Do it Yourself: Bernard Stiegler as Mystagogic Bricoleur

This article draws on Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel de Certeau’s theorizations of bricolagein order to explore Bernard Stiegler’s philosophical practice. Taking as its point of departure the elements of intellectual biography provided by Stiegler in Acting Out (2009), it explores his (re)deployment of existing philosophical concepts and the sedimentary nature of his own thought. The article then moves to consider the presence of concepts and practices of mystagogy in Taking Care of Youth and the Generations (2010), arguing that these are a restaging of the dynamics of Acting Out on a collective, rather than an individual scale. Ultimately, the article turns to Stiegler’s late aesthetic writing to explore how his theorizationof the roles of amateur and artist might point us towards the lineaments of his unfinished “mystagogy”.