Excommunication
Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation
Always connect – that is the imperative of today's media. But what about those moments when media cease to function properly, when messages go beyond the sender and receiver to become excluded from the world of communication itself – those messages that state: "There will be no more messages"? In this book, Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark turn our usual understanding of media and mediation on its head by arguing that these moments reveal the ways the impossibility of communication is integral to communication itself – instances they call excommunication.
In three linked essays, "Excommunication" pursues this elusive topic by looking at mediation in the face of banishment, exclusion, and heresy, and by contemplating the possibilities of communication with the great beyond. First, Galloway proposes an original theory of mediation based on classical literature and philosophy, using Hermes, Iris, and the Furies to map out three of the most prevalent modes of mediation today – mediation as exchange, as illumination, and as network. Then, Thacker goes boldly beyond Galloway's classification scheme by examining the concept of excommunication through the secret link between the modern horror genre and medieval mysticism. Charting a trajectory of examples from H. P. Lovecraft to Meister Eckhart, Thacker explores those instances when one communicates or connects with the inaccessible, dubbing such modes of mediation "haunted" or "weird" to underscore their inaccessibility. Finally, Wark evokes the poetics of the infuriated swarm as a queer politics of heresy that deviates from both media theory and the traditional left. He posits a critical theory that celebrates heresy and that is distinct from those that now venerate Saint Paul.
Reexamining commonplace definitions of media, mediation, and communication, "Excommunication" offers a glimpse into the realm of the nonhuman to find a theory of mediation adequate to our present condition.
About the Author
Alexander R. Galloway is associate professor of media studies at New York University. He is the author of four books on digital media and critical theory, most recently, "The Interface Effect".
Eugene Thacker is associate professor in the School of Media Studies at the New School. He is the author of many books, including "After Life", also published by the University of Chicago Press.
McKenzie Wark is professor of liberal studies at the New School. His books include "A Hacker Manifesto" and "Gamer Theory".
Reviews
"At a moment when media theory seems both ubiquitous and amorphous, more necessary than ever, yet often trapped in old paradigms or infatuated with new technology, 'Excommunication' makes a timely and provocative intervention. There's so much intellectual ferment in this historically informed, radically contemporary volume that it might well be a founding document – has the New York school of media theory finally arrived?" – Thomas Bartscherer, Bard College
"Communicational media permeate every aspect of our lives. But do we really know what media are? And do we really grasp what's at stake in every act of communication? In this book, Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark explore the obscure but fascinating origins and esoteric limits of communicational media and suggest helpful ways that we might be able to experience and use them differently" – Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University
