19 November 2007

Made whole again ... in time for the morning edition

The genius of the age is that of journalism.

Journalism throngs every rift and cranny of our consciousness. It does so because the press and the media are far more than a technical instrument and commercial enterprise. The root-phenomenology of the journalistic is, in a sense, metaphysical.

It articulates an epistemology and ethics of
spurious temporality. Journalistic presentation generates a temporality of equivalent instantaneity.

All things are more or less of equal import;
all are only daily.

Correspondingly, the content, the possible significance of the material which journalism communicates, is 'remaindered' the day after.

The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of
maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform. Political enormity and the circus, the leaps of science and those of the athlete, apocalypse and indigestion, are given the same edge.

Paradoxically, this monotone of graphic urgency anesthetizes. The utmost beauty or terror are shredded at close of day. We are made whole again, and expectant, in time for the morning edition.

-George Stiner, Real Presences

4 comments:

Nathan Martin said...

try dealing with television
(and now this)

andrew mook said...

upon the stone

Anonymous said...

(oh hannah, so unrelated, but...i'd love to read some of your words again. <3)

Anonymous said...
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