Documentality

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 inscription?the leaving of a trace to be called up later?is what is most fundamental to them. In doing so it systematically organizes concepts and theories that Ferraris’spredecessors?most notably Derrida in his project of a positive grammatology?left 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 Foucault’s 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.