By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication

ONE The Biases of Communication

ONE The Biases of Communication Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. —Inscription on the post office building in New York City R eality, argue Berger and Luckmann (1967), always appears as a zone of lucidity behind which there is a background of darkness . Knowledge about reality has the quality of a flashlight that projects a narrow cone of light on what lies just ahead and immediately around, while on all sides of the path there continues to be darkness (ibid., 44–45). Darkness, so it seems, always remains inaccessible, beyond the reach of knowledge, and yet continues to envelop the lighted zones. This metaphor might also be true for the theoretical conceptions of communication. Proposing a concept of communication establishes a perspective that may then offer a certain understanding of an elucidated area. It implies the explication of an order according to which things within the elucidated zone appear to operate. Yet, a conception, like a projected light, inevitably originates from a 27 28 By Way of Interruption specific point, which is in part a product of an intellectual environment and cultural, social and political settings. Conceptions have historical and intellectual contexts, and their significance, arguably, lies not only in the insights they suggest but also in the ways they invoke the contexts from which they stem. The following is a critical examination of four of the most fundamental theoretical accounts of communication: as influence, as a system of control, as culture and as critical discourse. While these may not represent the theoretical variety of the field, what guided the selection of the four is that all situate the study of communication at the fore of an epistemological discussion on the nature of mind, society and culture. In so doing, they mobilize distinctive theoretical frameworks in order to address questions pertaining to the work of communication processes. Each in turn circumscribes a distinct epistemological sphere, or a “zone of lucidity,” while attempting to tackle questions pertaining to the status of communication within wider contexts, its various manifestations, and its proper form and operation. The reading suggested here is in no way exhaustive of the texts analyzed. Its purpose is to explore the relationship between these conceptions, the world in which they are situated, the understandings they suggest, and the relevance of the historical and intellectual context in which they appear. However, the motivation behind circumscribing these “zones of lucidity” is out of concern for the surrounding “darkness,” for what resists explication and incorporation , that is, the place—or the lack thereof—that alterity occupies within these theoretical speculations. While remaining within the “zones of lucidity,” the following analysis attempts to draw attention to the murky margins, to the epistemological “twilight zones” suppressed in each conception. The critical mode of reading adopted here seeks to question the rationale of each conception by using its own terms. The objective is not to disclaim what is proposed by a theoretical account but rather to unsettle it from within by reading its texts against themselves, against their grain, in order to hint toward excluded, omitted, or otherwise denied possibilities . The purpose of this critical reading is therefore to point out conceptual blindness imposed by an unwillingness or inability to acknowledge otherness within the gamut of communicational phenomena. Conceptions of communication are much more than a mere account of the process of communication, as they are not divorced from positions taken in relation to the reality explored. The ways in which communication has come to be viewed have much more to do with ideal models of society, community and interpersonal relationships than with communication itself, and they are in this sense biased. To the communication scholar, invoking biases of communication echoes the analysis of Harold A. Innis (1973) on time- and space-biased media. Indeed, the biases pointed out here might also be understood in terms of time and space, but probably more in the ordinary sense: the time and the place, both physical and intellectual, in which theoretical conceptions develop. Biases may, then, indicate broader political, social and intellectual concerns, which are external to the phenomenon investigated yet influence the ways phenomena are approached, and, consequently, determine what remains outside, beyond the “zones of lucidity.” By problematizing the biases inhering in these conceptions, I will attempt to point out some conceptual lacunas...