Paddy Scannell - Love and Communication

Wittgenstein thought that talk was a primitive thing (Kerr 1997: 114); I think he’s right that human talk is earlier than writing. But that does not mean that it is primitive in comparison with writing. Writing’s telos is not communication in the first place. It is the first and greatest system of record, an archive that gives birth to history as we know it. It is a quite extraordinary human invention, a supervening necessity, as Brian Winston (1998) would say. Men began to make history when they invented writing. Systems of inscription made civilization possible if, like me, you follow Harold Innis (1964 [1951]). It made the language of talk analyzable and made analytic philosophy and linguistics possible. And philosophy as we know it began with Plato’s writings.

I do not mean to give technology a bad name, by thinking of it as original sin. In the academic field of media studies though, it was a bad thing, and went by the name of “technological determinism” (or sin by another name). Back in the day, the dominant ideology in our field was determined by cultural studies. For academics in that area, it was human beings who made history, not machines. But that was then, a different moment of historical time. In the post-TV era of today, it increasingly seems apparent that machines (particularly Turing machines) do make history, and the academic field of communication and media studies has silently adjusted to this. It is no longer possible today to think of either or both simply in human terms. Media and communication scholars must think not only of human>only have been conceived now, and is about today’s world, not the century into which I was born, not God’s world.

What I am writing is a mixture of what you might call religious and philosophical thinking, the new ingredient being “religion.” Words are very rascals nowadays; indeed, they always have been: words like “religion,” “God,” “sin,” to name a few. I cannot do without them, but they probably do not mean much to most people. I have taken a leaf out of Derrida’s book ( Of Grammatology ), and will put them sous rature (under erasure); God (x), sin (x), religion (x). This simply means that I want to use words such as these, but I cannot use them innocently (“just like that!”), because they are almost drained of significance. And so I leave them there, in the written text, but crossed out. (Derrida picked up this useful trick from Heidegger who, in later life, would cross out Being – or Beying – as he wrote, but then left it, crossed out, there in the text.) Minimally, this technique indicates not just the hemorrhage of meaning from words, but points up their indispensability. I was born and brought up a Catholic, but long ago stopped being a practicing member of the Church (it was finally educated out of me at Oxford). But “once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” as my elders used to say. They also said that it (religion) comes back when you get older. When I was a child, I thought that meant that when you were old you got religion again, as a sort of insurance policy, just in case.

This book is religious, but not in the “usual sense.” I am not, as they say, a member of “a faith community.” I try hard not to believe things (I most certainly do not think of the Catholic Church as a belief system). I do not believe in “the immortality of the soul,” heaven, hell, purgatory, and so on – all the usual Catholic stuff. I am writing this book because now, as I head into deep old age, I find myself looking back and trying to make some sense of my life, and more generally. This book is an effort in that direction. I do know that the mix of Wittgenstein and Heidegger – both treated at first in separate chapters and brought together in the end – were the right companions for this particular journey to Dublin (maybe I should say Rome, where all roads once led). I also know, in my bones, that love, communication, and God go together, and I am more than grateful to John Peters for this.

I could say more (what writer wouldn’t) but I’ll sign off with the little algorithm that the book ends with: f + h/t = love. F, H, and T are faith, hope, and trust (my version of Charity or Caritas). 2These are, I learned as a child, the three theological virtues in Catholic doctrine and dogma. They are theological because they come from God, who has freely (unconditionally, non-reciprocally) given them to all of us. I am working my way toward this algorithm, as expressing, in a nutshell, what this book is (finally) about.

1 1. “Usual” child/adult/human being. I use “usual” instead of “normal” in order (a) to recognize that there are “unusual” children and adults, and (b) to escape from sociological determinism (normal children obey the norms). In learning to talk, the usual child is learning (a) her Muttersprache and (b) how to be a member not just of society (which belongs to sociology) but of the human race. Unusual human beings are thought of by usual human beings as somewhere on the autistic spectrum. I regard myself as a usual human being.

2 2. I’d better say here that this is my interpretation of Paul to the Corinthians plus the Catholic notion of the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity. I have changed “charity” (or caritas, which I prefer, because the word “charity” today has lost much of its resonance) into “trust.” I regard this as a very great virtue, but it is not usually thought of as interchangeable with love. That, for me, is the sum of the ratio of these three little things – faith and hope, which always go together, underpinned by trust. This little trinity of words amounts to an algorithm of love as I see it; either a divine gift, or a human, ethical thing. Or even, perhaps, both.

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