Foucault: subject and power

“Though central to modern notions of individuality and liberty, it should also be noted that the word ‘subject’ also carries connotations of subjection, of being an individual constitued within or by power structures, ‘a subject of the Crown’ for example. So on the one hand this is a concept which constitutes an internal, private sense of self in individuals, but on the other it refers to the positioning of the individual within society. Michel Foucault’s work is particularly influential here, and is central to post-structuralist concepts of subjectivity. He argues that these two concepts of the subject are not contradictory but inseparable: the very rationality celebrated by enlightenment is not a universal principle, but a discourse which positions some individuals as rational but others as criminal or insane (Foucault 1989).”

From: Lister, Martin and Dovey, Jon et.al. (2003), New Media: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge, p.252

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Society of spectacle

“In a series of epigrammatic paragraphs The Society of the Spectacle asserts that post-war capitalism has reinforced its control over the masses through the transformation of culture as a whole into a commodity. Thus the spectacle is not so much a set of particular cultural or media events and images, but characterises the entire social world today as an illusion , a separation from, or masking of, real life.”

From: Lister, Martin and Dovey, Jon et.al. (2003), New Media: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge, p. 145

McLuhan’s history of cultures

1. primitive culture of oral communication
2. a iterate culture using the phonetic alphabet and handwritten script which coexisted with the oral
3. the age of mass produced mechanical printing (The Gutenberg Galaxy)
4. the culture of electric and electronical media (: radio, tv, computer

“Mc Luhan strives hard to show how television is a tactile medium.”
“ … new kind of primitivism, with tribal-like participation in the ‘global village’ “

From: Lister, Martin and Dovey, Jon et.al. (2003), New Media: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge, p.75-6

The virtual self

“To talk about the concept of the virtual is not just to speak of headmounted display systems but also to have to take into account the way, in which experiences of self and of identity are increasingly mediated in a virtual space.”

From: Lister, Martin and Dovey, Jon et.al. (2003), New Media: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge, p. 37

Hypertext

“We may define a hypertext as a work which is made up from discrete units of material in which each one carries a number of pathways to other units. The work is a web of connection which the user explores using the navigational aids of the interface design. Each discrete “node” in the web has a number of entrances exits or links.”

From: Lister, Martin and Dovey, Jon et.al. (2003), New Media: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge, p. 24