How can the medium be addressed when it is always already saturated in religious over-determinations and ever marked by theological concerns (such as revelation and incarnation) while, at the same time, religion would not be practiced and theology not be done without using some such medium? We encourage methodological and conceptual shifts, first, from medium to mediality; second, from religion to its partial negation (or, perhaps, partial permeation); third, from theology to doing the theological differently. With these shifts we (...) desire to initiate, continue, and intensify debates, specifically between theologians and scholars of religious studies and media theory. (shrink)

In light of developments within the field of media theory, a certain consensus has evolved in favour of approaches like mediatization and mediation. While these approaches above all focus on societal change from a media-dependent point of view, this article addresses the reverse side of these processes, asking about media users' appropriation of media in order to experience sociality that has only just been enabled by media-use. This awareness of medial terms and conditions is characterized as recipients' acknowledgment as well (...) as utilization of medial constraints, which is subsequently referred to as mediality. (shrink)

Aggleton & Brown propose that familiarity-based recognition depends on a perirhinal-medial dorsal thalamic system. However, connections between these structures are sparse or absent. In contrast, the perirhinal cortex is connected to midline/intralaminar nuclei. In a human, a lesion in this thalamic domain, sparing the medial dorsal nucleus, impaired familiarity-based recognition while sparing recollective-based recognition. It is thus more likely that the intralaminar/midline nuclei are involved in recognition.

Media. Mediality. Image. Media-Philosophical Investigation in the Image-Research. The concept of the media has been redefined many times; the medial interpretation of postmediality is only a critique of existing media-approaches and actuality. The concept of media is hardly going to disappear, its use has become increasingly popular, and the range of interpretation has become wider, the Media Studies brings together more and more sciences; it is not a limit science, but a cumulative science. In W. J.T. Mitchell’s approach, the (...) media is more than a medium, the media is a relation, there is no pure media, and all media are mixed. Breaking down the idea of the mixed media, we could make parallels/contrasts between the concept of total mediality and the concept of postmediality. Postmediality sees a way in the passing by overtaking of the concept of media (Manovich) in aesthetics, visual theory, art theory, media theory, but perhaps most of all the media concept should be sought as it is, just a different type of media use which has become commonplace in the digital-galaxy. Totalmediality is trying to point out the use of new media, and beyond this to the open media borders, overlappings, while the media is not just carrier material but also form. The study treats totalmediality as theoretical possibility for overcoming postmediality in Mitchell’s interpretation of media and emphasizing the dominance of visuality in the media-applications. (shrink)

It is shown that all the assumptions for symmetric monoidal categories follow from a unifying principle involving natural isomorphisms of the type →, called medial commutativity. Medial commutativity in the presence of the unit object enables us to define associativity and commutativity natural isomorphisms. In particular, Mac Lane’s pentagonal and hexagonal coherence conditions for associativity and commutativity are derived from the preservation up to a natural isomorphism of medial commutativity by the biendofunctor . This preservation boils down to an isomorphic (...) representation of the Yang–Baxter equation of symmetric and braid groups. The assumptions of monoidal categories, and in particular Mac Lane’s pentagonal coherence condition, are explained in the absence of commutativity, and also of the unit object, by a similar preservation of associativity by the biendofunctor . In the final section one finds coherence conditions for medial commutativity in the absence of the unit object. These conditions are obtained by taking the direct product of the symmetric groups for 0≤i≤n. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the broad applicability of the concept of symbol in human communication, beyond but including verbal language. The starting point is Charles Sanders Peirce’s understanding of symbolicity as signification grounded on habits. The goal is to be able to conceptualize mediality in general and media interrelations, particularly in relation to symbolicity. Informed by a multimodal view on media, the author provides a systematic overview of symbolicity within the context of communication among human minds structured around two crossing (...) parameters: symbols being limited or widespread among people and symbols not being part of or being part of systems – languages. Based on this overview, I clarify the role of culture in language notions and conceptualize language in relation to mediality. I also suggest a way of more precisely describing similarities and differences between languages and media types, without either conflating or totally separating the two concepts. Finally, I investigate how the dependence of language and media type conceptions on culture affects the idea of intermediality. Together, these investigations and conceptualizations promote a more comprehensive understanding of symbolicity in general and a deeper knowledge of the role of symbolicity in human communication, including verbal language, and intermedial relations involving all kinds of different media types. (shrink)

Bilder haben seit je her das Vermögen, sich als Metamalerei reflexiv mit den Bedingungen ihrer eigenen Bildlichkeit auseinander zu setzen. In Momenten,medialer Vanitas’, wie sie der Beitrag nachvollzieht, ist es die Symbolik der Vanitas, welche gegen das Bild als solches gerichtet wird. Schon im Barock entstehen sie mit so unterschiedlichen Werken wie jenen Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts und Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggios, die als spezifisch,thanatologische Metamalerei‘ bezeichnet werden können. Sie zielen auf die mortifzierenden Strukturen bildlicher Repräsentation, ihre Medialität und Materialität. Doch (...) auch in zahlreichen zeitgenössischen Bildern von Marlene Dumas finden sich solch selbstreflexive Momente medialer Vanitas und damit moderne Transformationen eines vormodernen Topos. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Molekulargenetik bietet seit ein paar Jahren völlig neue Zugänge zur menschlichen Vergangenheit. Das noch junge und sehr dynamische Forschungsfeld der Archäogenetik nimmt für sich in Anspruch, Geschichte schreiben zu können, und zwar über alte DNA. Durch zahlreiche beachtenswerte Veröffentlichungen hat es viel Aufmerksamkeit erzeugt und erfahren – nicht nur im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs, sondern auch in den Medien. Allerdings erfährt die mediale Berichterstattung von der Forschung bisher wenig Beachtung. Auch der Forumsbeitrag kann dieses Desiderat nicht beheben, sucht aber – mit (...) einem exemplarischen Blick auf die Presseberichterstattung – erste Tendenzen einzufangen. Dies geschieht anhand von drei Thesen, sie lauten: Erfolgsgeschichten erzählen, Grenzen ziehen und konformistisch schreiben.In recent years molecular genetics has provided a completely new approach/access to the human past. The still new and quite dynamic research field of archaeogenetics claims to be able to write history using ancient DNA. Through numerous remarkable publications it has generated and received much interest not only in scientific discourse but also in the media. So far, however, scientists have not paid much attention to this coverage–a research desideratum this paper cannot resolve. But by looking at selected press clippings it seeks to capture first trends according to the following three theses: telling success stories, drawing boundaries, and writing in a conformist manner. (shrink)

One lingering, unresolved dimension of intermediality theory is the status of mediality itself. Typically, the concept of intermediality is offered as a challenge to the idea that media exist as “isolated monads” ; the task of the analyst then becomes that of thinking through the variety of relationships between them. The risk is that this conception of intermediality may work to hypostatize media as particular kinds of objects. In this hypostatization, work on intermediality has sometimes diverged in important ways (...) from the ongoing development of ideas about mediality itself. Mediality is best seen, I would argue, not as a permanent and definitive property of objects or forms but as the occasional.. (shrink)

With great sympathy for Roman Ingarden and his work, Edith Stein edited his book project The Literary Work Of Art. In the letters she exchanges with him shereflects on relationship between reality and ideality: she writes that those who do not see the world as a reality must be fools. The political events in the 1930s had an impact on phenomenology. While Edmund Husserl dissociates himself from his protégé Martin Heidegger with regard to the content of his philosophy as well (...) as with regard to his ideology, Edith Stein distances herself more and more from the phenomenological method, seeing it as removed from reality, and she eventually become a Carmelite nun. Roman Ingarden, on the other hand, reconsiders interpreting phenomenology as aesthetic theory. Literature and film are being re-analysed in terms of phenomenological mediality and as factors of human communication. (shrink)

Even in liberal democracies there are media forms and procedures monopolized by the state. Such are the methods to secure and stabilize the authenticity of money and state documents, i.e. the central media of economy and the state. In terms of a media history of the state, the paper describes these forms and methods of securing authenticity and shows how the state had to respond to ever new technological threats to its media monopoly.

Bei der Rezeption von Kunst treten vier Faktoren ins Spiel: Als Bedingungen der Wahrnehmung fungieren Wissensbestände, entsprechende Präsentationsbedingungen sowie - nicht zuletzt - das Medium des Geldes. Sie bilden ein Rahmensystem, durch das ein Werk erst in Erscheinung zu treten vermag. Einschliesslich des rezipierten Gegenstandes, der den vierten Faktor in diesem Geschehen abgibt, stehen alle Faktoren in stetiger Wechselwirkung.

As Foucault has argued persuasively, human sciences carry in themselves not only the danger of anthropologization, but, precisely because of their epistemic instability and hybridity, also the potential for its criticism. This criticism is all the more important in the current turn to the human being as living, sentient and affective being, which takes place under the sign of life- and brain-sciences. Thus, it serves as the starting point of the medial anthropology and its focus on the medium of the (...) game that this paper presents. (shrink)

In the recent literature on the nature of sound, there is an emerging consensus rejection of what might be thought of as the scientifically informed commonsense position: that sounds, whatever else they may be, must be entities that mediate between the source of the sound and the subject hearing it. This paper offers an argument for such "medial" theories of sound. This argument is intended to shift attention from the two considerations that have dominated the debate thus far: the relevant (...) scientific facts about audition and the spatial phenomenology of auditory experience. (shrink)

Des pratiques artistiques aux discours sur l’immigration, les présences qui nous hantent en masse vivent de la tension entre leurs réalités médiales, nos désirs d’immédiateté et nos rêves d’immunité. Ce sont les plis générés entre ces trois registres qui rendent nos modes de présence très compliqués.

Husserl attempted to found logics and language on intuition, and particularly perception. The relationship between logical language and intuition is therefore one of the fundamental themes of his phenomenology. Husserl regarded the two as sharing an isomorphic structure, and this article shows that this structure can be characterized as “mediality.” That is, the “meaning” of language appears by mediation of sound or script, while the “I” as person appears by mediation of the body. I will show furthermore that intuitions (...) themselves appear through the mediation of language, and interpret this idea of mediality in terms of the Japanese language. Guided by Husserl’s notion of Sprachleib, I will also attempt an analysis of the “bodily” function of Chinese script and onomatopeia as aspects of Sprachleib and show how the Sprachleib functions as a “cultural living body” that makes community possible. (shrink)

Throughout the Middle Ages, documents commemorating the names of dignitaries and benefactors in monasteries and churches were characterized as liber vitae, just as the heavenly book mentioned in the Bible. Those whose names were inscribed in such a list were promised eternal life through commemoration. The paper discusses material and medial aspects of the mediation of salvation within such documents as well as the shifts between different sorts of bookkeeping arising between the 9th and the 15th century by focusing on (...) writing strategies, document organization, and layout in Carolingian confraternity books, monastic necrologies, and late medieval obituaries or anniversary books from collegiate and parish churches. Their differing structures show how concepts and places of liturgical commemoration changed over the centuries. (shrink)

The paper deals with the problematic of concept and image as independent forms of mediating the thought. A specific role in incorporating the media of concept and image into the system of thought is played by the mediality itself, which operates as an entity mediating between heterogeneous worlds. The symbolized messages of the concept and image thus represent using the dispositive of representation between the visual and intellectual worlds. The author takes the concept as the initial form of thought, (...) which describes the object from the perspective of its being without making any propositions about it; the image, on the other hand, is taken as a sensory representation of the object. However, each of them is only a particular form of mediation. Representing a concept thus means taking the thought as a conceptual representation. (shrink)

This article considers the role of disembodiment in the visual art and films of David Lynch. This line of inquiry, I argue, allows us to consider the ways scholars do and do not conceptualise the relationship between Lynch’s works of different mediums. Specifically, I pursue the conviction that Lynch’s preoccupation with an injured or fragmented body corresponds to his intermedial creative practice. I turn my attention to Lynch’s early short film The Alphabet (1968) which exemplifies how the violence inflicted on (...) the body represents the violence wreaked by the separation of art into different media. Using Jacques Rancière’s definition of mediality and his idea of the sensorium, I offer a new perspective on the questions of disembodiment that manifest in tricky and unpredictable bodies in Lynch’s work and thus on how we should read Lynch’s output as joined up across mediums. 1. (shrink)

I offer a reading of Aristotle’s “doctrine of the mean” that avoids two pitfalls: taking it as truistic, and taking it as involving the bizarre thesis that whenever one acts as reason directs, one’s action is mid-way between some extremes. The crucial point is that while Aristotle denies the existence of useful general ethical truths, he himself offers truths about the *likelihoods* with which rationality will require actions of certain types; and it is with such truths that the statistical idea (...) of the mean gets a foothold in his theory of the virtues. (shrink)

The paper explores medieval representations of potentates with maps, a model for showcasing spatial power still in use today. It shows that in different contexts of transmission – in texts and images or as elements of reconstructed palace furnishing – maps are always ingredients of a complex medial situation conveying perceptions of the nature of rulership to an educated public. Representing general or concrete claims on space, they interact individually with recurrent components of the stylisation of power-bearers, such as representations (...) of divine and genealogical legitimation, and of knowledge and virtues. (shrink)

The article delineates a model of communication among human minds that is designed to work equally well for all kinds of nonverbal and verbal significance. The model thus allows for detailed analysis of and comparison among all varieties of human communication. In particular, the transitional stage of communication, which is termed the media product, is thoroughly developed and conceptualized in terms of mediality and semiosis. By way of mapping basic media dissimilarities that are vital for differing communicative capacities, the (...) model explains both how various sorts of significance can be transferred among minds, and why they cannot always be realized. The article furthermore suggests a semiotic framework for conceptualizing the familiar notion that communication is also strongly predisposed by surrounding factors such as earlier experiences and cultural influence. (shrink)

Episodic memories are shaped by the representational format of their contents. These formats are not only determined by medial temporal lobe areas, but essentially also by the neocortical regions which these areas control. The representational formats of medial temporal lobe and neocortex are sufficient to determine both, memory contents and subjective memory qualities, without the further need for an attribution system.

This paper brings the analysis of epistemic injustices and the perspective of media philosophy into dialogue by proposing the new concept of medial epistemic injustice. After introducing the topic, the contribution confronts some metaphilosophical stances in light of the recent medial turn in order to suggest that, despite all their controversies, philosophers seem to agree that doing philosophy uniquely involves writing texts. This discussion sets the stage for the claim that institutionally sanctioned philosophy manifests a mono-genreism that only admits one (...) particular kind of written text and a mono-medialism that excludes all media other than writing. Next, the relationship between non-verbal media and philosophy is examined more closely on two levels. First, it is emphasized how academic philosophy leaves no room for corporeal thinking and visual thinking; second, it is illustrated how this may harm some individuals, using the example of deaf people and visually oriented autistic people. The conclusion proposes a provocative Gestalt-switch: What if current “angelic” philosophical knowledge were itself atypical, exhibiting the traits of an aphantasic mind? (shrink)