Documentality: Why it is Necessary to Leave Traces by Maurizio Ferraris (Hardback, 2012)

This books ushers in a new way of talking about social phemena. 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's predecessors-most tably 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 nscientific 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 tion to interpret social phemena, also in light of a systematic discussion of the concept of performatives, from Austin to Derrida and Searle. Moving into considerations of the present techlogical 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.