A Sociology of the Media Introduction II Prof. Dr. Joost van Loon Institut für Soziologie, LMU Nottingham Trent University, U.K.

Details Sprechstunde: Di 10-12, Konradstraße 6, Zi. 205 Email: joost.vanloon@soziologie.uni-muenchen.de

Outline Technology as Ordering (reflections on Martin Heidegger and Walter Ong) Form Historicity Cultural Embedding Embodiment (and Disembodiment)

Technology as Ordering Technologies ‘enframe’ the world; that is they order them in the double sense of (a) providing a structure and (b) commanding specific actions. This ordering constitutes the essence of mediation.

Technology as Ordering – A Meeting with Heidegger

Technology as Ordering – A Meeting with Heidegger Technology engenders particular perspectives (the essence of technology is revealing) Enframing: bringing forth into presence Presence is not ‘just there’ it is an accomplishment of mediation (as a form of presencing) Mediation is the creation of media events Mediation = “coming in-between”

Technology as Ordering – A Meeting with Walter Ong

Technology as Ordering – A Meeting with Walter Ong Orality and Literacy Orality: acoustic space: timeless, ephemeral, unity of enunciating actor (author) and enunciated act, ‘immediate’, active repetition as skilful task (memory, ability to enunciate) Literacy: visual space, linear, objective, separation of enunciating actor (author) and enunciated act (the text), reification, replication becomes a simple task, alienation

Form The form of mediation has significant bearing on the way in which communication works Forms are the products of formatting, which can also be seen as ‘contextual’ Two approaches to forms of communication (Carey, 1986) Communication as transmission Communication as ritual

Historicity Media as ‘cause’ of historical transformations Media-changes as ‘effects’ of historical forces Media are not static; they evolve Media evolutions involve changing relations between form, matter, use and know-how Examples: Speech: the content is not just ideas but words, i.e. language Writing: the content is not just speech but also the graphs (hieroglyphs, pictograms, alphabet)

Cultural Embedding ‘Articulations of form through use and know how’ The Medium is the Message (McLuhan, 1964) Culture is not given but ‘practiced’ (as sense-making). Sense-making is performative; The practice of mediation includes ‘selectivity’ of use Use affects how we perceive, think and communicate All forms of mediation are motivated

Embodiment and Disembodiment

Embodiment Speech is the first communication medium It uses language = an abstract system of symbols based on arbitrary connections between sounds and ‘things’. Media are extensions of ‘man’ (McLuhan, 1964): they are embodied. Bodies are (among other things) gendered. Gender constitutes a form of differentiation which generates the possibility of subjectivity and identity

and Disembodiment Bodies are not ‘closed’ – media extending bodies create networked bodies. Body-boundaries are not fixed. Matthew Fuller: a Nietzschean concept of the body as the ‘starting point’ for knowledge. this has two distinct advantages: (1) it provides a materialist and action-based grounding of perception, ordering, indeed mediation and (2) it bypasses the need to impose an a-priori hierarchy of the organization of this mediation. The ‘subject’ of communication is thus no longer a privileged entity (i.e. the human being) whose status is derived from metaphysics, but instead itself an effect of a sustained interaction between forces. Following Latour (1988b) we could further specify that these forces themselves are irreducible (to interests, beliefs, moral values etc.).