In the World Interior of Capital

Displaying the distinctive combination of narration and philosophy for which he is well known, this new book by Peter Sloterdijk develops a radically new account of globalization at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The author takes seriously the historical and philosophical consequences of the notion of the earth as a globe, arriving at the thesis that what is praised or decried as globalization is actually the end phase in a process that began with the first circumnavigation of the earth Ð and that one can already discern elements of a new era beyond globalization.  In the end phase of globalization, the world system completed its development and, as a capitalist system, came to determine all conditions of life. Sloterdijk takes the Crystal Palace in London, the site of the first world exhibition in 1851, as the most expressive metaphor for this situation. The palace demonstrates the inevitable exclusivity of globalization as the construction of a comfort structure Ð that is, the establishment and expansion of a world interior whose boundaries are invisible, yet virtually insurmountable from without, and which is inhabited by one and a half billion winners of globalization; three times this number are left standing outside the door.

First Part On the Emergence of the World System 1 1 Of Grand Narratives 3 2 The Wandering Star 15 3 Return to Earth 21 4 Globe Time, World Picture Time 27 5 Turn from the East, Entrance into the Homogeneous Space 33 6 Jules Verne and Hegel 36 7 Waterworld: On the Change of the Central Element in the Modern Age 40 8 Fortuna, or: The Metaphysics of Chance 47 9 Risk-Taking 50 10 Delusion and Time: On Capitalism and Telepathy 53 11 The Invention of Subjectivity – Primary Disinhibition and Its Advisers 57 12 Irreflexive Energies: The Ontology of the Headstart 66 13 Nautical Ecstasies 77 14 ‘Corporate Identity’ on the High Seas, Parting of Minds 81 15 The Basic Movement: Money Returns 84 16 Between Justifications and Assurances: On Terran and Maritime Thought 86 17 Expedition and Truth 94 18 The Signs of the Explorers: On Cartography and Imperial Name Magic 98 19 The Pure Outside 109 20 Theory of the Pirate: The White Terror 112 21 The Modern Age and the New Land Syndrome 116 Americanology 1 22 The Five Canopies of Globalization: Aspects of European Space Exportation 120 23 The Poetics of the Ship’s Hold 122 24 Onboard Clerics: The Religious Network 124 25 The Book of Vice-Kings 128 26 The Library of Globalization 131 27 The Translators 134 Second Part The Grand Interior 137 28 Synchronous World 139 29 The Second Ecumene 143 30 The Immunological Transformation: On the Way to Thin-Walled ‘Societies’ 149 31 Believing and Knowing: In hoc signo (sc. globi) vinces 155 32 Post-History 165 33 The Crystal Palace 169 34 The Dense World and Secondary Disinhibition: Terrorism as the Romanticism of the Pure Attack 177 35 Twilight of the Perpetrators and the Ethics of Responsibility: The Cybernetic Erinyes 187 36 The Capitalist World Interior: Rainer Maria Rilke Almost Meets Adam Smith 193 37 Mutations in the Pampering Space 211 38 Revaluation of All Values: The Principle of Abundance 223 39 The Exception: Anatomy of a Temptation 233 Americanology 2 40 The Uncompressible, or: The Rediscovery of the Extended 249 41 In Praise of Asymmetry 258 42 The Heavenly and the Earthly Left 263 Notes 265 Index 293