Spirits in the Material World

Book excerpt: In Spirits in the Material World: The Challenge of Technology, Gil Germain provocatively argues that humans are fast becoming spirit-like creatures, beings who assume their bodies are incidental to what it means to be human, and the 'real world' an accidental quality of the human condition. Technology, it is suggested, authorizes such an understanding and legitimates a manner of action that obscures the centrality of embodiment. Technology properly understood is thus an otherworldly or spiritual force. Spirits in the Material World challenges the assumptions underpinning the technological world view through a reading of leading contemporary theorists who have addressed the interconnection between technology and embodiment. The book both reveals and contests the multifarious ways in which technology's spiritual thrust is manifested in contemporary thought and practice. While respecting technology's hold on modernity and its predisposition toward disembodiment, Germain gives important reasons why this inclination toward spiritization ought to be resisted and what shape this resistance must take if it is to be meaningful. Spirits in the Material World will appeal to a broad spectrum of scholars and students alike, especially those interested in philosophy of technology, postmodernism, political theory, phenomenology, the end of history debate, and deep ecology.