Libido sciendi

Bibliography: p.281-304

** Maybe Latour's reflection helps  to freely navigate the possibilities of a research field that emerges from a proper social concern and not from an intentionally or instrumentally created one

Maria and Marcel sip their respective beers... I would invite you to wine, i would be sweet i would be lovely...

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/invencion/otros/elpepuculbab/20120107elpbabpor_48/Tes

Derrida

Both of them inspired my intervention in the Congress of Sociology organized in Innsbruck. I was talking there, about the reading Habermas reading of the Enlightenment (my presentation is here)

The title reads: History of Communication (at the University of Vic) meaning, in fact, History of Media; but what is actually taught is not History nor it is strictly about Media. The approach is instead uneasy and provocative: Archaeology of knowledge substitutes in practice the promising and always causal form of history that is accostumed; and Media therefore has to be discussed as a notion and is preferably dispersed into "devices/technology", or agents or ventriloquists. History, as we know it, is a recent notion and is deeply rooted in a western form of knowledge and a structure of time. A part from its genetic conditioning strongly related to Modern States, history drags the imprimatur of evolution, cause-unveiling or progress. Furthermore, the dimension of history related to story leads inevitably to the notion of media: tellers and interests, discourse and devices of reproduction. From this last point of view History of Media would bend into a strange form of histrionic gesture: "history of the devices of telling stories"? Actually, I must confess that there are some very stimulating approaches that do not avoid the notion of history itself (the volume by Manuel De Landa, for instance is one of the most impressive referents) but they struggle to get rid of that usual notion of history by non-linearising it or by historicizing it. In this context the work of Michel Foucault is of extreme use: Archaeology instead of History, portraits of moments in the past where a technological change happens in the middle of a struggle for a change in the mentality (Governmentality, power-knowledge). By doing this, it is possible to consider technology as part of the change without falling into certain mediacentric simplification that used to consider technology as the cause of change or as the motor of history. The second part of the problem is the same notion of media. The shortcut for Mass Media would not allow a broader reflection that extends further the late 19th century. And the digital world of new formats and multiple devices do not only discuss the notion of mass (that died some time in the mid 20th century) but the notion of media. The digital exploits, extends, multiplies, discusses the notion of media as we knew it. Is facebook a media, is Twitter a media of communication? This kind of questioning inspires the question back to the past: weren't medieval churches some sort of media? Therefore, buildings, urban shapes and painting could not be considered to be media? and what about writing, paper or print? Such a reasoning turns and bends once and again the meaning of media of communication. The uneasy solution divides into three options: devices -as all those technological instruments that help extending a story-; agents -as all those social elements that "work" in extending the story-; and ventriloquists -the ones speaking, those giving stories that extend through agents that use devices. By using such a tripartite form of media some functions can be distinguished and the blurry form of "media of communication" can be, at least, faced from another point of view. Of course, this is a begining, the subject of History of Communication has recently extended to 2.0 and students and teachers discuss online and grow a group in facebook and extend the virtual conversation in Twitter (@HistComUVIC). Let's see what it brings.

There is more about this here; and the whole letter...

Science fiction helps. History is possible. More if the time continuum is discussed, particularly if such a discussion points at the founding paradox of history making time happen. History of history, archaeology of time... So many possible doubts are conquered, are achieved, thanks to the writers of science fiction...

Walter Benjamin more contemporary than many, has always a priviledged room here. He taught us the art of finding pearls. That is what we ultimately do.

More about the author in German, here (his bio and works in English, here).