Documentality : Why It Is Necessary to Leave Traces

Ferraris, Maurizio; Davies, Richard (TRN)

ISBN 10: 0823249697 / ISBN 13: 9780823249695

Published by Fordham University Press, 2012

About this Item

Unread book in perfect condition.

Seller Inventory # 18999813

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Documentality : Why It Is Necessary to Leave Traces
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0823249697
• ISBN 13: 9780823249695
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

This books ushers in a new way of talking about social phenomena. It develops an ontology of social objects on the basis of the claim that registration or inscription―the leaving of a trace to be called up later―is what is most fundamental to them. In doing so, it systematically organizes concepts and theories that Ferraris’s
predecessors―most notably Derrida, in his project of a positive grammatology―left in an impressionistic state.

Ferraris begins by redefining ontology as a way of cataloguing the world. Before any epistemology can discuss the validity of scientific or nonscientific judgments, one faces a collection of objects, be they natural, ideal, or social. Among these, Ferraris focuses on social objects, elaborating a theory of experience in the social world that leads him to define social objects as “inscribed acts.” He then uses this notion to interpret social phenomena, also in light of a systematic discussion of the concept of performatives, from Austin to Derrida and Searle.

Moving into considerations of the present technological revolution, Ferraris develops a “symptomatology of the document” that leads to a consideration of legal systems, finding in them original applications for his theory that an object equals a written act.

Written in an easy, often witty style, Documentality revises Foucault’s late concept of the “ontology of actuality” into the project of an “ontological laboratory,” thereby reinventing philosophy as a pragmatic activity that is directly applicable to our everyday life.

About the Author

Maurizio Ferraris is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Turin. He is the co-author, with Jacques Derrida, of A Taste for the Secret and the author of Documentality: Why It Is Necessary to Leave Traces (Fordham).