Documentality Why It Is Necessary to Leave Traces [Hardcover]

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 inscriptionthe leaving of a trace to be called up lateris what is most fundamental to them. In doing so, it systematically organizes concepts and theories that Ferrariss
predecessorsmost notably Derrida, in his project of a positive grammatologyleft 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 Foucaults 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.

The growth of modern civilization depends to a surprising degree on the power of documents. Law, commerce, science, government all depend on documents to transcend the constraints of pre-modern, face-to-face communication. Yet documents, thus far, have played only a tiny role in the work of social ontologists. Maurizio Ferraris shows in this brilliant new work how documents can be used as a springboard for an entirely new view of the sl3‚