City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2014 Media and Message in Modern Political Thought: From the Age of Print to the Age of Digital Reproduction Asaf Shamis Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/281 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Media and Message in Modern Political Thought: From the Age of Print to the Age of Digital Reproduction by Asaf Shamis A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York. 2014 © 2014 Asaf Jacob Shamis All Rights Reserved ii The manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Political Science in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. X Professor Jack Jacobs Chair of Examining Committee X Professor Alyson Cole Executive Officer Committee Members Professor Michael Walzer Professor Alyson Cole Professor Uday Mehta Professor David Sorkin THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract Media and Message in Modern Political Thought: From the Age of Print to the Age of Digital Reproduction By Asaf Shamis Adviser: Professor Jack Jacobs The dissertation investigates the relationship between media and message in modern political thought. In the research I situate the ideas of three modern political theorists Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and Theodor Herzl in the material conditions prevailing in the printing industry of their times. I investigate in each case how the media culture the thinker was working in influenced his political ideas. My findings indicate that in all three cases the political ideas were shaped and conditioned by the particular position of the author, the prevailing attitude to the printed word, and the existing media technologies. Based on the historical research, in the last part of the study I explore the future of political ideas in the age of digital hypertexts. Overall, the findings of the research lead me to call for a broadening of conventional analysis of political ideas: Political ideas must be seen as part of the highly regulated streams of information that flow between author and reader in any given historical period. iv For Hila, who always believes v Table of Contents Introduction …..……………………………………………………………………….......… Page 1 Media Culture …………………………………………………………………………… Page 3 A Word about Case Selection & Methodology ………………………………………... Page 10 Media Culture & Political Theory ……………………………………………………... Page 12 Chapter Outlines…...…………………………………………………………………… Page 16 Imprinting the Cry of Nature: Rousseau’s Hidden Media Theory..……………………. Page 20 Words Set Free ……………………………………………..…………..……………… Page 22 The Emergence of the Enlightenment Literary Market ………...................................... Page 26 Rousseau’s Media Theory ……………………………………………………...……… Page 31 Rousseau vs The Enlightenment Literary Market ………………….………………….. Page 37 Imprinting the Cry of Nature ……………………………………………………….….. Page 42 Julie, or the New Héloïse …………………………………………………………….... Page 46 The Discourse on Inequality ………………….………………………………………... Page 55 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………..………. Page 61 The Industrialists of Philosophy: Marx, Engels and the ‘Discourse Network of 1840’... Page 64 The Industrialization of Print ……………………..…………………………………….. Page 67 Reproducing Reality …………………………………………………..………………….Page 71 Marx’s and Engels’s early Journalism …………………………………..…………........ Page 77 Industrializing Philosophy ………………………………………………………............ Page 85 vi Herzlism: Jewish Political Messianism ………………………………...…………………... Page 91 Fin de Siècle Vienna ………………………...…………………………..…………………... Page 93 Fin de Siècle Paris …………………………………………………….……………………... Page 95 Jewish Awakening ………………………………………………………………….…….... Page 102 Herzl’s Zionist Plan ………………………………………………………………...……… Page 106 The Zionist Rabbis & the Herzl Family ……………………………….…………………… Page 115 Herzl’s Political Messianism ………………………………………………………………. Page 119 Michelangelo’s Moses …….……………………………………………….………………. Page 122 The Journalist as Messiah: Journalism, Mass circulation and Herzl’s Zionist Vision …. Page 127 Mass media Technologies …………………………………………………………………. Page 128 Mass circulation Newspapers …………………………..………………………...………... Page 136 The Neue Freie Presse & The French Anti-Semitic “Gutter Press”…………………...…... Page 138 Journalism & Zionism ……………………………………………………………….……... Page 146 Publishing the Jewish State ………………………………………………….……………... Page 149 From Journalism to Statesmanship ……………………………………….………………... Page 154 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………....……………. Page 159 The Political Text: What’s Next?.………………………………………………………...... Page 165 The Digital Media Culture.…………..…………….……………………………..………… Page 167 Rousseau, Marx, Engels, and Herzl in the Digital Age ...……………………………….…. Page 180 Estranged Selfies ………………………………………………………………….………... Page 184 Egalitarianism, Historical Materialism, and Zionism in the Age of Digital Hypertexts ....... Page 188 Final Remarks ……………………………………………………………………………… Page 194 vii Bibliography………………………………………………………………....……………… Page 196 viii List of Figures Figure 1: The Media Culture Model ……………………………………………………. Page 4 Figure 2: Extract of the Front Piece of the Encyclopédie …………………...………... Page 30 Figure 3: The Title page of the Encyclopédie ………………..………………………... Page 30 Figure 4: A Cartoon Published at the Time of the Closure of the Reinische Zeitung .Page 85 Figure 5: Moses by Michelangelo, San Pietro in Vincoli ........................................... Page 125 Figure 6: James Gillray, The First Kiss in Ten Years! ………………………………………... Page 134 Figure 7: Honoré Daumier, Gargantua ………………………………………………. Page 135 Figure 8: The Front Page of the First Issue of “Die Presse”, July 1848 ……...……. Page 140 Figure 9: Fèlix Vallotton, L’age du papier ………………………………………….... Page 143 Figure 10: Illustration by Emile Courtet, “La Libre Parole”………………………...Page145 Figure 11: Illustration by Bayard Chanteclair, “La Libre Parole” ………….…….. Page 146 Figure 12: The Cover of the First Edition of the “Jewish State” ………………..…. Page 151 Figure 13: The Penguin Edition of Marx’s and Engels’s Communist Manifesto ….. Page 173 Figure 14: The Cover Page of the Digital Version of the Communist Manifesto ...... Page 174 viii Figure 15: A Page from the Digital Version of the Communist Manifesto ………… Page 175 Figure 16: A Page from the Digital Version of the Communist Manifesto ……..….. Page 177 Figure 17: U.S. President Barack Obama, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, and British Prime Minister David Cameron taking a Selfie during Nelson Mandela’s Memorial Service in South Africa ……………...…………………………………….. Page 186 Figure 18: A Young Woman Holding Up a Letter against the Camera Saying “I am the 99%” ……….…………………………………………………………………………... Page 190 ix Introduction The words on this page were written either on my Asus laptop computer or on one of the Dell desktop computers scattered throughout the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Whatever computer I used, these alphabetic signs are the product of electric pulses transmitted by a power supplier to a computer processer which, in turn, used them to execute a series of commands given to it by a Microsoft Word electronic processing program. At the beginning of that process (or at its end, depending on a person’s perspective) were my fingertips, pushing electronic levers on a keyboard, converting my thoughts into the electronic fonts now filling the page. At first glance, the fact that most political thinkers since the time of Plato communicated their ideas in writing seems trivial. The actual activities of writing and producing texts appear to have little to do with the political ideas they hold. Yet, this is only true if we consider ‘texts’ to be a historical constant; if we presuppose that political ideas are products of language in abstract; if we deem the relationship between authors and readers to be the same throughout history. Yet, what if we consider pushing buttons on a typewriter and moving a quill across a piece of paper as two different activities? What if we think of ancient scrolls and mechanically printed books as two different modes of communication? Doing so suggests that, although Niccolò Machiavelli and Michel Foucault may both be considered political thinkers, they were engaged in two very different activities. By the same token, Plato’s Republic, handwritten on a papyrus scroll, and Marx’s Communist Manifesto, produced by a steam-driven press, could not both be said to simply constitute political texts. If indeed texts are historical variables, then the full understanding of political ideas conveyed in writing requires an exploration of how the texts that carry them were produced. 1 Walter Ong notes that, while homo sapiens has been in existence for between thirty thousand and fifty thousand years, the earliest preserved script dates from only six thousand years ago.1 Yet only in recent years and thanks to the spread of digital technologies, is it possible to see texts for the first time as a changing technology.2 This understanding allows an appreciation of Western philosophy, science, and literature as expressions of chirographic