Extensions after Man: Race, Counter/insurgency and the Futures of Media Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372199453
Author(s):  
Michael Litwack
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Freedom Struggles ◽  
Intellectual Movement ◽  
Plantation System ◽  
Western Media ◽  
Racial Slavery

This article returns to the geopolitical scene and racial logics that provide the underacknowledged conditions of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media and, specifically, its well-known proposition that media should be understood foremost as ‘outerings’ or ‘extensions of man’. Attending to the structuring inheritances of racial slavery and the plantation system in this founding statement of mid-twentieth-century media theory, as well as its debt to the literary and intellectual movement of the Southern Agrarians, I consider how the racializing figure of ‘Man’ conserved by the nascent field of media studies was contemporaneously brought to crisis by black (and) anticolonial freedom struggles. Arguing for the need to reread the career of western media theory through its political vocation in attempting to manage this crisis, the article concludes by turning briefly to a revisionary account of media and exteriority also circulated in 1964: the revolutionary intellectual James Boggs’s ‘The Negro and Cybernation’. Boggs’s writings, which situate emergent forms of computing and cybernation within a longer materialist genealogy of race, capitalism and technology, offer both a proleptic critique of the early disciplinary formation of media theory and a divergent set of coordinates for approaching media technology on the terrain of black political struggle.

Encounters with Western media theory: Asian perspectives

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-157
Author(s):  
Dal Yong Jin
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Global Media ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Asian Society ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Western Media

The academic discourse on the West and the East is not new, and it has been commonly believed that non-Western countries must learn from the West in order to develop their own societies. Here, comprehending the notion of the West is considered significant, as it offers a model of comparison. While it is not necessary for the perspectives and process to be radical, it should be convincing to grasp Asia as a formation of a changeable force to the West. Of course, media scholars have to avoid limited perspectives emphasizing only intra-Asian dialogues; instead they must analyze Asian perspectives in the globalization context. What non-Western scholars must contemplate are not only paradigms that are unique to Asian society but also general trends and norms that apply to the globe so that they can identify new trends and directions, which provide fundamentals to advance new theories and norms in global media studies. This certainly contributes to a broadening of media theory and comprehension in a way that takes account of the practices of non-Western countries outside the Anglo-American sphere.

Introduction

Willy Ley ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared S. Buss
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
Complex Argument ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Romantic Science

The introduction provides an overview of Ley’s life and importance. It also presents a complex argument about the key features of romantic, popular science during the twentieth century. The section makes interdisciplinary connections between German and American romantic science, popular science, and media studies, while providing a brief introduction to Ley, his legacy, and the themes of the book.

The End of Media

2017 ◽  
pp. 20-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andréa Belliger ◽  
David John Krieger
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Network Society ◽  
Media Production ◽  
Media Convergence ◽  
Actor Network

In the network society and the age of media convergence, media production can no longer be isolated into channels, formats, technologies, and organizations. Media Studies is facing the challenge to reconceptualize its foundations. It could therefore be claimed that new media are the last media. In the case of digital versus analog, there is no continuity between new media and old media. A new and promising proposal has come from German scholars who attempt the precarious balance between media theory and a general theory of mediation based on Actor-Network Theory. Under the title of Actor-Media Theory (Akteur-Medien-Theorie) these thinkers attempt to reformulate the program of Media Studies beyond assumptions of social or technical determinism. Replacing Actor-Network Theory with Actor-Media Theory raises the question of whether exchanging the concept of “network” for the concept of “media” is methodologically and theoretically advantageous.

Structuralism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lundell ◽  
Vincent P. Pecora
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Widespread Application ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
Structural Linguistics ◽  
Universal Truth ◽  
Intellectual Movement ◽  
The Way

Structuralism, generally described, is a twentieth-century intellectual movement associated with linguistic studies in Europe, despite its vast applicability and many adherents. An initial aim of structural linguistics was to investigate – in greater detail than previously – the way language functions as a network of signification. Structuralism’s goal also typically derives from the question of whether universal truth can be revealed in this network in ways that define the constitution of thought. Structuralism focused on the whole of language, the ‘structure’ of the totality, over its individual parts or their historical development. The principles of Structuralism and its later transformations found widespread application outside of linguistics, particularly in anthropology, sociology, literary studies, semiotics, film, musicology, psychology, and philosophy.

scholarly journals Imaginary economies: the case of the 3D printer

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Schröter
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Research Field ◽  
3D Printer ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
3D Printers

AbstractIn the call for the special issue for the EAEPE Journal, we can find the word “scenario.” The question is if the authors can imagine scenarios in which “potential strategies for the appropriation of existing capitalist infrastructures […] in order to provoke the emergence of post-capitalist infrastructures” can be described. Obviously, the call verges on the border of science fiction—and this is not a bad thing. Diverse strands of media studies and science and technology studies have shown (e.g., Schröter 2004; Kirby 2010; Jasanoff and Kim 2015; McNeil et al. 2017) that not only the development of science and (media) technology is deeply interwoven in social imaginaries about possible outcomes and their implicated futures, but there is a whole theoretical tradition in which societies as such are fundamentally constituted by imaginary relations (Castoriadis 1975/2005). But in all these discussions, one notion very seldom appears: that of an “imaginary economy,” meaning a collectively held system of more or less vague or detailed ideas, what an economy is, how it works, and how it should be (especially in the future; but see the somewhat different usage recently in Fabbri 2018). The aim of the paper is to outline a notion of “imaginary economy” and its necessary functions in the stabilization of a given economy, but even more so in the transformation to another economy—how should a transformation take place if there’s not at least a vague image where to go? Of course, we could also imagine a blind evolutionary process without any imaginary process but that seems not to be the way in which human societies—and economies—work. Obviously a gigantic research field opens up—so in the proposed paper, only one type of “imaginary economy” can be analyzed: It is the field that formed recently around the proposed usages and functions of 3D printing. In publications as diverse as Eversmann (2014) and Rifkin (2014), the 3D printer operates as a technology that seems to open up a post-capitalist future—and thereby it is directly connected to the highly imaginary “replicator” from Star Trek. In these scenarios, a localized omnipotent production—a post-scarcity scenario (see Panayotakis 2011)—overcomes by itself capitalism: But symptomatically enough, questions of work, environment, and planetary computation are (mostly) absent from these scenarios. Who owns the templates for producing goods with 3D printers? What about the energy supply? In a critical and symptomatic reading, this imaginary economy, very present in a plethora of discourses nowadays, is deconstructed and possible implications for a post-capitalist construction are discussed.

Transmitted Wounds

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit Pinchevski
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Friedrich Kittler ◽  
The Face ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Human Failure ◽  
Bear Witness

In Transmitted Wounds, Amit Pinchevski explores the ways media technology and logic shape the social life of trauma both clinically and culturally. Bringing media theory to bear on trauma theory, Pinchevski reveals the technical operations that inform the conception and experience of traumatic impact and memory. He offers a bold thesis about the deep association of media and trauma: media bear witness to the human failure to bear witness, making the traumatic technologically transmissible and reproducible. Taking up a number of case studies--the radio broadcasts of the Eichmann trial; the videotaping of Holocaust testimonies; recent psychiatric debates about trauma through media following the 9/11 attacks; current controversy surrounding drone operators' post-trauma; and digital platforms of algorithmic-holographic witnessing and virtual reality exposure therapy for PTSD--Pinchevski demonstrates how the technological mediation of trauma feeds into the traumatic condition itself. The result is a novel understanding of media as constituting the material conditions for trauma to appear as something that cannot be fully approached and yet somehow must be. While drawing on contemporary materialist media theory, especially the work of Friedrich Kittler and his followers, Pinchevski goes beyond the anti-humanistic tendency characterizing the materialist approach, discovering media as bearing out the human vulnerability epitomized in trauma, and finding therein a basis for moral concern in the face of violence and atrocity. Transmitted Wounds unfolds the ethical and political stakes involved in the technological transmission of mental wounds across clinical, literary, and cultural contexts.

scholarly journals Education, Media and the End of the Book: Some Remarks from Media Theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (Educational Media Ecologies) ◽  
pp. 183-196
Author(s):  
Rainer Leschke ◽  
Norm Friesen
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
Material Characteristics ◽  
Music Film ◽  
Film Text

This paper sketches out an understanding of contemporary educational forms and practices from a vantage point afforded by recent German media studies. In so doing, it introduces a number of concepts from continental media theory. With the book – both as an artifact and an epistemic metaphor – in evident decline, what is taking its place is not any one new medium, but rather a radically new kind of media systematicity. By relentlessly reducing all content (e. g., music, film, text) to ones and zeros, digitization effectively erases the material characteristics of separate media forms, leaving behind only their conventionalized aesthetic qualities and forms. The paper builds on these arguments by concluding that the symbolic competencies which once constituted the core of all education (reading, writing, ‘rithmatic) are increasingly at odds with performative and stylistic abilities integral to this new mediatic order.

scholarly journals “Binge-Watching”: The New Way of Watching TV Series

2018 ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Srđan Krstić
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Central Hypothesis ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Watching Tv ◽  
Tv Show

In this paper I deal with the concept of the binge-watching of television series episodes. The word binge means a period of excessive indulgence in an activity. Particularly, in terms of media theory, it becomes synonymous with obsessive, marathon watching of TV shows and movies through streaming television. The central hypothesis is that binge-watching goes beyond what has for previous decades been considered a generally accepted way of watching TV content. In order to better understand this notion, it is also necessary to explain the importance of non-linear television and its distinction in relation to ‘traditional’ or linear television. I will pay special attention to social networks as an indispensable factor that completes the binge-watching experience. Social networks are also involved in the peripheral specifics of binge-watching that lead to the emergence of new occupations, which are in direct correlation with the desire of viewers to be informed about their favorite TV content. I also performed a case study of the TV show Pretty Little Liars (PLL). This show had strong effect on connecting creators with viewers through social networks. As a relatively new phenomenon, binge-watching has the potential to soon become an interesting subject of research. Article received: March 27, 2018; Article accepted: May 10, 2018; Published online: October 15, 2018; Original scholarly paperHow to cite this article: Krstić, Srđan. "'Binge-Watching': The New Way of Watching TV Series." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 17 (2018): 15−23. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i17.266 

scholarly journals Deconstruction and the Archival Revolution: on the Relevance and Reception of Archive Fever in New Media Studies

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
Zvonimir Glavaš
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
New Media Studies ◽  
The One

The paper focuses on the reception of Derrida’s Archive Fever among (new) media theorists and its relevance for the ongoing discussions in that academic field. Although this Derrida’s text is often described as the one in which he provides a statement on the pervasive revolutionary impact of new media, its reception among media theorists remains scarce. Several media scholars that tackle the text, however, have an ambivalent stance on it: they appreciate some of Derrida’s theses, but regard them largely obsolete. The first part of the paper analyzes these critiques and argues that many of the objections on Derrida’s behalf are caused by the misinterpretation of important features of the deconstructive thought. In its second part, the paper firstly deals with certain weaker points of Derrida’s reflection and then proceeds to examine his insights pertinent to the problems of contemporary media theory that were neglected in earlier reception. Finally, paper reaffirms the claim about the need for a more profound exchange between the deconstruction and media studies, albeit one that would avoid the examined shortcomings.

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