The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech

by Avital Ronell

The telephone marks the place of an absence. Affiliated with discontinuity, alarm, and silence, it raises fundamental questions about the constitution of self and other, the stability of location, systems of transfer, and the destination of speech. Profoundly changing our concept of long-distance, it is constantly transmitting effects of real and evocative power. To the extent that it always relates us to the absent other, the telephone, and the massive switchboard attending it, plugs into a hermeneutics of mourning. The Telephone Book , itself organized by a "telephonic logic," fields calls from philosophy, history, literature, and psychoanalysis. It installs a switchboard that hooks up diverse types of knowledge while rerouting and jamming the codes of the disciplines in daring ways. Avital Ronell has done nothing less than consider the impact of the telephone on modern thought. Her highly original, multifaceted inquiry into the nature of communication in a technological age will excite everyone who listens in. The book begins by calling close attention to the importance of the telephone in Nazi organization and propaganda, with special regard to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. In the Third Reich the telephone became a weapon, a means of state surveillance, "an open accomplice to lies." Heidegger, in Being and Time and elsewhere, elaborates on the significance of "the call." In a tour de force response, Ronell mobilizes the history and terminology of the telephone to explicate his difficult philosophy. Ronell also speaks of the appearance of the telephone in the literary works of Duras, Joyce, Kafka, Rilke, and Strindberg. She examines its role in psychoanalysis—Freud said that the unconscious is structured like a telephone, and Jung and R. D. Laing saw it as a powerful new body part. She traces its historical development from Bell's famous first "Watson, come here!" Thomas A. Watson, his assistant, who used to communicate with spirits, was eager to get the telephone to talk, and thus to link technology with phantoms and phantasms. In many ways a meditation on the technologically constituted state, The Telephone Book opens a new field, becoming the first political deconstruction of technology, state terrorism, and schizophrenia. And it offers a fresh reading of the American and European addiction to technology in which the telephone emerges as the crucial figure of this age.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, Psychology, Technology, Academic

484 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1989

About the author

Avital Ronell is Professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she directs the Research in Trauma and Violence project, and has also written as a literary critic, a feminist, and philosopher.

Ronell to Israeli diplomats and was a performance artist before entering academia.

She gained a B.A. from Middlebury College and studied with Jacob Taubes at the Hermeneutic Institute at the Free University of Berlin. She received her Ph.D. under the advisement of Stanley Corngold at Princeton University in 1979, and then continued her studies with Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous in Paris.

She joined the comparative literature faculty at the University of California, Berkeley before moving to NYU. She is also a core faculty member at the European Graduate School.

Reviews

[Andrew]

A logical extension of the unfortunate late-Deleuze writing style (without Deleuze's occasional visionary ideas) into obnoxious experimental text, which begins with a borderline-incomprehensible Heideggerian circle jerk, moves through a borderline-incomprehensible psychoanalytic circle jerk (and flirts with a case study that might actually be worth reading) and ends in what could be some rather interesting comments on the history of electric communication and the life of Alexander Graham Bell (not sure why, but OK). Avital Ronell started as a performance artist, and this feels like a piss-poor attempt to shoehorn what could be very good performance art into philosophy, or hell, what could be the basis of an excellent experimental novel into philosophy. It was written in 1989, a time when Americans thought that Baudrillard was actually a philosopher. That there's my grain of salt.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

At 50 pages in, I updated my status here on Goodreads, and quipped that I probably had no business reading this book. Other than an introductory philosophy course my freshman year of college, I know little to nothing about the subject (broad though it is). I consider myself an intelligent person, but I found philosophy at the time, to be frank, confusing as hell. Either my mind isn't wired to comprehend what seems to be intentionally dense and impenetrable thought (and writing), or I just didn't beat my head against the wall long enough.

In any event, I finally gave up on page 57 of Avital Ronell's "The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech." I had vowed to plow ahead, comprehension be damned, not because I was particularly enjoying myself, but because I held out hope that at some point I would begin to understand what in the hell she was talking about. To say I was being stubborn or foolish — stupid is the right word here, though only in describing the act not the person — is to put the matter lightly. Here's the sentence that finally did me in: "This scene calls forth recognition insofar as it gives access to that more primordial experience — an originary encounter with alterity: Dasein's uncanny experience of its thrown Being-toward-death — hence, having-been-thrown from which originates the call, out of which calls the Other as an anonymous Other — " 'Es' ruft." Two things about that passage: 1) it is by no means less understandable outside the context of the preceding seven pages of its chapter, and 2) it is by no means atypical; on the contrary, it is quite average when compared with anything else in the book.

Whether Ronell ever gets to the promise offered by the book's subtitle, I guess I'll never know. Even if I'd managed to make it to the end, I'm not sure I'd even comprehend if it did. Sure, a greater knowledge of philosophy and its fundamental principles and ideas would help. But without a pretty robust understanding of Martin Heidegger and his work (whose name, not to mention his ideas, is referenced in nearly, if not every, paragraph), I'm not sure anyone would fare much better than I did. That's a shame because the book I imagined would have been so fascinating.

But that's okay. I've been carrying this book around with me for nearly 20 years, entirely because of its graphic design, and while I found the title intriguing, I'd never really given much thought to ever actually reading it. To paraphrase Hall & Oates, "Some things are better left alone." At least, after all these years, I've got an empty spot in the bookcase to fill.

[Jaime · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book helped me describe many of those things that sometimes get lost in the banality of our day. Heavy read, and pretty conceptual. Think about it as The Telephone Book being that which is huge on reference. You have medical assistance, or hardware, all organized alphabetically, riddled with ads. Well this book acts as a telephone conversation through its making.

[Leonard Houx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ronell's The Telephone Book combines philosophy with literature and graphic design, in a disorienting, challenging mix. It's like a Derridean The Medium is the Massage. Some of it is annoying and indulgent. Some of it is sublime and heart-rending.

In one chapter, Ronell discusses R.D. Laing's account of a schizophrenic Ms. St. The chapter's text creates 'rivers' that run through the middle of the page. It's as if Ms. St.'s internal alienation is cutting through the page itself (and this alienation, in turn, echoes what the telephone puts us all through).

The Telephone Book deserves serious praise for its bold experimentation and piquant readings of Rilke, Bell, Laing, and, above all, Heidegger. However whatever insight it might bear into the telephone remained, for me, too little, too obscure.

[Cambra · Rating 4 out of 5]

on this shelf till Barry gets done wif.

[Al Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is about the distinction between inventing the telephone and using it.

ASM

[Mills College Library]

191 R772 1989

[Natalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[James Piss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, cheeky, cheeky. Oh, naughty, sneaky

[danielle; ▵ · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic/fascinating

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a re-read sparked by a conversation with a dear friend up in San Francisco. We were discussing books and he mentioned a book "that was unlike any other book (he'd) ever read". I said the only book unlike any other book I had ever read was a book called The Telephone Book. I had to hunt down a used copy (thank you Powell's!) because as great as the book is I couldn't justify spending $45 on a trade paperback. My copy came today (in excellent condition I should add) and I'm really looking forward to re-reading this remarkable work of art.

[micha cardenas · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing book, philosophy of technology, including ethical and political discussions. absolute must read.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of ranting, but in an ever-so-intelligent (and referential) postmodern fashion...

[Tz348 · Rating 1 out of 5]

unreadable