Mediated

Instead of continuing to quote de Zengotita until I’ve transcribed the whole book, let me summarize: This is the best anthropology of contemporary culture I’ve ever read. Somewhat reductive – I’m not sure that everything is so shaped by media as de Zengotita suggests. Mostly he makes a very compelling case for tying in our politics, relation to time and things, our habits of thought and feeling to the fact that (in one of his most succinct formulations) we live “in a world that is made up of a flattering field of represented options.”

He offers no “solutions.” In some ways, this is one of the strengths of the book. He suggests that the expectation of “solutions” is itself a media-induced expectation, one of the genre conventions of cultural commentary – a demand that leads to what he calls “bogosity.” Yet, not responding is impossible; not responding is a response, a decision to go with the flow. But if de Zengotita makes one thing clear, it’s that any real response or stance toward this world has to be a communal one, taking the form of a counter-culture.