Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11

by R. Grusin

Overview

In an era of heightened securitization, print, televisual and networked media have become obsessed with the 'pre-mediation' of future events. In response to the shock of 9/11, socially networked US and global media worked to pre-mediate collective affects of anticipation and connectivity, while also perpetuating low levels of apprehension or fear.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230242524
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	04/09/2010
Edition description:	2010
Pages:	196
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

RICHARD GRUSIN is Director at the Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA. His publications includeRemediation: Understanding New Media (co-authored with Jay Bolter, 1999).

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

Remediation after 9/11 1

Brief notes on method 4

1 Remediating 9/11 8

"After 9/11" 8

Remediating 9/11 11

9/11: theorization or mediatization? 16

"We are all Americans" 23

The new normal 25

The emergence of premediated time 33

2 Premediation 38

Remediation and premediation 38

The media regime of pre-emptive war 41

Autopoiesis and the liveness of futurity 50

From virtual reality to the reality of the virtual 57

3 Affect, Mediality, and Abu Ghraib 62

The trouble with Abu Ghraib 62

Remediating pornography? 67

Unknown knowns 69

Mediality 72

Affectivity 77

Torture and pornography 82

Transmitting affect 86

4 The Affective Life of Media 90

Cyborgs 90

Feedback loops 97

Affective computing 109

Mediators 118

5 The Anticipation of Security 122

Premediation and securitization 122

Anticipatory gestures 126

Mediaphilia 131

Premediation and politics 134

Conclusion 143

Beyond 9/11 143

Natural things 144

Economic things 147

Social things 151

Notes 156

Works Cited 180

Index 189

Editorial Reviews

'In this book, Richard Grusin demonstrates why he is one of the leading media and cultural theorists of our time. Lucid and convincing throughout, Premediation interrogates our mediatized futures, today. It is essential reading.'

- Andrew Hoskins, University of Nottingham, UK

'Premediation offers an important counterpoint to the hegemony of futurism, a critical analysis of how visions and narratives of the future require more than a second glance. Grusin remediates his well known work on media, technology and time through an affective political sphere; one that, he argues, is cultivating an uncanny feeling of inevitability.'

- Greg Elmer, Ryerson University, Canada

From the Publisher