Page 84 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

DIGITAL/ANALOGUE DISTRIBUTION

warrant of its veracity, for all experience and reality is already a
representation in signification. Representation, far from being a
duplicitous, textual, tainted ‘expression’ of otherwise pure thought, is
all we have got – perception itself is already a representation, and pure
consciousness cannot be ‘expressed’ since it is the differentiating
activity of signification that constitutes consciousness. Finally, it is no
longer possible to claim with confidence that individual subjects ‘have’
an identity (self-presence, self-knowledge), since identity is a product
of difference – of the endless play of signifiers in the (absent) system of
language.
Derrida co-wrote the script for postmodernism (subtitled ‘the
textualist’s revenge’) by positing the world as a text. His philosophy of
doubt and radical scepticism led to the ‘deconstructionist’ movement,
especially influential in the US (see structuralism).
Interestingly, there is a ‘politics of signification’ attached to the very
notion of difference. Some would argue that Derridean post-
structuralism ends up in an idealist, solipsistic, anti-materialist cul-
de-sac, where the materialist contention that social existence
determines consciousness is short-circuited, giving a newlease of life
to an Alice in Wonderland version of critical practice which allows the
world to mean whatever the critic decides (this accusation may apply
to some examples of literary deconstruction). On the other hand,
some have argued that Derridean doubt, scepticism and self-reflexivity
are not radical philosophical positions at all, because these qualities have
been central planks of Western philosophy since Aristotle and Plato. If
so, this makes Derridean practice paradoxically a conservative force in
intellectual culture, despite its unsettling implications. Certainly it is
rationalist at heart, by no means an emotional or ‘romantic’ devotion
to textual excess.
See also: Author/ship, Binary opposition, Culture, Discourse,
Individualism, Postmodern, Subjectivity
Further reading: Lawson (1985); Norris (1982)

DIGITAL/ANALOGUE DISTRIBUTION

The word ‘analogue’ is used to describe that which is ‘analogous to
the original’. Digital technology converts analogue (continuous)
information into a binary language. This language consists of discrete
‘bits’ (short for ‘binary digits’) of information in the form of 1s (an ‘on’
state) and 0s (an ‘off’ state). Howa strand of 1s and 0s is arranged

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