Transmitting Culture

by Régis Debray

How do we explain the fact that certain ideas, at certain moments in time, can have earthshaking effects? Or that some cultures have left an indelible mark while others have not? Why did Jesus, rather than Mani the Mesopotamian or the Eastern god Mithra, take hold among masses of people? Why did Karl Marx instead of Pierre Proudhon or Auguste Comte leave his mark on the century? Behind these questions lies the matter of the human need to conserve, hand down, and transmit cultural meanings -- the study of the means of transmission and of the long evolutionary history of media.

In a departure, R�gis Debray redefines communication as the inescapable conditioning of civilization's meanings and messages by their technologies of transmission and lays the groundwork for a science of the transmission of cultural forms -- in a word, mediology./PP ITransmitting Culture/I examines the difference between communication and transmission and argues that ideas and their legacies should be rethought not in terms of "communication" from sender to receiver but of "mediation" by the vectors and messengers of meaning. ITransmitting Culture/I stresses the technologies and institutions long overlooked by philosophy and the human sciences in the study of symbols and signs throughout the history of civilizations. Ranging widely from the history of religion and the printing press to the French and industrial revolutions, from the role and place of authority to scientific inquiry, ITransmitting Culture/I establishes a new approach to the cultural history of communication.

224 pages, Paperback

Published May 19, 2004

About the author

Intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in Bolivia.

Reviews

[Clara Browne · Rating 4 out of 5]

nada como um francês impaciente. icônico.

[Robert Hudder · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my area of study or at least adjacent to it. It is the first time in a long time that I read something that was a bit more challenging and tight in terms of academia. It is easy to read something that thesis, all sorts of argumentation reiterating the thesis and then summary of thesis versus something like this.

It is a wide ranging piece that is arguing for a new discipline. it was written in 1997 and was arguing for mediology. The study wouldn't be on the artifacts of communication or the transfer of ideas but something more. How are ideas transmitted? A move beyond the medium is the message to something more.

Now, this is where I put down my hat and say that I have been out of academia for so long that only parts of the book hit me. I am going to read this again. I get the jist but this is really pushing it. I was hoping to go through my old texts and stuff that I bought afterwards because of continued interest in the area. Many have not stood well to time. They are already gone and I can see how many more will fall but this thin volume will need to be read again. Not because it is particularly hard to understand but because it is pushing against the standard ways of academia. There is a bent towards interdisciplinary and looking at the margins that are rarely the object of study. The printing press is often looked at more than the ideas that made it possible. Rather than look at the printing press as a way that democratized reading and made the Bible popular maybe looking at the way the faith needed to be transmitted and used what was available.

This is but one lobbed thought. And there is something to noticing the connection of things. In fact, there was a bit of the tv show "Connections" in this book as a way of beginning to understand culture as an object. But as I said, I have lost the discipline of academic close reading. I will return after going through more texts of the past. I really enjoyed the challenge and look forward to coming back to this book.

[Noa · Rating 4 out of 5]

he's so fucking stupid