AMNIOTIC EMPIRE - Spano, Andrew John

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Résumé :
What Edmund Burke identifies as the sublime in human experience, the arts, and science has been overthrown by a new cult-like religion of Scientism. As a secular religion, this new cult structures itself on the old framework of the Christian religion, in particularly Roman Catholicism, which it attempts to displace. While it does indeed depend upon the discoveries and advances of science to evangelize its message, it relies chiefly on belief, manipulation, and coercion as much as did its predecessor, but with entertainment and consumerism rather than great art and holy ritual as its expression. It is supported by a lesser cult: The Cult of Mediocrity, represented by the creators of entertainment content, the education system, government, and the financial industry. Its basis is largely commercial, as its finance needs are infinite. However, to create the right environment for its infinite expansion, it must work closely with government and the banking system in various effective ways to achieve its end: which is the creation of the Apex Consumer, the super-consumer helplessly indebted while equally helplessly addicted to the mediocre and toxic distractions the amnion offers in place of the Sublime. The collective result is the amnion, matrix, or technosphere. It is a de facto false world that strives to be more real than reality to the consumer. Consequently, the mass of consumers have already begun to eschew the real world of cause and effect, human relations and action, and nature and the sublime. Instead, they have elected to adopt the amnion's doctrine that everything good comes in the future - including medical immortality -- if they can only keep up with the monthly payments on the debt they have taken on, fatally, through the instrument of the promissory note. The exegesis of this work relies on what it defines as the world-historic culture of the collective voices of those who valued the sublime above all else. These voices include the literary work of European and American Romantic authors, French and German philosophers, artists, scientists, mathematicians, logicians, and, to a significant degree, the philosophical and semiotic work of American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist Charles S. Peirce.

Biographie:
Andrew Spano is Ferdinand de Saussure Fellow at European Graduate School. Until 2020 he was Foreign Expert at Liaoning University in Shenyang, China; Assistant Professor and Academic Director at New York University; and Lecturer at Northeastern University for twenty years. His books include Abdication of the Sovereign Self: The Psycholinguistics of Invalid Synthetic Propositions (Cambridge Scholars); Abduction Topology: The Psycholinguistics of Discourse (Atropos); and HARDSCAPE/ABC (poetry, Atropos). He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the European Graduate School, a master's degree in literature from the University of Vermont, and an undergraduate degree from Norwich University.