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Pan European University Faculty of Mass Media

Paul Feyerabends Against method: a media-anthropology prophecy based methodology


(And its asset to the research of the reception of media reality)

Seminar Paper for the subject Communication in a Foreign Language

2010/2011

Peter Jan Kosmly

Paul Feyerabends Against method: a media-anthropology prophecy based methodology

LIST OF CONTENTS Abstract / Glossary Introduction Part l Part 2 Part 3 Conclusion Bibliography / Resources 3 5 6 11 18 20 21

Paul Feyerabends Against method: a media-anthropology prophecy based methodology

Abstract
This paper deals with Paul Feyerabends book Against method and describes, how it is related to the dissertation thesis Reception instruction in the media reality, writing in progress by the author of this paper. The aim is to identify a broader context for media criticism, media ethics and media studies, here named as media anthropology. The scope of this paper is to introduce some of media studies & criticism related scientists and researchers as prophets of media anthropology. The additional work in the dissertation thesis would be then to prove reception deformations in media reality as systems replaced human prophets, teachers and shamans. In this paper, the anything goes principle of Feyerabends book is examined as a ruling principle for better, more complex, organic reception (of media reality). This principle is introduced metaphorically, as well as by relevant quotations and remarks. In the conclusion we underline the importance of such a method for understanding and managing media reality, because later we are going to describe it as an alternative stream/mode of consciousness.

Paul Feyerabends Against method: a media-anthropology prophecy based methodology

Selected glossary
Anything goes (transl. vechno se hod, Slovak vetko sa hod or vetko je citovaten, pouiten, etc.) a leading principle of epistemological anarchism to achieve a freedom of (in) science (p. 19). Conservatisms in science (transl. konzervativizmus vo vede) influence of background, such as linguistic, personal, religious, cultural, that is suppressed in order to achieve more objective observations (p. 11). Consistency condition (transl. podmienka sdrnosti) a demand for scientific observations: new theories must be consistent with older findings. According to Feyerabend, this condition is unreasonable, because it preserves the older theory, not the better one (p. 24). Critical rationalism (transl. kritick racionalizmus) a methodology by Karl Popper, quoted as a possible alternative to Feyerabends methodology, but later proven as acceptable for school philosophers, but not for the question of human freedom (p. 154). Epistemological anarchism (transl. epistemologick anarchizmus) a methodology promoted in Feyerabends book to achieve more liberate, more real observations (epistemology) and theories (philosophy of science), science is an essentially anarchistic enterprise (p. 9). Freedom (transl. sloboda) the very essential element of knowledge; unfortunately, as modern theories become clear and reasonable only after incoherent parts of them have been used for a long time, liberating the science means avoiding a theory to be beaten into a pattern (p. 17-18). Ideology (transl. ideolgia) naive view of man and his social surroundings does produce the illusion, that a fixed method, fixed theory of rationality, can deliver real, objective truth (p. 18); a discourse based prejudice of observation. Natural interpretations (transl. prirodzen, naivn vklady) conclusions that are taken from visually observed phenomena with simple reasoning (p. 58). Tower argument (or the stone arg. transl. argument vee) the reasoning argument for refuting the motion of the Earth before Galileo and Copernicus: the stone is falling direct to the surface (p. 57).

Specific in this paper


Discommunication (transl. diskomunikcia) a state when no content is communicated, quoting Stuart Hall and his reception theory. Framing, Framekeeping (trans. rmcovanie) again, Hall theory is applied a frame is the context, which is kept by media communication, which frames the content, therefore also likewise gatekeeping the framekeeping activity could be described. Media (transl. mdium) quoting Marshall McLuhan the medium is an extension of human abilities and activities, an improvement of them. Media reality (transl. medilna realita) the reality provided, constituted, operated by media; described and observed as an alternative stream/mode of consciousness. Prophet, Prophecy (transl. prorok, proroctvo) in this paper used for scientists and researchers which have foretold the happening in media reality. Reception (transl. recepcia) a process of consumption and interpretation of any content in order to produce, better, an additional one (primary and secondary texts e.g.), only an organic, systematic reception leads to meaningful knowledge distribution.

Paul Feyerabends Against method: a media-anthropology prophecy based methodology

Introduction
"Language," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is..." 1

We have led this passage from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, originally the word language is replaced with the word space the language is our space, our species space cultural, anthropological, and social; beginning with forms of language and ending with complex (hypnotic) formulas as super-market, tele-vision, etc.. Nor could best linguists decide whether the language is made of archetypal, lets say anthropological constants, such as language structures in mind or is that being taught in the society, neither can they draw a line put a materialistic in a positivist science term objective classification or characteristics (they try: codify it with vocabularies, encyclopedias, etc.). But, according to the object of their lifetime science-ing, the view may not be so mechanistic try to exam and explain it within the terms of itself. We called this a paradox of the linguistic neutral referring to Derridas and others opinions that the language cannot be clarified within language terms, or even knowledge structures. Nietzsche even declared the language a cage. But back to linguistic neutral are linguists able to and have the right to decide what a language is? Are they able to create and perform a scientific research of it? Moreover, what is the language? Is it a system, a net, or even a network what creates the language what remains: words, meanings... or idioms? Classic of media science Harold Lasswell sciencing media his historical reality 2 pointed out, that media have a function of the social heritage transmission. So we add besides the question what is language and what science uses to examine it the question what may the media be? Very simply, the cover of my textbook named Mediln osmonoh (Media octopus: quoting V. Flussers metaphor media as an octopus) an introduction to the media anthropology does give the answer media regarding any view were and would be a human creation paraphrasing Marshall McLuhan the medium is: any instrument that helps human that extends his abilities, and the ideology included quoting McLuhans work The Medium is The

Message/Massage.

1see 2

more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhikers_Guide_to_the_Galaxy In this study we simplify this to a media reality, which is later going to be proven as a simulation, an alternative mode of consciousness. So we try to point out, that Harold Lasswell a classic of the media discourse, which tries to explain media, had got this views based on his experience as living in his historical period. But the media system the media reality may not differ so much nowadays as well.

Paul Feyerabends Against method: a media-anthropology prophecy based methodology

At this point we declare a strict solution: language sciencing as well as the science itself, the media reception and media education have to be revolutionized. It should be done with the arising methodological view, that we will call media anthropology. Simultaneously, the actual state of hypnosis, media narcosis3, a reception through destructive consumption4, should be replaced with the media reception, that we call an organic reception.

1. Language de(con)struction in media reality, the call for an epistemic tool


The media anthropology as presented in this paper straightens the view of media as an organic system. If we proposed in foregoing lines the need of an organic reception of media, we should now explain why it is un-free, not organic. Furthermore we will suppose even more: that media reality produces what we people call lie untruth, false illusions and irresponsibly. That is because the media reality is based on other elements/fundaments as is the human society. Media reality, as it is going to be proven soon, doesnt recognize (because of binary valuation: either 0 nothing or 1 anything, not good or bad) categories as known for human beings. It de-constructs, mixes, constructs, simulates, re-organizes a prophet of media anthropological view of media, prof. Vilm Flusser, accents: Vetko dianie dnes smeruje na obrazovku, na filmov pltno, na fotografiu, aby sa tak stalo vecnou
konfigurciou. Tm vak zrove kad innos strca historick charakter a stva sa magickm ritulom a vene opakovatenm pohybom. (...) Nstroje a prstroje vykonvaj prcu tak, e vytrhvaj predmety z prrody a informuj ich, to znamen: menia svet. Ale aparty nevykonvaj prcu v tomto zmysle. Ich zmerom nie je zmeni svet, ale zmeni vznam sveta. 5

In my lectures I never omitted the difference between the information theory and information society and the process of artificial in-formation, which is considered to be a higher, system process (in media reality which is created by the media system, as a part of political, social, cultural, anthropological, etc., system). Another pioneer of the anthropological view of media, Herbert Marcuse, gave 40 years ago the answer that the universe of language has been closed6. The language as a part of
McLuhans understanding of deformed reception of media reality, the type causing narcotic dependence, neurotic reactions and long-term frustration I would prove and exemplify this in the dissertation study. 4 according to prof. B. Heilbrunn, a professor of marketing, this is the most used type of consumption in nowadays society in the cultural industry times 5 FLUSSER, Vilm. Komunikolgia. Bratislava, 2002. p. 18, 22. quoted In VALEK, Peter (2005). Sperryho syndrm. p. 37 6 MARCUSE, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. p. 86
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Paul Feyerabends Against method: a media-anthropology prophecy based methodology

cognitive processes was/is deprived of its autonomy, critics and demonstrative power (linguist may recall the classic Jacobsons roles of language). The language was turned into a toy of The Mighty, because governments, supervisors (mass media as gatekeeper) and political correctness saloons have the last word, because they lead people to do something, buy and receive/accept (both in the Slovak term recepcia used by linguists and philosophers from Nitras interpretation school led by prof. Miko and prof. Popovi). As we put down the goo-goggles of media optics (Jan Amos Komensk explained it poetically and very precisly in his work Labyrint svta a rj srdce) or vice versa, put on some demystificating X ray glasses (as suggested by Roland Barthes in his Mythology), we will be able to see the real or at least in the sense, what real means to humans. Even and, of course, that we start there at the consumer shelf/basket. This may be a pure assumption, but the major value of this product is a consumer one, calculated as a ratio of a manufacturing producing prize and satisfaction of consumers needs (that are constantly programmed by marketing system and media reality) and this is probably the case of cost economization, that is related with producing a Slovak and a Czech language package mutation. The name of this product is a condensation of Slovak word Prskacie and Czech word Prskac. Such a type of media object creation was already mentioned by S. Freud as condensed interjections Verdichtung7, where interjections are specific shortcuts as in dream or joke. So who decided, to whom was this blessed idea given, and who ordered and released this? And why? Both questions could be briefly answered with m. system and m. reality. Marcuse described it prophetically exactly: he thinks, that the dialectic character of the original language reminding the tension between is and supposed to be (simply, the matter of ethics) is suppressed/repressed and the new language insists on shortcut-ing (cutting, pasting, thanks to the computer program Office everyone is involved, everyone is a surgeon of own language). Philosophers call therefore the result a clip-consciousness. These shortcuts reorganize the act of designation simply giving a name in the way of replacing meanings by signs/brands/logos, etc., by repressing evolution and development and establishing hypnotic formulas that declare themselves as legitimate and real, true... (again, very simple example a billboard announcing 100% discounts? 100 years guarantee?

VALEK, Peter. Sperryho syndrm. p. 85

Paul Feyerabends Against method: a media-anthropology prophecy based methodology

Stop lies! and promoting real discounts), identifying person/object with its function, etc.8 Herbert Marcuse claims in his study One-Dimensional Man, that communication means (we often call media) and the information and entertainment overflow that has gone out of control (Frankfurt Critic School, which Marcuse belonged to, firstly used the term culture industry) carry with them prescribed (Stuart Halls term framed) patterns and schemes, certain rational and emotional reactions, which connect producers with consumers in one ... simulation of reality. These products indoctrinate and manipulate, they support the false consciousness, which is immune against own falseness and create schemes of one-sided thinking and behavior9. So we raise the question, how is the recipient able to free/liberate himself from this repression, interpret media and as the result to live them and live them up, maybe finally leave them and explore new ones. Stuart Hall, a member of Birmingham Critic School, used in his theory the term framing (therefore we sometimes mention framekeeping) and explained the impact:
As social groups and classes live increasingly fragmented and sectionally differentiated lives, the mass media are more and more responsible (a) for providing the basis on which groups and classes construct an image of the lives, meanings, practices and values of other groups and classes; (b) for providing the images, representations and ideas around which the social totality, composed of all these separate and fragmented pieces can be coherently grasped as a whole. This is the first of the great cultural functions of the modern media: the provision and the selective construction of social knowledge.10

All the movement around critical theory, critical reading (U. Eco, etc.), critical aesthetics, criticism of the culture industry and imperialism (Frankfurt School), the reception theory (S. Hall, etc.) could and will in this paper be seen as outstanding from literary criticism, as exploring a new area for the last 100 years for language scoped scientists. Yet, the demarcation line has not been vanished, still there are scientists, that do not include media communication within their study of language the literary system and literary reality are well defined (e. g. by Anton Popovi in the Tvorba a recepcia Creation and reception with co-author Frantiek Miko from the Nitra Interpretation School; the author of this paper himself took part in such a study: 2006 2007 studied PhD. in language and literary education at University of Trnava) the problem is that they study their (semiotic, linguistic) artifacts within the media reality, related to other artifacts in a specific way, in a manner, that can be understood by translating it. The call for a translation is to been seen in work of semiotics

MARCUSE, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. p. 91 Ibid. p. 43 10 HALL, Stuart. Culture, the Media and the Ideological Effect.
8 9

Paul Feyerabends Against method: a media-anthropology prophecy based methodology

(Jurij Lotman), media philosophers (Peter Valek, Vilm Flusser) and also by the author of this paper. This has to be done by emerging science, carrying the term for the whole study of media and its effects on humans. The marked demarcation line was, in our opinion, set by one of media anthropologys prophets (among already mentioned Stuart Hall, Herbert Marcuse) Marshall McLuhan. He defined or we can say, his definition culturally remained (in a form of meme11): the medium is the message (eventually massage, Mess Age, Mass Age), following the concept of Understanding Media as carriers, extensions of human abilities. Moreover, we have recently realized and debated the discourse knowledge base and the source of the leading so we are already aware of the media discourse as the sum of knowledge about media yet we have to re-discover the leading, the ideology. Stuart Hall sums very briefly the concept that we called paradox of a linguistic neutral and the anthropological or methodological problem with it:
...it is the discourse which constitutes the subject position of the social agent, and not, therefore, the social agent which is the origin of the discourse the same system of rules that makes the spherical object into a football, makes me the player. The existence of objects is independent of their discursive articulation...12

Beyond the concept of cultural imperialism13, in media anthropologys view seen as consistently concurring on McLuhans 60s concepts (in a sense of the general system theory) was Jean Baudrillards 80s definition of Simulations Simulacras and the reality it constitutes: hyperreality. Simulacras, simply, are a stage of sign evolution they are signs (returning to Flussers concept of apparatus quoted Slovak in the beginning) not carrying any meaning, they are a sign created only for the simple purpose or we may say function of designation. As they are a part of cultural industry (or media reality), they are obviously driven by another vehicle than classic, semiotic, signs these are driven by a human vehicle, Peirce defined it as the Interpretant14. Partly this, artificial system was defined by prophets of media anthropology outstanding from media psychology, Gerhard Maletzkes view of communication drew another demarcation line between people and (their) apparates, already sedimented (in a sense of sociological explanation of knowledge distribution) in a form of meme. Maletzkes communication model15
11 12

additional information about The Meme Theory e. g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme (quot. 01/2011) HALL, Stuart. Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. p.70 13 further information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_influence (quoted 01/2011) 14 more about Peirces semiotic asset can be found at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/#Int (quoted 01/2011) 15 further information and the topic of communication theory can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_theory (quoted 01/2011)

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includes anthropological categories as communicators self-image, personality, working team, pressure and constrains related to feedback reception, which can be various (St. Hall: even discommunication or opposite reading). These categories may for media anthropology serve as a psychological base for an anthropological view at human relations with/to media and its actual degree; neurosis, frustration and media addiction can be proven. The role of an epistemic organic reception must be revealed, the role of prophets, teachers and/or shamans in the human society and human-based systems (such as language) and their deformation or even destruction within media reality the evidence base for a daily exploration of misunderstood human relation to media. Simply to prove, it seems as nonsense, to apply human created and human understood ethics, onto events in media reality. In 2004, California, the DHMO syndrome16, or better to say (in the sense of a semiotic view), the problem of DHMO took place, or recently, last years the Balloon Boy Story are a pure semiotic signs in a manner of a simulacrum, their essence need to be understood through terms of system (apparatus) creation of hyper-reality. Because any step taken by human applying the ethics, could and would be digitalized, mixed or framed, suspended in media reality therefore it has no anthropological constitution, no real value or existence (in media reality it can be e. g. owned, or forgotten after another new story). The human ethics deformed in media reality was seen in the BBCs reaction to Balloon Boy Story, the debate about addiction to soft news type events, not about addiction to media.

16

Referring to http://www.dhmo.org a case of an official trial against dangerous substance (that can be found as a major compound of acid rains) dihydrogenmonooxide, which was postponed after revealing the semiotic secret: DHMO is simply the Latin term for H2O, water.

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So we raise the final question the quest for the instrument. We hope to find an epistemic one for Hitchhiker in the Global Village, something like a Hitchhikers Guide to the Media reality17.

2. Feyerabends epistemological anarchism and the method against a method: anything goes (...in a free science)

If the legendary Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy a fictive book explained in a book; so a form of media reception followed by media production begins with words
Dont panic,

the Hitchhikers Guide to the Media reality, a book born as a metaphor of a fictive book explained in a book, could add:
Anything goes

We try to esteem that a handbook, moreover mental tool translating mechanism can serve as an epistemic response to media reality, the process of reception leading to media production. Epistemic in the sense of social heritage/knowledge distribution, in the sense of transcending the language of knowledge and revealing its elementary constituting bricks (as in a pattern), another view delivered by Jacques Derrida calling these elements traces or by scientists trying to re-map the ideology in language e. g. Benot Heilbrunn: semiological pollution, receivers reception of logo, Stuart Halls rediscover of ideology18 - ideology delivered may not be the ideology accepted/consumed, struggle over meaning, Slavoj Zizeks psychoanalytical concern about acceptance of ideology, assuming Marxs thesis about commodity fetishism as ideology fetishism19, public sphere discussion raised by Jrgen Habermas, or by or the concept of responsibility assumption20, emerging through centuries and ideologies). The author of this paper suggests own solution, based on the key function of the review genre to orientate21. As a genre, review operates within the literary system production of literary knowledge (as shown by prof.
17

Author of this paper called this innovative book, epistemological tool also Didactica Bombastica, referring to Czechoslovak pedagogical icons: J. A. Komenskys work Didactica Magna and D. Lichards Rozhovory o Matici slovenskej. 18 HALL, Stuart. The rediscovery of ideology: return of the repressed in media studies. 19 basic information can be found at http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/biography/ (quoted 01/2011) 20 Responsibility assumption is a doctrine in the personal growth field holding that each individual has substantial or total responsibility for the events and circumstances that befall them in their life. quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assumption (01/2011) 21 a related study KOSMLY, Peter. Podoby recenzie v periodickej tlai.

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Popovi and prof. Miko); it is a mechanism of classification and orientation, the first step of reception, which ends with production (e. g. text of literary knowledge, interpretation or misinterpretation or literary commercial, a form of self-promotion within the system). That epistemic tool is as simple as the dialogue between a priest and a farmer about Slovak cultural institution found in Daniel Lichards work and as instrumental as glasses goggles, which misled the Journeyer in Komenskys work Labyrinth of the World and the Eden of the Heart (Labyrint svta a rj srdce). The idea and the instrument is to review give ones opinion, even more a reception instruction or promotion, to orientate. The only one tool, dealing with hyper-reality based on irregulative and unpredictable relations a principle, that one itself can be described as a cement for media reality is the principle anything goes. If this principle would serve for media-anthropological based reviews of media reality, it could teach us to control, to liberate in order to todays destructive consumption (B. Heilbrunn).
It is clear, the, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, ,objectivity, ,truth, it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes. 22

These are words written by a philosopher from the 60s, Paul Feyerabend, famous for, sometimes pejoratively marked as trendy, epistemological anarchism. The core of epistemological anarchism is the seek for something (nowadays in quantum physic the quest for the God Particle The Higgs Boson23) that can instrumentally serve to analyze, to science the object. And for Feyerabend this was not a question of a linguistic component, or social/political constellations, more it was a question of principle, guidance and security through scientists journey into the deep of unknown. Nor is true, that Feyerabend was against science, or even tried to relativize it. He was, actually one of the pioneers objecting that a relation between human and its media (incl. language and ideology) is tight, but dense and can be tracked vice versa. The reason for naming him a prophet of media anthropology can be readable from the quotation, where he explains, what is his intention in fact to humanize sciencing:
I therefore again warn the reader that I dont have the intention of replacing old and dogmatic principles by new and more libertarian ones. For example, I am neither a populist for whom an appeal to the people is the basis of all knowledge, nor a relativist for whom there are no truths as such but only truths for this or that group and/or individual. All I say is that non-experts often know more than
22 23

FEYERABEND, Paul. Against method. p. 19 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson (quoted 10/2011)

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experts and should therefore be consulted and that prophets of truth )including those who use arguments) more often than not are carried along by a vision that clashes with the very events the vision is supposed to be exploring.24

So the ethical compound in his philosophical solution of the everyday matter is clear. Once again, he repeats it at the end of the Introduction to Chinese Edition:
But I am against ideologies that use the name of science for a cultural murder.25

We can simply read the Main Argument from the Index page: each chapter begins literally explaining basic argumentation and terms. So we are able to excerpt key theses: in the introduction, there it is considered, whether the science is an anarchistic enterprise, or not; Feyerabend claims, that theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives. He, then, shows by examination of historical episodes and by an analysis of the relation between idea and action, that only the major achievements in the Western science was done by breaking, trespassing a boundary of law-and-order discourse, that had currently been ruling.
More specifically, one can show the following: given any rule, however fundamental or rational, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite.26

So his argumentation is more epistemic, empirical than logical. In the idiomatic language of this study we could say, that he tries to imply a human principle into the methodology, into a system, that can either tend to be homeostatic or to be more and more complex (according to general system theory). We may also say, that Feyerabend tries to reveal the human in that system, tries to anthropologize more and more bureaucratic science practices. He argues against traditional elementary conditions: hence science is never a completed process; it should be done before the event, simplicity, elegance or consistency are never necessary. What is more, they are systembased components, conditions for the ideology of science, for the discursive curriculum not for knowledge. We may think about doing a great science, when all elements pass into our puzzle, but what if the puzzle is a matrix that should only mislead, apart from the scienced object. As the pattern is set and we are only seeking elements to prove/strengthen it, there is no liberating science there. Models/images are only a halfway point, not the conclusion. So we may, with a real scientific method, find some curious, questionable object/excerpt and it depends on our abilities to scientify it, so to find a passing theory and explain. Yet, in this chapter, Feyerabend explains, what was already explained in this study as the relation between reception and creation.
24 25

FEYERABEND, Paul. Against method. p. XIII Preface to The Third Edition Ibid. p. 4 26 Ibid. p. 14

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He also realizes, that creation of a thing and full understanding of a correct idea of the thing are not even parts of the same, indivisible process (divisible only for the purpose of exploration), moreover he claims that this process is not and could not be guided by a program, because it is driven by a passion (quoting Kierkegaard). The same is announced through media anthropology and the inquiry on reception instructions: the reception is a specific human activity that may also serve to cope with artificial systems (e. g. orientation in literary knowledge). In a sense of the antiestablishment movement of the 60s and 70s, when this book was composed, we may say that the knowledge flows, expands itself, the same way as the universe does. This should be the only one image that we have to remind at through the iconoclastic scientification of any object. From the definition of the role, which anarchy plays in scientific progress, we may see, that Feyerabend slightly confuses both meanings; he claims that anarchism helps to achieve progress also in the law-and-order science, hence he applies the moral on the method. It is obvious, that every theory has its known and unknown and Feyerabend tries to present the liberty we have in relating both, not omitting that a professional sticks to the very essential the passion from getting known, explored, explained, etc. We may say, he refuses to give a plain definition of progress, he suggests this would be done, when a strict definition would not be needed anymore and the progress argumentation would be transgressed (transcended). Knowledge is here understood not as series of self-consistent theories that converge into an ideal view; not as a gradual approach to the truth, but as an ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives, each part of a collection, forcing others into greater articulation and competing to be a part of the life-giving process of developing consciousness27. Then he summarizes, that the role of the scientist is not to seek for the truth, to praise god or systematize observation, his role is to make the weaker case stronger and thereby sustain the motion of the whole. This principal claim separated Feyerabend from those, who practice neo-atomism, a reductionist view, that the whole could be observed through its parts but looking at the complexity of, e. g. media system, it is highly improbable even to find and isolate any stable part. It is because modern, complexity based systems, are operated rather by a program, instructions and semantic relations, than by an interaction between solid particles. That is, why Feyerabend in the third chapter claims, that the consistency condition which demands new theories to be consistent and coherent with elder ones, serves the system of knowledge, not the science at all. Uniformity endangers the free development of individual and weakens the critical power. Hypotheses contradicting well-confirmed theories, otherwise, give the

27

Ibid. p. 21

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evidence that cannot be obtained in any other way. Furthermore, in the 4th chapter he explains that there is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge, because the whole history of thought is absorbed into the science and is used to improve every single theory. Nor is the political, social, economic, or medial aspect of the surrounding, where objects are being scientified. These should and may be included in the science, not limit it (political: unwilled science, economical: no funds for science, medial: only popular themes, etc.). So does also Feyerabend, as he examines in chapters six to fourteen the case of the tower argument used by Aristotelians to refute the motion of Earth (a stone falling from tower fall vertical and straight down, to the Earth surface) and the revolution set by Galileos science. The point is that Aristotelian materialistic concept does not, in a self-reflecting manner, include the explorer itself. It glues sensory observation (of the phenomenon) and idea production (statement):
But under normal circumstances such a division does not occur; describing a familiar situation is, for the speaker, an event in which statement and phenomenon are firmly glued together. This unity is the result of a process of learning that starts in ones childhood. From our very early days we learn to react to situations with the appropriate responses, linguistic or otherwise. The teaching procedures both shape the appearance or phenomenon, and establish a firm connection with words, so that finally the phenomena seem to speak for themselves without outside help or extraneous knowledge. They are what the associated statements assert them to be. The language they speak is, of course, influenced by the beliefs of earlier generations which have been held for so long that they no longer appear as separate principles, but enter the terms of everyday discourse, and, after the prescribed training, seem to emerge from the thing themselves.28

Feyerabend uses here the term phenomenon as a synonym for event (in our meaning, within the media discourse) appearance and obviously with a notion what Husserls phenomenology considers29 acts of consciousness and their study, structures of the consciousness and related mechanism at this point we point out our subject of study: reception instructions, which can be seen either as glued into the product (immanent), or prescribed, framed, linked with the ideology and so may be transcended (transgressed). The reveal of ideology, discourse, or system of leading is present in Feyerabends book too, as he continues previously quoted claim with:
At this point we may want to compare, in our imagination and quite abstractly, the results of the teaching of different languages incorporating different ideologies.30

Back to the origin of the stone argument, he calls it simply natural interpretation and continues with a statement, that:
28 29

Ibid, p. 57 Phenomenology, in Husserl's conception, is primarily concerned with the systematic reflection on and analysis of the structures of consciousness, and the phenomena which appear in acts of consciousness more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy) 30 FEYERABEND, Paul. Against method. p. 57

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In the history of thought, natural interpretations have been regarded either as a priori presuppositions of science, or else as prejudices which must be removed before any serious examination can begin.31

As he writes, the first view is that of Kant and some linguistic philosophers, the second is due to Bacon, Greek skeptics, etc. Both are components of the Western, reductionist paradigm based materialistic science, in which there is no place for a human idea as it is, because every input has to be objectivized, concerning the output or vice versa, scientific output is linked with scienced input, and everything has to be proceed in a strict procedure, we call science, but which actually is more a bureaucracy than science as a liberator from the Cage of Language (Nietzsche), or as a leader of human-knowledge based activities. So, the validity of such appearances is always examined and, either confirmed or denied (what, of course, is a prejudice and refutes a free observation) this is called reasoning, but the problem may be, that what we obviously call a reason is rather a part of the discourse itself, of the ideology in which we actually want to see, science, the object. For example, in the stone argument, it was the motion of the stone that was a reason for refuting the motion of the Earth. The problem is, that the observation statement stone is falling straight down must have referred to a movement in absolute space. The same are the Journeyers goggles from Komenskys work, the same are the recipients pressures and constrains that are based on the materialistic and visual character of language used to state observations and knowledge. An argument from observation is therefore misleadingly connected with the ideology and cannot be therefore real. Whether is it denotatively interpreted Bohrs model of atom, or meaninglessly used communication formula stating, that communication acts as a magic bullet, as a process beginning at communicator and ending with receiver (old Lasswell based models are a part of the media discourse history and are a stage of evolving mental maps, as it show Maletzkes, Halls, Baudelaires, etc. more structured, even more real communication theories). Simply, to interpret it a bit ironically, in a manner of a natural interpretation, the more words (and worlds) we created, the more visual and mental metaphors, images we use... the more is the lack of precise meaning. This can and was brilliantly demonstrated in the bachelors thesis Logo, Logonym, Logotype and Icon, which I consulted for my student udovt Pastork at Univerzita Jana Amose Komenskho v Praze. In the section on Logotype and pragmatic representations of the logo, we quoted an internet survey on logo reception. The author survey about 40 people, so we used the same questionnaire and involved four professionals, sign-makers, image-makers; people who create logos daily: their answers actually rejected the relevance of that inquiry. We found out, that there is a crucial difference
31

Ibid. p. 58

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between a professionals statement (what logo is, how is it readable, color balance, artistic value) and those which we called laics. As professionals create logos and/or other communication elements, they understand the principles, but laics do not they receive and what is more, also recipe, the final form, the appearance, so they are not able to judge about principles, about quality, in fact about nothing. Their view represents the argument from observation in the case of Earths movement (the stone falls vertically, so a movement of the surface cannot exist). The force of the argument from observation needs to be considered. Feyerabend also raises the question about describing ones observation, when he does not know the language a communication code. That means, if we want to prove the experts work, the effect, we ask for an opinion of laics, but if we want to explore the reception of experts work, we have to rethink. Furthermore, Feyerabend raises the question of media as he mentions Galileos argument to remove sensation (perceived excitement of senses) as the medium the carrier of the message, through a new channel a scientific discourse of telescopic exploration. But the initial experience with telescope is, on one hand an essential, indifferent, and contradictory thesis for the ruling theory, on the other hand it does not give a true picture of the sky the truth is seen as an object for science, philosophy:
Moreover, the extension and the internal structure of the image is entirely determined by the telescope and the eyes of the observer: it is the telescope that decides how large the diffraction disks are going to be, and it is human eye that decides how much of the structure of these disks is going to be seen... We must subdivide what we perceive to find a core that mirrors the stimulus and nothing else.32

Why is this book and Feyerabends supertemporal not trendy philosophy important in media anthropology is the evolving consciousness that flows into this methodology: Feyerabend wrote this in McLuhans times, before Baudrillards and Ecos analyses of the semiotic universe, before Derridas re-construction and tracing, before Foucaults discourse analysis; this view was later marked as technological/media determinism, what means a fear to be overridden by robots and systems. But Feyerabend and McLuhan were prophetic enough to mark them as prophets of media anthropology. They were convinced that, what rules these principles, is human. So they described their attempts to form a simple theory of understanding media, understanding science and in their legacy we will try to form a simple theory of understanding reception, something in the sense of ideology de-construction and simultaneously in the sense of a Hitchhikers Guide to Media Reality. It could begin like this:

32

Ibid. p. 110

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The explanations did not make the matter at all clear to me at the time; but they were not therefore useless...33

3. Ideology deconstruction
There is a further element in this tapestry of moves, influences, beliefs which is rather interesting and which received attention only recently the role of patronage. Today most researchers gain a reputation, a salary and a pension by being associated with a university and/or a research laboratory. This involves certain conditions such as an ability to work in teams, a willingness to subordinate ones ideas to those of a team, a harmony between ones ways of doing science and those of the rest of the profession, a certain style, a way of presenting the evidence and so on. Not everyone fits conditions such as these; able people remain unemployed because they fail to satisfy some of them.34

Only a brief concept can be manifested at this place the broader theory of ideology deconstruction or whatever we call it would be a part of my dissertation thesis, regarding the emerging science in philosophy of the human the media anthropology. As we sometimes join or put together scientists/researchers and call them prophetic from this point of view, it has to be added some additional names. First of all, Roland Barthes, has to be mentioned and his short novel on mythology, where he not only illustrates and explains mystification through various short essays, moreover he adds a theoretical passage on mystification. There35 he suggests an anti-mystification mechanism a mechanism that reveals ideology and strips the meaning. It comprises three steps36: 1. Concentrating on the emptied designator (in a myth, of course, which deals with secondary designation, the denoted meaning from the 1st designation is emptied and filled with a parasitic meaning, which serves the purpose of mystification, is no longer a designation, Barthes call it exnomination), the concept is left alone, without any ambivalence. So the myth, the signification, is clear: it is clear, what stands for what. This type of view is related to one, who produces such a myth (a form is being searched for the concept). 2. Reversely, concentrating on the designator as a full in a specific manner deformed signified unit; we simply reveal the deformation, the ideology, comprised in the myth. This view is characteristic to the mythologist, who decomposes the myth and sees a deformation in the signification a fake, a hoax, a manipulation.

33

MILL, John Stuart. Autobiography. Essential Works of John Stuart Mill. ed. Lerner, New York, 1965, p. 21, quoted from FEYERABEND, Paul. Against method. p. 119 34 FEYERABEND, Paul. Against method. p. 119 35 BARTHES, Roland. Mytologie. 36 more in BARTHES, Roland. Mytologie. p. 126-127

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3. Finally, concentrating on the designator and its unbreakable relation of form and meaning, I become a reader of the myth, I accept the secondary designation in the same manner as I did with the primary one, although they are distinct principally. The objection raised by Feyerabend is as important as the deformation of designation, mentioned here with the help of Roland Bathes. These prejudices the material conditions and support for scientists mentioned also in Gerhard Maletzkes model of communication (communicators arm): the personal background and influence that it has on ones work/proficiency. We may object, we may try to implant an objectivity principle into our work (either science, or media), or even the ethics principle it is nothing worthy; until we do not accept, that the concrete form/manifestation of our work is deeply linked with the profession/its social status, eventually with the discourse and its ideology (HR or IT is a popular area, therefore well paid and so has a higher status). Feyerabend summarizes it like this:
I tried to show that neither logic nor experience can limit speculation and that outstanding researchers often transgressed widely accepted limits. But concepts have not only a logical content; they also have associations, they give raise to emotions, they are connected with images. These associations, emotions and images are essential for the way in which we relate to our fellow human beings. Removing them or changing them in a fundamental way may perhaps make our concepts more objective, but it often violates important social constraints.37

and calls loudly to recover those features of knowledge, which not only inform, but also delight us38. Regarding the principle anything goes a Czech group named ZTOHOVEN (which is a play of word, could mean z toho ven: out of that or sto hoven: 100 shits) arranged a nuclear explosion (a digital fake) in the live stream Czech television camera39. They vindicated themself with such a prophetic text:
We are no terrorist or political group, our purpose is not to intimidate or manipulate the society in the very same way as we are witnessing in everyday real life or media. No matter the intentions whether political or those of market, companies, global corporations which secretly manipulate and exert pressure on their products and ideas through every channel possible into the human sub-consciousness. Even the slightest intrusion into this system, appeal on pure human intellect, its ability not to be worked upon is by our opinion harmless inside democratic country.40

One of the best methodologies for use of the anything goes principle that can serve as a relevant reception tool for deconstruction of media reality is that of critical rationalism, so that the last word goes again to Paul Feyerabend, because of his pregnant description of rules, which
37 38

FEYERABEND, Paul. Against method. p. 124 Ibid. p. 122 39 more at http://ztohoven.com (quoted 02/2011) 40 http://ztohoven.com/omr.html (quoted 02/2011)

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led also his anarchistic scope from visual representations through ideology to knowledge and philosophy of science:
Develop your ideas so that they can be criticized; attack them relentlessly; do not try to protect them, but exhibit their weak spots; eliminate them as soon as such weak spots have become manifest these are some of the rules put forth by our critical rationalists.41

41

Ibid, p. 151

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Conclusion: Media reality an alternative mode of consciousness?


But neither the rules, nor the principles, nor even the facts are sacrosanct.42

This is the message (not a massage) that sublimates all the important observations and notions found in Feyerabends prophetic book. This is also the message that constitutes an approach to media reality and leaves enough liberty for sciencing it. In the dissertation thesis Reception instruction in the media reality it will be objected and proven (through various test on media addictions, neurosis and reception deformations), that media reality is an alternative mode of consciousness generated with a help of artificial systems (media: language, idioms, designation and secondary designation, myth, transfer of knowledge, political, social, economic and cultural context). And will be written, in a form either of a handbook Hitchhikers Guide to Media Reality or Didactica Bombastica, a metaphorical text with the function Feyerabend has so honestly praised in Galileos argumentation a text based on the illustrated metaphysics43.

42 43

Ibid. p. 123 FEYERABEND, Paul. Against method. p. 121

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Bibliography
BARTHES, Roland. Mytologie. Prague: Dokon, 2004. ISBN 80-86569-73-X. FEYERABEND, Paul. Against method. First published London : New Left Books, 1975. 3rd Edition published by Verso, 1993. ISBN 0-86091-481-X HALL, Stuart. Culture, the Media and the Ideological Effect. In Mass Communication and Society. Ed. James Curran, Michael Gurevitch, and Janet Woollacott. London: Edward Arnold, 1977. HALL, Stuart. (ed.) Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. London California: Sage, 1997 (2003). ISBN 0 7619 5432 5 HALL, Stuart. The rediscovery of ideology: return of the repressed in media studies. In Culture, Society and the Media. New York: Routledge, 1982. KOSMLY, Peter. Podoby recenzie v periodickej tlai. In Otzky urnalistiky, 2005, XLVIII, No. 1 2, p. 113-121. KOSMLY, P. Organick recepcia medilnej reality. In Quo vadis massmedia. Quo vadis marketing. (a conference preceeding ) Trnava: Faculty of Massmedia Communication of UCM, 2010. ISBN 978-808105-183-8 LICHARD, Daniel. Rozhovory o Matici slovenskej. Bansk Bystrica: Matica slovensk, 1865. MARCUSE, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. London: Abacus, 1972. VALEK, Peter Sperryho syndrm kognitvna dynamika a multimedilny chronotop. Bratislava, 2007. Valek, P.: Sperryho syndrm kognitvna dynamika a multimedilny chronotop. Bratislava: Pictus, 2007. ISBN 80-7128-011-9.

Internet resources (assessed December 2010-February 2011)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhikers_Guide_to_the_Galaxy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_influence http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/#Int http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_theory http://www.dhmo.org http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/biography/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy) http://ztohoven.com

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