Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy)

"We are living in a time of inflationary media. While technological change has periodically altered and advanced the ways humans process and transmit knowledge, for the last 100 years the media with which we produce, transmit, and record ideas have multiplied in kind, speed, and power. Saturation in media is provoking a crisis in how we perceive and understand reality. Media become inflationary when the scope of their representation of the world outgrows the confines of their culture's prior grasp of reality. We call the resulting concept of reality that emerges the culture's medialogy. Medialogies offers a highly innovative approach to the contemporary construction of reality in cultural, political, and economic domains. Egginton and Castillo, both luminary scholars, combine a very accessible style with profound theoretical analysis, relying not only on works of philosophy and political theory but also on novels, Hollywood films, and mass media phenomena. The book invites us to reconsider the way reality is constructed, and how truth, sovereignty, agency, and authority are understood from the everyday, philosophical, and political points of view. A powerful analysis of actuality, with its roots in early modernity, this work is crucial to understanding reality in the information age."--Bloomsbury Publishing. We are living in a time of inflationary media. While technological change has periodically altered and advanced the ways humans process and transmit knowledge, for the last 100 years the media with which we produce, transmit, and record ideas have multiplied in kind, speed, and power. Saturation in media is provoking a crisis in how we perceive and understand reality. Media become inflationary when the scope of their representation of the world outgrows the confines of their culture's prior grasp of reality. We call the resulting concept of reality that emerges the culture's medialogy. Medialogies offers a highly innovative approach to the contemporary construction of reality in cultural, political, and economic domains. Castillo and Egginton, both luminary scholars, combine a very accessible style with profound theoretical analysis, relying not only on works of philosophy and political theory but also on novels, Hollywood films, and mass media phenomena. The book invites us to reconsider the way reality is constructed, and how truth, sovereignty, agency, and authority are understood from the everyday, philosophical, and political points of view. A powerful analysis of actuality, with its roots in early modernity, this work is crucial to understanding reality in the information age. - Provided by publisher Cover Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Medialogies 1 Editing Reality 2 A New Perspective 3 Theatricality 4 Commodity-Spectacles 5 How to Turn Things into Copies, and Copies into Things 6 Ineffable Me 7 Foundations 8 Freedom for Sale 9 Crime Shows 10 Political Theater 11 Monumental Screens 12 The New Fundamentals 13 Terrifying Vistas of Reality 14 Dreamboat Vampires and Zombie Capitalists 15 The Global Undead 16 Dark Mirrors 17 Apocalypse Then and Now 18 Minor Strategies 19 Stranger than Fiction 20 Truth and Lies in Life and Art 21 Staging the Event 22 The Architecture of Mourning 23 Occupy and Resist 24 Empire of Solitude Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index Pt. 1. Inflationary media -- pt. 2. Fundamentals -- pt. 3. Exclusions -- pt. 4. In defense of being