Designing the World: from McLuhan to Sloterdijk, towards an anthropology of space in becoming

This Working Paper explores the relationship between space, media, and immunity in the work of Peter Sloterdijk. Modernity, argues Sloterdijk, may best be understood as a vast technical project aimed at compensating for a loss of insurance regarding our position in the world: the loss of a comforting roundness, of a being-inside the whole. What is at stake is therefore to design immune systems that are adapted for the burst and globalized spaces we inhabit. In dialogue with the work of Marshall McLuhan, this WP pays specific attention to our radical immersion in conditioning relations that operate upon us by the outside: in the media.

The author

Vincent Duclos is a doctor in anthropology and a searcher of the Chair Anthropology and global health at the Collège d'études mondiales. He is in charges of courses at the University of Montréal too. Its researches are about the relation between space, technology and health in the era of the numerical globalization. He conducted its researches in India and in the west of Africa and published its works in many scientifics magazines, especially "Medicine Anthropology Theory, Face à Face. Regards sur la santé, India Review and the Journal of Critical Southern Studies.

Reference

Vincent Duclos. Le design du monde. De McLuhan à Sloterdijk, vers une anthropologie de l'espace en devenir. 2015.