Philosophy of Media
Perniola’s wide range of theoretical interests include philosophy of media. In Contro la comunicazione (Against Communication 2004) he analyzes the origins, mechanisms, dynamics of mass-media communication and its degenerating effects. The volume Miracoli e traumi della comunicazione (Miracles and Traumas of Communication 2009) deals with the uncanny effects of communication since the 1960s focusing on four “generative events”. These are the students’ revolts in 1968, the Iranian revolution in 1979, the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, and the 9/11 Twin Towers attack. Each of these episodes are all dealt with against the backdrop of the miraculous and traumatic effects in which mass-media communication have blurred the differences between the real and impossible, high culture and mass culture, the decline of professions, the success of populism, the role of addictions, the repercussions of the internet on today’s culture and society, and, last but not least, the role of evaluation in which porn stars seem to have reached the highest ranks in the who’s who charts.
Read more about this topic: Mario Perniola
Famous quotes containing the words philosophy of, philosophy and/or media:
“Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds with other nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous.”
—Edna O’Brien (b. c. 1932)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)