Anti-Hermes: Examining Deleuze, Communication, and Power in the Twenty-First Century

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atmire.migration.oldid5968
dc.contributor.advisorPierson, Ryan
dc.contributor.authorPattinson, Telford-Anthony
dc.date.accessioned2017-09-14T19:10:59Z
dc.date.available2017-09-14T19:10:59Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.date.submitted2017en
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation conceives of a post-structuralist philosophy of communication as informed by Gilles Deleuze (1925-1990). This philosophy of communication is based upon two things. First, within the primary literature, the problem of power is a consistent thread around which Deleuze organizes his concepts. Two, concurrent with his analysis of power, Deleuze produces a disparate critique of communication itself that develops and matures across the decades of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, in which he moves from ideas of transmission, information, and opinion, respectively, to focus his analysis of the relationship between power and communication. However, while the history of Communication Studies has also evinced an interest in this relationship between power and communication, the field has not taken up Deleuzian philosophy as a viable mode of theoretical inquiry to further address this association. This dissertation seeks to address this gap. To make the Deleuzian perspectives about power and communication translatable in terms that are relevant to Communication Studies, this dissertation engages in a close reading of Deleuze’s “Postscript of the Societies of Control” essay (1992), in which control is described as several things—the opening of confined spaces, the breakdown of social institutions, and the materialization of communication in practices of technology, labour, and economics. However, this dissertation explains, expands upon, and critiques these perspectives on control that Deleuze only sketches in this essay. Additionally, to make the link between Deleuzian post-structuralism and Communication Studies more cogent, the Deleuzian descriptions of control are thematized on the level of movement, which are treated as both concrete and analogical, which situates one’s freedom by modulating the capacity to move altogether. On one hand, control-as-movement is concrete, since messages, smartphones, capital, information, and people are all things in the world that move from one point to another. On the other hand, control-as-movement is analogical, as much as power and communication have been modelled by Communication Studies as being unilinear and unidirectional, from a sender to a receiver. And yet, today, control is multilinear and multidirectional, within which power and communication are omnipresent.en_US
dc.identifier.citationPattinson, T. (2017). Anti-Hermes: Examining Deleuze, Communication, and Power in the Twenty-First Century (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24935en_US
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/24935
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11023/4099
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisher.facultyGraduate Studies
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgaryen
dc.publisher.placeCalgaryen
dc.rightsUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subjectMass Communications
dc.subject.otherpost-structuralism
dc.subject.othercontrol
dc.subject.otherpower
dc.subject.othercommunication theory
dc.subject.othermovement
dc.titleAnti-Hermes: Examining Deleuze, Communication, and Power in the Twenty-First Century
dc.typedoctoral thesis
thesis.degree.disciplineCommunications Studies
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Calgary
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.item.requestcopytrue
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