While marking the closure of the western metaphysical tradition, deconstruction also signals the opening of post-print culture.
Deconstruction remains bound to and by the world of print that it nonetheless calls into question. What comes after deconstruction? Imagology. To realize what deconstruction has made possible, it is necessary to move into the world of telecommunications technology. The notion of textuality
cannot be radicalized until it is transformed from print to other media. To perform dissemination is to electrify the signifier. ~ Imagologies follow the lead of deconstruction by giving up the search for secure foundations. The disappearance of the signified in the endless field of signifiers is embraced as an unavoidable cultural condition. This destiny should not be suffered with a heavy heart but affirmed in all its creative richness. ~ Deconstruction is an ingenious continuation of the critical function of philosophy. ~ Deconstruction theorizes writerly practices that anticipate hypertexts. ~ At this late hour, we can see that Derrida, with his immense distrust of the conceptual represented through a higher-order conceptuality and a higher-abstract syntax, is the bridge between the paradigm of conceptually centered philsophy of pure thought and the philosophy of exploding images. Derrida is the first synactician of imagology. ~ differAnce is sameness which is not identical. ~ A "marginal" difference is a movement that articulates a strange space between speech and writing. ~ Applied grammatology is a search for a writing that recognizes and brings into balance this [ideographic and phonetic] double value. ~ The linear schema of unfolding presence, where the line relates the final presence to the originary presence, according to the straight line or the circle, became a model, Derrida says, and as such became inaccessible and invisible. ~ The resurgence of the graphic element, escaping from the domination of the spoken word, is a symptom of the end of the metaphysical era. ~ Grammatology cuts across the old divisions of knowledge, being concerned with all manner of inscription, with the question of how any form of knowledge or mode of knowing related to writing. ~ Grammatology...interrogates the relation of knowledge to metaphor. ~ Grammatology, then, is a science that functions as the deconstruction of the concept of science. ~ The challenge of an applied grammatology is to define how this other writing can function as knowledge without being theoretical. ~ Every theorist who has addressed the question of the role of communications technology in the evolution of cognition, representing every shade of thought from the Catholic Walter Ong to the Marxist Hans Enzenberger, agrees that the new media are bringing about a radical cultural transformation whose imperatives ay no longer be ignored by intellectuals. ~ Grammatology, then, studies enframing, not 'literature' or 'science', which is to say that ultimately it is a pedagogy rather than a system of knowledge. ~ Derrida, against description theories, and also against phenomenological epistemologies dependent on perception, intuition or experience, is developing a theory of naming that does not depend on intelligibility or prior knowledge. ~ The principle underlying Derrida's method for researching the relation of metaphors to concepts is exactly the same one that governs the signature -- a systematic exploitation of the chance-necessity effects produced by the event of homophony or homonymy. ~ In grammatology, the theory of signing is also a theory of teaching. ~ Catachresis does not go outside the language, does not create new signs, does not enrich the code; yet it transforms its functioning: it produces with the same material, new rules of exchange, new meanings. ~ ~ Metaphorology [metaphorization processes suggsted by Derrida]: (1) Articulation: differAnce,
the joint of spacing, the interval that joins and separates homophones; (2) Decomposition: non-objective senses as models for thinking/writing -- smell and taste displacing sight and sound. ~ The betweenness of grammatological space is a zone of license. ~ Theoretical grammatology...is a repetition, a retracing at a conceptual level, of the history of writing. Its purpose is to disentangle in that history the nature (or absence of an essence) of writing from the ideology or metaphysics of voice which has dominated and restricted writing, in order to reassess the full potential of, and alternate directions for, a new writing of practice. ~ The reversal of phoneticization -- the reduction of the phonetic in favor of the ideographic element in writing -- which is the goal of grammatology, takes as its model the principle of rebus writing, both as it appears in the historical analysis of nonphonetic scripts and...theorized in psychoanalysis. ~ Freud's two systems of memory: memory as text or script; memory as apparatus or machine. ~ Memory or writing is the opening of that process of appearance itself. ~ Dreams: consist of dream-thoughts (latent) and dream-content (manifest) presented like two versions (mise en scene) of the same subject matter in two different languages. ~ Dream writing is bilderschrift -- figurative script, an image inviting a reading. ~ The 'shell and the kernal' is the very image Freud used to describe the structure of psychoanalytic representation (the process by which fantasies and drives -- the recto and verso of the apparatus -- mediate and bring into relation the organic and the psychic). ~ Allegory is a mode of representation most adaptable to Derrida's purposes. ~ The picto-ideo-phonographic model consists of intermedia writing. ~ The colossal, mediating the move from the sublime to fetishism, from Enlightenment aesthetics to psychoanalysis, interlaces the two effects: The equivalent of the absolutely large (grand), whose effect in aesthetics was to be frozen in stupefied wonder, is in psychoanalysis, the confrontation with the absolutely small, the 'little thing' as fetish, whose effect threatens castration, bringing one up short in the face of the medusa (being 'medusa-ized')...In short, the fetish displays the signature effect. ~ Style has never been mere ornament. The text believed to be straight-forward and ornament-free simply displays the machine aesthetic of functional simplicity. ~ Pattern is a form of rhythm. ~ The laws of repetition: translation, rotation, relection. ~ Interlacing patterns introduce the fiction of a mirroring plane. ~ Framing delimits the field of vision; it determines the included and the excluded. ~ In simcult, the responsible writer must be an imagologist. Since image has displaced print as the primary medium for discourse, the public use of reason can no longer be limited to print culture. To be effective, writing must become imagoscription that is available to everyone. ~ The challenge of imagologies is to transform institutional technologies dedicated to the production of knowledge that advances understanding. ~ Imagology involves a second naiveté in which the figural, which has too long been repressed by the conceptual, returns as the medium for understanding and communication. The return of the figure disfigures the disfiguration of concepts be reinscribing the imago in the midst of the logos. ~ Imagology insists that the word is never simply a word but is always also an image. The audio-visual trace of the word involves an inescapable materiality that can be thought only if it is figured. ~ To embody style is to incarnate the imago in all dimensions of one's life. Image is destiny, which sometimes can be changed. ~ The imagologist can only figure through figures. Images are not only the object of study but are also the medium of thought, action and communication. ~ The imagologist suffers from the mania for signifying. ~ Imagologies is media philosophy. ~ The imagologist must not fear banality but exploit it. ~ The imagologist does not seek truth but entertains enigmas. ~ Imagology demythologizes the book. ~ The image is the hallucinatory production of perception. ~ Engagement must never overwhelm disengagement, and disengagement must never undercut engagement. Critical involvement requires the cultivation of both the distance the insider can never maintain and the closeness the outsider can never enjoy. Neither inside nor outside, the imagologist remains forever marginal. ~ The imagologist issues a call rather than a statement or a theory. A call that is a challenge to face up to the radical changes that are already taking place and to imagine a future shaped by interstanding. ~ The imagologist is a spacemaker whose task is to create a gap where others can write. ~ Fashion is an irreducible phenomenon because it partakes of a crazy, viral, meditationless form of communication which operates so fast for the sole reason that it never passes via the mediation of meaning...Anything that bypasses mediation is a source of pleasure. In seduction there is a movement from one to the other which does not pass via the same. In cloning, it is the opposite: the movement is from the same to the same without passage via the other; and cloning holds great fascination for us.) In metamorphosis, the shift is from one form to another without passing via meaning. In poetry, from one sign to another without passing via the reference. The collapsing of distances, of intervening spaces, always produces a kind of intoxication. What does speed itself mean to us if not the fact of going from one pace to another without transversing time, from one moment to another without passing via duration and movement?
from (collectively) Baudrillard; Gombrich; Taylor/Saarinen; Ulmer. See Mediagraphy.
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| I |
Excitedly, I ascended the staircase, confident in my ability -- feeling I was in-control. As I climbed higher, it grew darker; the sunlight from the downstairs window failed to reach that distance. Now enveloped by complete darkness, I continued to climb, though much more slowly. Still, I believed that I'd know when I'd reached the top. Would I recognize the feel of the platform? Realize the dis-continuation of the need-to-ascend? Something else, something other, happened. As I took another step, I found there was no stair below. With balance lost, I fell so very fast, seeing nothing in-focus. Suddenly, with a deep plunge, I landed in a rushing current immersed yet again in utter darkness there below. Yet, I couldn't believe my
eyes.
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| II |
What is medialogy? Literally, the term refers to the science, study and expression of media. In terms of the study of technological form and function, it includes fields such as communications and media studies, but also extends to the creative, practical world of the artisan, as well as the precise and exacting realm of the technician. Use of the term 'media' also underscores its meaning as the quality or state of betweenness. This relates technology to its function as the vehicle -- or mediator -- in terms of communicative interaction, and both intended and unintended affects/effects. Unintended results of interaction are usually specific and generally circumstantial. However, intended results of interaction are specified in the overall plan for development. The strategy which I have found to be proven effective is contextual synergy. It considers the medium an active and influential component of the communication process and learning environment. This reiterates my earlier call for a necessary reading-writing between as a praxis of medialogy. This betweenness necessarily implies separation, a denotation of separation of time or space. There exists an interval, a space of separation. Any point within that space, including its center, is intervening -- it is one of perhaps many points within that interval -- but not its entirety. Therefore, medialogy cannot be limited to the 'study of the middle' but must necessarily encompass the 'study of betweenness' in the development and construction of learning technologies.
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| III |
There amidst the silent comfort of exactitude, rages in glory the height of chaotic destruction. Five points of motion -- the pentagram -- bound within the boundless sphere. Fierce extremities await in the near future; gateways of passion admit both birth and death.
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| IV |
What constitutes the development of a successful mediated learning environment is an understanding of medialogy and an acute awareness of media
literacy. A mediator is more a channel for communication, rather than a transmitter of information; her function is at once both transparent and formed. Although she is not consciously interacting with nor influencing the communication, she is not passive, nor objective. She is an active participant. It is, in fact, her own form which embodies and enlivens the communication. What of the interaction and influence of the unconscious on the processes of
learning and communication? The issues raised and questions posed here demonstrate, precisely, the need for medialogy -- combining approaches to Applied Grammatology and Imagology. Applied Grammatology, developed by Gregory L. Ulmer, is an extension of Derrida's quest for a
picto-ideo-phonographic style of writing and focuses on its practical applications (hence applied). While it is a solid foundation and primary source for medialogy, it is lacking in one particular area which I feel detracts from it. In concentrating on creating a praxis for writing, the phenomenon of concurrent reading is not explored. To this, I would strongly argue that reading and writing are inseparable counterparts of an interdependent system; the exclusion or neglect of one concerning a study of the other can, at best, yield an incomplete approach. I do, however, think that Ulmer's analyses are coherent and valuable in the formation of a science of media. Mark C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen together developed Imagology, which also builds upon Derridean concepts, though not as closely as Applied Grammatology. Taylor and Saarinen, like Ulmer, espouse the need for an integrated praxis, rather than mere theory, as a pedagogy for post-modern educational technology. However, unlike Ulmer, they do not supply a recommended praxis nor any substantial practical information related to applications of technology. The stated primary goal of each of these research areas is to esablish a postmodern pedagogy for mediated learning. Medialogy accomplishes this by (1) embracing interdisciplinary academic endeavors, like the works of Ulmer and Taylor and Saarinen; (2) recognizing professional (experiential) ingenuity; and (3) seeking to maintain technological integrity. Whereas betweenness may have long been a subject for philosophical reflection, it has not yet been the focal point in developing a praxis for postmodern learning technologies -- a techno-pedagogy -- in any area of study other than medialogy. For the developer of online media and technology for learning, both a theoretical and practical understanding of medialogy is absolutely essential.
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| V |
Archer-twin, of speed
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Ripe with fertile imagination;
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Thought in continuum -- there,
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Eternal abundance.
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Mistress of enchanted night,
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Innocent in virginal form
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Sleeps; at last, giving way in
Dream.
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Earthen grounding of
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Mother's mind,
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Ethereal, though
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The same:
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Entrances and exits, the waxing and waning
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Rhythms of life:
Hallowed.
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Engagement of fantastic
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Creature, dwelling between lived shadows.
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Absence of knowledge knows
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Transpersonality --
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Ebullience.
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