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

© 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue VIII Version I 17 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 A Locating Media in Cultural Theories acute in dealing with media, primarily because of the duplicity of the topic; it requires a theory to manifest the social implications of media, but in encountering the unexpected in the object of analysis, discourse on media tends to deviate from the analytic horizon that the theory prescribes. The emphasis on the relative autonomy of practice from habitus is an example: the increasing fluidity in the reality of media-saturated society transmutes the social that the notion of practice must presuppose, while imposing the contrastive sense of constitutive power not captured by conventional analytic tools for interpretation of culture. Yet, media do engage subjects in a particular modality of existence; by intervening into the topology of daily life, media frame a tempo-spatially orchestrated normalcy the constitution of which is not immediately apparent from the particularity of the information conveyed. How should we conceive this engagement? In an attempt to illuminate the social consequences of media, Hepp shifts attention to the impacts of media in his discussion about mediatized cultures. Calling for a systematic reconstruction of media as a complex component that intervenes in the constitution of the life world, Hepp claims that the shift to the holistic vision of media promises a set of sociological insights into the way in which micro-level subjective spheres reciprocate with the macro-level media culture composed of multiple media practices. On the topic of how we can utilize the ensuing conceptual frame mediatization and achieve the task of rectifying the shortcomings of conventional media research, Hepp acknowl ed ges the need for theories based on empirical research to articulate the actual workings of mediatized culture. Derrida provides a clue helpful for imagining how this task can be achieved by replacing speech with writing, so that the primary importance of voice in speech act theory is modified. Derrida’s engagement in the topic is not intended for empirical research in media, but its relevance is sufficiently clear. First, it enables us to situate mediatization as a predictable consequence of advanced communications technology; second, it serves to mobilize the performative perspective as a potentia l to supplement the theory for mediatization. One question arises at the outset: Can we apply the performativity of speech acts to types of expression based on media other than speech? J. L. Austin discovered that the task of speech goes well beyond the referential denotation of meaning, reaching the constitutive dimension of doing something 18 Despite its potential implications to media research, where the consequences of message take on tangible sociocultural forms, speech act theory itself proved to be an obstacle for replacing the missing link until 18 J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, Oxford University Press, 2 nd ed. 1975 . Derrida raised doubt about the notion of acting based on speech in media. Derrida suggests the possibility of applying the original thesis to non-speech events other than acts that arise from speech. Derrida’s main target is the essentialism inherent in western thought, where the physiological origin, i.e., voice, is considered a primary source of will and thereby the basis of thinking. 19 From this point of view, speech act theory replicates the essentialist tradition because of its prioritization of the voice coming from an actor. In Austin’s view, the voice similarly constitutes a critical element for the making of a context predicated for the fulfillment of a speech act. Few have so far responded to the discussion between Derrida and Searle, the principle proponent of Austin, for a potential use for media research, but in extending the notion of performativity to media, Derrida’s challenge to speech act theory offers a hint for imaging the act in media from an angle other than the available. a) Presence and Absence The use of speech act theory for media research is essentially a form of bricolage, a deviant use of the theory for purposes originally unintended. To justify this operation, a brief summary of Derrida’s intervention into the Austinian paradigm is appropriate. Let me begin with the notion of absence. It assumes importance for the deduction of the subterranean movements that predicate communication in a horizon unique to writing. Derrida captures the movements as a form of iterability, which predicates the act of writing, that presupposes the existence of its receiver but often in absence. Because of this duality in the target of the interlocutor, his/her overture to others is positioned in distinctive time and space. The presence, the addressee who is actually absent, is a willed potentiality to which one’s message is addressed. Writing in this manner locates our connection with assumed presences in time and space unique to their own; time resists narrative flow and the space therein disobeys the law of extension set by sheer physicality. The absence of which Condillac speaks is determined in the most classic manner as a continuous modification and progressive extenuation of presence. Representation regularly supplants [ supplée ] presence. …, this operation of supplementation is not exhibited as a break in presence but rather as a continuous and homogeneous reparation and modification of presence in the representation. 20 Is a speech act in this horizon? The answer is definitively yes, but to confirm the point, we need to 19 Referring to the “the inevitable consequences of these nuclear traits of all writing”, Derrida writes, “This essential drift … bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority, orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is precisely what Plato condemns in the Phaedrus .” J. Derrida, Limited Inc. , Northwestern University Press, Evanston IL., 1988, p. 8. 20 Derrida, ibid., p. 5.