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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.
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.
- GenresPhilosophy
217 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2013
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138 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 6, 2016
Despite being written by the star trio of New York school of media theorists, it struggles a little to purely distinguish their individual approaches to their central theory of xenocommunication and their issues with hermeneutics.
Galloway does the setup with Hermes/Iris/Aphrodite/Furies but then Thacker goes into the "haunted media" theory leaving it upto Wark to do much of the tying up in the third and final segment before he goes off into his own Marxist re-reading of theological heresies.
It ultimately works and offers some solid critiques to mainline rhetoric of media studies but in parts, struggles to articulate it.
Galloway does the setup with Hermes/Iris/Aphrodite/Furies but then Thacker goes into the "haunted media" theory leaving it upto Wark to do much of the tying up in the third and final segment before he goes off into his own Marxist re-reading of theological heresies.
It ultimately works and offers some solid critiques to mainline rhetoric of media studies but in parts, struggles to articulate it.
October 15, 2025
Galloway found a way to live perpetually inside the clenched assholes of both Eugene Thacker AND Mckenzie Wark. It truly is a tale of sodom and gomorrah between the three of them. Calling Galloway a parasite is too kind. Apparently, all three are societally recognized as responsible adults.
Public shitting and shit eating is normalized here, they should keep their bedtime practices in the privacy of their Jersey home.
Public shitting and shit eating is normalized here, they should keep their bedtime practices in the privacy of their Jersey home.
December 10, 2018
"Excommunication is given as a message that proclaims: 'there will be no more messages."
Three intertwined essays on how communication systems annul communication systems.
Galloway takes us all the way back to the Greeks - kneeling in the dust to conjure Hermes, Iris, and the Furies as a means to establish a "middle communication." Galloway is the most accessible of the three essays, only because he maintains a clear vocabulary rooted in the familiar and the distant. By plunging into the ancient, he allows himself room for clarity. Galloway's excommunication middle is embodies by the sensual violence of Aphrodite, a figure that synthesizes the other three into a perfect whole.
Thacker's poses the idea of "dark media." Using japanese horror films as par excellence of his new term, Thacker asserts that technology serves as the object a thing can invade. While much his essay sags under the weight of trying to complicate this assertion, the basic idea remains that when a cell phone serves as a conduit of a supernatural or other-worldly communication everything gets super strange. As the other-worldly presence attempts to communicate they are limited by the object (media) they are forced to utilize. In addition, the other-worldly's vocabulary is "weird, beyond" normal experience - thus creating a source of excommunication (or dark media).
Wark basically summarizes the other two, while unpacking Vaneigem's later essays on the Free Spirit Movement and other christian heresies. Oh, and he tacks on something about Laruelle's "non-philosophy" as a continuation of heretical storytelling, but this feels added to remain relevant to the arguments of the other two theorists.
Overall, this book becomes an shakingly unbalanced wedge in communication theory...
Three intertwined essays on how communication systems annul communication systems.
Galloway takes us all the way back to the Greeks - kneeling in the dust to conjure Hermes, Iris, and the Furies as a means to establish a "middle communication." Galloway is the most accessible of the three essays, only because he maintains a clear vocabulary rooted in the familiar and the distant. By plunging into the ancient, he allows himself room for clarity. Galloway's excommunication middle is embodies by the sensual violence of Aphrodite, a figure that synthesizes the other three into a perfect whole.
Thacker's poses the idea of "dark media." Using japanese horror films as par excellence of his new term, Thacker asserts that technology serves as the object a thing can invade. While much his essay sags under the weight of trying to complicate this assertion, the basic idea remains that when a cell phone serves as a conduit of a supernatural or other-worldly communication everything gets super strange. As the other-worldly presence attempts to communicate they are limited by the object (media) they are forced to utilize. In addition, the other-worldly's vocabulary is "weird, beyond" normal experience - thus creating a source of excommunication (or dark media).
Wark basically summarizes the other two, while unpacking Vaneigem's later essays on the Free Spirit Movement and other christian heresies. Oh, and he tacks on something about Laruelle's "non-philosophy" as a continuation of heretical storytelling, but this feels added to remain relevant to the arguments of the other two theorists.
Overall, this book becomes an shakingly unbalanced wedge in communication theory...
August 10, 2015
settle down
July 18, 2018
"The sun shines on men and women and all their desires -and nothing is owed in return."
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews