From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
To: <bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: Re: BHA: Base & Superstructure
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 22:53:36 -0400


Howard--

I'll try to answer your inquiries briefly.

> What I thought fascinating then and emphasize now is that the
> "base" he identifies for communication systems concerns "the
> material appropriation of nature," as does Marx's analysis of the
> economic base.  It is our "transformative negation of the given,"
> our transformation of the world through action, that is at issue.

This is a good way of looking at my presuppositions.  Largely for this
reason, I find it possible to adapt a number of concepts that Marx devised
for economic analysis, and with a little adjusting utilize them to analyze
communication.

> But if I recall correctly, Tobin, you only dealt with the so to
> speak "forces of production" aspect of that.  Did you also
> investigate the relations into which people enter in the course of
> the material appropriation of nature for the purposes of
> communication?  That would be the "relation of production"
> component of the "base."

Yup.  I spoke of the "relations of communication" rather briefly, but they
were there.  A number of different relationships have their primary basis in
communication structures.  The social division between mental and manual
labor is one; hegemony, I think, is another; and there are more.

> Still I would be surprised to find that these material forces did
> not broadly correspond to historical changes in the forces of
> production more generally. I mean the material process of
> communication does not have a life of its own independent of what
> is going on in the rest of society's material processes of
> appropriating nature.  Is that an assertion of yours, Tobin?  Laser
> discs depend on the broader use of lasers.

I would certainly argue that communication structures and economic structures
(in the narrow sense) interact, such that changes in one affect the other and
vice versa.  But communication *does* have some autonomy.  I think one could
argue that the revitalization of (ecclesiastic) education under Charlesmagne
had far more profound impact than the political and economic changes; and I
definitely think that a number of important epistemic changes in the late
17th and early 18th centuries (Locke et al) were connected to developments in
print culture which *preceded* and important ways facilitated the next
important shift in world political economy (the American and French
revolutions, etc).  Partly for these reasons, I think it's imperative to keep
the Internet free, in every sense of the word.

> Assuming an "appropriation of nature" base for communication
> systems, then what would emerge from it?  Where do we go from
> there?  I mean, what are the superstructures?  What are they as
> scientific objects?

This is massively complex; it fills much of the book I've been wrestling with
for the past million years.  But to give the barest sketch, my founding idea
is that communication practices establish "ground rules" or "generative
principles" for discourse (in Foucauldian language, an episteme).  These are
elaborated, on one level, into concepts of selfhood and human action (among
other things); and at another level, more-or-less systematic ideologies,
theories, novels, plays, movies, music pieces, and other discursive products.

> Also, what is the significance for this analysis of the fact that
> what must remain a preeminent force of the production of
> communication -- our vocal chords -- remains relatively stable
> through change?

Well, for one thing, it means that technological determinist theories of
communication (e.g. the work of McLuhan, Ong, Havelock, sometimes Goody) are
*wrong*.  Changes in the social use and organization of a mode of
communication, without any technical change, can have major social effects. 
The development of the periodical in the late 17th century involved no
changes in the printing press, only a new application of it (made possible,
it should be noted, by various economic and governmental developments, but
nonetheless distinct from the latter).  So while our vocal cords have altered
little over the past 5000 years, the utilization and social role of the voice
has changed dramatically.  For example, a century ago most major cities had a
place where people would go and make speeches, and crowds would listen (think
of the Haymarket clash); today it seems only loonies orate in the parks, and
the cops probably think "oration" is a sexual offence.  And a friend once
told me that the last strike by the Furriers union was to keep their
"readers," who would read aloud from Shakespeare, the newspaper, and quite
possibly radical literature while the workers labored.  (They lost.)  Lest
these examples sound nostalgic, I should add that aristocratic verbal law was
of course notoriously "flexible," and for this reason one of the major steps
toward the development of democracy in ancient Athens was the act of
incribing laws into stone in a public place.  Not that writing per se is any
rock of truth: it's been argued that the ancient Britons were suspicious of
writing, which they were generally unfamiliar with but which their Norman
conquerors used quite a lot; but I think the presumption of a "natural" fear
of innovation vanishes when one considers that the Normans used documents to
provide legal proof of their land claims, and very often those documents were
total fabrications.

Meanwhile, the Internet seems to have founded a new adage: brevity is the
mother of verbosity.  Dash off a comment, and someone will ask you to explain
yourself!  Well, I guess that's why we're here.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gwi.net
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce


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