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Abstract
In the information-society the production of culture and meaning has
reached a level of simulation (Baudrillard). With the new technologies
developed for the distribution of information (INTERNET, Satellite-TV etc.)
this simulated culture and meaning confronts with the intersubjective creation
of meaning in face-to-face interaction. The creation of meaning on an individual
level is primarily founded on the senses. This meaning is by definition
subjective and not necessarily easy to communicate. On the intersubjective
level meaning is created through the spoken word. This creation of meaning
takes place in face-to-face interaction with an intimate relation to praxis.
It is situational, which means that there is constant reference made to
a shared reality. This intersubjective creation of meaning is constantly
confronted with the production of culture and meaning in the information-society.
This production is of course aimed at consumers and is therefore produced
in order to be significant. But as the globalisation of culture increases
so does the distance between the producers and the consumers. There is
no shared praxis to which this production refers. We have reached a level
of simulation where production refers not to a shared reality, but to differently
produced culture and meaning. This constant confrontation between the local
intersubjective creation of meaning and the global production of culture
and meaning is the field where the fruitful development of culture now
takes place. We live in a constant flow, where our creation of meaning
takes place under the influence of a global production of meaning.
Key words: simulation, global-local, intersubjective meaning,
production of meaning, creation of meaning.
The question concerning the intersubjective
creation of meaning is whether it is an act set and limited by language
or if there is something which this act depends on, in addition to language.
For Habermas, the ideal speech-act in
which meaning is generated is dependent on two or more individuals who
control and share a language. There is no place for a generation of meaning
in a speech-less situation1
. For Habermas the I is formed through language and, because of that, there
can be no "I" behind the sentiments expressed on a pre-linguistic level.
The acts we perform in the world however have a long history, they go further
back than our possibility to retell them, they are in this sense pre-linguistic.
We can relate to a small child where meaning is generated for both, independent
of language.
G.H.Mead reduces the creation of meaning
to a role-taking which enables the individual to comprehend a situation
and act accordingly 2 . The
ability to take an other's view anticipatory, tends to reduce the I to
the other, there is no stability or self-identity in a self from which
the sense of the meeting with the world have a centre. When I act in the
world the world acts in me, according to Mead, but problems arises when
we try to distinguish between different acts and how these acts effect
our sense of the world. If there is no centre, there can be no independent
I.
We are already primarily situated in the world and act in it according
to the situation 3 .
From interactions taking place in the world, we form knowledge of the world.
Different situations with things (and people) become significant to us
in our interactions in the world. We encounter potentially possible meanings.
The significance of the world is neither founded by the subject nor something
independent of it, it is generated from the meeting between the subject
as a sensing and conscious being situated in the world and what is sense
from this position. The actions performed are dependent on what is encountered
in the world. Pre-comprehension of the situation and expectations also
influence action. These actions in the world, praxis, influence one's knowledge
of the world and even generates new knowledge.
To experience something when acting in the world is to sense a situation
bodily. With consciousness sensations are structured in relation to time
and space, and to former and expected experience 4 .
This process is a primary ability humans have, which is not dependent on
language but on the capacity to memorise and to relate to these memories
when acting in the world. Through perception individuals gain knowledge
of the world, knowledge which has to be transformed into a linguistic form
in order for it to be communicated.
The main relation one has to the world
is the relation to the Other, be it a mother or some other caretaker. This
relation is primary because it is mutual, i.e., it is necessary that both
parts take part in order to keep the relation going. As opposed to the
relation towards "dead" things, which is not mutual in this sense, things
don't act, they make me act. Even the infant participates in this interaction
through sucking, smiling and directing attention towards another. This
interaction is basically non-verbal including gestures, miming, sounds
etc. From this interaction a set of meanings are developed. Meanings transferred
from the adult to the child, but also meanings created in the very interaction
taking place between the two. These meanings are created in close relation
to the ongoing activity, praxis.
For Habermas (1987) this relation to
the other in the ideal speech-act is symmetric i.e., the two interacting
persons are on the same level. There is no antagonism or constraint between
the two. This version of the intersubjective foundation of meaning is truly
ideal as opposed to real. "The best argument wins"-metaphysics is founded
on an anthropology regarding man which assumes man as non-dominant, idealist
and without any psychological secondary effect.
I would suggest a more realistic version of this relation and assume
an asymmetry between the two sides. Levinas (1971) regards this relation
as the possibility to reach an even higher level (infinity) by regarding
the other as an elevated Other. Whereas putting yourself in this position
only maintains the normal state-of-things which is "war" (between people,
classes, ethnic groups and nations) 5 .
Disregarding the importance of asymmetry in the relations between two persons
in the process of creating meaning is a major default 6 .
The possibility to force your own interpretation of the world onto somebody
else, or being forced into accepting an other's interpretation is a common
situation. The asymmetric relationship is not only the reality, it is also,
as for Levinas, the possibility.
Interaction with another is a constant
process of interpreting the other through role-taking (Mead). What we interpret
is not only speech but also gestures, miming, etc. We also interact with
others in an activity going on in the world, when we do things together.
From this shared activity we create meanings intersubjectivily (see below
for an example with the bikers). We signify what we are doing with the
help of language, and we modify our prior meanings according to new experiences.
This signifying and modifying is a process constantly going on which does
not depend on what Habermas calls "an ideal speech-act", where consensus
is achieved through the best argument, but in asymmetric relationships
where domination or manipulation are common strategies. An informal leader
in a group achieves this position perhaps through being verbally outstanding,
by being the one who defines the situation. This interpretation of the
situation becomes the shared meaning of it. A theory about the intersubjective
creation of meaning must consider the subtle ingredients of domination
in the relations between people. These ingredients are important in understanding
how we come to share meanings. They are vital for the development of cultural
content and are not something avoidable.
As we learn to use language, we also
learn to verbalise experience and to communicate them to others. But we
also use the language when we interact with another person, when we act
in the world together. From our actions in the world, praxis, we create
meanings with the help of language, we signify the world and we discuss
and come to conclusions about the meaning of things and events. But this
intersubjective creation of meaning has its origin in praxis, i.e., language
is always signified from the way it is used. For Wittgenstein (1967) the
way to comprehend a word is to study the way the word is used, in terms
of the cultural context from which it derives its meaning. Going into the
cultural context means studying the praxis in which it is used. Of course,
we also use the language in an abstract way, not closely connected to present
actions, however the meaning of a word is ultimately given through praxis.
I will try to exemplify this. The Japanese
artist Yutaka Sone has made a bicycle which is supposed to be used by 18
different bikers all from different nationalities 7
. This bicycle is very difficult to ride, it is very unstable and about
20 meters long, which means that the riders had to practice a lot together
in order to be able to ride. To be able to fulfil this difficult task they
had to co-ordinate their actions with the help of language. But since they
all had different nationalities they had no common language to communicate
in. They were forced to invent new words and give them meaning deriving
from their activity. Of course it only came down to a very few words, performatives,
and not a complete language, but what I want to show with this example
is the notion that language is primarily founded on praxis, and on this
micro-level language always derives its meaning out of an activity.
Praxis, defined as our actions in the
world, social as well as non-social, is the ground for cognitive content.
Durkheim (1984) held this notion in assuming the division of labour as
the ground on which distinguish pre-modern from modern society. In pre-modern
society, the division of labour is simple which means that many people
share the same work i.e. actions in the world. This gave about the same
cognitive content i.e. they shared the same meanings. Durkheim's concept
mechanical solidarity is developed on this notion where people share the
same meanings, ideas and norms. They form a collective consciousness. Marx
(1960) also held the notion that what you do, your work, forms the way
your sense of the world is structured. The concept of false consciousness
is developed from the notion that ones position in relation towards the
forces of production produces a certain consciousness, but under the influence
of capitalist culture one is fooled into holding false beliefs i.e. false
consciousness.
With the language we are able to signify
the world. This gives us the possibility to speak to other people with
whom we share these signifiers. We do not necessarily have to share the
same experience to be able to understand each other. Because of the possibilities
contained within language, to abstract a situation and retell it, we are
able to communicate meaning independently of a situation. Another person
is able to generate meaning out of a situation retold by me. This is one
example of how meaning can be created independently of praxis.
These meanings, or knowledge, are not
lived through. That is, I haven't reached them with my own experience,
they are not conquered by myself, but gained intellectually or theoretically.
This makes these meanings secondary compared to meanings out of my own
experience. A lot of our knowledge is gained not from our own experience
but from secondary sources. Of course this knowledge is important as a
preparation for the real or physical experience, but because of the way
this knowledge is brought on to me, through reading, telling, television
etc. it doesn't involve the whole of me, my body, my senses. The interpretation
of the experience into words or other media's is done by somebody else
and then communicated on to me.
If we divide knowledge into theoretical
and practical (lived through) knowledge these two constantly influence
each other. I am able to transform my theoretically gained knowledge into
practical when I act in the world, and my practically gained knowledge
forms the ground upon which I can understand knowledge gained theoretically.
In order to understand mediated knowledge, theoretical knowledge, there
has to be links between my own practical knowledge and the mediated knowledge.
The possibility for this theoretical knowledge to be significant to me
is whether it can connect on to knowledge I have already stored. Or to
put it in another way, the significance of the mediated knowledge depends
on my disposition, what I find significant depends on my prior knowledge.
The way I interpret it depends on my cognitive content. The way I experience
something, be it in praxis or in front of the TV, depends on my sedimented
knowledge and meanings. But this is not a static relationship, my sedimented
knowledge is constantly being modified by my new experiences and by time
8 .
Within the culture I share with different
people around me my interpretation of something will be pretty much the
same as theirs, because we share more or less the same cognitive content
coming from our common experiences in praxis. I can rely on how people
I share a culture with interpret me, what I do and what I say. I expect
a certain interpretation from their side and I act and talk on this ground.
The problems arise when we don't share this cultural ground, praxis, and
the foreigner cannot expect to be interpreted the way he wants and neither
can I. Problems with how to understand and be understood arise by the reduction
of a common ground 9 .
This is the focus for my paper: How
is it possible for the producers of a global culture to be interpreted
the way they want without a shared local culture. How is it possible for
me to understand the meanings produced globally with no reference to my
local context.
If we recognise the major changes that
has taken place in the post-war world, we can label today's society in
different ways: a post-industrial society (Bell), a post-traditional society
(Giddens), late-capitalism (Habermas), post-modern society (Lyotard). I
would prefer to call it information-society 10
because of my focus on meaning.
In the information-society several aspects
integrate the individual to the global context. Giddens (1990) speaks of
the global consequences most every action on a local level has in presupposing
and relying on a linkage and a dependence on a wide range between the local
and the global. The international production system integrates most every
part of the globe and connects you with the whole world. The question for
Giddens is the traditional Durkheimian: What helps people function together?
His answer is trust, where Durkheim speaks of organic solidarity. But Giddens
doesn't recognise the difficulties in understanding why I act according
to these globally produced meanings. How these globally produced meanings
become significant to me and integrates me by my actions.
Another aspect integrating the individual
globally is the extension of media which functions as a levelling transmitter
between different local contexts. The local contexts are joint together
by the globally produced meanings. On the earth different local contexts
have their language-games (Wittgenstein) connected to the local praxis,
but in participating with the global mass-media they connect to each other
in sharing a globally produced meaning-structure.
Habermas speaks about the colonisation
of the life world 11
i.e. the local context. The global economic system forces its way more
and more into the life world, taking over and diminishing the important
social relations in the local context. This pessimistic account for modernity
doesn't recognise the fruitful meeting between the local and the global
as a constant process of influencing each other. My focus is more held
at understanding this meeting than comparing modernity to a premodern way
of life.
Meyrowitz (1985) is studying this meeting
between the electronic media and the local praxis focusing on how the media
is levelling many of the social relations between gender, generations and
towards public authorities. Friedman (1994) accounts for the relation between
the global processes and the local identity formation. He is studying the
influences on the local production of culture and identity from the expanding
globalisation and how these influences are being integrated locally. Being
an anthropologist his examples are of wide rang from every corner of the
globe.
A significant difference from the pre-war
world is the expansion of mass-media. Satellite-TV and the electronic-superhighways
increases the access and the interactiveness of these mass-media's. They
make people actively take part of the huge quantity of information distributed
globally.
This constant flow of information which
is produced not for a specific local context but for a general (westernised)
global context is a major difference from the pre-war world. Nowadays we
are constantly exposed to information, i. e. produced meaning, effecting
our daily life. It influences our consuming, our dreams and our sentiments.
The huge quantity of information we
are exposed to daily differs from the knowledge I gain from my own acting
in the world and from face-to-face interaction with others. This information
is not addressed specially to me and it presupposes a wide rang of competence
on behalf of me in order to be significant. Yet this is a competence which
is supposed to be global and not developed only in one local cultural context.
This global necessity forces the information to be structured in a mode
as to be comprehended in a large variety of local contexts.
Of course, one way of analysing this
process is to study the post-war expansion of the commercial American culture-industry.
Such an analyses would focus on how a commercial culture is been integrated
in a local context and dealt with according to it. My aim is to study the
way this culture or information is structured in order to be comprehensible
in a local context.
This is where the concept of simulation
12 provides us with an
understanding of how it is possible for the globally produced meanings
to fit into the local contexts.
On this macro-level of society we can
study information i.e., images, texts, etc. as signs. Signs normally refer
to something real 13 ,
an existing object or phenomena, but on this level with the globally produced
meanings the referent is no longer to be found in reality. The referent
for the signs are no longer attached to something existing in a local context,
which would make them particular, but to an abstraction or an idealised
model of something real, which make them general. It is this idealised
model which has been reproduced over and over again in the commercial culture,
the model of family structure, the model of manhood, of happiness and despair
etc. Nowadays, these idealised models have become the referent for the
way the globally produced meanings are constructed.
If we for instance take the advertising
as an example. The Marlboro ad's (with the Cowboy-hat and -boots smoking
Marlboro-man promising freedom and independence) are totally dependent
on the viewers knowledge of Western-movies and its mythology. The ad's
signify a way of life totally abstracted and idealised compared to what
it really was like during the white mans "going West". The referent for
these ad's are not something empirically possible to find either in the
present nor in history, but to a mythology deep rooted in American culture.
This relationship 14
between the sign and the referent is what Baudrillard calls "the third
order of simulacra" . It is a historically developed relationship starting
in the "classical" period ranging from the Renaissance to the industrial
revolution where the relationship between the sign and the referent was
close and modelled as a counterfeit. The examples are the stucco and the
Trompe l'|il-paintings in which the effort is to imitate as close as possible
the reality and "fool the eye". But the referent, reality, is still the
criterion from which you judge the quality of the counterfeit.
The next period is the industrial era
where the mass production of goods out of an original levels the superiority
of the original. The mass-produced goods are exactly the same as the original,
their value are not generated in comparison with the original but in comparison
with each other, its expediency. The referent has lost its primacy. The
T-Ford was the first mass-produced car and it gained its value not in comparison
with the original T-Ford but in comparison with other T-Fords and more
expensive cars.
In the post-industrial era a new relationship
is established where the referent, corresponding to something real, is
vanished. Things and signs no longer refer to something real, but to an
abstracted model of reality created within the system itself, the commercial
culture industry or the consumption-industry. This is what Baudrillard
calls simulation, where the referent no longer exists as something real.
Abolishing the real referent, necessarily
coming out of a local context, is, as I argue, the possibility for the
globally produced culture and meanings to become significant in a local
context. Instead of referring to a local context which makes the signs
particular, the globally produced meanings have to refer to themselves,
i.e., to the meanings already produced and established, which makes them
general. The globally produced meanings assume a competence by the consumer
in having knowledge of this commercial culture and its significance. Without
this competence the commercial culture becomes quite absurd. This competence
has been developed more and more in the post-war era and we are constantly
being exposed to it from birth. It has become a part of our culture and
the way we understand the world. But there is a difference between this
knowledge and the knowledge gained from our own actions in the world.
The interesting notion of this is the
meeting between the globally produced meanings and the locally created
meanings. In order for the globally produced meanings to be significant
on a local level it must correspond in one way or another to the local
meanings. This is a very trivial statement, but if we look into it a bit
further we can recognise the tensions between the two levels and understand
how these tensions brings out moderation's and shifting's on both levels.
These tensions are in fact one major part in the changes of cognitive content
of a culture in today's society. The fact that we are within this constant
flow of information is the reason why praxis has lost its main importance
in being the source for changes in the information-society. We no longer
have the praxis as the major source for our creation and moderation of
meanings. Even though we always ground our knowledge of the world in the
praxis, this praxis become less and less important in generating changes.
It is no longer what we do that counts but what we participate in.
This participation differs from praxis
because it doesn't involve the working body - the doing is reduced to zipping
on the remote-control or handling the computer-keyboard. The absence of
a specific praxis connected to cognitive content reduces the sensed experience
(this is why the computer game-industry tries to develop interfaces which
stimulate as many senses as possible in order to increase the sense of
reality, praxis). We participate with our bodies in front of the screen,
we use our senses and handle the interface, but we don't do things as in
ordinary life. We don't touch the things on the screen, we point at them
with the mouse, we don't experience the Bosnia-war bodily, the experience
is mediated to us by somebody else.
Of course, we still do things in life,
we have a praxis and we share it with others, but the influence on our
life has shifted radically since the pre-war period. When we experience
something unexpected or dramatic bodily, with all our senses, it has a
major impact on our sentiments, much greater than what we experience in
front of the screen, but in our daily life the globally produced meanings
tends to influence us more than the local praxis.
This influence is also a part of how
we experience the world. We use the knowledge gained from the global production
of meaning in our own actions in the world. We consume under this influence,
we develop our taste from this, like music, fashion etc. But we don't do
this without any reflexivity, this is a process where the globally produced
meanings influence our sentiments derived from our acting in the world,
it doesn't completely take over our sentiments and colonise our minds.
There is a meeting between the global and the local which can be very fruitful
in developing new ideas and meanings. This meeting influence our actions
not only on the commercial level but also on the level where we ourselves
create meanings and products.
The producers of a global culture are
trying to become significant in a local context in order to make us act
in a certain way, mainly by consuming. It is not possible to relate to
the different local meaning-structures globally. This is where simulation
as the structuring of the globally produced meanings comes in. But the
tension between the local interpretation of the global culture and the
intended interpretation is a very dynamic process generating new meanings
on a local level and modifying it constantly.
References:
Baudrillard, Jean (1993) Symbolic exchange and death, Sage publications, London.
Durkheim, Emile (1984) The division of labour in society, MacMillan, London.
Friedman, Jonathan (1994) Cultural identity & global process, Sage publications, London.
Genosko, Gary (1994) Baudrillard and Signs, Routledge, London.
Giddens, Anthony (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Habermas, Jürgen (1970) Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, Suhrkamp Verlag, Hamburg.
Habermas, Jürgen (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action II, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Joas, Hans (1985) G.H. Mead, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1971) Totality and Infinity, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh.
Marx, Karl (1960) Die deutsche Ideologie, Bücherei des M-L, Berlin.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964) Understanding media, Routledge, London.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962) Phenomenology of perception, Routhledge
and Kegan,
London.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1968) The Visible and the Invisible, Northwestern
University Press,
Evanston.
Meyrowitz, Joshua (1985) No sense of place, Oxford University press, Oxford.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1967) Philosophical investigations, Basil Blackwell,
Oxford.
Notes:
1. With speechless I don't mean literally, so what
I mean is that for Habermas all communication is in a linguistic form,
whether we use words or not. His reading of Wittgenstein through Winch
tends to reduce everything to linguistics, Habermas (1970). back
2. Joas is accounting for Meads position in his
book on Mead, Joas (1985). back
3. I will here try to account for a sociological
micro-theory founded primarily on my reading of the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
(1962), (1968). The limits of this paper doesn't allow me to argue against
other positions to the extent I would like to. back
4. Merleau-Ponty (1962) has a thoroughgoing account
for this process. back
5. In Totality and infinity, Emmanuel Levinas
establishes his phenomenology in which the relation to the Other becomes
the most basic and primary relation to the world and the possibility to
have a relation to God (as infinity), Levinas (1971). back
6. Basically the difference between Habermas and
Levinas is that Levinas is trying to describe how it is and not how it
should be as Habermas ideal philosophy accounts for. back
7. From the exhibition Nutopia at the modern art
museum Rooseum in Malmö, Sweden 1995. I talked to one of the participants
in this project who gave me the story of how they managed to bike this
multinational bicycle. back
8. Merleau-Ponty has developed these notions aboute
sedimented knowledge, retension, protension etc. from Husserl in Phenomenology
of perception. back
9. Of course, there are limits within a shared
culture in the possibilities of being interpreted correctly. On one level
everything is more or less totally subjective, not possible for anybody
else to understand (and sometimes not even myself) but my focus is on the
intersubjective level where meanings are created and shared. back
10. This concept is a more fluent one, not immediately
associated to anyone. McLuhan is maybe the first to analyse society from
this point of view, McLuhan(1964). back
11. Habermas (1970) which he developed further
in The Theory of communicative action. back
12. The concept of simulation is developed throughout
the works by Jean Baudrillard, specially in Symbolic Exchange and Death,
1993 (1976). back
13. Peirce' pragmatically oriented semiotics argues
for this notion while Saussure argues for the intra-referentiality where
signs refer to other signs and the reality is left aside. Genosko (1994)
has a thoroughgoing account for Baudrillards relation towards Saussure
and Peirce back
14. Baudrillard (1993) 50-86 back