Esposito - The Arts of Contingency - Critical Inquiry - 2004

Critical Inquiry 31 (Autumn 2004)

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1. See Giuseppe Cambiano, Platone e le tecniche (Turin, 1971).

The Arts of Contingency

Elena Esposito

If we consider the present situation of the arts of transmission in the

broad sense of the phrase as Francis Bacon used it—namely, as the whole

of the procedures that circulate, record, and organize knowledge—wehave

to admit to quite a discouraging condition for theoretical reflection.While

there exist many techniques in the sense of technologies, machineries, and

instruments, the ancient sense of art, as used by Bacon, has been lost. In

this sense, art—the art of carpentry, for instance, or the art of navigation

or persuasion—is something governed by rules that can be taught. These

rules indicate what to do, how to do it, and for what purpose.1 On a con-

ceptual level, there does not presently seem to be much to teach, in spite of

incessant reflection on media and of the multiplication of theories about

media. Technological development andmedia practice proceed quickly but

also proceed independently of theoretical reflection. Theory seems rather

to be concerned with integrating mostly uninterpreted new developments:

chat rooms rather than virtual reality (which was much theorized but

quickly faded from general interest), the internet explosion instead of in-

teractive television (which failed because of a lack of interest rather than

because of technological difficulties), very intelligent video games rather

than (often quite stupid) artificial intelligence. We lack autonomous theo-

retical categories that can deal with these developments. Instead of sur-

prising and informing the development of technology, theory seems to be

continuously surprised by the evolution of technology.

Media theory seems to be suffering from a kind of interpretive inade-

quacy. Inmedia analysis, for instance, theory tends topresuppose adubious

8 Elena Esposito / The Arts of Contingency

2. A similar approach can be found in RaymondWilliams,Television: Technology and Cultural

Form (London, 1974), where he argues that diffusion is a secondary aspect in the sense that it

comes later. First there is redefinition of the functions and of the process of communication,

leading then to new techniques for diffusion. An example is lithography, which was developed to

produce portraits to preservememories for those who already knew the represented person and

was used later to overcome spatial and temporal distances (see in particular § 1.3). I owe this

reference to James Chandler.

final causality. One tries to explain the phenomena by starting from the

effects, as though a certain innovation had been successful because of its

usefulness or because of the advantages it implies. But an innovation, aswe

well know, would not be new if it were not unknown before; and how can

unknown (and hence imperceptible and, strictly speaking, also unintelli-

gible) advantages motivate and foster the assertion of a new technique,

overcoming the resistance that always opposes the modification of familiar

practices? How can one examine the birth and consolidation of the new

without slipping into aporias or tautologies?

Problems of temporal coordination also emerge in the simple analysis

of data. In the study of media, the presumed effects often seem to come

before the cause, as exemplifiedby the age-olddisputesover therelationship

between the introduction of the printing press and the consequent social

transformations of the Renaissance. Many of the innovations allegedly en-

abled by the new medium (such as the production of a great number of

volumes, which was possible also in scriptoria, and the introduction of

punctuation, references, and title pages, with which copyists had already

experimented) seem to have actually preceded it, in a curious muddle of

causalities.

In my essay, I would like to propose a hypothesis: the difficulties of

media theory can be connectedwith the fact that thedifferentapproaches—

above and beyond their disagreements—tend to employ a concept of me-

dium based primarily on transmission.2 The weakness of studies of the arts

of transmission could then be due to an excessive emphasis on transmission

itself—to the detriment of the art as such and its other aspects. Certainly,

the notion of communication is by now much broader than the mere dif-

fusion of information, and also includes emotional, expressive, relational,

and other aspects. The medium itself is no longer understood as a neutral

Elena Esposito is professor of sociology at the University of Modena-Reggio

Emilia. She has published several works on the theory of social systems, media

theory, and social memory, including Soziales Vergessen: Formen und Medien des

Gedachtnisses der Gesellschaft (2002) and Die Verbindlichkeit des Vorubergehenden:

Paradoxien der Mode (2004).

Critical Inquiry / Autumn 2004 9

3. In sociology, systems theory, associatedmainly with Niklas Luhmann (for an overview, see

Niklas Luhmann,Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft [Frankfurt, 1997]) represents the rather

controversial and very complex attempt to research society starting from communication

rather than from people or the objects of the world. Objects of sociological analysis are then

first of all the ways and forms of communication, from which follow not only the configuration

and the complexity of the concepts used to consider the world but also what, for a given social

formation, is the world: not an independent external datum but the external reference of

communication. In this way, science and law, economics and politics, religion, formal

organizations, love, and much else have been examined. For such an approach, the study of

media is clearly central, even if at the moment there is no finished treatment of this topic.

Media, however, cannot appear as external instruments (typewriter, telephone, or television

set) but as modalities that configure and organize communication, first of all as its internal

articulations, which will then use these instruments.

diaphragm diffusing denotations and connotations with the least possible

interference; the medium intervenes, influences, constructs, or distorts the

message (depending on the view of the student). But in general it is thought

that the central point is the spreading of communication beyond the im-

mediate perceptual context (as in writing) or beyond the personalized

sphere of the people and things one knows or could know (aswith theprint-

ing press). This feature of the medium should then explain its cognitive

effects, like the ability to abstract or to modalize, with their respective

consequences for the general organization of semantics. One starts from

transmission and eventually returns to the recording and organization of

information.

In section 1 I will propose an alternative conception, the one of socio-

logical systems theory, which starts not from a concept of the medium as a

unity but from the difference between medium and form.3 As we will see

in section 2, this leads to consideration of the familiar technologies of com-

munication from the point of view of their capacity to loosen and recom-

bine the elements of the consolidated forms. Transmission, that is, the

capacity to reach more receivers and in different ways, would then be only

one of the aspects of this general reassessment of the relationship of the

necessary and the contingent, of the stable and themutable, of redundancy

and variety. In section 3 this approachwill be tested in the cases of themedia

of writing and the printing press. In section 4 I will try to sketch the con-

sequences of this approach for the still openfieldof computers as amedium,

specifically with regard to their communicative uses.

1In the sociological view the problem of media is not primarily the study

of the features of someobjects, that is, of particular instrumentswithcertain

presuppositions and certain consequences. There is also this problem, of

course, but prior to it there is the much more radical, self-referential ques-


4. George Spencer-Brown spoke of a space that can be inferred only when amark has

distinguished inside it a marked state and an unmarked state, and the initial space can be

reconstructed as the unity of both states, a unity that, however, at that point no longer exists; see

George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form (New York, 1972), chap. 2. According to Spencer-Brown,

this produces the shadow of paradox accompanying each step of the logical calculus developed

from the initial distinction, like a sort of condition of possibility that must be neutralized at each

passage in order to be effectively forgotten (but never eliminated). The problem is quite near to

the one in a philosophical perspective fromwhichDerrida’s construction starts (or deconstruction;

see in particular JacquesDerrida,De la grammatologie [Paris, 1967]). If one investigates the original

forms of communicationone encounters a language that is from its very beginningwriting, that is, a

mediated form that breaks the unity with a “violence originaire” (ibid., p. 55). The primary forms are

already secondary; they are the result of an exteriorization, and immediacy is only the illusion of an

observer looking for a world where he or she does not exist (transcendency).The study ofmedia is

then nothingmore than the study of this inevitablemediatedness, accompanied also in this case by

the aura of a paradox often latent but never eliminable.

5. See Luhmann,Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, p. 195 andDie Kunst der Gesellschaft

(Frankfurt, 1995), p. 165. The distinctionmedium/formhas been elaborated by Luhmann starting

from the distinctionmedium/thing presented by Fritz Heider in the frame of the theory of

perception; see Fritz Heider, “Ding undMedium,” Symposion 1 (1926): 109–57; translated as

“Thing andMedium,” Psychological Issues 1 (1959): 1–34. Here I skip the historical reconstruction

tion of reflecting on the presuppositions of the very operation one is bring-

ing about. Specifically, sociological research is conveyed through oral or

written communication, which is printed or mediated in various ways. To

study the required conditions and the ties imposed by media means at the

same time to investigate the conditions and ties of the very communication

through which one studies them, which remains subject to them even if it

allows their functioning. In other words, the study ofmedia becomes a par-

adigm for the (typically circular) analysis of the relevance of external factors

as seen from the inside. That is, the study of media represents an attempt

to independently question that which one ultimately depends upon.4

Seen in this way, the problem of circularity holds evident paradoxical

implications. In this form, this problem has been the object of several phil-

osophical reflections, which have mostly tried—in very different ways—to

neutralize the problem by diversifying the perspective (individuation of

metalevels, deconstruction of the discourse, or other solutions). In general,

these reflections shift the focus from unity to difference. The sociological

perspective, which ismuchmore interested in concrete (situated)practices,

comes to a similar end (the exploitation of difference as the basic element

of a theory that cannot and does not want to eliminate the shadow of par-

adox). However, this perspective is much more concerned with the oper-

ationalization of this position. In the case ofmedia—andherewecomeback

to our initial question—this leads to a theory that replaces the unitary con-

cept of medium, which is too concrete and too connected with the idea of

a definite object to be studied, with a specific difference: the differenceme-

dium/form.5 The object of media theory is, then, not an object but a dif-


and the examination of the differences between both approaches, about which one can read in

Luhmann,DieWissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1990), p. 53.

ference, which oscillates from one side to the other and is never univocally

defined because each side depends on the other. Who looks for unity finds

only this paradoxical oscillation—and then one shouldmove to difference.

This lack of univocality is the most important aspect of the distinction;

the medium, which is always evasive, cannot be observed immediately and

is apprehended indirectly in the forms through which it exists, but these

forms themselves would not exist without the corresponding medium. In

Luhmann’s formulation, this can be stated as follows: on both sides of the

distinction medium/form there are elements that in the medium are cou-

pled loosely and in the form are coupled more tightly—like, for instance,

grains of sand in a beach that have no connection to one another and there-

fore are fit to receive the form left by a footprint or like light rays making

objects visible. More interesting for communications studies is the case of

language, which exists as a medium in the sentences (forms) built by using

the possibilities it offers. The elements are the single words that in the me-

dium have no connection to one another and gain sense only in the context

of the sentences coupling them tighter.

The medium cannot be observed directly, but this does not imply that

it is not subject to any limitations; words can be combined to formdifferent

sentences, but the words still have their own meaning and cannot be

changed or invented at will. This holds for all media that show different

grades of granulosity, whichmakes themediamore or less plastic andmore

or less receptive to forms. As the presence of little stones in sand hinders

the impression of prints, so the concreteness of a word limits its possible

uses in forming sentences. The looser the medium, the more abstract the

forms impressed in it can be. This abstractness can be amplified by the re-

cursivity of the distinction medium/form; the elements constituting the

medium can be themselves forms impressed in a differentmedium, and the

forms can act as media for the imposition of other forms. The sentences of

spoken language, for instance, can be the elements used inwriting (another

medium) to produce different combinations (forms).

What are the advantages of this construction for media research? Our

problem, as we said, is to have available conceptual instruments that allow

us to distinguish and at the same time to connect the question of trans-

mission (media) with its semantic presuppositions (forms), without giving

priority to either aspect. In this view, media only arise together with the

corresponding forms in the moment when the elements constituting both

(inmore rigid ormore loose couplings) are available.Media ariseonlywhen


6. Luhmann (Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, pp. 202–315) speaks somewhatmisleadingly—in

my opinion—ofmedia of diffusion, which underlie precisely the aspect of transmission that I wish

to relativize. In his analysis, however, this accentuation disappears then completely.

7. See Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt, 1984), p. 224.

Systems theory, like deconstruction, inverts the trivial chronological priority relation of common

sense and of disciplines like linguistics, which assume oral communication to be the most

authentic form of communication and consider all others to be derivative forms. This hierarchy

can itself be a consequence of the availability and pervasiveness of alphabetic writing, as is shown

also by the fact that in cultures without accomplished phonetic writing, like ancientMesopotamia,

written names were the ones expressing the destiny and the nature of things because they could be

analyzed and handled with the typical techniques of a divinatory culture, while orality was

secondary; see Jean Bottero,Mesopotamie: L’Ecriture, la raison, et les dieux (Paris, 1987), p. 126.

it becomes possible to break the compactness of a unity into a multiplicity

of loose elements that can be recombined in different ways, that is, when

new possibilities to generate forms arise. Media are only potentialities, and

their fundamental function is to make contingent something that was for-

merly indispensable.

2The distinctionmedium/form is applied in sociology to several different

problems: specifically, to all cases where one wants to show how a specific

modality of contingency is produced and how it is controlled through spe-

cial forms. Media are then very different-seeming phenomena like love,

money, and truth, but also are positions in organizations and pupils in the

praxis of education. But media are also—and here we enter the field that

concerns us—the languages (which allow us to organize the medium of

sounds into discrete unities that combine to formwords and sentences)and

above all the technologies of communication:6 from writing and the print-

ing press through the mass media and the recent advances in telematics. In

what sense arewe dealingwithmedia here, andwhichare thecorresponding

forms and the elements to combine?Which unities get loosened, andwhich

necessities become contingent?

Writing and the printing press allow and impose a much higher aware-

ness of communication than is associated with oral communication,which

relies on many perceptive presuppositions implicitly taken for granted.

Written communication, on the contrary, must create autonomously

(through communicative means) all the references it needs and is in this

sense a more communicative form of communication.7 In comparison to

orality, writing is on the one hand obviously disadvantaged because itmust

give up much of the support that comes from the shared context of the

interlocutors, but on the other hand it can make use of the advantages that

come from the capacity to clearly distinguish communication from its ob-

servation. In anoral situation, bothmoments coincide; bothcommentsand

reflections on the ongoing communication and also the preservation of the


8. Eric Havelock bases his reconstruction of the origins of abstract thinking in ancient Greece

on this thesis; see Eric Alfred Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge,Mass., 1963).

9. See Luhmann, “The Form ofWriting,” Stanford Literature Review 9, no. 1 (1992): 25–42. There

is a widespread hypothesis that the birth of the critical attitude, together with the praxis of

observing and revising the contents of communication, is due to alphabetical writing; seeMarcel

Detienne, Les Savoirs de l’ecriture en Grece ancienne (Paris, 1988).

10. See Luhmann, Soziale Systeme, p. 128.

11. This is also a very controversial argument of Havelock: in the moment when the alphabet

enables a reproduction of communication that is really independent of the context (while even

syllabic writings presupposed that the reader already possessed the information necessary to

content of the communication occur only during the course of commu-

nication itself. There can be no detachment from the situation. In a hypo-

thetical condition of primary orality, there is neither the time nor the

detachment necessary to distinguish a communicative text fromthecontext

of the ongoing communication.8 In writing, on the contrary, this is possible

and this becomesmore andmore necessary aswriters presuppose that read-

ers are in the habit of distinguishing the narrated action from the actual

situation. What changes with the diffusion of alphabetical writing is first of

all the mode of observation. The observer is distinguished from the object

of observation, which enables new forms of reflexivity—including the po-

tential to observe oneself as an observer and to communicate about com-

munication.9

Communication can then refer directly to communication, to com-

menting on other communications, or to citing written texts, even if they

are not present. It can, however, acquire much greater autonomy and de-

velop its own criteria, whichbecomemore andmoredifferent fromtheones

based onperception andon lack of detachment. The things said (orwritten)

become more and more autonomous from the person saying (or writing)

them and instead gain currency from the strength of the argument, which

becomes increasingly important. Oral communication is an event that dis-

appears in themoment inwhich it is produced and thus cannotbemodified

or manipulated. Writing, on the contrary, remains fixed in the form in

which it was produced, but exactly because it does not change and does not

flee it can be considered fromdifferent points of view. Its invariabilityallows

for more possibilities of transformation, that is, for a greater variety of in-

terpretations.10 Writing, one could say, compensates for its fixity with the

potential for varying interpretations. One can change the communication

because it does not change itself.

Oral language is notorious for its use of deictic expressions that neu-

tralize the problem of the referent; their references are evident and clear by

themselves. With writing, nothing can be taken for granted; deictic expres-

sions must be replaced with formulations that remain univocal even when

the context changes. Onemust then facewhat remains fixed in spite of these

changes: the referent, which becomes a theme and a problem.11 Another


eliminate the ambiguity of reading), the context itself becomes independent and can become the

object of an autonomous analysis, fromwhich philosophy originates; see Havelock, Preface to

Plato, p. 148; Bottero andMarie-Joseph Steve, LaMesopotamia: Dalla scrittura all’archeologia

(Turin, 1994), p. 42; Bottero,Mesopotamie, p. 103; and Jan Assmann,Das kulturelle Gedachtnis:

Schrift, Erinnerung, und politische Identitat in fruhenHochkulturen (Munich, 1979), p. 220.

12. See Albert B. Lord,The Singer of Tales (Cambridge,Mass., 1960), p. 99, and Detienne, Les

Maıtres de verite dans la Grece archaıque (Paris, 1967), pp. 46, 56. This apparent ambiguity is often

presented as one of the characteristics of mythical thinking.

13. The originary deixis is replaced by a system of references to other elements of

communication,which in linguistics is calledDiskursdeixis; see RudigerWeingarten,Die

Verkabelung der Sprache: Grenzen der Technisierung von Kommunikation (Frankfurt, 1989), p. 19.

14. Here also originates the problem of interpretation, to which we will return later. Even

Gadamer, however, insists finally on the “unity of the text” (Hans-GeorgGadamer,Wahrheit und

Methode [Tubingen, 1960], p. 375).

aspect is especially interesting for our topic: orality, which relies on context

and its univocality, can accommodate a lack of coherence that to our eyes

often looks contradictory because coherence was afforded by the situation

and did not have to be established through communicative means.12 Oral

culture, based on repetition and on constant reproduction of the same

models, can then allow remarkable variety, which results from the variety

of situations and contexts. Written communication, on the contrary, can

not feed on environmental variety because it is definitely detached from the

context and bound to a much more rigid self-discipline. Writing must be

coherent, in the sense that all its parts must support each other without

contrasts and contradictions because there is no external context to resolve

any inconsistencies.13 Written communication is much less able to endure

incoherence, but exactly because of that it curiously enables more variety

then oral communication does.

Orality, as we saw, depends on repetition and can put up with ever-

changing situations; differences and lacks of coordination can be tolerated

because they are reabsorbed in the unity of the sense of communication.

Writing, on the contrary, must be coherent in order to be understandable

in different and unpredictable situations, but it can admit the unpredicta-

bility and diversity of reading situations.Writingmust be coherent in order

to be independent from context, and when writing is coherent the context

can then be left indeterminate. One does not knowbywhom, how, andwith

which agendas written communication will be read.14 The emphasis, pre-

viously on redundancy, is now on variety. Formerly, one admitted variety

in order to confirm stability, and now the fixedness of writing is only a

means of achieving variety. And variety nowmeans the capability to spread

communication through space and time without having to foresee differ-

ences of context; that is, variety can be defined as a greater capacity for

transmission.


15. See, as exemplary instances of research on the social relevance ofmedia, Havelock,Preface to

Plato, p. 109, and Elizabeth Eisenstein, preface toThe Printing Revolution in EarlyModern Europe

(Cambridge, 1983).Many accuseHavelock and Eisenstein of considering respectively the alphabet

and the printing press as the cause of social and semantic transformations.The data they present

actually contradict this claim, showing that the transformations in question did not follow the

diffusion of the new technologies but accompanied them—therebymaking the causal constellation

muchmore complex.

Returning to our distinction medium/form, what has it to do with this

analysis of the features of written communication? In our terms, it is a dem-

onstration of the functioning of communication technologies and of the

reasons it is convenient to use the distinction between media and forms.

Writing (and then printing) is a medium because by separating commu-

nication and observation it loosens the unity of the communicative act into

separate elements that can be recombined in different ways (in specific

forms). Writing allows distance from the context, and consequently iden-

tification of the referent is no longer immediately supplied by the situation,

but must be constituted by the communication, combining the available

elements in a new (and coherent) way. For this reason, because they gen-

erate new forms from their own decomposition into elements, writing and

printing are media adding new potentialities to linguistic communication.

These new forms are the ones that can be communicated at a distance from

context andmake communication successful evenwhen it must give up the

supports onwhich it formerly relied. In otherwords, themediumbecomes

an instrument of transmission primarily because it can produce its own

forms, but transmission is only an aspect, almost a consequence, of a gen-

eral transformation that modifies the asset of communication. Distant

transmission then feeds back on this decomposition into elements and

(particularly with printing) fosters recomposition in more complex and

unpredictable forms. However, it is not by starting from transmission that

one can understand the scope of the transformation and the role of the

medium.

3I will try now to verify this still quite abstract hypothesis by analyzing

more concretely the mediative features of writing and of the printing press.

Muchhistorical research adopts an approach that assignspriority to theway

information is handled, preserved, and combined, and infers from this the

possibilities of transmission that are available in a given social formation.15

With due prudence, one can also refer to the research on the psychic impact

of communication technologies. Lev Vygotsky’s and Alexander Luria’s

now-classic studies subordinate the ability to participate incommunication


16. See Alexander R. Luria,Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations

(Cambridge,Mass., 1976).

17. Actually, the communicative competence proceeds at the same pace as the acquisition of the

individual competences in the use of writing: annotation andmodeling.

18. See Jack Goody,The Domestication of the SavageMind (Cambridge, 1977), andWalter Ong,

The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (New Haven,

Conn., 1967), p. 43. This deep solidarity between words and things is not affected by the

availability of nonalphabetical forms of writing exactly because these do not allow for the

contextual autonomy I discussed above. Chinese culture developed very complex and refined

ways of manipulating words, but apparently never questioned the reciprocal dependency and

interpenetration of words and things; see amongmany David Palumbo-Liu, “Schrift und

kulturelles Potential in China,” in Schrift, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer

(Munich, 1993), pp. 151–68.

19. See Luhmann, “Die Lebenswelt—nachRucksprachemit Phanomenologen,”Archiv fur

Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 72 (1986): 187.

20. And then also for oral texts that exist as texts only once the form of the text has been

established in writing.

at a distance (for example, the ability to learn only by linguistic means) to

acquisition of logical instruments and the achievement of the necessary de-

tachment from the visual-practical situation.16 In order to be able to read

in a proper sense, one must be able to think in a written way—without the

ability to loosen the elements of media, there can be no transmission.17

Of course, a certain capacity for abstraction exists even withoutwriting.

One foresees, remembers, classifies, and groups, but apparently in all these

activities the separation of words and things is not acute. The things and

not the words are of interest, or the words are of interest only as things

among the others.18Alphabet-basedwriting,whichenablescommunication

without sound, is the medium that definitely underscores the difference

between sound and sense—and consequently between linguistic sounds

and referents—by shifting attention to the restrictions and conditions that

words must satisfy in order to refer to the corresponding objects. Attention

can then be turned to readers, with their abilities and their limitations, be-

cause knowledge is no longer governed by the distinction between the

known and unknown, the familiar and unfamiliar. The unknown, which

previously referred to deeper (and by their nature unattainable) truths, be-

comes the simple counterpart of what is known, is written somewhere, and

can be read.19 Nobody can knoweverything that has beenwritten; therefore,

one can be concerned with the diffusion of knowledge. Transmission be-

comes a lay question and can as such be technicalized.

The text as such attracts attention; it is fixed, controlled, and observed,

and becomes the object of several interpretations. And it is exactly in the

difference text/interpretation that the distinction medium/form finds ex-

pression in the case of writing; as a written text, communication as a me-

dium offers the space for a multiplicity of different interpretations.20 It


21. I here understand complexity in the technical sense of the availability of more and different

possibilities.

22. See Luhmann,Das Recht der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1995), p. 255.

23. Saul H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing (London, 1959), p. 21.

24. See Eisenstein,The Printing Revolution in EarlyModern Europe, p. 83.

makes available the loose elements in which the more rigid forms of dif-

ferent interpretations can be impressed. Communication consequentlybe-

comes much more varied and much more complex21 because the rigidities

connected with the concreteness of the references and with the sacrality of

the approach are loosened. Just as amediumexposes itself to the imposition

of forms and is a medium only through the forms impressed in it, so the

text exposes itself to the game of interpretations and exists as a text only

through its constant interpretation.22 And it is in its new medial guise, as a

text, that communication can be transmitted at a distance and can make

sense in unpredictably different situations—but an always different sense,

as different as the possible interpretations of a text.

In this process, the printing press exemplifies a deep continuity with the

medium of writing. Gutenberg’s discovery itself fits in a situation (in the

course of the fifteenth century) in which many others searched for the way

to produce “artificial script.”23 Initially they were interested only in pro-

ducing another kind of writing—an artificialiter scribere that could make

better what had been made before, not a kind of writing designed to spread

communication to unknown and unpredictable readers. Once introduced,

however, the printing press greatly increased the mediality of written com-

munication. The printing press achieved this through a process in which

transmission is again only one aspect, aside from the methods of collec-

tion, systematization, and retrieval of data on which most contemporary

thinkers actually concentrated their attention. David Hume declared ex-

plicitly that the fundamental advantage of the printing press seemed to be

the potential to continuously improve and amend books in various edi-

tions (in other words, the potential to impress in the medium of the text

always different forms).24 The first revolution of printing was a deep trans-

formation in theway that textswere producedandmanipulated,combining

an apparent continuity with a radical change. It is only with printing that

books really become texts—artifacts open to interpretation.

This is not, however, as is sometimes believed, because concerns about

the manipulation, systematization, and pagination of the text began with

the printing press. To a certain extent, these concerns have always existed,

even if they related to other problems—and here lies the not marginal dif-

ference. Up to the eleventh century, writing aimedprimarily at reproducing

the flux of oral language in order to mimic a correct oral reading. The ex-


25. See Jean Vezin, “Poemes figures,” inMise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit, ed.

Henri-JeanMartin and Vezin (Paris, 1990), p. 439, andMartin, conclusion toMise en page et mise

en texte du livre manuscrit, p. 462. This volume offersmuch interestingmaterial on the techniques

of organization of the pages in manuscripts.

26. See Paul Saenger, “La Naissance de la coupure et de la separation des mots,” inMise en page

et mise en texte du livre manuscrit, p. 448.

isting punctuation marks were prosodic ones, meant to indicate to the

reader if, and when, the voice had to go up or down.25 There were no signs

indicating the separation of the words or of the unities of discourse. The

texts were transcribed in the so-called scriptio continua,uniformlyfillingup

the lines of the manuscript without any visible articulations in the flux of

writing. But, once more, this was not because punctuation was unknown.

The ancient grammarians had devised techniques on the matter, and the

Romans had used them. In Ireland the separation of words, which greatly

increased the legibility of manuscripts, had been widespread since the sixth

century.26 On the continent, however, these techniques had not been used

for a long time because they did not capture general interest. There was no

interest in facilitating reading because reading was still a practice that pre-

supposed experience and familiarity with the text, which was taken as an

object of meditation and memorization before the performance of the oral

reading. The task of individuating the syllables and combining them into

words was part of the art of reading and not to be performed by the scriba.

One must not think, however, that the manuscript text lacked any in-

ternal organization. On the contrary, books had a complex hierarchical ar-

ticulation with the aim of making perceptible the underlying logical (and

finally cosmic) order. Images, for instance, did not have amerely decorative

purpose. They were undoubtedly useful as mnemonic clues, in accordance

with the old precepts ofmnemotechny, but they alsohada functionalmean-

ing, helping to transform the text into a complex symbolic object. Illustra-

tions were useful to orient the attention of the reader, with tables that

exposed or summarized the content of the chapters, but they were also use-

ful (in the decoration of the initial letters) in helping readers scan andmark

the rhythm of discourse. The ornate letters pointed out the different unities

of the text and allowed readers to distinguish its components; for instance,

the initials of the text were more developed than the ones of the commen-

tary.

On all of these levels it is interesting to note that the turning point is not

the introduction of the printing press butmuch earlier, in the eleventh cen-

tury, when the use of images became more complex and when the sepa-

ration of words and efficient forms of punctuation became common.

Research instruments like verbal concordances (word indexes) andmaterial


27. See Helene Toubert, “Fabrication d’unmanuscrit: L’Intervention de l’enlumineur,” inMise

en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit, p. 417.

concordances (subject indexes) were developed, overcoming even themis-

trust for conventional cataloguing systems like alphabetical order, which

bore no relation to the ultimate order of the world. The printing press was

introduced into a foment of active experimentation with the forms of pre-

sentation and the organization of manuscripts, which were innovations

connected with mostly autonomous developments like the increase and

consequent standardization of available books. Collectively, these devel-

opments created a favorable environment for the consolidationand thesuc-

cess of the typographical innovation.

Must we say, then, that the printing press did not make any difference?

Rather, in this situation of flexibility and ferment, the new technological

possibilities introduced transformations that marked the final separation

from the ancient and medieval approach. In preceding centuries images

associated with texts—images that were as elaborate and complex as ever—

still created a situation where the picture remained subordinate to writing.

It illustrated the text andnot theworld. Theminiaturist couldgooncopying

the images of the manuscripts reproduced by an amanuensis that under-

went a progressive transformation but remained recognizable. Or he could

draw his motives from a collection of available models or from repertories

of scenes and motives accumulated in memory, without any direct con-

frontation with the external world.27 Since the sixteenth century the ten-

dency has been reversed: the image illustrates the referent and changes its

relationship with the written text. The reference to reality resides now in

the image more than in the text, which in some cases is now used (contrary

to the former habit) to explain and to interpret the image. The text is in

service of the image and not vice versa. Even more acutely, the change in-

volves systems of information finding. As we saw, indexes and repertories

were already available before, but they did not refer to contingent criteria.

There were specific indexes, referring to the exact sheet and to the column

of the book, that held for only onemanuscript, and therewere independent

indexes, referring to chapters and paragraphs, that were valid for each spec-

imen of the work. There were, however, no instruments that were inde-

pendent and general at the same time—references such as page numbers,

which do not depend on the specificity of the single volume or on the in-

ternal organizationof the text.References to thepagenumberof aparticular

edition remain contingent (in another edition the page can of course be

different), but are nevertheless univocal on strictly formal grounds,making

no reference to the content of the text.


28. Particularly for consideration of the effects of the move to the market on the constitution of

a critical public sphere, see JurgenHabermas, Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (Neuwied, 1962),

chap. 1.

29. See Rolf Engelsing,Analphabetentumund Lekture: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Lesens in

Deutschland zwischen feudaler und industrieller Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1973).

30. See Terence Cave, “TheMimesis of Reading in the Renaissance,” inMimesis: FromMirror to

Method, Augustine to Descartes, ed. John D. Lyons and Stephen G. Nichols, Jr. (Hanover, N.H.,

From our point of view, this is a further arena for the decomposition of

communication into loose elements that can be recombined in new, more

varied, and more effective forms. The novelties in paging and in the typo-

graphical aspect are not only exterior questions but indicate the move to-

wards a different idea of order; in the Middle Ages the sense of order still

resided in an Aristotelian idea of putting things in the right place, where

rightness depended on a necessarily cosmic (and in its essence, inscrutable)

organization. Even if the organizationof themanuscripts used complexand

refined solutions, it still remained bound to this reference. The order

typographers tried to give to texts was, on the contrary, a rationalization

based on use and practice, a contingent organization that couldbemodified

and was driven by the possibilities for making use of the books. The aban-

donment of fidelity to the original alsomeant abandonmentof thenecessity

of order and the opening of a new space of contingency.

Communication thus becomes more and more autonomous, and this

implies correspondent autonomy of the referent. The books of men, once

separated from the Book of God, are separate also from the book of nature,

which is not the illustration of an already given truth but an inexhaustible

search horizon. In the search for knowledge one can move on both levels;

one can investigate nature with a previously unknown freedom, but one

can also consult, confront, and combine books. It is not only the single text

that is decomposed and combined in different forms; the relations among

texts, or the general horizon of communication, also become possible ob-

jects of decomposition and recombination. The medial landscape of the

culture of the press is constituted precisely in this loosening in elements,

which is accompanied by new possibilities of distribution and of diffusion

(of transmission).

Even in distribution, of course, innovations are introduced. A primary

example is the orientation towards the market, making the distribution of

books muchmore effective and above all much less controllable than in the

traditional restricted channels of manuscripts.28 However, the ability to

read remained restricted for a long time,29 which leads one to think that

the enormous importance of the larger availability of books lies not only

in a quantitative factor (more readers) but also in the qualitative change

in the practice of reading. Terence Cave speaks of a discovery of the reader

in the sixteenth century based on a circular and indeterminate relationship

between the writer and the reader;30 the writer writes so as to compel the


1982), pp. 149–65. In the same period, the humanists lamented that the multiplication of printed

texts brought their contemporaries to unlearn the art of reading as it was practiced up to then; see

Martin, conclusion toMise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit, p. 467.

31. See Cave, “TheMimesis of Reading in the Renaissance,” p. 163, who speaks explicitly of an

“unforeseenmental horizon.”

32. See Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford,

1986).

33. Given this circularity of utterance and interpretation, it cannot come as a surprise that the

reader has been discovered together with the complementary role of the author, which also did

not exist before the diffusion of the printing press and on whichmuch literature is available.

Inevitable in this account is the reference toMontaigne.

reader to elaborate his or her own autonomous perspective, that is, to pre-

suppose his or her active role. A practice of generative reading is thus sta-

bilized, where the text is used as material to be interpreted according to

criteria and interests completely foreign to the one writing.31 Compared

with the previous practices, this is a deep transformation just on the level

of the difference of medium and forms; the medieval allegorical reading

aimed at identification with, and not at detachment from, the perspective

presented in the text (which was not that of the writer, but on a noncon-

tingent and nonsubjective level). From that point of view, writing and read-

ing were virtually identical. The text was read in light of its transcription

from another text, and interpretation coincided with imitation—in other

words, the transposition of the first text onto a second text meant to re-

produce it.32 The reader was not presented with loose elements to recom-

bine but with a compact perspective with which to identify; he or she was

not presented with amedium but with a portion of the world. Themedium

arises with the pretense of interpretation, when the text appears as an in-

complete entity subject to the interpretations of readers. Even the long-

persisting use of topoi or the citations of the ancient authors lose their

mnemonic value and function as clues to be reorganized in an autonomous

way.33

The new autonomy of readers has remarkable practical consequences.

The spread of reading is significant not only because of the fact that one

learns to read but also because by reading one can learn. With books avail-

able, one can learn without teachers (without support from the interaction,

that is, by orality) and eventually evenagainst the indicationsof theteachers,

interpreting books in one’s own way. Besides the diffusion of alphabetiza-

tion, a no less relevant change takes place in the way books are used by the

alphabetized individuals. The old treatises of rhetoric and memorization

are reproduced, but so is an ever-growing number of guides and practical

handbooks, meant to function as dumb teachers with the aim of transmis-

sion of knowledge that is first of all an autonomous act by the reader. The

world of communication holds by itself and no longer needs contextual


34. The case of the news is particularly studied, about which one speaks of criteria of

newsmaking that have little to do with truth, morality, or objectivity; see, for example, David L.

Altheide, Creating Reality: How TV News Distorts Events (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1976), and

Altheide and Robert P. Snow,Media Logic (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1979). Luhmann,Die Realitat

der Massenmedien (Opladen, 1995) presents the mass media as an autonomous functional

system of contemporary society.

support; on the contrary; it is now communication in absentia that deter-

mines the ways and the practices in presentia of objects and persons. Me-

diation is not subordinated to immediacy anymore. Transmission cannow

appear as an autonomous question.

4Since the diffusion of the printing press, our medial landscape has un-

dergone deep changes. In the present situation, many students assume an

autonomous relevance of the media as a specific system or as a complex of

internal criteria for the selection and production of communication.34 It

would be interesting to examine the functioning of the mass media on the

basis of the distinctionmedium/form, especially in view of the involvement

of perceptual components, which are dissolved and recombine themselves

in specifically communicative forms.

Owing to a lack of space, I would like to focus on the potential usefulness

of the distinctionmedium/form for describing another aspect of themedia

in contemporary society: the impact and consequences of the spread of the

communicative use of computers. The aim of this paper is to propose and

comment on the advantages of this distinction as regards the overemphasis

on transmission in the analysis ofmedia; in the caseof telematicsandrelated

phenomena this overemphasis seems particularly evident. Think only of

some sensational failures of the last decades: the project of broadband in-

teractive television, which dramatically demonstrated (for the financers)

the public’s lack of interest in a potentially infinite transmission capability.

Apparently users are not particularly interested in choosing from a near-

infinite selectionof programs.What interests them isnot somuch thequan-

tity of transmission but rather the quality of selections, the possibility of

decomposing and recombining information in new ways, with supports

and instruments available to help them in this recombination.This capacity

is what they seem to be finding in the internet.

The difficulty in dealing with this topic lies first in the fact thatwe cannot

presume to foresee the evolution of a medium in the course of its defini-

tion—not only because the situation is still veryfluid, but especiallybecause

of the fundamental elusiveness of novelty. What can be predicted in the

present as a new development cannot be really new, if novelty means rup-


35. See Heinz von Foerster and Paul E.Weston, “Artificial Intelligence andMachines That

Understand,”Annual Review of Physical Chemistry 24 (1973): 353–78.

36. Not simply to diffuse.

ture and surprise. A predictable surprise is as paradoxical as an alreadypres-

ent future, a concept that, not by chance, is cited in almost all scenarios of

the alleged effects of technology.

But, then, what can be analyzed? Where can we turn our attention?We

can consider themedial features of the new technologies,which are far from

unproblematic. Does it make sense to speak of a medium in the case of an

instrument that seems to subvert all the familiar characteristics ofmassme-

dia? Where there was anonymity there is now personalization, where there

was unilaterality there is interactivity, where there was the mass there is in-

dividual configuration, and, above all, where there was an instrument ex-

pected to be as “not noisy” as possible, not to interfere with the message,

there is now amachine used precisely to process information. Starting from

transmission and its features, the introduction of the communicative use

of computers seems to mark a rupture rather than a continuity, and the

available analytical categories do not seem adequate. Before stating defi-

nitely that the computer is not a medium, however, it can be useful to try

tomodify the concept ofmedium—for instance, by applying thedistinction

medium/form and seeing if we get any useful clues. The starting question

would not be how telematics facilitate the spread of information but rather

if and how they permit a new decomposition into elements and a subse-

quent recombination in different forms.

It is well known that computers are quite a special kind of purposeless

machine,35 radically not trivial machines, because, paradoxically, they are

not used to produce any specific object predictable from the beginning but

rather to produce previously unknown information—36 that is, to produce

surprises. The curious aspect is that this productionof surprises is entrusted

to a technique that can to some extent be programmed and controlled.The

forms impressed in the medium are then pieces of information; but what

are the loosely coupled elements that will be coupled in a more rigid way?

Again, these are pieces of information, but this information is notdealtwith

as information; computers process data that were initially information for

someone and will possibly produce information as the result of the pro-

cessing but are actually handled with no reference to their meaning. This

loosening ismuchmore radical than the one that led, somecenturiesbefore,

to the dissolution of the unity of written communication in themultiplicity

of interpretations.Here even the sense of the interpretation is irrelevantand

is completely subject to the interests of the user.


37. See von Foerster, “Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things,”Understanding

Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition (New York, 2003), p. 252: “The environment

contains no information; the environment is as it is”—coherently outlining the consequences of

the first developments of cybernetics and of circular causality introduced by NorbertWiener,

Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Cambridge,Mass.,

1948).

The mass of loosely coupled elements, the substrate of this medium, is

constituted by the data put into the machine. These data represent a set of

elements whose bonds are loosened in order to be available for new recom-

binations. This is the unprecedented ability of computers: to deal with

communications as simple discontinuities without any reference to the in-

tention of the transmitter or to the situation in which communications are

produced. Computers and only computers are able to radically loosen the

unity of communication in the search for new forms that mostly had not

been considered by the one who produced the information. For example,

when processed by computers, a text can show structures, regularities, and

repetitions completely unknown to its author. These features can never-

theless serve as clues for the creation of forms of other kinds, which can

themselves become informative. Features that are perfectly casual from the

point of view of the one drafting them, such as recurrent constructions and

the redundancy present in lists or directories, are used by the computer in

order to achieve effective ways of processing, with unpredictable results

(think of compression techniques or the work of search engines). Even the

search for information through computers relies on simple data; the work

of computers has nothing to do with meanings, and this is its great advan-

tage and its great disadvantage. It is an advantage because it enables the

decomposition of communication into elements specific to the medium

with no regard for the previous bonds. But it is also a disadvantage in all

cases where information rather than simple data is the desired output; for

example, computers are not able to plausibly translate a text from one lan-

guage into another.

A first consequence of these transformations, as has already become

clear, is the need to rethink the concept of information—a typicalmodern

notion conceived as a unity with its own identity. According to this par-

adigm, information can be exchanged, gathered, stored, and transmitted

like the (printed) books containing it. In this sense information as such is

a value and its accumulation is wealth because information is understood

as something scarce, and from the perspective of economics scarcity is the

presupposition for value. If, on the contrary—as seems to follow fromour

analysis—information becomes relative to the specific perspective of each

observer,37 there is no information by itself, and its intersubjective value


38. On this double relationship of mass media to time, due to which the communication

of the new is always at the same time production of the old, see Luhmann,Die Realitat der

Massenmedien, chap. 3.

39. We find here again, in an ironic version, the reflexivity of sociological research, investigating

a category of object—communication—towhich the research itself belongs and that takes as an

object distinctions that depend on communication itself.

narrows to selection. In this case, information is valuable not because of

what it conveys by itself (everyone builds their own information from their

own perspective) but because it selects possibilities—a place from which

one can start, like a computer does, to create more and more complex

forms. Information then has value only as a precondition for a further de-

composition into elements, which leads to recombination into forms.

Let’s return in closing to the question of transmission. Does this medial

decomposition have consequences for the diffusion of communication, as

happened with writing and the printing press? If so, what are these conse-

quences?Ourmassmedia societyhas aneed andaproblemthat areperfectly

complementary. On the one hand, there is a growing need for new infor-

mation to replace that which is published every day in the papers and

disseminated by television, which by the very fact of having been com-

municated is no longer new or news.38 On the other hand, society suffers

from a constant information overload and is constantly searching for cri-

teria that enable selection and effective use of information. In this situation,

the computer as a medium offers, with its processing capabilities, a new

potential to produce and select information out of already available in-

formation (by handling it as data). With the use of computers, commu-

nication enormously amplifies the ability to draw information from

information—39 not hidden or impossible-to-find information, but infor-

mation that did not exist before and is produced simply in order to increase

the available differences. This information, however, is produced on de-

mand and is combined and selected in such a way as to permit the user to

forget everything he or she doesnot need—that is, toneutralize theproblem

of information overload. It is possible that the effects of themediumon the

transmission of forms depend on this aspect. That the informaticprograms

rather than the structures of language and of communication decidewhich

forms are impressed in the medium of the available data is a novelty on

which we can only now begin to reflect.

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Esposito - The Arts of Contingency - Critical Inquiry - 2004