title: Symbolic Misery- Volume 1: The Hyperindustrial Epoch
author:  Bernard Stiegler 
description: "In this decisive contribution to a critical understanding ofcontemporary life, Stiegler demonstrates how mass exclusion fromcultural production constitutes a form of generalizedimpoverishment, threatening to reduce our existence to meresubsistence. Typically though, he also suggests how we might buildalternatives to this 'symbolic misery'. This work forms a vitalpart of Stiegler's essential project."<br /><b>Martin Crowley, Queens College, University ofCambridge</b><br /><br />"Expanding on Deleuzes idea of 'control societies', BernardStiegler provocatively diagnoses the 'misery' of contemporarysociety as a collective exclusion from the creation of symbols. Awar is being waged, he argues: capitalistic marketing is theinstrument of choice, the battleground is aesthetics and the fightis for the control of affect. Recommended for anyone interested inthe contemporary cultural condition."<br /><b>N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University</b>
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  * * *
  
  
    
    
  The Philosophy of Misery
  
  
    
    
  [INTRODUCTION.  
    
  ](The%20Philosophy%20of%20Misery_split_001.html#filepos3548)[I.  
    
  ](The%20Philosophy%20of%20Misery_split_001.html#filepos5901)[II.  
    
  ](The%20Philosophy%20of%20Misery_split_001.html#filepos25480)[III.  
    
  ](The%20Philosophy%20of%20Misery_split_001.html#filepos55209)[CHAPTER I. OF
  THE ECONOMIC SCIENCE.  
    
  ](The%20Philosophy%20of%20Misery_split_001.html#filepos87634)[CHAPTER II. OF
  VALUE.  
    
  ](The%20Philosophy%20of%20Misery_split_002.html#filepos144646)[CHAPTER III.
  ECONOMIC EVOLUTIONS.--FIRST
  
  
  PERIOD.--THE DIVISION OF LABOR.  
    
  [CHAPTER IV. SECOND PERIOD.--MACHINERY.  
    
  ](The%20Philosophy%20of%20Misery_split_003.html#filepos328132)[CHAPTER V.
  THIRD PERIOD.--COMPETITION.  
    
  ](The%20Philosophy%20of%20Misery_split_003.html#filepos424615)[CHAPTER VI.
  FOURTH PERIOD.--MONOPOLY.  
    
  ](The%20Philosophy%20of%20Misery_split_004.html#filepos534380)[CHAPTER VII.
  FIFTH PERIOD.--POLICE, OR TAXA