Books the Bookaneers are reading (continued)

Thanks to Bookaneer Althea for initiating this post with the theme of summer reading.

I'm currently taking a full load of classes, so my summer reading has been tempered by school (ha!). Seriously though, reading stuff other than the assigned class readings is like my own personal pastime.

Let me briefly mention a book that I'm currently reading.

The book is entitled Speaking Into The Air: A History of the Idea of Communication by John Durham Peters. Peters is a communications scholar at Indiana University and his book is fascinating. And, let me add right off the bat, his prose is some of the best scholarly writing I've read (for example, he strategically uses short sentences that pack a punch. Whatever happened to short sentences in academe?) As the title suggests, his main thesis is to trace the idea of communication through history. Yes, how we (perhaps the western world) have thought about communication has changed quite radically over the years. Our conception of "communication" -- indeed, the usage of the word as it is commonly used today -- is a decidedly modern phenomenon. For example, Peters repeatedly highlights the erotic overtones to certain conceptions of communication; specifically, the word "intercourse" used to mean what we think of as "communication," and vice versa.

I'm only through a few chapters, but let me talk about one chapter to spark your interest. The first chapter, entitled "Dialogue and Dissemination," discusses two opposing ideas of communication through the important historical figures of Socrates and Jesus. A close reading of Plato's Phaedrus serves as the vehicle for discussing what Socrates believed made for true, transcendental communication: dialogue. Taking place during a period of transition from Greek orality to literacy, Socrates argues that forms of communication (i.e., writing) other than one-to-one dialogue are morally wrong, because (and here comes more eroticism for you) reading is like being penetrated and ventriloquized by the author. Dialogue, on the other hand, is the truest form of communication, because it allows each person to understand one another more fully (the written word doesn't respond to questions).

As opposed to Socrates' privileging of dialogue, Jesus's Parable of the Sower privileges quite the opposite. By scattering or broadcasting one's message everywhere, the speaker has more chances to "plant that one seed." In other words, for Jesus, miscommunication with most people is natural. He doesn't expect most people to understand his teachings, only a small minority. By broadcasting, one is able to more broadly distribute Truth.

I'm doing Peters a disservice in this description, because his readings of these texts are much more nuanced. Nevertheless, you get the gist of it. Later chapters discuss, for example, how the 19th century's craze of spiritual mediums (mostly women) was a historical continuation of a longer tradition of "angelology" - the study of angels - in Christianity. In addition, the spiritual mediums often described their practice in terms of the "new media" of the day - the telegraph. (New media are always accompanied by new ghosts.)

I hope I have sparked your interest. Check it out!

I look forward to hearing what other Bookaneers have been reading this summer, even in their far flung travels.