Beyond Semiotics Text Culture And Technology – Niall Lucy

Detente will never inch towards nor even surpass, but will suddenly have been surpassed by denouement, the day after. When no one is around to remember. Meanwhile, we must all suffer the after- shock, the radioaction, before the fall-out occurs. We must all live with the nuclear question, as we have always done, never forgetting that this time the threat is real.

Species extinction, environmental annihilation, planetary obliteration: these are our chosen trivialities. We approach them, as we have always done, with our fear of the unknown, our anxiety in the face of a dilemma, and seek refuge in what we know: our faith in the vitality of life, the corporeality of living. Yet we must face them as cyborgs, fully adapted to our adequation by machines, accustomed to our constitution in writing. This is our fate, as it is the fate of technology in general, and we must forget to remember to forget it.

For the effects of after-shock, the space of radio activity, cannot be controlled by either side: the airwaves are full of interference, full of gaps. On both sides of the channel there is static, and always the possibility of receiving a signal from afar, the chance of overhearing other voices – ghostly voices, even – from the other side. Nor is this to feign solemnity, or at least not only for its own sake or that of bathos.

For in moving beyond semiotics we continue to open ourselves to unexpected ways of relating to things in the world around us, and to do so without looking for a systematic approach or a consistent method. ‘Cultural criticism/ writes Darren Tofts, ‘is not a pure art. It has more in common, in fact, with T. S. Eliot’s industrial portrait of the poetic imagination at work, in which the incongruous and the ill-fitting, such as Spinoza, falling in love, typing and the smell of cabbage cooking, are drawn together into new syntheses under the force of invention/24 Now of course while this is not to say that ‘anything goes’, it certainly does help to affirm the necessarily inventive nature of our project, if not of any project of cultural criticism in general (see Chapter 9).

This is neither to glorify invention nor to ‘disciplinize’ what we are doing here by calling it a form of bricolage.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-8264-4932-8 (hardback) 0-8264-4933-6 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lucy, Niall. Beyond semiotics—text, culture and technology/Niall Lucy.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8264-4932-8—ISBN 0-8264-4933-6 (pbk.) 1. Semiotics. 2. Culture. 3. Communication and technology. I. Title. P99.L83 2001 302.2—dc21 00-065827 Typeset by Paston PrePress Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by Martins the Printers Ltd, Berwick upon Tweed Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Chance Encounters 1 1 The Concept of Culture 13 2 A Short History of Semiotics 25 3 Total Eclipse of the Heart (Thinking through Technology) 33 4 The Phake Fone: Crossing (Telecommunication) Lines 41 5 Situating Technologies: Radio Activity and the Nuclear Question 54 6 The Sound of a Dream 72 7 Catholic English 77 8 Derrivations: From Derrida to Empson 97 9 Gilligans Wake 116 Coda: Interzones (Science Sentiment Cyberpunk) 133 Notes 149 Bibliography 159 Index 164 vi Acknowledgements As always, I am grateful to friends and colleagues for taking an interest in my work and commenting on the manuscript.

This time around I want to thank Robert Briggs, Martin P. Casey, Lisa Gye, Steve Mickler, Deborah Robertson, Horst Ruthrof, Darren Tofts and McKenzie Wark. I am also deeply grateful to Janet Joyce at Continuum, whose patience and support saved the day; to Gillian O’Shaughnessy, whose friendship has saved more days (and more besides) than I could hope to return; and I thank Murdoch University for granting me some time away from teaching in which to write the book.

Several chapters are based on previously published material, and I thank the editors of the journals in which those earlier versions appeared: Chapter 3 in Senses of Cinema (2000), Chapter 4 in Social Semiotics (1994), Chapter 5 in Social Semiotics (1992), Chapter 6 in Essays in Sound (1995) and Chapter 9 in Semiotica (1993).

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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