Page 172 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Chapter Seven

Semiotics and the
Dialectic of Information

The two previous chapters proposed money and the dialectic of time/space
as being possible portals for dialogue between cultural studies and critical
political economy. The present chapter addresses a third such portal—
information. Like money and time/space, information, too, however, must
be viewed dialectically if dialogue is to begin. Unfortunately, particularly in
the age of digitization, many analysts conceive information as disembodied
form, quite removed from material reality; hence, a source of the disjunc-
ture between language and nonverbal reality as posited by poststructural-
ism. But equally detrimental, focusing exclusively on the material element
of information can give rise to an undue determinism (“economism”). After
surveying both of these reductionist errors, the chapter affirms the dialectic
of information, that is, information as matter-in-form.

CONCEIVING INFORMATION

The term, information, is polysemous, and in much media/communication
1
scholarship it is defined imprecisely, if defined at all. A starting point for
greater precision is the seminal work of German physicist Carl Friedrich von
Weizsäcker (1912–2007). Recollecting Aristotle, von Weizsäcker proposed
that information is the form, structure, shape, or pattern of matter (or of en-
ergy), detectable by the senses, to which meanings are imputed or ascribed.
He explained:

This “form” can refer to the form of all kinds of objects or events perceptible to
the senses and capable of being shaped by man: the form of the printer’s ink or

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