Media Theory：The Turn from Humanism to Anti-Humanism.pdf

191传播符号学传播符号学Media Theory:The Turn from Humanism toAnti-HumanismXianguang Peter ZhangAbstract:This article traces the shift in media theory from humanism to anti-humanism,or from extensionism to assemblage theory and machinism.The suggestion is that the anti-humanistic orientation illuminates thehuman condition even better,especially in the post-industrial and digitalages when Kafkaesque absurdity characterizes human life.The article alsopoints,if only in passing,to the relevance of interology to media-theoreticinquiry.Keywords:extensionism，a s s e mb l a g e,ma c h i n i s m，aapparatus,megamachine,McLuhan,Deleuze,Flusser,MumfordD0I:10.13760/ki.sam.202301015The peonies all bloomed red one day,And throughout the towm the noble sons got drunk.(Hori,2010,p.438)I.IntroductionGenerally speaking,media studies have two traditions:the one is content-oriented whereas the other is medium-oriented.Media theory belongs to the latter.Itis more or less synonymous with media ecology,and overlaps significantly withThe epigraph can be read as a figurative description of media effect.192符号与传媒(26)philosophy of technology,techno-ethics,and media philosophy.It is also closelyrelated with interality studies.For media are interological phenomena.The atrophyand revival of the interological sensibility in the West have a lot to do with theevolution of media.This article compares the humanist view of media with the anti-humanist view.Marshall McLuhans(1994)notion of media as extensions of manis an example of the former.The discussion of the latter will be limited toassemblage theory and machinism.I.Extensionism,or the Humanist ViewHumanity qua humanity is characterized by the use of its body or itself as themeasure of all things,including nature,eventually creating a human-based world.This world is anthropomorphic,anthropocentric,and anthropotropic(in the sameway plants are phototropic).The contrapuntality between technical objects andhumans pervades this artificial world.There is contrapuntality between hand andhandle,between keyboard and fingers.To use McLuhans expression,media arelike humanitys mechanical bride,who rests her head on the left arm of thebridegroom and turns along with him.In the final analysis,the world humanityinhabits is made up of media.Media are humanitys dwelling.Humanity is thecontent of media.Media are humanitys externalization(i.e.,what McLuhan callsuttering and outering)(McLuhan&Powers,1989,p.7).In this sense,humanityresembles strikingly the silkworm that creates a cocoon to bind itself.Media are tohumanity as the cocoon is to the silkworm.The traditional Chinese ideograph forcocoon/jian indicates silk that binds up a worm all over,and the one for silkworm/can indicates two worms lurking in wait for the sun.To allude to FriedrichNietzsches book title,the world humanity inhabits is one that is“human,all toohumanInterality is a polysemic term.The core senses include:betweenness,middle,liminality,interval,relationality,symbiosis,counterpoint,distance,and antiform,etc.The author has guest-edited six specialissues/sections of scholarly articles on interality/interology and written extensively on the topic.Lately,he hasbeen working on an interological philosophy of media with a focus on the notion of“medium as khora.Theproject is an extension of the 2019 article,“Toward an Interality-Oriented Philosophy(IOP)of the Digital,and the 2021 article,“Deleuze and Khora.The terms“interality”and“interology/interalogy”were bothcoined by Geling Shang(2015).193传播符号学The genealogy of media starts with humanity,or humanitys self-consciousness,and its bionic impulse.Nearby,humanity models after its own body,and afar,itmodels after other things.The motive force is humanitys will to freedom,eventhough the outcome may well be its bondage.The waterslide is a replay of the fearand joy accompanying birth.The helicopter is the dragonfly-becoming of humanity,a becoming induced by bionic thinking.Research into and development of artificialintelligence start with understanding human intelligence.Mythology and sci-finarratives are the previous life of and precursor to media.The late Eric McLuhanoften compared humanity as the etymology of media.Like most media ecologists,heunderstood media in a broad sense:a technology is a medium;a medium is anenvironment.McLuhan and Carson（2 0 0 3，p p.3 0 4 -3 0 5）p o i n t o u t,“Environments are not just containers but are processes that change the contenttotally.Humans are a core content in them.As an extension of humanity,amedium is a simulation,simplification,reduction,augmentation,offloading,replacement,and obsolescence of some human faculty.For the sake of efficiency,humanity has paid the price of alienation from nature.If nature is humanitysmother,then media are humanitys adopt mother and“second nature,punintended.Since then,human experience has become an experiencing of media.Forexample,what one experiences while riding an airplane is not the beautiful sceneryalong the way but the airplane itself