To Reclaim Einfühlung: The Search for a Formula of Radical Empathy in Harun Farocki’s Early Work

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Piasecki
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Critical Attitude ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Radical Empathy ◽  
Alienation Effect

Beginning with a close reading of Harun Farocki's Einfühlung, the author analyzes the formation of this tradition of empathy and the critical attitude towards it, with particular emphasis on the sense of failure and the retrospectiveness of the postulate of regaining the Einfühlung by the critical tradition. The author looks at the role of photographs of suffering bodies in the process of shaping the German public sphere during the Vietnam War. He tries to show the complexity of strategies critical of the mass media by reconstructing Farocki's polemics with terrorist movements. He analyses parodying the use of television aesthetics in Inextinguishable Fire (1969) and includes it into the tradition of fighting the tabloid media. He is interested in the reevaluation of the relation between the body and image, which enables reaching beyond the pattern of empathy by means of identification and the idea of “Einfühlung, which has caused the alienation effect.”

scholarly journals Progressive Social Movements and the Internet

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Power ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Because of the field’s foundational concerns with both social power and media, communication scholars have long been at the center of scholarly thought at the intersection of social change and technology. Early critical scholarship in communication named media technologies as central in the creation and maintenance of dominant political ideologies and as a balm against dissent among the masses. This work detailed the marginalization of groups who faced restricted access to mass media creation and exclusion from representational discourse and images, alongside the connections of mass media institutions to political and cultural elites. Yet scholars also highlighted the ways collectives use media technologies for resistance inside their communities and as interventions in the public sphere. Following the advent of the World Wide Web in the late 1980s, and the granting of public access to the Internet in 1991, communication scholars faced a medium that seemed to buck the one-way and gatekeeping norms of others. There was much optimism about the democratic potentials of this new technology. With the integration of Internet technology into everyday life, and its central role in shaping politics and culture in the 21st century, scholars face new questions about its role in dissent and collective efforts for social change. The Internet requires us to reconsider definitions of the public sphere and civil society, document the potentials and limitations of access to and creation of resistant and revolutionary media, and observe and predict the rapidly changing infrastructures and corresponding uses of technology—including the temporality of online messaging alongside the increasingly transnational reach of social movement organizing. Optimism remains, but it has been tempered by the realities of the Internet’s limitations as an activist tool and warnings of the Internet-enabled evolution of state suppression and surveillance of social movements. Across the body of critical work on these topics particular characteristics of the Internet, including its rapidly evolving infrastructures and individualized nature, have led scholars to explore new conceptualizations of collective action and power in a digital media landscape.

Mass Communication and the 'Nationalisation' of the Public Sphere in Former Yugoslavia

Res Publica ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-270
Author(s):  
Spyros A. Walgrave
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Peace Movements ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Although the quasi-confederal character of Yugoslavia, especially after the introduction of its 1974 constitution did not encourage the development of a genuine Yugoslavian public sphere wherepublic debate could transcend ethnic and republic divisions, it nevertheless allowed the formation of what could be called Yugoslav cultural space, a space within which social and political actors (feminist, peace movements) forged their identities regardless of the ethnic or national diversity that characterised their membership. However, the existence of this 'space' had a limited impact in Yugoslav politics partly due to the breakdown of inter-republic communication and the fragmentation of the Yugoslavian mass media. This paper traces the process of disintegration of the Yugoslav cultural space and the emergence of national 'public spheres' in the republics and provinces of former Yugoslavia and attempts to assess the role of the mass media and cultural institutions in these developments by identifying the key strategies of representation employed in the process of the fragmentation and 'nationalisation' of the public sphere of former Yugoslavia.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Marina Dekavalla
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Media Framing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter discusses the significance of referendum campaigns as an increasingly used form of direct democracy and explores the role of the mass media in determining how referendums are understood in the public sphere. It introduces the idea of media framing and sets out the research questions addressed in this book.

Cartesian Secularity: “Disengaged Reason,” the Passions, and the Public Sphere Beyond Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007)

2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 1050-1084 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Public ◽  
Neutral Space ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractAlthough explicitly challenging overly simplistic dichotomies between secular reason and religious affect, Charles Taylor’s monumental genealogy A Secular Age (2007) downplays the role of the body in Descartes’s theory of agency and mistakenly projects this understanding of the “Cartesian” self upon the public sphere of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through a careful reading of Descartes’s last work, Les Passions de l’Âme (1649), and drawing on existing work by Cottingham (2012), Kahn (2006), and Kirkebøen (2001), this article argues the Passions is better seen as an attempt to reinscribe politics in the body through Descartes’s theory of the habit. A focus on the latter yields a complex understanding of the emergence of the public sphere, not as a neutral space for the free exchange of rational speech acts, but as a power-driven environment shaped by the manipulation of habit-creating experiences. The article ends by considering some implications for the genealogy of our “secular age.”

Science and the (Meta)Physical Body

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-58
Author(s):  
David S. Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Physical Body ◽  
Scientific Discourses

Chapter 1 discusses José Vasconcelos’s notion of a cosmic race through a posthuman reading of his seminal essay The Cosmic Race [La raza cósmica] (1925) and his largely forgotten play Prometeo vencedor (1916?). Because Vasconcelos and his Ateneo colleagues were all famously antipositivist, they were suspicious of scientific discourses that purported to hold a monopoly on the “truth.” However, they also lived in a twentiethcentury society in which scientific discourse had gained intellectual hegemony. My chapter begins by asserting science as one of many discourses that compose Vasconcelos’s philosophy of Aesthetic Monism, which subordinates human knowledge to an overriding aesthetic imperative. Afterwards I use a close reading of Prometeo vencedor to assert the key role of science—especially in the guise of technology—in establishing both a worldwide mestizo society and a spiritual, posthuman superation of the body.

Mass Media and the Generation of Conflict: West Germany's Long Sixties and the Formation of a Critical Public Sphere

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA VON HODENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The Media ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Professional Ethos

From the 1950s to 1970s the West German public sphere underwent a rapid politicisation which was part of the ongoing socio-cultural democratisation of the Federal Republic. This article examines the role of the mass media and journalistic elites in bringing about this change. It analyses how and when political coverage in the media evolved from an instrument of consensus to a forum of conflict. Arguing that generational shifts in journalism were crucial to this process, two generations, termed the ‘45ers’ and the ‘68ers’, are described in regard to their professional ethos and their attitudes toward democracy, mass culture, German traditions and Western models.

The Role of Print Media in Kerala Renaissance

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Chandrabose R
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Christian Missionary

Mass media especially print media, act as a catalyst in the growth and development of modern democratic societies. Several studies has proven the role of printing in the evolution of the idea of the nation state, nationalist ideologies, and standardisation of language, printing and journalism acted as a catalyst in the formation of Kerala public sphere in the surge of the ideologies and activism that resulted in Kerala Renaissance. A diachronic survey of Malayalam print media, which started in the nineteenth century, illustrate the formation of the ideological pathways of the Kerala Renaissance. The survey proves the significant role of the print media in effecting the diverse ideological under currents of colonial administration, indigenous spiritual figures and movements western Christian missionary groups etc. to fashion Kerala modernity. This study focuses on the role of the print media in steering Malayali consciousness towards modernity, enlightenment, humanism and the idea of nation state.

The Fourth Estate: The construction and place of silence in the public sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (10) ◽  
pp. 1071-1089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ejvind Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Flexible Structures ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Fourth Estate ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

The main narratives of prevailing ideas of the Fourth Estate were articulated in the era of traditional mass media, and these traditional narratives are challenged by the changing media landscapes. This raises the question whether traditional narratives of the Fourth Estate should be maintained. We will argue – through a close reading of Derrida’s reflections on the relationship between communicative significance and silence, combined with a deliberative ideal for democracy – that the new structures of communication call for a Fourth Estate that focuses on creating spaces for flexible structures of silence in the public sphere. The Fourth Estate has an obvious assignment of counteracting problematic structures of silence (if certain important voices are not being heard). In this article, we will, however, bring out assignments of creating spaces of silence in the public sphere: by (a) silencing certain dominant voices, (b) making room for an increased lack of answers and (c) creating an awareness of the insufficiencies of the public spheres.

scholarly journals Media, art and technology: a contemporary reflection

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 299-310
Author(s):  
Fernando Augusto Silva Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Art And Technology ◽  
Commodification Of Culture ◽  
Contemporary Western Society

This article is based on a report about cultural industries and their reflexes on media saturation. From that point, a reflection on technology, media and contemporary arts is presented, especially on the role of the body in the manifestation of art. This work seeks to ratify the influence of technology, of mass media and of information over the construction of the contemporary cultural values. It also provides a reflection on current contemporary artistic practices as elements that seek to evidence and question the standardizing influence of mass media and of the market. The background for the development of this article is the evolution of technologies, which expand the commodification of culture and make possible the deep social and cultural changes experienced in contemporary Western society. Finally, it is outlined a brief analysis  of cultural identities and diversities in the teleinformatics era.

The discursive construction of the recent European economic crisis in two political magazines

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bessie Mitsikopoulou ◽  
Christina Lykou
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Weak Link ◽  
The Body ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Content Type ◽  
European Public Sphere ◽  
European Public ◽  
The Media

Purpose – Acknowledging the important role of the media in shaping a European public sphere, the purpose of this paper is to explore how the recent economic crisis is discursively construed in the context of the British media discourse. It investigates discursive constructions of the economic crisis in two political magazines of different ideological positioning by placing emphasis on the economic crisis in Greece, the “weak link” of the Eurozone. Design/methodology/approach – The study draws on systemic functional linguistics which views language as social semiotic and conducts a transitivity analysis of a corpus consisting of 59 articles (a total of 61,820 words) from two weekly British political magazines, one of conservative and one of centre-left political position. The analysis is assisted by Wordsmith 6.0 concordance corpus tool. Findings – It is argued that the articles of the conservative magazine construe the crisis as primarily local and financial, discussing its effects on the British economy. On the other hand, the articles of the centre-left magazine view the crisis as a systemic one derived from and, at the same time, affecting European Union policies and stress its political and economic implications in all of Eurozone. Originality/value – The findings of the study contribute to the body of studies which investigate the role of language in the construction of the economic crisis and also adds to the on-going discussion regarding the development of a European public sphere as part of the wider European Project and the process of European integration.

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