A Communication Universe by Klyukanov Igor E.;

Author:Klyukanov, Igor E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

chapter six

v

Through the Fire:

Communication as Resignation

The (Un)Bearable Lightness of Being

It is common to equate the main difficulty of communication with misunderstanding or lack of understanding between its participants. This difficulty is mostly a part of the staging of communication as conversation. Without a doubt, misunderstanding or lack of understanding do not contribute to successful communication. A much more serious difficulty, however, is the situation when understanding is (or rather seems to be) achieved; now the subject can no longer wait for the Other (or the system) to clarify meaning or blame the Other (or the system) for not doing enough to clarify it. At this point, the subject must do something himself/herself so that communication can continue. In this light, communication can be conceptualized not so much as a process of understanding or constructing but rather creating meaning; a time comes for the subject to carry out/on the commitment made.

In other words, the subject situated in a temporal dimension is aware of the gravity and difficulty of his decisions, but at the same time he is aware that he must decide, that it is he who must decide, and that this process is linked to an indefinite series of necessary decision making that involves all other men. (Eco 1984, 113; emphasis mine)

The process of creating meaning is not the same as representation in the strict referential sense; rather, this process must be viewed the way M. Heidegger viewed representation. For him, “‘representation’ (Vorstellung) means a process of bringing a thing before one’s self, and thereby imagining it (the German word is the same) . . . by the word traditionally rendered in English as representation (Vorstellung) he means . . . a whole (metaphysical) process of reorganizing the world and producing a new category of being” (Jameson 2002, 46).

It was mentioned earlier that the staging of communication as construction was not complex enough because it was too grounded in reality lacking enough imagination. Now communication reveals its more complex nature; every act of communication can now be viewed as a complex number, combining real and imaginary parts. It becomes clear that the process of communication as creating meaning cannot be successful without a certain degree of imagination. To that end, the subject plays the role of a hyperreflexive observer (cf. Leydesdorff 2000), embracing the entire experience made meaningful up to that point. This way, what is brought before one’s self is the entire process of communication: while communication was earlier conceptualized as a process of recognizing objects (cf. the staging of communication as invocation), or understanding the Other (cf. the staging of communication as conversation), or constructing together with the Other a world order (cf. the staging of communication as construction), now communication can be viewed as a process of the subject be(com)ing aware of (one’s role in) communication, i.e., be(com)ing self-aware. That is why “properly speaking . . . the Self exists only insofar as one is self-conscious” (Aboulafia 1991, 231). As mentioned in the previous chapter, what is

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