Reawakenings to the improbable
Offerings of the limit situation for media theory in a disorderly world
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6441991 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Amanda Lagerkvist (0000-0002-2059-645X, Uppsala University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 418-426 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Media Culture & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-4437 • E-ISSN: 1460-3675 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01634437231216440 |
| OpenAlex | W4389485799 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 27 |
The global pandemic threw the world in all its asymmetries and diversities into a limit situation without known coordinates. This article suggests that in its aftermath there is actually a call and an opportunity for more than rethinking existing keywords in the field. It argues that the crisis was “improbable” in the meaning of the word offered by Amitav Ghosh who traces a common sense forged by probabilistic science, that expelled the unthinkable from the modern imaginary. Tracking down this regime of certainty, the essay offers a discussion on the place or displacement of the disorderly, the uncertain, and the disruptive in media theory. It submits that reawakening to the improbable, in light of Karl Jaspers’ philosophical anthropology of the limit situation, offers a fruitful conceptual avenue ahead. Apart from introducing the concept of the (digital) limit situation, the article offers a conversation between existential media studies, critical disability studies, feminist STS, and the environmental humanities, by also inviting an extended family of unruly concepts, including dismediation and deferral. It concludes that limit situations can be transformative also for media theory, if we dare to seize them, by means of existential modes of transversal listening to ghostly pasts never fulfilled
Active listening · Certainty · Conversation · Epistemology · Existentialism · Field (mathematics · Limit (mathematics · Media studies · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Transformative learning · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology
A Feminist Companion to the Posthumanities
The Costs of Connection
The Spectatorship of Suffering
Discriminating Data
Premediation
Media Events
Your Computer Is on Fire
Existential Media
Environment, Media and Communication
The Great Derangement
Rewilding memory
Disruption and transformation in media events theory
The Marvelous Clouds
Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene
The Mushroom at the End of the World
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
Media sociology
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |