Ideology: Signification from structure to poststructural

when ideology defines a struggle...

The signification of a message is commonly argued to have polysemic explanations thus, along with, duly establish the variety of human recipient or decoder in a geo-social format. Such heterogeneity can be classified through political, economic, and obviously other various cultural identity specifications. A decoder can thus be identified in accordance with his / her class identity, mundane individual identity and also group identity [like ethnic, religious...]. The natural heterogeneity can only be defined or identified by an eternal signifier what we may call ideology. Ideology is thus a much reductionist signifier representing a vast thought-structure that encompasses any temporal aspect of human life. Noted theorist Raymond Williams (1977) defined ideology in the following three categories:

(a) System of belief of a class or group;

(b) False consciousness or ideation of the ruling class which is opposed to the scientific and pragmatic knowledge;

(c) A process which produces ideas and meaning;

Psychologists’ views tell us about ideology as a useful tool to produce transparent attitude; they feel that society determines the existence of ideology than individuality. Classical Marxian theorists on the other hand think that ‘ideology’ of the oppressed class determines a political dimension of social relationship and thus produces constructive relationship being always affiliated to any mass identity. Later in many countries including third world nations, Marxian theorists have started even recognizing the ‘ideology of individuality’ to combat the commercial outburst of ‘individualism’ along with the traditional class-driven mass political ideology. Legendary Marxian theorist EMS Namboodiripad has beautifully explained the transformation of mass ideological format taking Chinese case of transforming the classical expression of ideology “Dictatorship of Proletariat”: “…China does not call its own system a Dictatorship of Proletariat, but a People’s Democratic Dictatorship…What does this change in terminology mean? It means, first, that the dictatorial element is preserved. Secondly, it is not the Dictatorship of Proletariat but the dictatorship of the entire people against a small stratum of the former ruling class”. It is however an evident truth that class inequalities and surplus extraction of divided labour therefore are the prime sources of ideology in a society altogether.

Raymond Williams however argues that dominant class squeezing the process and means of production creates a false ‘mythic’ consciousness in the name of ideology in the working class psyche. Using this illusive structure extensively they influence people and the mass consciousness. In this course they try to get a strong hold of mass media owning these organizations to transform common mass a mere tool of corporate propaganda.

EMS Namboodiripad here has been pragmatic to the core to explain the referent of ideology in socialism and socialist systemic ideology: the socio-political set-up established in the Soviet Union and socialist countries of Eastern Europe was called the “Dictatorship of Proletariat”. Experience with the working of that system has shown that though major achievements have been registered under it, the dictatorship of the proletariat as practiced in the Soviet Union and socialist countries of Eastern Europe had serious deficiencies. Marxists-Leninists throughout the world have now come to the conclusion that there is no going back to the system that existed in Soviet Union…”

Ideology and signification: 

It is already evident that in a specified social territory the appropriate signification of communication depends upon the social responsibility of cultural stance which ensures the meaning of the message. Such specification of culture determines the ideological stance of the communicator. If a dress-code signifies a specific meaning it can then also disseminate ideology of the communicator. However the concept of ideology is a staunch Marxist analytical phenomenon which has tended to have developed in socialist revolutionary movements and also in the pluralist discourse of the transformation of cultural elements. It is now important to note Fredric Jameson’s argument. ‘All class consciousness — or in other words, all ideology in the strongest sense, including the most exclusive forms of ruling class consciousness just as much as that of oppositional or oppressed classes — is in its very nature utopian’.

However ideology, as commonly observed, is the procurement of a system (semantic system) of ideas by a set of people on similar contextual planes which not only prepares the base of a social structure but also sustains plausible expression by which people can interact with each other and also with the institutions. Naturally contradiction and conflict are always the necessary outcomes of ideological existence of human being as it embeds both instinctive and professional courses of struggle within a social structure where people earn the necessary footage to work with or to live in. Thus in a capitalist socio-economic format, exploitation often causes severe contradiction between different ideological codes of general people and social institutions. Ideological practice has the natural heterogeneity in various micro-social formats, like marriage, service providing institutions, charitable institutions, shopping malls, religious groups, business organizations, professional sporting institutions, and even rock bands coexistent along with the political ideology. It is being graduated to be more complicated in the contemporary information processing age also. All the facets of the social structure have common fascination to produce dominant or elitist forms of culture separately, fabricators of which often called ‘elite’ and ‘opinion leader’, as we can observe information elite, elite rock band, elite or dominant religious groups and elite members of the civil society.

American Marxists like Fredric Jameson and others from Frankfurt school have tried to place ideology in a utopian environment where ideology is basically a false consciousness and often structured by the ideas of the dominant class. In this way they have discarded any possibility of ‘ideology of masses’ or the concept of political ideology. Noted Marxist Louis Althusser has defined ideology as it “... is a system of ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group...ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence... we commonly call religious ideology, ethical ideology, legal ideology, political ideology, etc., so many world outlooks. Of course, assuming that we do not live one of these ideologies as the truth (e.g. believe in god, duty, justice, etc....), we admit... that these ‘world outlooks’ are largely imaginary, i.e. do not correspond to reality. However, while admitting that they... constitute an illusion, we admit that they do not make allusion to reality, and that they need to be interpreted to discover the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of the world (ideology = illusion / allusion)” (Althusser, 1994). 

Althusser however though has recognized the referent of beliefs as used to refer ideology the definition doesn’t still substantiate the concept of ideology as a structure which has got a structural relationship with all existing social parameters. Thus he also has discarded the “dialectical” relationships among different ideologies in a geo-social format. In reality the ideology and only the ideology controls and regulates the politics of the signification process. Thus political ideology may not proceed with the religious ideology and different religious ideologies have open, ‘not imaginary’, confrontation with each other.

Marx had shown the binary conflict that working class people have their own ideology which is opposed to the capitalist class. So the ideology substantially determines a way of life of a person, which may or may not express its alignment with other people’s lives. Thus opposed to the concept of illusion, ideology can be substantiated by its social and material outcomes, which on the other hand assure or define cultural dimensions of every living even non-living object. So we live in heterogeneous codifications of ideologies. But neo-Marxist theories didn’t correspond to any revolutionary change of existing society or social conditions and also denounced class identities of common mass to release ideology from any structural or revolutionary composition. Noted Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci has dealt with the ideology as synonymous to the struggle. He however recognized unification of working class people and organized struggle for ideology to organize a revolution. Another Sociologist E. Veron defined, “...if ideologies are structures ... then they are not ‘images’ nor ‘concepts’ but are sets of rules which determine an organization  and the functioning of images and concepts... Ideology is a system of coding reality and not a determined set of coded messages ... in this way, ideology becomes autonomous in relation to the consciousness or intention of its agents:  these may be conscious of their points of view about social forms not of the semantic conditions (rules and categories or codification) which make possible these points of view... then an ideology may be defined as a system of semantic rules to generate messages... it is one of the many levels of organization of messages, from the viewpoint of their semantic properties...”

As noted cultural theorist Stuart Hall has explained that in a society, contradiction between significations is an inevitable outcome complying with the natural course of ideologies in social matrices. Thus ideologies can produce structures and also an inherent dynamism on the other hand, which overrule any level of domination from any of the stagnant, age-old ideological practices and remain unaffected. Extending definitions of ideology he has made a successful critique on Marx and Louis Althusser. According to Marx, ideology works because it appears to ground itself in the mere surface appearance of things... it represents social relations as outside of history: unchangeable, inevitable and natural. Thus Stuart Hall argues, despite scientific discoveries involved in the total development European modernity in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Marx defined the whole development as ideological discourse as it recognized and reoriented social relationships and capitalist economic order as inevitable. Hall established that all kinds of social parameters of development set and derive various dimensions of regulatory consciousness [not all to be regarded as dominant] which produce the sources of ideologies. On the other side, Hall, while analyzing Althusser’s view, which “... tended to present the process as too uni-accentual, too functionally adapted to the reproduction of the dominant ideology”, has made a very useful critique, “... Indeed, it was difficult, from the base-line of this theory, to discern how anything but the dominant ideology could ever be reproduced in discourse”. Hall continues arguing, “...since signification was a practice and practice was defined as any process of transformation of a determinate raw material into a determinate product, a transformation effected by a determinate human labour, using determinate means of production, it also followed that signification involved a determinate form of labour, a specific work...”. Thus according to Hall, meaning is not therefore determined by the structure of reality but by the process of signification being appropriately done through social practice. This is also to be noted that the meaning, then, may not be as obvious as the given structure of reality but the signification can produce another dimension of meaning also. Hall also has made a useful recognition of social struggle which always influences the signification. Thus in this way of analysis Stuart Hall has recognized the inevitability of ideological struggle as a necessity to organize a movement. He nicely argues that if a trade union has lost its ideological struggle then the dominant capitalist interest may get an easy success to curb down the movement by imposing legal and political or administrative means.

Signification, Plurality & Politics:

It is already discussed that signification leads to a cultural outcome of contemporary social practices which naturally ensures cultural heterogeneity of a geo-social periphery. So there is a natural tendency to have one cultural prophecy may emerge as dominating other cultural forms in a pluralist format. But this process, at least, in contemporary social practices can hardly leave the idea of ‘ruling class’ or ‘oppressed class’ as to be easily identified. Naturally the question of the future of organized ideological struggle is gradually getting harder to answer. This jolt, however, even problematizes the Marx’s seminal concept that “...the ideas of the ruling classes are in every epoch the ruling ideas”, i.e., the ruling class also rules intellectual properties. Even in the contemporary developing societies such traditional identification marks of ruling class steadily get fragmenting and the situation becomes trickier than to be identified in the above manner. EMS’s analysis on Chinese dictatorship as dictatorship of the entire people against small stratum of the ‘former ruling class’ depicts such a fragmentation of traditional identification process.

Specially in developing countries the need for industrialization accentuates some emerging cultural trends which are gradually homogenizing the mode of social practices and ideological stance by almost identical syntagmatic arrangements of signs in commercial outlets. There is no doubt about that the underlying politics of signification of these syntagms is to dominate the lookers mystifying the notion of subordinating them as consumers. Though some will definitely feel oppressed and there are still millions of people left out of this aspect of development, it is yet difficult to virtually identify people who are to be considered as oppressed. It is doubtless that people of low income group [as measured by the administration] can always be identified as oppressed; and, the slogan of ‘education for all’ is not yet achieved, but the civil society believes that people are to be paid according to the degree of some people’s education. It is then very hard to distinguish the ruling class and oppressed class in such all round plurality. Only no alternative condition exists in these developing countries probably in ‘Bustee’[slums] areas where people are really barred from getting minimum civic amenities, but this signification is also no longer valid because both public institutions and NGOs nowadays claim to have initiated several measures of developing these areas and its people. Moreover the overall awareness toward Parliamentary Democracy has transformed the cultural aspirations of poor people and even destitute to reject the validity of domination from a single-dimensional authority. As Stuart Hall argues, “that notion of domination which meant the direct imposition of one framework, by overt force or ideological compulsion, on a subordinate class, was not sophisticated enough to match the real complexities of the case”, the situation of developing countries tells us exactly this truth. If it goes now to be difficult to identify ruling class, how can we determine the signification of “hegemony”? But the unequivocal truth is that people are nowadays found severely oppressed by the rules or regulations of number of establishments which cannot be structured under a single nationalist umbrella. Actually the notion of industrialization in developing nations has been justified by two modes of signification:

The first one is that even to be oppressed a person needs first to get at least a job to survive. The second one is that while inviting foreign investment you will have to accept the farthest extent of full fledged corporate-cultural domination which is the prime responsible for fragmenting traditional social bonds and cultural continuity into many sub-cultural structures in the society. Both fiscal and monetary deficits in the developing countries [analyzed in Indian context] have reached to a point of absurdity that they even are not in a position to prepare its infrastructure for foreign investment and for which they invite foreign institutions to build up infrastructure. But they have chosen the easiest way to open up the economy and market and reformed economic structure favourable to that, without doing anything for internal economic and administrative reforms for earning revenues on its own axis. It is needles to say that this signification also has been countered by several other significations. Probably the most valid signification is that despite being able to understand the corporate-cultural domination the developing countries must organize rapid industrial development for its own survival. Moreover the growing social movements against such stream of development have not given any political or ideological alternative which the common mass can really depend upon. So who is there to represent the ruling class and is supposed to oppress the common people? It is absolutely difficult to identify.

Signification and the process of mediation:

At this juncture plurality in the developing societies are accentuated mainly by the development and concentration of media and other signifying institutions. On the other hand media reveal its most distinguishable feature of producing consensus in the society among the prevalent pluralist outcomes of socio-cultural activities. Such consensus is doubtless to be existing beyond any mass political ideology. So media whereas trying to be producing consensus, cannot be held direct responsible to hold the power and be hegemonic to its audience or the society. So far the wide spectra of the process of mediation occurring in mass communication, which sets ideological plurality in a social format, media often flow its contents beyond the ‘sovereign will of the people’ and have become powerful to claim to have people’s opinion. On the other hand Daniel Chandler argues interestingly about the mediation process of other social institutions, “our social institutions also involve processes of mediation, which ‘organize, select and focus the environment through various transformational structures.’ They tend to channel human behaviour into predictable routines...”. It is thus to be clarified analytically that all kinds social and media institutions in a society try to mediate messages comprising of their cultural codes to perpetuate its sustainability. Chandler’s critique looks very important here in this context, “we can be so familiar with the medium that we are ‘anaesthetized’ to the mediation it involves: we ‘don’t know what we’re missing’. Insofar as we are numbed to the processes involved we cannot be said to be exercising ‘choices’ in its use. In this way the means we use may modify our ends...”. specially in developing societies the concept of plurality through the process of mediation has equivocality in a cultural domain of two sides. One is the process of formulation and other is the process of decoding. Social and media institutions often formulate plurality in terms of its narrow corporate objectives with a notion to feed the mainstream views of all the sects but often found less accommodative recognizing alternative or sub-structures of a society. While in formulation of plurality, these institutions are not very keen to explore and accept all sources of ideologies which may proceed against the plurality what they try to formulate to earn best out of every bargain. On the other hand people with its individuality or different forms of smaller sub-cultural identity, accept plurality to participate in a mediated or given consensus to avoid any risk or institutional pressure while decoding the message. So they have to be quite compromising decoding a message what media disseminate to ensure consensus in its favour. Here the concept of deviant attitude cannot be sustained though plurality with all its heterogeneous properties apparently looks very kind enough to recognize or absorb any deviant attitude. So a severe institutional pressure has finally resulted to become both necessary and sufficient trends of plurality or the neo-liberal pluralism.

Globalization of Culture: Rise of Cosmetic Heterogeneity

Does global culture exist at all? To start with Fredric Jameson, If globalization of economic practice by and large means absolute liberalization of both developed and developing nations including US-allies, or if we demand for optimal and independent use of technologies, do then we have to accept Jameson’s notion of ‘superficial’, ‘depthless’, and outright ‘commercial’ mediated postmodern cultural forms? This is otherwise not at all trivial as Lull argues that he would rather prefer to ‘concentrate on more concrete developments by emphasizing how people interpret their changing worlds, make them meaningful, and advance their personal, social, and cultural interests’. But this may also look too much utopian when huge number of have-nots is to be considered. They are nowhere in a position to deal with, define, advance, their individual cultural interests. It is true even for the middle class people also throughout the globe. So let’s not talk only about their social or socio-cultural interests. Even a middle class Chinese wage earner [earning $200 p.m. in Chinese currency, her husband was earning at that time, in 2000, was nearing $300] Zhang Iazhu, one of my once close associates, was hardly in a position to build up a duplex house for their own when this is not really an impossible task for a middle class Indian wage earner of almost same dimension.

The most dreaded metanarrative of our time is ‘globalization’ which refers to a massive sense of somewhat ‘away cultural’ notion that promotes, according to Lull, the scope of current developments in communication and culture, but more than that in a specific contextual reality. Though Prof. Lull has given an enhanced outlook toward modern developments [mostly corporate developments], does not believe that we have become one people. He argues further, ‘it is true that potent homogenizing forces including military weaponry, advertising techniques, dominant languages, media formats, and fashion trends undeniably affect consciousness and culture in virtually every corner of the world...but these political, economic-cultural influences do not enter cultural contexts uniformly...’. But the main problem with this analysis is that for people of most developing nations this plurality is often considered as ‘homogenizing forces’ as the prime effects of ‘globalization’ over their natural cultural heterogeneity that may further be extended to the natural mixing of symbolic cultural elements. These even affect all interactions in ‘diverse local conditions’, what Lull has tried to save as an imperative to establish that we are not affected by such homogenizing forces. Furthermore such homogenizing global cultural forces have not accomplished their globalization journey but received sufficient on-going protest from alternative socialist forums in different parts of the world. So Lull’s notion that ‘we will not become one people’ seems to be quite different from the on-going anti-globalization movements.

However let’s now move into the nitty-gritty of the metanarrative ‘globalization’ specially ‘of culture’ and ‘communication’. Many theorists, like James Lull, Arjun Appadurai have time and again tried to establish a root natural heterogeneity of cultural praxis that let people not become so called ‘globalized’. They believe at the same time that such homogenizing forces may affect consciousness and culture but do not surprisingly recognize the invading motives of the globalizing forces. Anthony D. Smith has however defined the practicing heterogeneity of culture, ‘...if by culture is meant a collective mode of life, or a repertoire of beliefs, styles, values and symbols, then we can only speak of cultures, never just culture; for a collective mode of life, or a repertoire of beliefs, values etc., presupposes different modes and repertoires in a universe of modes and repertoires. Hence, the idea of a global culture is a practical impossibility...’

I am now interested in talking about the mediated global, commercial cultural forms and codes that evidently accompany the mediated cultural contents that Lull et.al. exclude from their globalizing list. A stark difference of outlook has therefore always been evident between neoliberal ‘cultural development’ theorists and anti-neoliberal and progressive social thoughts.

However noted American sociologist Arjun Appadurai has pointed out that cultural heterogeneity [the idea that culture takes many forms] is much more valid than any theory of encroaching cultural sameness [Lull, 1995]. He has however excluded any possibility of taking globalization as Americanization, or neoliberal postcommerciality whatever. He argues: ‘...global homogenization invariably subspeciate into an argument about Americanization, or an argument about commoditization, and very often these two arguments are very closely linked. What these arguments fail to consider is that at least as rapidly as forces from the various metropolises are brought into these societies, they tend to become indigenized in one way or another: this is true of music and housing styles as much as it is true of science and terrorism, spetacles and constitutions...’. But surprisingly such diaspora of cultural arguments and elements do not at all designate the contemporary form of globalization and quite motivated to subscribe a progressive historical outlook which was bitterly countered, derecognized earlier during war and even post war period of time. Excolonial countries were the worst sufferers of such colonizing motives of the West. They have never felt the necessity of using Asian societies and markets until the contemporary phase of globalization when they feel an extraordinary need of Asian market and social structures because of severe internal economic and social crisis. Noted corporate strategist Kenichi Ohmae has thus pointed out: ‘the capital markets in most of the developed countries are flush with excess cash for investment. Japan, e.g. has the equivalent of US$10 trillion stored away. Even where a country itself hovers close to bankruptcy, there is often a huge accumulation of money in pension funds and life insurance programmes. The problem is that suitable and suitably large - investment opportunities are not often available in the same geographies where this money sits. As a result the capital markets have developed a wide variety of mechanisms to transfer it across national borders. Today nearly 10% of US pension funds are invested in Asia. Ten years ago that degree of participation in Asian markets would have been unthinkable’.

What they have done is, therefore accepting a growth of cosmetic cultural heterogeneity in every ideal term but deliberately rule out the politics of signification and so the appropriate installation of plurality. So the question of indigenous cultural forms being affected is nowhere discussed in their texts. 

Scape theory:

Nevertheless while he is stressing upon the impossibilities of cultural homogenization and any kind of domination over any particular form of culture Arjun Appadurai has classified ‘heterogeneity’ of culture into five ‘scapes’ which according to him, can assure such impossibilities of homogenization of culture. These five scapes are: ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financescapes, ideoscapes, and mediascapes. 

Ethnoscapes refer to the deterritorializing migration of people from one part of the globe to another in various forms, as analyzed by John Tomlinson, like, tourists, immigrants, refugees, guestworkers, exile, and so on [Lull, 1995].

Technoscapes refer to the movement of corporate technologies from one place to another. Globalization of techno-capitalist development remains the prime consideration.

Financescapes refer to the undeterred movement of finance capital and industrial capital from any transnational source to any newly developing region, e.g., World Bank, International Monetary Fund, foreign development funds of some European states, like DFID of British government etc. 

Appadurai argues in this context that these scapes are quite disjunctive to each other and also unpredictable in nature but fail to understand the common unipolar and irreversible cultural factor ‘domination’ jointly perpetrated by the transnational corporates and group of nations led by the United States. Massive military aggressions in several nations, like, massacre in Indonesia, Mexico in late sixties; devastation in several West-Asian countries in two-three decades from early sixties; economic-cultural-military-industry axis domination in several Latin American states, like, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Costarica, Panama, Brazil, an other Boliverian states; allied participation in Gulf War in subsequent two stages [1990s and 2003-04] completely destroying Iraq and glorious remaining of the oldest Mesopotamian civilization, massacre in Afghanistan; promoting the civil wars actively in African states and former East-European nation states; and most recently nuclear deal with India follow so many earlier economic and cultural blockades since last forty years.

However by Mediascape, Appadurai argues about the transnational telecast of mass media technologies and mass produced images they constitute. Audience, according to Lull, here constructs narrative of the images produced and shown. This concept refers to when we see a Mexican film we construct an image of common Mexican lives. 

By Ideoscape Appadurai has expressed political images and in ideological domain, Lull has accommodated fundamental rights, freedom, responsibility, equality, discipline, democracy etc. which make up ideoscapes specified for different regions and habitations.

Thus by these five disjunctive ‘scapes’ Appadurai has emphasized on heterogeneity in diffusion of innovative and adoption of new ideas that overrule any form of hegemonic interaction, homogeneous ideation and influence. Mass media, as a special referent, communicate diverse and extended, polysemic contents that nowhere correspond to any homogeneity of message. So homogeneous constellation in cultural praxis is impossible.

On the other hand Stuart Hall while moving into the multiplicity of encoding and decoding of mediated message discards such automated outcome that human beings naturally conceive culture that is independent of any form of domination. Hall in this context while installing the same plurality of meaning of the message structures has stressed upon underlying struggle performed by the decoder of message. He conceived the message having close relation with the production function where lives the struggle for meaning and identity as well as the pertinence of domination. He quite substanively argues that polysemy must not be confused with plurality because in every social space classifications in cultural political orders are being imposed to constitute a ‘dominant cultural order’ that rules the dominant or preferred meaning for its audience. And this dominant cultural order however articulated by dominant social institutions.

Encoding-Decoding model:

Hall argues in this model that ‘broadcasting structures must yield encoded messages in the form of a meaningful discourse. The institutional-societal relations of production must pass under the discursive rules of language for its product to be realized. This initiates a further differentiated moment, in which the formal rules of discourse are in dominance. Before this message can have an ‘effect’, satisfy a need or to be put to a ‘use’ it must first be appropriated as meaningful discourse and be meaningfully decoded. It is this set of decoded meanings which have an effect, influence, entertain, instruct, or persuade with very complex perceptual, cognitive, emotional, ideological, or behavioural consequences’. Thus with this relational discourse structure creates a code and yields a text-message and also determines ‘effect’, ‘uses & gratifications’.

The model however reveals that meaning structure of encoding may not be same with that of decoding. They do not constitute ‘immediate identity’ and codes are not symmetrical, i.e., codes produced by the encoder-producer may not be symmetrical with the codes of decoder-receiver. So denotive meaning of a code largely depends on situational ideologies and therefore class struggle in language is almost inevitable that signs and codes enter into struggle over meanings. Hall argues in this context that literal or denotive meanings are not outside ideology and always perpetrate struggle. 

Cultivation theory revisited: Audience brought back from ‘hyperreactive’ allegation

As it has been already argued that polysemic nature of codes [verbal, visual, televisual etc.] basically reveal asymmetry between codes of encoder-producer and that of decoder-receiver and lack of equivalence between them. This functional proposition is successfully used to explain Gerbner’s notion of ‘television content’ where such lack of equivalence can be widely seen among the audience. Hall argues that ‘it might also transform our understanding of audience reception, reading and response as well’.

Cultivation analysis in Gerbner’s notion tells us the long term heavy viewing of televisual contents [preferred ones] leads to a substantive change in audience behaviour and ideology. But as Hall argues that televisual content or television programmes are not at all behavioural inputs. Interestingly he remarks that ‘though Gerbner has mentioned that representations of violence on TV are not violence in reality but the message or image of violence, but we continue doing research on the question of violence as if we are unable to comprehend this epistemological distinction’. Gerbner however condemns the audience for becoming hyperreactive to such projection of not violence but the image of violence.

Hall in this context has explained semiology of televisual signs and its atachment to the immediate cultural praxis. According to Hall, all televisual signs are more than a ‘sign’, are a combination of visual and aural ‘discourses’, thus become an Peirce’s iconic sign that even depend on the things represented. Thus studying visual signs or languages often leads to a deep confusion and controversy is the first outcome in the society. He argues further that visual language transforms [translates] three dimensional reality into a two dimensional plane ‘it cannot be the referent or concept it signifies. The dog in the film can bark but it cannot bite’. So the reality exists outside the language but constantly mediated in this language. So our knowledge [even that may be discursive] has been produced and assured in this way. Hall says that true and transparent representation of the ‘real’ is not our knowledge but how it is being articulated is going to be the thing we are interested in and this is the ‘code’. Thus code analysis is as important as to analyze our understanding to it and according to Hall, Peirce’s iconic signs are similar to the Sausseurean code [the particular cultural arrangement of signs]. In his words, ‘...naturalism and realism - the apparent fidelity of the representation to the thing or the concept represented - is the result, the effect, of a certain specific articulation of language on the real...’. So even continuous observation of the image or the mesage of violence [not the real] would cause a serious effect on audience psyche or behaviour.

How to criticize media; or be critical to the mass media or mediation

Is it really your politics?

It is nowadays a common non-phenomenal circumstance to make a ground on the other side of the popular mass media or mediated contents. Although people have to be grounding for their individual social positioning in contrast to the power exertion and socialization process of mass media, the individual audience in most of the time takes the lesson of social positioning from the mainstream media. It is therefore a must-do job for an individual audience to get accustomed with the mediated content on the one side and to criticize on the other hand in contrast to his/her own temporal positioning in the public sphere.

What do mass media do? In between media and audience

It is not a simple question as it looks like for many aspects of its manifestation or what people usually accord in common understanding with it. The first approach toward its non-simplicity is that audience-people in any common cultural understanding or plane largely appear to be media-expert, media-friendly, media-observant, counter opinion maker and many such identities what comes suitable at any moment. In other side of such arbitrary identities media people at the back a typically capitalist corporate establishment often commonly manifest protectionist approach within organization and outright opinion maker in the operating society. So the question ‘what do media do?’ appears to be highly monolithic in nature at least to set public agenda and policy agenda in any point of time and space. So the audience in this condition hardly gets any space to criticize media content in general.

Media in this conditional space perpetrate certain jobs for its own hypercommercial purpose:

(i) locate and identify the targeted people;

(ii) form the audience;

(iii) prepare suitable programme contents [news, soaps and any other entertainment material];

(iv) influence the audience [viewing process];

(v) stimulate audience action [in short run];

(vi) change audience behaviour [in the ling run];

Media therefore gradually use the so called democratic space not just trivially to perpetrate ideal duties [to inform, to entertain, to educate, to…all other responsible duties] but to sustain its commercial corporate existence, earn maximized business in terms of turn-over and reach. Media here also played its nationalist role altogether in the post world war global perspective. In India the union government once used mass media extensively to disseminate public agenda along with policy agenda in three four decades since independence. People at that time were not in a position to at least open the lips. Gone are however those days as nationalist media largely being replaced by the hypercommercial media have lost its existence. 

What then do people do to its media?

If it at all appears to be a question accepted in any social format, people do not possess any form of statutory right to do anything substantial for media but to pose a responsible citizen as media-audience following democratic norm. Many will not agree with such harsh and passive looking condition for a growing belief that what media do is just for public perusal. Just for public consumption media produce contents. Mass audience have become gradually more and more active as individuals get enough amount of space to interact with media.

Whatever commonly spoken or uttered hovers close to bankruptcy of such concepts when audience recognizes interaction with the media in contrast to his/her shrunken space in public sphere. The growth of hyperreal mediation not only fictionalizes the reality with many fabricated counter-real arguments but also redefines all social spaces like political, economic, cultural etc. Thus an election oriented talk-show often fabricates the show in a set of a ‘boxing ring’. Such a presentation nevertheless proposes audience activism to make the programme successful outside the media in public sphere. Audience on the other side often transports the content in various lanes public sphere, like discussions in tea shops, lanes and rocks etc.

What is hypercommerciality?

The commerciality of media or consumption of media contents by the audience are often loosely derived as a choice-customization of an individual by Transnational Industrial Corporations (TNC) in any region-state thus defines the hypercommerciality of media. The hypercommeriality therefore moves beyond the once traditional corporate commerciality that only defined the institutional perpetuity. Hypercommerciality appears to be a ‘combined effect syndrome’ of large scale mediation and heavy viewing of media. Huge and incessant mediation greatly influence audience behaviour with a massive homogeneous behavioural effect that causes lowering of reactive space in an individual mind. Hypercommerciality thus dissolves all barriers between fiction and reality even in a finer space that goes beyond audience psyche. So the audience has no option but to consume the mediation.

The hypercommerciality of media thus appears to be a post ‘active audience’ analysis what Joseph Klapper, Denis McQuail et.al. proposed in 1960s in contrast to the dominant media paradigm phase with a clear notion that audience is equally active while they watch media; they usually choose the programme content what they want to view or read. This activism toward using media to gratify individual needs becomes a highly monolithic syndrome extensively used by the media conglomerates in post-eighties period. Thus far beyond the activism of just switching the channels over and surfing the channels, this individual mechanism of media viewing was the USP of media houses throughout the world.

Hypercommerciality thus proposes an outright consumption of media contents and substantial use of such contents in suitable places. As aircrafts need a runway or an airport to operate, such media contents also need a hyperreal space where the consumption can take place. Audience is just supposed to attend such mediated place to hang out and rediscover all mediated symbolic contents; so are they very active audience!!!

Media vs. Ideology? Progressive use of the Mediation?

In such a situation people nevertheless feel there is much space left for launching a huge protest against such mediation and criticize mediated contents. It is almost a counter use of the same media space for progressive and people’s purpose. The progressive use of mediation thus can be traced out:

(i) producing progressive contents using same mediation technology;

(ii) producing a content for a specific causal factor; may be a political issue;

(iii) producing for the making of an ideology; may be a mass political ideology;

(iv) producing for a specific targeted mass for a specific time and space;

(v) revival of ‘to inform-to educate’ syndrome;

(vi) producing benevolent contents for the mass;

(vii) redefining social awareness more than the popular use of mediation;

(viii) more and more participation in popular mediation programmes;

Audience on the other hand needs also to be classified for the underscored progressive use of mediation: 

(i) audience mostly in traditional middle class public spheres;

(ii) audience in an upper social-class formats;

(iii) audience in hyperreal spaces; shopping malls, water parks, viewing newer channels etc.

(iv) audience regularly migrating from traditional residing places to newly transformed hypercommercial office places.

(v) audience promoting democratic norms;

(vi) audience as opinion leaders;

(vii) audience promoting individual ideology; ideology of a rock band etc.

(viii) audience vanguards of a mass political ideology;

(ix) audience ‘partial’ vanguards of political ideology; i.e. representatives of mass organizations; more socially promoted; earlier Marxian social identities.

(x) audience of rural, urban identity specifications;

The progressive use of mediation is thus a competitive replication of popular mediation guided by a socially upgraded ideology that covers maximum benefit of the common mass in contrast to the unlimited entertainment mediation of media conglomerates. So in such cases progressive mediation following the same path of popular mediation promotes somewhere a different mode of ideological dealing.

Criticizing in such a huge gap between mediation and audience-ship

It now though not difficult to undertake an opinion-building process, often comes out very difficult to criticize the popular mediation being in traditional public spheres. Such a huge gap between progressive mediation, audience-ship and popular mediation creates a huge space-jolt for the mass audience to consolidate a non-bourgeois political ideology; or the Left ideology precisely. Mass audience nevertheless criticize media contents, launch debates in public spheres, democratic spaces often play a crucial role to become real vanguards of ideology somewhere more than the mass leaders and political offices. The common oppositions here in such cases are the nationalist bourgeoisie; right political opportunist forces, and newly emerged postcolonial violent extremist forces.

Poststructuralist Communication: Dissolution of Communicative Space in Hypercommerciality of Media

when traditional signification of communication dissolves...

Noted Philosopher Jacques Derrida in his redefinition of communication argues,“...Is it certain that there corresponds to the word communication a unique, univocal concept, a concept that can be rigorously grasped and transmitted: a communicable concept? Following a strange figure of discourse, one first must ask whether the word or signifier “communication” communicates a determined content, an identifiable meaning, a describable value. But in order to articulate and to propose this question, I already had to anticipate the meaning of the word communication: I have had to predetermine communication as the vehicle, transport, or site of passage of a meaning, and of a meaning that is one. If communication had several meanings, and if this plurality could not be reduced, then from the outset it would not be justified to define communication itself as the transmission of a meaning, assuming that we are capable of understanding one another as concerns each of these words (transmission, meaning, etc.). Now, the word communication, which nothing initially authorizes us to overlook as a word, and to impoverish as a polysemic word, opens a semantic field which precisely is not limited to semantics, semiotics, and even less to linguistics”.

In this way poststructuralist theorists like Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard et. al. have established infinite meanings can be produced and transmitted where no specific meaning is possibly achieved in communication of a message that may appear in any form. If the expectation or claim to have a definite or determinate meaning of a message is withdrawn from any level of social practices or if the concept of plurality can be extended to infinitely operative extent, communication then may achieve its highest possible limit of expansion. Thus structurality in communication or mass communication is, according the poststructuralists, is outright a superfluous issue to be discussed. Before to go into the deeper analysis on it, we must establish the basic tenets of poststructuralism:

In late 60s’ France, the notion of poststructuralism was to provide absolute emancipation of redears or recipients of the ‘Text’. The prime theoretical assumption was that recipients of a text in any form have the feel of emancipation to evaluate. The basic tenets can be articulated in the following ways:

(a) The Primacy of Theory

(b) The decentering of the subject

(c) The fundamental importance of the reader;

i.e. a text can be evaluated in infinite ways to get the meaning which a particular reader desires to achieve in terms of his / her cognitive attachment to that. According to Derrida, there is no particular structure of theorization involved to enrich the recipient with maximum possible output derived. Derrida has significantly pointed out that communicating a message doesn’t lead to the transmission of signification. Signification depends on the recipient of that message. In this way Derrida has discarded any possibility of convention or rule which may influence the signification. Only cultural aspiration of an individual recipient is needed which may reiterate any prior way of describing any similar kind of ‘text’. That is the reason why, according to Derrida, a novel / text has infinite opportunities to get read and followed even long after the death of the creator / communicator. Derrida even has discarded the option to describe or characterize a sign and even message as impoversihed to be ‘polysemic’. He has completely rejected any ideation of structuralist mode of cultural aspiration from the recipient’s end. Thus he has recommended complete dissolution of structures and ultimate liberalization of ‘text’ from any structural domination, even that be societal or cultural. He has pointed out certain distinctive features and non-features of communication. These are:

 Communication can never be definitive or determinate and uni-dimensional word to conceive any determinate meaning.

 Signifier cannot communicate any determinate or planned meaning; so communication cannot transmit any determinate meaning.

 So communication should not be defined only as the process of transmission of meaning.

 Communication is not dependent on semiosis or semio-linguistics. It rather depends on multi-dimensional use general or colloquial language which transcends traditional semiosis and semio-linguistics.

 Communication can be performed in even two different cultural contexts and perspectives and moreover in the cases of language differentiation, communication conveys no specific signification.

 So communication reveals or recognizes no semantic meaning or relationship between signs, i.e. a word cannot express any determinate meaning.

 Literal and specific meaning are the major sources of problems in the contemporary world.

 Conventional context is really a vague structure, but often used in communication analysis.

 Convention doesn’t exist; this is just the reiteration of the subject. Consensus may be achieved through continuous discussion.

 No suitable context can be produced for transmission of message, because what elements needed to produce a context are absolutely indeterminate “...are the prerequisites of a context ever absolutely determinable?”

 In written communication, the writer starts writing 

(a) when he / she intends to communicate something.

because (b) he / she represents his own idea.

(c) this representation becomes signified conveying his ideas.

(d) he / she can communicate well and through his writings, communicates incessantly to someone of the same grade. In this discourse he discovers writing as means of communication.

(e) As the process is continuous, it cannot produce any structure or meaning.

 The communicator can communicate the same subject through [non-verbal] gestures and postures.

 In written communication the recipient or addressee always remains absent. 

 Again even in absense of the communicator the message would be reproduced several times.

 Anyone can say that when I write the addressee is absent. Wouldn’t it represent the distance, belated, or any alternative idea?

 If this absense is the death of the addressee what then remain are the communicator and the writing. Even if everything is stopped the writer / communicator will go on writing. This process can only produce codes and is highly communicable even if the addressee or referent is absent.

 It is to be noted that this absense not only indicates a ‘continuous modification of presence’ but a departation or a complete alienation which deserves the possibility of deadly absense, i.e., while writing a creator transcends even the deadly absense of the addressee.

 Every context is thus a code, which rejects any possibility of conventional code or context.

 Like the absense of addressee, it is applicable for the addresser or communicator also, i.e., immediate after the transmission of message communicator also remains deadly absent. And the message is stored in a machine and can be reproduced ‘n’ times for which presence of the addresser is not required.

 So the absence of the addresser can be justified from practical outlook under following considerations:

(a) absense from conveying meaning or signification;

(b) absense of the intention to signify;

(c) absense from wanting to communicate;

 So it is evident that during communication both addresser and addressee remain totally absent.

 As it is already mentioned that signifier and signified are not at all existent excepting some inferior amount of presence which create crisis of meaning.

because, (a) communicator may manipulate the signs;

 Communication doesn’t have any specific signification.

 some message may possess some meanings but referent is not specific:

[Circle is a square]

the message signifies but the referent is absent.

 There are some messages which signify nothing. This can be called agrammaticality. These are:

[Abracadabra]

[Hocas Focas Gilli Gilli Gay]

These are all agrammatical and can only be justified by ‘Teleology’.

Jean Baudrillard:

Another French theorist Jean Baudrillard has also done seminal work on poststructural approach of communication.

 McLuhun conceptualized the revolution of technology would also explode geo-existence of human being. In this discourse he postulated the concept of ‘global village’. With the explosion of geo-social identity, ‘local’ becomes smaller and tend to be personal toward the implosion of self. This causes massive increase of information flow and the people are induced to consume more and more commodities. But the truth is that people consume the information first as essential commodity. As more information is available people show less interest to consume ‘meaning’. Thus ultimately explosion of information devalues the utility of information.

 Information doesn’t only produce or reveal meaning. Mass media as being flooded by excess information have inevitably deconstructed the traditional unitary concept of social perspective and practices.

 Communication is a derived process. So in this process ‘Brand’ is distinguishably precious. So in the contemporary age ‘packaging’, which an represent brand is a very important element of message. It is further to be remembered that such packaging even transcends the production of meaning of the message. Nowadays packaging is more important than the product or the commodity. So transmission of information for packaging has mopped up the necessity of meaning. In other words, the issue of ‘production of meaning in communication’ has become least important.

 So in mass mediated information the ideas like, ‘social perspective’, ‘social context’ of information are no longer evident. It can be defined as “catastrophe of meaning”. We have no other options but to remain in this situation. So out of neutralization of meaning, beyond meaning, and imploded meaning the concept of “fascination” comes in.

 Thus people have no other option but to think about his / her personal or individual self. People want implosion in quest of better interpretation, heterogeneity among the things in the world. Only mass media provide such heterogeneity.

 Media practices have rearranged our senses of place and time. No distinction of hierarchies, hyperreality dissolves the old oppositions; the more real than the real has become the only existence. Media have deleted all the public places, so destroyed the differences between the external and internal world.

 More information and more information, lesser and lesser meaning and finally rejection of meaning are the elements of communication.

 Mass media have elevated our senses. Television is the real world; Life is dissolved into television and television is dissolved into life. The fiction is the reality and the reality is the fiction.

 The personality of an individual can best be expressed as an object in accordance with the economic necessity or consideration. The basis of such expression, as articulated by the media, is to establish that a person can act as a free agent in the world who is not associated with any society, state, even with any given option of life pattern and other givens.

 Without mass media people or mass cannot make any sense of culture. Culture is taken out of the hands of the masses. People or the mass is no longer the source of culture but is inspired by the mediated culture.

 Mass is not considered by what people think about it. It is rather justified by how people actively participate to accept the transmission of mediation process and of course the information.

 Thus social perspective of communication means the development of self identity. No concept of emancipation is possible beyond this development.

 So we are proletariatized regardless of class, a function of the spectacle. This is doubtless to be the postmodernity where people watch media content and forget but never associate themselves with that.

Establishment vs. Opposition Platforms: In search of ideology among common mass

Abir Chattopadhyay

Does this headline stink too much specially in West Bengal? or enough cliché anyway? Whatever it smells people of this state, otherwise, have to sit with this debate for at least coming one and half year, even if anyone ignores imminent 2012 debacle as accorded by some demanding astrologers!!! If it still looks enough viscid please let me introduce that categories like ‘political’, ‘commercial’, ‘social’ are going to be permeated within next one or two years into a complete mutation of the individual meaning of them. Through the postcommercial development of mass media toward becoming a ‘package’ ahead of a ‘message’ all categories of ‘individual and mass’ life are going to hover close to the end of existence. But the most interesting issue is that people of India including this state also largely are quite unaware of such mutation of all earlier meanings and categories as they by the reason of severe economic inequalities, cultural hierarchies, and bourgeois political domination face lots of struggle while in their mundane life. So mass media can easily maneuver such packages of understanding beyond common, traditional understandings of life which are mostly binary oppositional, staying between good or bad, yes or no, we or they, hero or villain etc. etc. The headline represents such a binary oppositional topic of discussion of the hour that often reduces natural plurality of political, social, cultural issues and leads to a simple ‘uneven’ concentration of power specially political and economic power in some bourgeois hierarchical strata. That not only baffles the common mass away from the mainstream political notions but makes them eternal consumer of mediated political packages.

Binarity between two prime categories

In between the above two categories ‘Establishment’ and ‘Opposition’ the leading debate exists between the mediated package and the traditional binary notions of life. Mass media everyday perpetrate an absolute detailing of establishment and opposition as well, as they create every moment of that and people are always eager to reduce the same into any friendly category of life, say government, local politics, village politics, market price,  2009, 2011, alliance, CPM, Trinamool, Congress etc. Therefore in this equation bourgeois media naturally have a tendency to maneuver such reductionist issues toward making of a mass understanding of it by creating pseudo often fabricated public opinion, as suited commercially. Media try thus to realign its audience reorienting their notions into a homogeneous one like ‘this time Mamata’ from 2001 since the birth of Trinamool congress, and Now 2011 etc.

What establishment and what opposition? An oversimplification altogether

Nevertheless people of West Bengal have to participate in this debate between mediated package and common opinion toward identifying establishment and the opposition. So let us better clarify what is establishment? And what indeed the opposition is? Common understanding often says ‘establishment’ is the government that rules, if further reduced, CPM government and opposition is ‘Mamata’ in any sensibility whatever or ‘no’. But extending such ordinary notion we will find various other categories that also rule common psyche and many such deviant or defiant voices on the other hand that do not rule but oppose ruling. Government ruling is often presupposedly taken as absorbing common individuated and oppositional desires. Common sense of ‘opposition’ therefore often comes out to be simply opposing such ruling. But beyond such oversimplified and near obsessive sense there are many other forms of establishment that also participate in ruling the common mass or psyche. 

Opposition dissolves: emergence of new ruling

After Singur and Nandigram fiasco the emergence of new individuals in the name of civil society have taken a self proclaimed ruling stance staunchly standing by the political opposition and have left no stone unturned to rule the mass. These people not disclosing membership of any particular political wing have created a new ruling over the common mass and public opinion straightway to the Trinamool Congress. Being hugely fed by bourgeois mass media the new ruling-power groups have been unceasingly rewarded in every kind possible. The sacred role of the common mass is, if at all needed, to just switch their TV set on or newspaper open and be an unimposing consumer. The unimposing consumer even media disseminate the fabricated death figure of 1500 people on 14th March, 2007 in Nandigram. If bourgeois media even compete among them on the fabrication of the number of death. Media thus create another establishment creating regular newer talk-shows with people who often try to be the opinion leaders of the common mass. The so called opposition platforms have consequently taken the safe shelter behind these opinions of newer individuals. A new binarity is at the same time been created. Opinion leaders on the other hand are to be shown politically independent and saviour of the bourgeois political parties which operate behind them. Binarity is the ‘others’ who are marked by their political identities. So ‘opportunism’ precisely ‘political opportunism’ is another ‘establishment’ that rules common psyche in the guise of so called marked opposition. Please note that this newer establishment is too costly as the members are to be heavily financially fed by another establishment, here it called the ‘Ministry of Railways’ which largely feeds the bourgeoisie with huge public money simply in the name of another establishment called ‘heritage’. Therefore ‘opposition’ here is mutated to become a form of more powerful counter establishment leaving mass distress of poverty, hunger, political killing, price hike, food inflation away from the spotlight. This is also a spectacle that evades ideological plurality.

32 years of left front government: still ‘establishment (!!!) in making’

Another inconsistent and anomalous (category) presupposition is the 32 years of left front ruling which is another ‘establishment in making’ beyond natural plurality of democracy. If democratic naturalism is the frequent change of the government, as often accorded by many social theorists, how then left front have won seven consecutive assembly elections since 1977. Is it beyond democracy!!! Wisely ‘no’. Here natural plurality supports the left front coalition that has ruled the state beyond ruling. This is important. It is not a package because capitalist democracy can’t generate that possibility in its procedural format. Opposition parties since 1982 have been trying to organize people against the left front. They were not totally unsuccessful in this process as they have also earned democratic space among people. But since 2001, opposition again was dissolved and oppositional content had been reduced to a mediated homogeneous ruling “This time or never”. Public however rejected this ultimatum. Same result spilled over in 2006, public again rejected such ‘ruling’. After winning considerably in Parliament election in 2009 and some municipal elections opposition parties have completely forgotten their agenda. The slogan is even further reduced to “Now 2011”. Gone is the oppositional identity, a new ruling emerges not as alternative but a mere consolidation that only desires power against proclaimed “32 years” of establishment. Dear reader, this is a pre-election scenario!!! Naturally opposition here is only the emergence of newer power bloc or consolidation.

Public reaction: backlash or vandalism

Recently a Kolkata based hospital was quite brutally ransacked by a violent mob alleging the hospital for not admitting some accident patients. But the attack was so planned and organized that vandals turned the hospital into a heap of rubble within hours. Is this a notion of opposition? Let us not confine our discussion within the Advertisements given by the hospital authority in almost all newspapers of the very next day that ‘this is a blow to the whole of hospital industry’. The state government has announced a departmental inquiry. But still the binarity remains in between the performance of hospital industry on the one side and the organized vandalism on the other. The deceased members of our society and the rubble of our property mutually symbolize the dissolution of both establishment and opposition toward making of a more powerful establishment structure that only exploits common people. Most importantly the remaining is the uneven power concentration in both sides of the coin where neither government nor any people’s ‘ideology’ have a legitimate entry. These concentrations not only provide a new ruling but destroy all kinds of welfare approaches of common life. State inquiry may throw a new light on it, but will then be anyone there to recognize what has happened really? This is suitably a question that hardly allows even the victims and their families.

People of not only this state but of the country have earlier seen many such incidents in the name of ‘public reaction’ or backlash etc. We have seen the demolition of Babri Mosque, Gujarat genocide, Maoist extremism, ransacking West Bengal state legislative Assembly by handful members of the state opposition and the list is endless. On the other side we have seen 2/3rd of total population of the state for seven consecutive times have supported a political coalition. Is it too non-commercial or chimera? Isn’t it a public reaction and at least better than killing common innocent mass?

In Nandigram since 2007 amongst all categories of events occurred during the year long massacre, the only neglected and impoverished category what have had a least amount of public attention was of those four thousand people being thrown away from their land. These people remained always ousted not only from their land but from the spectacle also. The whole of East Midnapore gradually came under a family ruling. Isn’t it an establishment that gathers only power to engulf the mass in an encircled impasse? Let us still not accept any binarity that declares the earlier regime in East Midnapore innocent. They have accepted public penance in exchange of every wrong stepping.

2011

This four digit combination nowadays acts beyond all its traditional meaning and gradually becomes a symbol many false connotations that somewhere scares people, gives a message of something historic beyond all democratic norms where people only have to perform and make a history of their own what they have done since last three decades. Therefore this was never a continuous process where they had chosen seven distinctly separate governments in West Bengal. 2011 is exactly like 2006, 2001, 1996, 1991, 1987, 1982, 1977 and even 1972 where people used to express their individual grievance, ideology, struggle, gratification, discontent, anger, deprivation. This individuality and a sense of independence keep them united which often wrongly defined as ‘polarization’. The other side of this stream is sheer domination which transcends even governmental ruling toward an emergence of unholy power over the common mass.

Baudrillard Reading: Packaging or ‘Explosion-Implosion’ of information dissolves meaning of communication

when signs mutate in a package

Noted French theorist Jean Baudrillard has come out with an extension of ‘explosion of technology’ that results to an implosion of a concept ‘global village’. Baudrillard prime notion of poststructurality or postmodernity rests on infinite implosion in, what he called, individual postmodern mirror that reflects the individual notion toward incessant explosion of information. He explained that we consume more products because of information. So his central logic was that we consume more and more information. Naturally consumption of more information is to be backed by more technological explosion. Here at this point Baudrillard has made a post-historic notion that the more information we consume the less meaning we derive from them, i.e. we consume less meaning but implode on the other hand. As information explodes meaning implodes. Baudrillard’s prime notion is that as information explodes it neutralizes itself or devours its own content.

Thus according to Baudrillard, explosion of information destroys communication and the social for two reasons:

(a) instead of causing communication, it exhausts itself in the act of staging the communication; instead of producing meaning it exhausts itself in the staging of meaning;

(b) the mass media, with its pressure of information, carries out an irresistible destruction of the social.

Consequently Baudrillard has designated this post-social condition as a continual brand-making process as he defines communication is an act that has a branded effect and must have a packaging, which on the other hand always transcends normal meaning making sense. He argues interestingly that this is not sufficient telling that packaging has beome more important than the product in an age of image making or information of packaging deletes the meaning. Meaning has rather been corrupted that again corrupts the whole description of the social. He calls this phase ‘catastrophe of meaning’ and no resolution or revolution is possible to overcome this ‘catastrophe’.

So beyond this catastrophe individual ‘fascination’ exists that comes from the neutralization of information and implosion of meaning and everything becomes reduced to titilation, obscenity and pornography. So individualist human has the sole option to describe its privileged self and offers a sense of explosion to the extent what he can explain up to. Beyond that variety exists in the world.

Simulation & mutation of signs:

Baudrillard however at this point has re-discovered a world where individual is in all sense independent while producing meaning and reproducing the code. He designates this transcendent re-codification as simulation where signs have been mutated [means subsequent phases do not replace previous phases; they contain and add to them] to satisfy phasal representations. He interestingly observes that ‘we don’t want nature: we want parks; we don’t value living as much as the health which can be bought; we don’t want foreign culture: we want Disneyland; Indians of the west don’t want indigenous culture: they want Durga Puja. He thus has made a history of signs mutated in three phases:

(a) counterfeit: dominant in the era of renaissance and industrial revolution and still evident today. The first order of the sign is the counterfeit that represents a meaning arbitrarily. Counterfeits enforced class structures and fake status symbols. Advertisement of ‘Nano’-car transmits its class referent, that lets the user remind that he/she does not belong to the class but the class that pays the price.

(b) production: was the dominant scheme of industrial era. It represents the second order of the sign that represents economic prosperity and cultural progress of the social is, according to Baudrillard, is industrial purpose of the sign. Dominant social always signifies such second order meaning of signs in its favour, like, ‘Nano’ reminds audience of the gifts of industrialization.

(c) simulation: this is the contemporary mutation of signs. Baudrillard’s notion to simulation is the postmodern sign that no longer represents or signifies any class or social reality despite reality occurs in everyday life. The sign in simulation signifies the hyper-relations between the market and individualist consumer. In this phase consumer or audience [individualist] thinks that he/she is the sender of the message and the sign appears not as a message but a feedback to the consumer’s message [fascinated desire]. They individually start thinking that for them the sign is created. For them mediation occurs and they have the individual power to control the sign and its meaning.

Thus audience [consumer as Baudrillard termed deliberately replacing sender, communicator, people etc.] consume more information but less meaning and implode to establish individual choice or fascination. Thus making own individuality as a free agent consumer simulates the meaning through implosion of media contents. Naturally media specially ‘Television’ becomes the real world that enters into the life and life enters into the television.

While analyzing extensively, Ernest A Hakanen lets Baudrillard’s view become expressed in his own words: “In such a system the old Marxist commodity is queer and trivial. The new media consumer doesn’t fall victim to commodification. This notion might be liberating, but it is not. We fall for meaningless image. But then again, it works for what we have become. The arbitrariness of images and signs further releases us from being right, wrong, good, bad, true, false etc. We live in a world in which advertisements do not have to show the product. This is evidence not only that we buy the signs, but more so that we do not attach meaning to our philosophized world...Alas our individuality, always in the spotlight, is that and only that, in the spotlight. The spotlight functionalizes human being. The social limits of the spotlight and playing to the spotlight are the individual. The social framework and its communicative action are the self. There is no freedom beyond this activity. We are proletariatized regardless of class, a function of spectacle”.

Let’s conclude the poststructurality and beyond it of communication or mediation with Baudrillard’s own observation [In the shadow or the silent majorities] of what we are:

“an insoluble ‘double bind’ like children face to face with an adult universe. They are summoned to behave like autonomous subjects, responsible, free, and conscious, and as submissive object, inert, obedient, and conforming. The child resists on all levels, and to a contradictory demand he/she also responds with a double strategy. To demand to be an object, he/she opposes all the practices of disobedience, revolt, emancipation; in short a total claim to subjecthood. To demand to be a subject, he opposes just as stubbornly and efficaciously with an objects’s resistance, that is to say, in exactly the opposite manner: infantilism, hyperconformity, a total dependence, passivity, idiocy” (Baudrillard: The system of Objects).