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 If the expectation or claim to have a definite or determinate meaning of a message is withdrawn from any level of social practices or if the concept of plurality can be extended to infinitely operative extent, communication then may achieve its highest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.