Contextual auto-horizons as determining originary experience of television-serials[1]
Editor’s Note: Written c.2006
- 1. Introduction
In the 30 years since the zenith of reader-response criticism, aesthetic theory, as it appears in our venerable institutions, has become increasingly focused on its subject field’s relevance to fields outside itself. This attempt to self-validate by associating with other (relevantable) disciplines has ironically resulted in aesthetic theory’s being considered all the less relevant or referentable, sprouting sub-schools by the dozen: structuralism and deconstructuralism (post-structuralism); psychological- [sic], feminist-, queer-, and Marxist-studies; and of course the New Historicists and Cultural Critics who assure us all that they’re completely different[2].
The following essay suggests an alternative to contemporary academia’s myopia, and introduces a methodology which builds on Husserl’s phenomenology[I] and especially his determinations of the horizontal dimensions of intentional experience. By the end of the essay this author hopes to have demonstrated: (a) that there exists a third way between an object-oriented approach to a fictional paradigm (a la the New Critics and the historiographical critics who were their predecessors) and a subject-oriented approach (which almost inevitably collapses into social criticism); and (b) that there exists a third way above the two recognised practices for approaching a fictional paradigm, namely naive immersion[3] and critical self-awareness. These points will be further described and elaborated upon below.
- 2. Pole-dialectics[4]
The first of this essay’s self-attributed tasks will characterise the two dominant poles of media descriptions before describing an alternative approach which makes use of each of the others’ epistemological strengths whilst allowing a novel existential coherence.
- 2.1 Implied cybernetics
{An OO-interpretation of viewing presumes that the show can form a cybernetic system (which here may be understood as a self-contained instantiation of semiotics)}
- 2.2 The lonely subject
The second of the dominant views to be discussed in this section is a non-simple derivative of emphasising that the viewer’s embrace envelops the shows topology.
- 2.2.1 Show topology
An awareness of show-topology includes not only the math-sum of the program’s unitised elements, but also the reference of those elements to other topologies. Thus this theory is able to explain why temporally or symbolically associated motifs are relevant to a description of a viewing experience; as well as describing the relevance of allusions, parody and satire, appropriation, retro-reincarnation, and presumptions of a viewing literacy.
- 2.2.2 Mirrors on the edge of show topology
Show topology presumes the viewer to be allegorically isolated from the television as media, instead subliming it into a fused product that annotates the observed facts of the show (even where falsified) into a geography that is intuited as Other.
- 3 X
- 3.1 The Idiot
by Dostoyevski is recommended as one of the greatest Russian novels.
- 3.1.1 Epistemological presumptions of naivety
- 3.1.2 Modes of living cum stepping stones
{use the word “seamen” here}
- 3.2 Borgesian abominations and Lacanian reconciliations
{mirrors = self-awareness, Lacan’s mirror stage}
- 3.2.1 Structuralist hopes and Peepers of Ceder City – de Saussure watches on
- 3.2.2 Television 2.0
- 3.2.3 Death of the “Pro-sumer” in a post-Barthes cyborg world
Meaning and the search for it is deconstructed over YouTube; we have returned full circle to the “hypodermic needle” theory of the 30s as prosumers fashion meaning through the use of meta tags; reality is constructed by consensus; the economy of meaning represented by a pluralist democracy of ideas {may be prudent to add something quasi-Marxist here}
- 4 The golden mean meets the high road
{The ability to show topology to incorporate false annotations is a strength. The fact that it doesn’t take this further is its most glaring failure}
This work was made possible by the Iser Grant for Studies into Emergent Media.
Conflict of interest: The author declares no conflict of interest aside from the fact that the author’s position in the department depends on the number of publications and not their quality or originality.
[1] The following essay was first published in Noūs (Nov. 1999). It has since been heavily edited so as to present ongoing research as well as to address the various concerns that have been raised.
[2] This author suggests that both departments at UCLA be shut down until this is resolved!
[3] The phrase “naive immersion” was coined by myself during a conversation with Roland Barthes, only a few days before the latter’s passing. Barthes agreed that the phrase is both more descriptive and philologically subversive than “pre-impression” (cf. Anton 1997).
[4] Recent research suggests that Hegel is an idiot. This author concurs.
[I] “Phenomenology is a broad discipline and method of inquiry in philosophy, developed largely by the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, which is based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events (“phenomena”) as they are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness.” For further information see https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_phenomenology.html.
