Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 22 Issue 8

© 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue VIII Version I 13 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 A Locating Media in Cultural Theories the search was on, so to speak, for a new way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together. 9 If we can conceptualize the “search” as a form of “structure of feeling” that emerged at a phase of print capitalism, we see how the problematic relation between social theories and media practice suggests that “a way of linking fraternity, power and time”, or the constriction of new social solidarity based on media, defies methodical explication derived from semiotic imaginations. The approach is effective for elucidating the contingent character of the nation thus imagined through print media; although nation building essentially follows a similar pattern, reflexive subjectivity in the act of imagining a community relies on the innovation of new cultural signs, not on an application of the familiar. Anderson rightly makes an adjustment arguing that the approach to nationalism should be interpretive instead of that of conventional political science; nonetheless, for all his insights into the consequences of mass media, Anderson treats literary work as a type of semiotic sign and relies on the conventional identification of mass media “as objects, texts, apparatus of perception”. This methodological approach to media results in a mismatch of the analytic target (imagined communities) and a methodological procedure (focus on texts primarily as a form of referential vehicle). Let us take Anderson’s analysis of novels. In novelistic depictions of social life as collective recognition of common subjective perceptions of reality, temporality is an indispensable precondition for the construction of the imagined nation; depictions of the public in a novel present a social life taken for granted, yet at a certain stage of the literary history of a nation, mundane depiction of the public serves as a type of qualisign against which reality turns into an “object”. The qualisign assumes the status of icon. Nevertheless, the signified of the qualisign – simultaneity – is not a direct derivative from the referencing of the qualisign to the real because the novel as a form of duplex sign conjoins the iconic meaning to a reflexive awareness on the part of readers. In Peircean parlance, the secondary layer of signification derives from a form of sinsign for deduction of the self as an object for a synthesis of aggregate readership. However, the validity of this synthesis depends on the knowledge of aggregate readers, with whom the reader presumably shares the literary realism of simultaneity. In so adopting the semiotic interpretation, Anderson risks excessively stretching the indexical role of an iconic sign. The claim that media generate a social condition wherein a reader of a novel generates a synthetic knowledge presupposes an ontic condition of a kind, but a condition that is not easily ascribed to a function of aggregate quantity. 9 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 1991, London, Verso, p. 34. In Anderson’s discussion on nationalism, the formative power of print media constitutes a lynch-pin of his assertion about the mediation of unreflected but decisive elements contributing to the making of modern nations. His work in this sense is an exemplary contribution to media study. However, one’s impression is that he falls short of claiming the value of his ingenuity because of the reliance on the notion of print capitalism without substantive evidence. It is facile to ascribe the shortcomings of semiotic theories to this outcome, but it is surely not a far-fetched predicament given Anderson’s sophisticated use of semiotic perspectives. Like a double-bladed sword, his use of semiotic insights might cut too well, leaving behind the problematic unthought inherent in media. Couldry’s departure from the semiotic approach to meaning seems relevant in light of the role of actor in interpretation. It helps to explore the more protean practice in analytic terms, but a critique of semiotics from within casts doubt on whether the paradigmatic shift in media makes the matter overly schematic. Numerous published studies show that media studies revitalize practice by stimulating a new set of issues; however, in reading those, one also detects pragmatic use of semiotics in which other related theories on texts, objects, and apparatuses remain indispensable for induction of cultural consequence from practice. As mentioned, actors may activate media (e.g., consumption of a novel), but their actions in aggregate can result in a collective representation that may obtain a semiotic function (e.g., index of an imagined community). III. F rom S emiotics to P ractice Media practices today come with diverse modalities of communicative process. Forms of conventional print media – newspapers sold at stations for commuters, free papers given away in public, books in specialized stores nurtured by devout supporters – though increasingly pressed economically to peripheral spheres of circulation, cling to their shrinking but still substantive market. Such remnants of the pre-digital era are accompanied by the medium-free broadcasts. Radio, television, and satellite transmissions once dictated the correlation of time and information reception. Media in this sphere liberate the receivers of message from the materiality of representation, while also generating a peculiarly cumbersome lifestyle. The ritualistic synchronicity imposed on the audience turned broadcast into semi-theatrical performance. Then, with the advent of new broadcast, everything did not dissipate into the air; it tied the audience to the rigid regime of time, imprisoning them in an authoritarian scheme of media reception. However, the last few decades have produced a radical transformation in the way media regulate the