Philosophy of the Medium

Taking the principle of the ‘disappearance of the medium’ into new territory, this book questions the pervasive influence of the principle that the ‘medium is the message’. Bold and expansive, this book argues that we have for too long focused on the technical specificities of media, when we should have been focusing on what it is that mediums do, that is, on their ‘content’ rather than their formal and technical qualities.

With a re-reading of McLuhan, this volume offers a study of the conflicting views of technics as a medium in Bernard Stiegler’s work as well as an investigation into the extent to which Michel Serres’ work on communication sheds light on the nature of medium. Engaging also with the concept of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), and the notion of probabilistic objects in quantum physics and climate change, he explores the way in which measurement is perceived to ‘create’ reality. Concluding with a fascinating study of the implications of consciousness as a medium, this book ultimately reconsiders and offers a deeper understanding of what we mean by the term ‘media’: it is that which comes ‘between’ and which facilitates the transmission of content, essentially a creator of possibilities, yet never present as such in the light of its success as a vehicle for meaning.

Philosophy of the Medium offers a lively and nuanced interrogation of the ongoing viability of the assumptions of medium theory, a leftover from the age of McLuhan, in terms of questions about a medium’s disappearance, transparency, digital dematerialization, objecthood, lack of concreteness and, ultimately, content. This is an important addition to media ontology. Gary Genosko, Professor of Communication and Digital Media, Ontario Tech University, Canada
This is an important book that offers a formidable challenge to existing orthodoxies as Lechte takes on a range of thinkers and shows how they have misunderstood what a “medium” is, resulting in a need to change the ways we think about media, art, and the world as such. Richard Rushton, Professor of Film Studies, Lancaster University, UK

John Lechte is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Macquarie University, Australia. He has published widely on French thought, particularly the work of Julia Kristeva. He is author of Genealogy and Ontology of the Western Image and its Digital Future (2013), which includes an analysis of Sartre’s philosophy of the image. His most recent book is The Human: Bare Life and Ways of Life (Bloomsbury, 2018).

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