are good friends. I respect and appreciate his work immensely.
February 24, 2012 at 1:52 am