Reforming the Common Boundary: An Ethic of Technical Media

Abstract

This two-part dissertation combines intellectual history and formal analysis to activate the ethical potential of media theory. In “Part One: Informing the Media Concept,” I argue that the media concept has sublimated core ethical energies that may be resuscitated in the present. These energies can be traced to the etymology of the term “media” in Aristotle’s philosophical architecture: a root that prepares consideration of how environment, technology, and ideology form necessary conditions for human flourishing. This root prepares what I term a “media ethic,” defined by a commitment to how sensory experience may engender ethical activity in transpersonal ecosystems, shaped by technical form. A media ethic thereby opposes approaches that treat media technologies, devices, and platforms as fundamentally unethical. Chapter One traces the Aristotelian root of the media concept in detail. Chapter Two argues that this ethical approach has been underutilized because the media concept consolidated in the mid-twentieth century West: a domain dominated by liberal ideals autonomy from technicity. Examining the pragmatic and conceptual failure of these liberal ideals demonstrates the pressing need for a media ethical alternative, one that takes the ethical potential of technicity seriously. However, midcentury liberal thinkers were sensibly aware that technical forms often deform sociopolitical ecosystems, and diminish ethical possibilities by shaping insufficient ideologies. “Part Two: Contemporary Media Reformation” responds to these concerns. It does so by demonstrating how a modern media ethic must add to Aristotle’s preview, by closely attend to how contemporary technical forms may reform ethical conceptions in generative ways. By closely engaging Isaac Julien’s multimedia installation Lessons of the Hour (2019) in Chapter Three, and Bo Burnham’s film Eighth Grade (2018) in Chapter Four, my study engages how these technical forms may reform ethical sensibilities for positive ends. These chapters show how these works render crucial ethical topics––including racism, stereotype, self-expression, sexism, recognition, collectivity, community, and alterity––sensible in newfound ways. They also do so by also engaging the ethical affordances and limitations of technical forms like camera obscuras, panoramas, daguerreotypes, large format photography, multiscreen 35mm cinema, multichannel digital video, vlogs, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube postings. In conclusion, I urge media theory to engage widespread technical forms by adopting a hospitable “spirit of entertainment.” A media theory true to its root ought to resuscitate its ethical potential by closely, charitably “hosting” the technical forms that shape our sociopolitical ecosystems through sensory experience: so that we may consider our shared ecosystems anew, collectively deliberate about them, and act through them to reform our world for ethical ends.