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Examining Deleuze, Communication, and Power in the Twenty-First Century

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University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2017 Anti-Hermes: Examining Deleuze, Communication, and Power in the Twenty-First Century Pattinson, Telford-Anthony Pattinson, T. (2017). Anti-Hermes: Examining Deleuze, Communication, and Power in the Twenty-First Century (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24935 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/4099 doctoral thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Anti-Hermes: Examining Deleuze, Communication, and Power in the Twenty-First Century by Telford-Anthony William Pattinson A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA, AND FILM STUDIES CALGARY, ALBERTA SEPTEMBER, 2017 © Telford-Anthony William Pattinson 2017 Abstract This dissertation conceives of a post-structuralist philosophy of communication as informed by Gilles Deleuze (1925-1990). This philosophy of communication is based upon two things. First, within the primary literature, the problem of power is a consistent thread around which Deleuze organizes his concepts. Two, concurrent with his analysis of power, Deleuze produces a disparate critique of communication itself that develops and matures across the decades of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, in which he moves from ideas of transmission, information, and opinion, respectively, to focus his analysis of the relationship between power and communication. However, while the history of Communication Studies has also evinced an interest in this relationship between power and communication, the field has not taken up Deleuzian philosophy as a viable mode of theoretical inquiry to further address this association. This dissertation seeks to address this gap. To make the Deleuzian perspectives about power and communication translatable in terms that are relevant to Communication Studies, this dissertation engages in a close reading of Deleuze’s “Postscript of the Societies of Control” essay (1992), in which control is described as several things—the opening of confined spaces, the breakdown of social institutions, and the materialization of communication in practices of technology, labour, and economics. However, this dissertation explains, expands upon, and critiques these perspectives on control that Deleuze only sketches in this essay. Additionally, to make the link between Deleuzian post-structuralism and Communication Studies more cogent, the Deleuzian descriptions of control are thematized on the level of movement, which are treated as both concrete and analogical, which situates one’s freedom by modulating the capacity to move altogether. On one hand, control-as-movement is concrete, since messages, smartphones, capital, information, and people are all things in the world i that move from one point to another. On the other hand, control-as-movement is analogical, as much as power and communication have been modelled by Communication Studies as being unilinear and unidirectional, from a sender to a receiver. And yet, today, control is multilinear and multidirectional, within which power and communication are omnipresent. ii Preface Portions of this dissertation were presented at the annual conference of the Canadian Communication Association in 2015 (University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario) and 2016 (University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta). The author of this dissertation, T.A. Pattinson, is responsible for the production of the written materials contained herein, which are original and unpublished pieces of work. iii Acknowledgements First, thank you to Dr. David Mitchell and Dr. Ryan Pierson, who have shepherded this dissertation, in its various stages and transformations, during the past six years of my PhD education. Your feedback, encouragement, time, energy, and patience when working with me have been greatly appreciated, both in terms of professional development, when it came to things like asking better questions, developing more persuasive answers, and articulating a stronger, clearer line of inquiry to my theoretical arguments, and personal support, when the realities of the world outside of the university were skulking at the margins of this document. This dissertation would not have taken shape without the myriad conversations that we have shared in person, on the telephone, and via e-mail. Secondly, thank you to the members of my PhD committee—Dr. Barbara Schneider, Dr. Maria Bakardjieva, Dr. Anthony Camara, and Dr. Jinying Li—for taking the time to read this document, for providing me with suggestions to improve my writing and research foci, and for formulating questions to probe the limits of this work and my thought process. I would also like to thank the members of my candidacy committee—Dr. Jason Wallin, Dr. Lee Carruthers, and Dr. Graham Livesey—whose input was beneficial in reshaping and bolstering my project’s connection to the field of Communication Studies. Third, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my friends and colleagues at the University of Calgary and other institutions, who have provided words of encouragement and wisdom when I was first articulating and later refining the ideas presented in this dissertation. In no particular order, thank you to Anders, Terrance, Aiden, Andrea W., Kobra, Jeremy, AnneMarie, Mylynn, Justin, Lisa, Ofer, Susan, Jessica, Ray, Angie, Andrea J., Kirsten, Trang, Mohammad, Rebecca, Heba, and Christine. iv A major shout-out of praise to Megan Freeman, who has fielded an endless array of administrative questions from me during the peak periods of the school year, and any and every time in between, since 2011. Thank you for your knowledge in navigating all the ins and outs of the details of the PhD degree. I am grateful for the continued sponsorship I have received from the Stó:lō Nation of British Columbia, without which my education since 2003 would not have been possible. A special note of thanks to Jewel Francis-Leon, who has been a huge help in facilitating my graduate student journey. Additionally, the research and writing of this dissertation have been funded by the Department of Communication, Media, and Film at the University of Calgary, the Province of Alberta Queen Elizabeth II Scholarship, and the University of Calgary Indigenous Graduate Award program. Of course, thank you to my parents, to whom I owe a huge debt for making my graduate student experience in Calgary over the past few years that much easier. And last, although certainly not least, thank you to N., the person with whom I have communicated the most—there for a word or a laugh, always. Thank you to anyone else I have missed. v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ i Preface............................................................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi Epigraph ......................................................................................................................................... ix Introduction: .................................................................................................................................... 1 Stuck in the Middle of the Movements of Control? ....................................................................... 1 Or, Conceiving Power-Communication In Media Res ................................................................... 1 1. Sketching the Goals & Scoping the Focus of the Dissertation ............................................ 1 2. Identifying & Explaining Relevant Terms of the Dissertation ............................................ 6 a. Communication ................................................................................................................ 6 b. Control .............................................................................................................................. 8 c. Power .............................................................................................................................. 11 d. Movement....................................................................................................................... 14 e. Post-Structuralism .......................................................................................................... 18 3. Chapter Outline .................................................................................................................. 20 Chapter I: ...................................................................................................................................... 28 Communication vis-à-vis Power—Beyond History, Conception, & Field: ................................
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