Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, Published in the well-known “Postmodern culture” series of SUNY, this second book by Gray Kochhar-Lindgren is an important contribution to the study of the “other” side (outside? inside? in-between? nowhere?) of contemporary culture, which the author defines both in philosophical, technological, economical, and political terms. If our culture is a culture of the self and its reproduction (“mimesis”), of the rational use of machines (which are no less mimetic devices than the traditional Judeo-Christian ways of seeing), of the appropriation of these machines by techno-capitalism, and of the spread of globalised but invisible organizations, the hegemony of its structures is less hegemonic than it may often appear to those who feel crushed by the violence of its institutions and their pervading influence on the life of individuals and societies. Diagnosed by Freud under the term of the uncanny, a wide range of phenomena accompanies modern culture as its shadow (or, rather, as its ghost, since the logic of this double is not a mimetic reproduction of the dominant model). For Kochhar-Lindgren, the role of poststructuralism is then to critically disclose the importance and the force of the uncanny, using it as tool of critical resistance against the hubris of techno-capitalism, which is now promising us immortality (for instance via cloning, i.e. the seamless and endless reproduction of the self), at the expense however of our own humanity (which is as much a matter of difference than a matter of identity). In short, what Kochhar-Lindgren aims to do, is not simply to dress the repressed muthos against the victorious logos, but to underline the aporias and contradictions of the technological post-logos, by Jan Baetens

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	TechnoLogics. Ghosts, the incalculable, and the suspension of animation
		Author: Jan Baetens Published: November 2005 Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, TechnoLogics. Ghosts, the incalculable, and the suspension of animation. SUNY, 2005, 222 p., ISBN: 0-7914-6304-4


		Published in the well-known "Postmodern culture" series of SUNY, this second book by Gray Kochhar-Lindgren is an important contribution to the study of the "other" side (outside? inside? in-between? nowhere?) of contemporary culture, which the author defines both in philosophical, technological, economical, and political terms. If our culture is a culture of the self and its reproduction ("mimesis"), of the rational use of machines (which are no less mimetic devices than the traditional Judeo-Christian ways of seeing), of the appropriation of these machines by techno-capitalism, and of the spread of globalised but invisible organizations, the hegemony of its structures is less hegemonic than it may often appear to those who feel crushed by the violence of its institutions and their pervading influence on the life of individuals and societies. Diagnosed by Freud under the term of the uncanny , a wide range of phenomena accompanies modern culture as its shadow (or, rather, as its ghost, since the logic of this double is not a mimetic reproduction of the dominant model). For Kochhar-Lindgren, the role of poststructuralism is then to critically disclose the importance and the force of the uncanny, using it as tool of critical resistance against the hubris of techno-capitalism, which is now promising us immortality (for instance via cloning, i.e. the seamless and endless reproduction of the self), at the expense however of our own humanity (which is as much a matter of difference than a matter of identity). In short, what Kochhar-Lindgren aims to do, is not simply to dress the repressed muthos against the victorious logos , but to underline the aporias and contradictions of the technological post-logos . Given the technological orientation of this study, Kochhar-Lindgren could have focused his research on things such as mass culture or the culture industry (and the continuing merger of both). Yet his scope is totally different. Although his work relies on the authors we most commonly associate with postmodernism and its predecessors (Derrida, Baudrillard, Guattari, Heidegger, Freud, and others), the author has shifted his attention to a domain that is more and more withdrawn from critical attention: classic modern literature. The central part of the book is therefore devoted to the close reading of "traditional" works, which are not always modern or pre-modern: hardly known short stories by Hawthorne and Mary Shelley, Melville's Bartleby , and a 1957 novel ( The Glass Bees ) by Ernst Junger. The very attentive and illuminating close reading of these narratives, which is undoubtedly the most original (although not the most "innovative") part of the book, is preceded and followed by very dense (but in a sense, at least in this context, less surprising) rereadings of key fragments of mainly Heidegger and Derrida, clearly the major influences of Kochhar-Lindgren's own thinking. In his methodology and style, this book is definitely "continental", in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of the word. Kochhar-Lindgren does not only propose close readings of well-chosen fragments, he is mostly interested in interpretation, and this interpretation, which is always perfectly aware of the interpretive histories of problems and concepts within various interpretive communities, tends to raise questions rather than to give answers. Yet despite many breathtaking short-cuts and montages of quotations, and despite also the author's fascination with the mingling of the oracular and the colloquial, the line of argumentation is held very strongly. Kochhar-Lindgren always elegantly offers us exactly those fragments we need, ensuring moreover that these fragments and quotations are both refreshingly new and solidly linked with the interpretive tradition in the field, so that one feels simultaneously happily lost and safely taken by the hand. If reading TechnoLogics is toboggan-like, the reader also knows that it is no less methodic and goal-driven (as an intelligent critic of technomodernism, Kochhar-Lindgren knows that his postmodern critique has to acknowledge and use the weapons of the enemy). It is this mix of good old scholarly reading qualities (the chapter on Bartleby has everything, I think, to become a classic in the Melville studies) and audacious intellectual leap-frogging (it is certainly not a coincidence that etymological thinking receives so much attention) that makes this book such an exciting, bewildering, frustrating, and fascinating experience.

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