10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17040
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2038-3460
17040
1
en
Letteria Fassari
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Scott Lash, Intensive Culture. Social Theory, Religion and Contemporary Capitalism, Sage, 2010
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
3
Book Reviews
2012-06-16
2023-05-25
2012-06-16
2023-07-10
124-128
TS
Letteria Fassari
2012/06/16
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17040
124
University of Roma La Sapienza
2038-3460
1
en
128
Scott Lash, Intensive Culture. Social Theory, Religion and Contemporary Capitalism, Sage, 2010
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17040/15934
3
124 TECNOSCIENZA – 3 (1)




    because of disturbances in the            Doing’ series. However, her work
    regular arrangements of tools, pati-      also has much to contribute to the
    ents or practitioners, Goodwin is         debates about standardizing health
    able to convincingly suggest that         care work and accountability. Her
    such disturbances are actually a          descriptions of how knowledge is
    contributing factor to the develop-       embodied and situated in practices,
    ment of expertise. "Learning to see       her ability to make invisible
    “normal appearances” from a differ-       anaesthesiology work visible, and her
    rent perspective, and to accomplish       arguments about "the primacy of the
    anaesthetic techniques from these         immediate context of action in
    altered positions, furnishes a reper-     understanding how trajectories of
    toire of techniques that can be used      care are shaped" (p. 32) ought to be
    when facing unanticipated difficul-       incorporated into policies regarding
    ties" (p. 165).                           medical technologies and clinical
    Some of the chapters in this book         guidelines. Her book would force
    have previously been published as         policy makers to ask: if agency is
    articles. Collecting them into one        recognized as enacted in relations
    volume is very useful for those of us     between bodies and machines,
    who have long been inspired by            should this not also change our
    Goodwin’s work, and it is a pleasure      understanding of who can be held
    to be able to read a substantial          accountable    for    what     within
    quantity of this research at once. But    medicine and health care?
    collecting the work this way has also
    allowed Goodwin to draw larger
    theoretical lessons from her research                      ***
    and present more nuanced ideas
    about learning and acting in
                                                           Scott Lash
    anaesthesia for the reader. Thus,
                                              Intensive Culture. Social Theory,
    because of this book, she has been
                                                 Religion and Contemporary
    able to develop her ideas about
                                                          Capitalism
    health care as practice populated by
    clinicians, patients, medical techno-              2010, Sage, 247 pp.
    logies, machines and devices, all
    acting in concert, and all relationally
    shaping action, which she discusses                   Letteria Fassari
    further in the final chapter.                 (University of Roma La Sapienza)
    These ideas are useful to us working
    in the field of science, technology
    and medicine studies and to those         As often happens in the lives of
    interested in the interplay between       scholars who have achieved a
    learning-in-practice, cognition and       deserved success, Lash allows himself
    technology, so the work is well           the luxury of an exploration,
    placed in Cambridge’s ‘Learning in        philosophically founded, on contem-
                                                                  BOOK REVIEWS        125




porary culture, which he calls              To explain what he means by
"intensive culture”. Many of the            “intensive culture”, Lash uses again a
arguments drawn by the author have          series of dichotomies: homogeneity
been published in the well-known            versus difference, actual versus
scientific journal "Theory, Culture         virtual, things-for-us versus thing in
and Society" (2001, 2003, 2007), but        itself, life versus mechanism, onto–
now Lash draws a line of continuity         logy versus religion. “Intensive
building a very ambitious theoretical       culture” is a culture of difference, of
platform. For this purpose, Lash re-        inequivalence. For instance, intensive
reads key thinkers such us Leibniz,         is the brand’s virtuality where what is
Nietzsche, Simmel, Deleuze and              in potentia may grow, flourish, or
Guattari, Benjiamin and many others         come into being. The intensive is full
in order to extract the “spirit” of the     of possibilities, is the extensive
topics which are introduced in the          actualization of what was, at first, a
text. To define contemporary                potentiality. Things in themselves are
culture, he uses a substantial number       intensive: to be treated in their
of dichotomies, the first and most          singularity and not through general
important of which is the dichotomy         categories such as ethnicity, gender,
“extensive/intensive”. Contemporary         race means to be treated as intensive.
culture, capitalism and global              For Lash we live in a culture that is
information are, nowadays, according        both extensive and intensive: the
to the author, widely extensive and         more globally stretched and exten–
tend to expand: we can find clear           sive social relations become, the
examples looking at the large               more they seem to take on this
corporations, the intergovernmental         intensity.
organizations, the growing exten–           Lash is necessarily redundant when
siveness, the extensive contemporary        he traces with great creativeness the
social relations and the universaliza-      shift from the intensive to the
tion of contemporary culture. This          extensive in different key areas of
growing extensivity manifests itself in     social life and social thinking
terms of geographical spread and            including: sociology, philosophy,
process of homogenization that              language, capitalism, politic, religion
makes distant shares of the globe           and theology.
substantially identical. At the same        With this book Lash also presents a
time, but on another level, there is an     case for the revaluation of vitalism in
opposite process that leads to              sociological theory. It argues for the
experiencing a culture that is defined      relevance of such a Lebenssoziologie
“intensive”: experiences of drugs,          in the global information age. The
sex, daily life in global cities but also   core of this part is naturally centered
convergence of media, social net–           on vitalistic sociology of Georg
works, processes, and downloading           Simmel. In defining the modern
streaming. All these experiences are        vitalism, Lash refers, among others,
defined as intensive.                       to Nietzsche, Bergson, with regard to
126 TECNOSCIENZA – 3 (1)




    the classical thinkers, and Deleuze,      not the extensivity of res extensa, but
    Foucault and Negri with regard to         the intensivity of res cogitans; the
    contemporaries. The currency of           monad is possessed with memory as
    vitalism has re-emerged in the            trace; it is comprised of relations of
    context of the changes in the sciences    perception; it is reflexive. In today’s
    correspondently to the rise of ideas      global informational culture, inten–
    of uncertainty and complexity, and        sity and extensity are increasingly
    the rise of the global information        fused together. The result is that
    society. This is because the notion of    substance      increasingly     becomes
    life has always favoured an idea of       system. The fusion of substance and
    becoming over one of being, of            system, of the intensive and the
    movement over stasis, of action over      materiality of social life is seen above
    structure, of flow and flux. The          all in information and communica-
    global information order seems to be      tions. Information in its difference is
    characterized by “flow”. Lash’s           necessarily intensive. System itself,
    central question is to put the issue of   Lash says, becomes substance.
    vitalism in the context of the            Substance leaves its place in the
    “information age”. Central to this        human subject and itself becomes
    shift is the concept of mediatisation.    system: system itself now becomes
    Today media as technological forms        intensive. Media machines of
    are given meaning-making powers;          information and communications
    but they are largely outside the          (the semantic machines of Luhman
    control of the subject and of the         and of Varela which produce
    social institution. Media nomination      meaning) have taken powers of
    yields a shift from the externally        predication.
    causing power of mechanistic form to      The substance of Aristotle and the
    power that is wielded through, self       Leibniz's monad are key concepts for
    causing and takes cybernetic forms.       understanding contemporary capita–
    Externalized flows of the information     lism. This, with its new media, its
    society are in fact abstract infor–       brands, the dominance of finance
    mation, communication, finance            and biotechnology, logic design and
    flows; flows of technology, media,        constant innovation as a result of the
    immigrants even desire or libido.         investigation, metaphysical, and their
    Simmel provides to Lash the bases         shapes become substantial. What
    for an intensive sociology, especially    characterizes contemporary capita–
    in Simmel latest works vitalist socio–    lism is that the thing, the object, the
    logy assumes greater importance as it     good, the service is in-itself. Goods
    becomes ontological. Simmel, Lash         and services become metaphysical
    says, was influenced by the study of      capitalism. In classical capitalism, the
    Leibniz and especially from Leibniz's     exchange of equivalents leads to
    monadology. The monad is simple           equilibrium (and reproduction), in
    substance as difference. It is self-      the capitalism of today, the exchange
    organizing, conceived on the lines of     of non-equivalent objects leads to
                                                                 BOOK REVIEWS         127




imbalance and "production". Here,         function.
Lash highlights the question of           Following Gramsci footpath, Lash
production and innovation without         poses the question of how to define
limits, where under the principle of      the post-hegemonic power. In his
naturalized difference, it is always      answer Lash tries to show that the
possible to produce something new,        extensive power or the extensive
perhaps very similar to its previous      politics are being progressively
version, but with a renewed sense in      displaced by a politics of intensity.
the market. For Benjamin, Lash            Correspondently a change has
writes, capitalism worked through         occurred from an extensive (and
the extensity of the commodity but        hegemonic) regime of representation
commodities are physical. Here the        to an intensive regime of commu–
logic of the commodity, of the cause      nications.
and effect of economic structure on       The passage from hegemony or
superstructure, is modelled on and        extensive politics to intensive politics
consistent with Newtonian physics.        shall be translated, in Lash’s terms,
But the capitalism of today, on the       into the following shifts: a transition
contrary, is a capitalism of difference   to an ontological regime of power,
in which, like Aristotle’s substance      from a regime that in important
and Leibniz’s monad, each thing is        respects is 'epistemological'; a shift in
different from every other and self-      power from the hegemonic mode of
sufficient. There is a shift from the     'power over' to an intensive notion of
abstract homogenous labour to the         power from within (including
abstract heterogeneous life. Material     domination from within) and power
cause changes from the commodity’s        as generative force; a shift from
units of equivalence to consist of        power and politics in terms of
informational units of inequivalence.     normativity to a regime of power
How does capitalism stand in              much more based in what can be
relation to metaphysics? Lash refers      understood as a “facticity”. This
to Antonio Gramsci for whom the           points to a general transition from
superstructure      is   metaphysical.    norm to fact in politics and from
Gramsci stresses the contrasts bet–       hegemonic norms to intensive facts.
ween economic infrastructure, which       Lash merges the issue of power with
works like a physical mechanism, like     the neo-vitalist look of social
a mechanical body, and the mind, the      sciences. Is contemporary mediatised
spirit of the superstructures. Indeed     politics about transforming flow into
‘hegemony’, which is super-structural     flux? Lash’s answer lies in framing
is essentially meta–physical. But         the today’s neo-vitalism as an attempt
today with the determination of the       to put flux back into the flow. To put
economy, and the subordination of         flux into flow is to put reflexivity
superstructures to economic repro–        (flux is always reflexive) into
duction, the metaphysicality of the       globalization.
superstructures is relegated to a mere    Lash's book is not an easy reading
128 TECNOSCIENZA – 3 (1)




    but it is constructed as a major          Germany, Italy, and the United
    challenge to the traditional socio–       States, and is now at the University of
    logical theory. It is permeated by an     Klagenfurt in Austria. The title itself
    interpretive vitality that leaves the     alludes to the work of the Italian
    reader with the conviction that the       philosopher      Giorgio     Agamben,
    path taken is going in the right          whose Homo Sacer (Agamben 1995)
    direction. It requires, however, the      in particular helped to revitalize the
    effort and the modesty to abandon         two Greek terms “bios and “zoë”, as
    most of the conceptual equipment          well as to Walter Benjamin’s “The
    commonly used to interpret cultural       Work of Art in the Age of
    and social changes.                       Mechanical Reproduction” (Benja-
                                              min 1963). Moreover, Bios und Zoë is
                                              published      by    the    prestigious
                      ***                     publisher Suhrkamp, whose reco-
                                              gnizable brown paperback books
                                              often indicate a zone of philosophical
              Martin G. Weiß                  reasoning.
                                              Yet this first glance is misleading.
      Bios und Zoë. Die menschliche
                                              This book is more than a purely
         Natur im Zeitalter ihrer
     technischen Reproduzierbarkeit           philosophical collection. Assembling
                                              a plethora of authors with very
     (Bios and Zoe. Human nature in the age   different modes of reasoning and
            of mechanical reproduction)       styles of writing, the book is just as
           2009, Suhrkamp, 388 pp.            heterogeneous and difficult to
                                              categorize as the beast it seeks to
                                              study: life in the bio-age. Containing
                 Ingrid Metzler               chapters that discuss such different
                                              phenomena as synthetic biology,
              (University of Vienna)
                                              DNA codes, stem cells, egg cells, and
                                              post-genomic configurations, the
                                              collection provides not only a
    At first glance, Bios und Zoë: Die        snapshot of the many frontiers and
    menschliche Nature im Zeitalter ihrer     heterogeneous directions of contem-
    technischen Reproduzierbar–keit –         porary bio-technology, but in fact a
    which might be translated into            fairly suggestive picture of the
    English as “Bios and Zoe: Human           different modes of reasoning and
    nature in the age of technical” or        styles of writing that have emerged
    perhaps, indeed, “in the age of           within those fields of inquiry that
    mechanical reproduction” – seems to       have sought to make sense of the
    be a collection of philosophical          ways in which the life sciences have
    works. It is edited by Martin Weiss, a    unsettled our ways of thinking on life
    German philosopher who has held           and our ways of acting on it, fields
    academic positions in Austria,            such as philosophy, history of
