No More Learning

Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, p. 57. See also the important expla- nation that this indeterminacy does not follow from the use of inde- pendent variables which represent conditions in the world that are indeterminable for the system, but rather from the way the calculus itself is set up. The problem of indeterminacy, then, cannot be solved either by inserting into the independent variables of the mathemati- cal equations values which might emerge from conditions in the world. We can interpret as follows: the problem of indeterminacy, insoluble at the level of the binary calculus, is a consequence of the differentia- tion of the system. This differentiation forces the system to react to the difference of system and environment, which is thereby given,
12
1
2 3
4
? with a re-entry, i. e. with the distinction, usable only internally, of
self-reference and other-reference.
5 See his review in the Whole Earth Catalogue magazine (spring 1 9 6 9 ) ,
p. 14.
6 Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, p. 58.
7 This ambivalence is also considered necessary in general communi-
cation research. See e. g. Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson, Com- munication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry (New York, 1951; 2nd edn 1968), p. 238: 'We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it. '
8 This could not happen either with the binary distinctions towards which the system orients its own operations, or at any rate not with a binary logic of utterance oriented towards truth/untruth. See for this Gotthard Giinther, 'Die historische Kategorie des Neuen' and 'Logik, Zeit, Emanation und Evolution', in Beitrage zur Grundlegung einer operationsfahigen Dialektik, vol. 3 (Hamburg, 1980), pp. 183-- 210 and 95-135.
9 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 155ff, 195ff.
10 Cf. Frank Marcinkowski, Publizistik als autopoietisches System (Opladen, 1993), pp. 43ff.
11 This could be further elaborated with regard to the thematic but not medical proximity to topics such as homosexuality or drug use and, further, to the political challenges thrown up by this set of issues.
Chapter 3 Coding
1 The fact that this is an extremely drastic condition need hardly be further elaborated here. If someone on the street asks us the way, we cannot respond in the social system by singing Lilli Marlene or ask- ing in return whether the inquirer is a true believer in Jesus Christ. The sharp restriction of possibilities for meaningful continuation of the communication indicates to the sociologist that without further systemic differentiations society can achieve only a very low level of complexity.
2 Not merely through the economic system of accounting nor through the long-established and familiar system of 'credit', which depended upon existing social ties and on trust. On this specific point, see Michael Hutter, 'Communication in Economic Evolution: The Case of Money', in Richard E. England, ed. , Evolutionary Concepts in Contemporary Economics (Ann Arbor, Mich. , 1994), pp. 111-36.
? 3 Thus not merely through plain superiority of power, which in turn depended upon complex conditions of social support.
4 Communication in reply is not ruled out completely, of course. It remains possible in individual cases, for example in the form of read- ers' letters or in the form of telephone calls to radio or television broadcasting centres. But when such responses occur, they are in- cluded in the autopoeisis of the system. Selected letters can be printed, or telephone calls dealt with during an on-air programme, where such calls are made visible on screen in the studio and might be re- trieved and slotted in. They serve the reproduction of the system of the mass media and not the system's contact with its environment.
5 It should be noted here for future reference that this in no way rules out social communication that goes on orally, in written form, through letters, or on the telephone, and neither does it rule out organized responsibility, legal obligation etc. Politicians are individually invited to take part in talk shows. But, and this is the crucial point, such contacts do not occur in the specific manner of mass communication.
6 For other cases see Niklas Luhmann, 'Codierung und Programmierung: Bildung und Selektion im Erziehungssystem' in id. , Soziologische Aufklarung, vol. 4 (Opladen, 1987), pp. 182-201; id. , Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 85ff, 187ff; id. , Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 194ff; id. , Das Recht der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 165ff; id. , Die Kunst der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1995).
7 The medical system is an example of the opposite case. Here, only the negative value, sickness, is operationally connective, whereas health merely serves as a reflexive value.
8 Such a confusion would amount to the naivety of certain religious moralists who assume that only the just and not the sinners belong to the kingdom of God (although one can infer the opposite from the Bible itself).
9 It must be pointed out here that especially in interactions among those co-present and in societies which know only this form of com- munication, the information value of utterances can be marginalized. People have to talk even when they have nothing to say, because the only way to express good will and belonging is through participa- tion in communication; suspicions regarding evil intentions would otherwise arise. See e. g. Bronislaw Malinowski, 'The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages' in C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (London, 1923;
? 10th edn, 5th repr. 1960), pp. 296-336; Lorna Marshall, 'Sharing, Talking, and Giving: Relief of Social Tensions Among ! Kung Bushmen', Africa, 31 (1961), pp. 231-49. Ruesch and Bateson, Communication (ch. 2 n. 7), pp. 213ff treat this issue (for modern conditions) as the resolution of a paradox through positive meta- communication. People communicate 'we are communicating', whereas it would be paradoxical to communicate 'we are not com- municating'. In the system of mass communication the correspond- ing problem is no longer found at the level of communication - here the information/non-information code prevails. Rather, it occurs as an organizational constraint which fills entire pages or broadcast- ing slots, be it with more stories being told, with imagined scenes, with music.
10 See Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology (London, 1972), p. 381.
11 For example, the purpose of a mathematical equation is to maintain a difference which makes no difference. This means also that the mathematics of equations destroys information and neutralizes time (i. e. the later difference).
12 See Spencer Brown, Laws of Form (ch. 2 n. 2), p. 3.
13 The reader might notice that this statement corresponds to what has
been said about operational constructivism.
14 On this distinction, see Donald M. MacKay, Information, Mecha-
nism and Meaning (Cambridge, Mass. , 1969).
15 Here is one important difference between the code of the mass media
and the code of the system of art. Works of art must display sufficient ambiguity, a plurality of potential readings. Particularly in modern art, this characteristic is pushed provocatively to its furthest extremes. This is Umberto Eco's theme in The Open Work (London, 1989). And perhaps this tendency towards extreme demands upon the ob- server is itself a reaction to the mass media and the possibilities for the technical reproduction of art works. Pinnegans Wake is one big protest against being read; just as, vice versa, the recommendations on writing style that journalists get fed in their training are diametri- cally opposed to the tendencies towards open artwork. Cf. , e. g. , Harold Evans, Newsman's English (New York, 1972). Postmodern jargon speaks of 'readerly' text, in order to free textual art from such demands.
16 Marcinkowski, Publizistik (ch. 2 n. 10), pp. 65ff attributes the posi- tive value of the public to the code of the system in the distinction
? public/non-public. However, this cannot explain the unique dynamic of the system, arising from the fact that the system is unable to do anything more with what has already been made public. The system is continuously ending its own operations itself by the output or the 'purpose' of publication; as a result, it can only continue if it treats as a negative value that which is already known, by which it can measure what may still be considered for publication as something not yet known. Autopoiesis thus consists in a constant exchange of positive for negative values.
17 For this, see Bateson, Steps to an Ecology, pp. 412ff.
18 This contrasts noticeably with medieval and early modern rhetoric which described as 'antiqui' and 'moderni', or then as 'anciens' and 'modernes' those who lived before and those living now, and left any judgement to rhetorical disposition. Cf. on this literature about the querelle before the 'querelle', e. g. August Buck, Die 'querelle des anciens et des modernes' im italienischen Selbstverstandnis der Re- naissance und des Barock (Wiesbaden, 1973); Elisabeth Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni im Mittelalter: Eine gescbichtlicbe Standort- bestimmung (Munich, 1974), or Robert Black, 'Ancients and Moderns in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and History in Accolti's Dialogue of the Preeminence of Men of his Own Time\ Journal of the History of
Ideas, 43 (1982), pp. 3-32.
19 All manner of combinations are conceivable - for example, a deep
ambivalence in Rousseau or a contrary, conterfactual and therefore
normative positive evaluation of the 'modern' in Habermas.
20 See e. g. Paul de Man, 'Literary History and Literary Modernity' (1969) in id. , Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contempo- rary Criticism (2nd edn, London, 1983), pp. 142-65, or Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lec-
tures (Cambridge, 1990).
21 The sociological curiosities (and embarrassments) of such a debate
are expounded on in Jeffrey C. Alexander, 'Modern, Anti, Post, and Neo: How Social Theories have Tried to Understand the "New World" of "Our Time" ', Zeitschrift fitr Soziologie, 23 (1994), pp. 165-97.
22 Cf. on this Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (London, 1990), esp. pp. Iff.
23 Cf. also on the following, Marcinkowski, Publizistik, esp. pp. 133ff.
24 Before the age of the mass media, one spoke of admiratio {= amaze- ment, admiration, astonishment, shock occasioned by deviations). This presupposes that external causes and their occurrence are an
? exception. When the mass media normalize news, the corresponding concept must be generalized. On this, see also Niklas Luhmann, 'Abweichung oder Neuheit? ' in id. , Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik, vol. 4 (Frankfurt, 1995). Moreover, it is not admiratio but only irritation or irritability that can be used as an argument in the context of an evolutionary theory. This is particularly so since Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck's Zoological Philosophy of 1809 (London, 1914).
25 No place is foreseen for this function of unrest within the Parsonian theoretical edifice. Adherents of this theory therefore locate the mass media in the domain of the integrative function and medium of 'influence'. See esp. Harry M. Johnson, 'The Mass Media, Ideology, and Community Standards', in Jan J. Loubser et al. , eds, Explorations in General Theory in Social Sciences: Essays in Honor of Talcott Par- sons (New York, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 609-38, and Jeffrey C. Alexander, 'The Mass Media in Systematic, Historical, and Comparative Perspec- tive', in Jeffrey C. Alexander and Paul Colomy, eds, Differentiation Theory and Social Change: Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York, 1990), pp. 323-66. This is problematic for several rea- sons, for example with regard to the preference for accounts of conflicts and deviations from the norm. And in general one would have to con- sider whether the primary orientation of the mass media lies in the social dimension at all, or not rather in the temporal dimension.
Chapter 4 System-specific Universalism
1 As a guiding difference - that ought perhaps to be commented on. It goes without saying that all systems distinguish the information that interests them and in this respect generate an empty space of non- information. But the system of the mass media alone reflects this difference in order to be able to recognize which operations belong to the system and which do not.
2 These are Parsonian concepts. For their application to the theory of the mass media, see also Jeffrey C. Alexander, 'The Mass News Media in Systemic, Historical and Comparative Perspective', in Elihu Katz and Tamas Szecsko, eds, Mass Media and Social Change (London, 1981), pp. 19-51.
3 For the interplay of these domains in a developmental-historical per- spective, see Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social His- tory of American Newspapers (New York, 1978).
? 1 See for this, in addition to the customary histories of the newspaper industry, Lennard J. Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins of the Eng- lish Novel (New York, 1983), pp. 42ff. The material analysed by Davis also shows, incidentally, that the need to present news and the use of this as a marketing strategy first appeared in the sixteenth century in the entertainment sector and for cheap products of the printing press, distinctly before the sciences followed with their concept of truth ori- ented specifically to new facts and explanations of facts.
2 See the comedy The Staple of News (premiere 1 6 2 5 , first printing 1631, quotation from the Ben Jonson edn, eds. C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson, vol. 6 (Oxford, 1966), pp. 277-382), esp. the inser- tion 'To the Readers' after the second act (p. 325): 'but Newes made like times Newes (a weekly cheat to draw mony) and could not be fitter reprehended, then in raising this ridiculous Office of the Staple. Wherein the age may see her owne folly, or hunger and thirst after publish'd pamphlets of Newes, set out every Saturday, but made all at home, & no syllable of truth in them. ' Thus, his criticism infers untruth from the organization of the production of news. In the same piece, though, one also comes across signs of amazement/admira- tion: 'Sir, I admire, / The method o' your place; all things within't / Are so digested, fitted, and compos'd / As it shewes Wit has married Order' (i. v. 66-9; p. 295).
3 In approaches oriented more to the sociology of professions, one also finds a way of looking that relates to 'journalism' and disregards other technical forms of media dissemination. See most recently Bernd B l o b a u m , Journalismus als soziales System: Geschichte, Ausdifferenzierung und Verselbstandigung (Opladen, 1994).
4 And if it is unknown, then what can also remain unknown is whether or not it is determined at all. This can remain open (and be left to the philosophers), because it would make no difference in either case. To put it differently, as far as this issue is concerned, there is no opportunity for information.
5 The suggestion that we should consider this question of news factors or the news value of potential reports comes from Johann Galtung and Marie Holmboe Ruge, 'The Structure of Foreign News', Journal of Peace Research, 2 (1965), pp. 64-91. For a typical list in which nonetheless some important items are missing and others are ana- lysed in more detail, see e. g. Malcolm Peltu, 'The Role of Communi- cation Media', in Harry Otway and Malcolm Peltu, eds, Regulating Industrial Risks: Science, Hazards and Public Protection (London,
? 1985), pp. 128-48 (137ff). From the perspective of an increasing risk consciousness, we find the following selection: (1) immediacy and event-orientation; (2) drama and conflict; (3) negativity because bad news usually has drama and conflict; (4) human interest; (5) photographability; (6) simple story lines; (7) topicality (current news frame); (8) media cannibalism; (9) exclusivity; (10) status of the source of information; (11) local interest.
6 More recent language usage in systems and evolutionary theory speaks also of 'attractors' in referring to the structural conditions which attract certain operations. We shall keep to 'selectors' in order to avoid teleological misunderstandings.
7 Nonetheless, if they prove to be expedient, they are excused. 'As we reported in part of yesterday's edition . . . ' Or they are smuggled in as an aside to aid the understanding of receivers who have not kept up to date.
8 Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Cul- ture (London, 1992), p. 174, mentions the headline of a Scottish newspaper from the year 1912: 'Aberdeen Man Lost at Sea'. The occasion was the sinking of the Titanic.
9 A particularly dramatic case is the public discussion of the grounds for the verdict against NPD Chairman Deckert at the start of August 1994. The Mannheim judges made the glaring mistake of viewing 'strength of character' as a mitigating factor in a criminal act - an argument which would hardly have entered their heads with repeat offenders in traffic offences, thefts etc. As knowledge of the case was spread via the mass media, and because a political taboo had been touched upon, even the German minister of justice and the Chancel- lor himself were moved to voice their abhorrence, thereby severely testing the boundary drawn by constitutional issues such as state law and order, separation of powers, independence of the judiciary. It is also worth noting that the mass media force such a quick reac- tion in the mass media that there is no time to wait and see whether the judiciary will correct itself. The way in which this kind of minor case is played up by the mass media might lead one to ask what strains the German state under the rule of law would be able to cope with.
10 For this, cf. Heinrich Popitz, Uber die Prdventivwirkung des Nichtwissens: Dunkelziffer, Norm und Strafe (Tubingen, 1968). If one includes the mass media's reporting of individual cases, then the con- clusion can easily be drawn that it is precisely the scandalization of isolated cases which leads to the distribution of such behaviour being underestimated and attention being drawn rather to the norm itself.
? 11 Cf. e. g. Giinther Kaiser, Jugendrecht und Jugendkriminalitat: Jugendkriminologische Untersuchungen iiber die Beziehungen zwischen Gesellscbaft, Jugendrecht und Jugendkriminalitat
(Weinheim, 1973), p. 43.
12 Richard Miinch, 'Moralische Achtung als Medium der Kommuni-
kation', in id. , Dynamik der Kommunikationsgesellschaft (Frank- furt, 1995), pp. 214ff, infers from this that, as a symbolically generalized medium of modern society, morality is prone to inflationary and deflationary trends. Presumably both apply simul- taneously (and not just alternately): there is much talk of morality, and more recently even of ethics, but no one dares rely on it, instead keeping a low profile by 'dispensing' moral symbols in everyday life.
13 This, however, does not begin to explain why the sociological theory of action stubbornly holds fast to this error, why there is this curious resistance to criticism. It seems to be a case of the subject putting up a line of defence as a pretext, preventing it from having to name itself or present its ideas.
14 On this, see John W. Meyer, John Boli and George M. Thomas, 'On- tology and Rationalization in the Western Cultural Account', in George M. Thomas et al. , Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society, and the Individual (Newbury Park, Calif. , 1987), pp. 12-37.
15 This corresponds, incidentally, to an old etymology and conceptual history of persona/person. On this, see also Niklas Luhmann, 'Die Form "Person'" in id. , Soziologische Aufklarung, vol. 6 (Opladen, 1995), pp. 142-54.
16 Case studies on this in more recent organizational research have been available since the publication of James C. March and Johan P. Olsen, Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations (Bergen, 1976). Cf. also Martha S. Feldman, Order without Design: Information Processing and Policy Making (Stanford, Calif. , 1989). Previously, ambiguity had been dealt with principally as a solution to stress or to role conflicts.
17 See Hans Mathias Kepplinger and Uwe Hartung, Storfall-Fieber: Wie ein Unfall zum Schliisselereignis einer Unfallserie wird (Freiburg, 1995); Hans Mathias Kepplinger and Johanna Habermeier, 'The Impact of Key Events on the Presentation of Reality', European Jour- nal of Communication, 10/3 (1995), pp. 371-90.
18 Even this has long been observed with mistrust. In Ben Jonson, The Staple of Newes (n. 2 above), we read: 'See divers men opinions! Unto some, / The very printing of them, makes them Newes; / That ha' not the heart to beleeve any thing, / But what they see in print' (i.
? v. 51-4; p. 295).
19 It is a separate question whether the media themselves, either qua
organization or qua journalistic ethos, also get involved in this kind of mixing, or whether here at least importance is attached to a strict division of news and commentary, as is customary in the Anglo- Saxon press in particular.
20 On this, see Manfred Riihl, Die Zeitungsredaktion als organisiertes soziales System (Bielefeld, 1969), and id. , Journalismus und Gesellschaft: Bestandsaufnabme und Theorieentwurf {Mainz, 1 9 8 0 ) . Following Riihl there have been a number of empirical studies which confirm his theory of routine selection of newsworthy items. For an overview, see Marcinkowski, Publizistik (ch. 2 n. 10), pp. 98ff. What is particularly surprising here is the extent to which the sensational comes about as a product of routines.
21 See Heinz von Foerster, 'Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-)Behaviors', in id. , Observing Systems (Seaside, Calif. , 1981), pp. 274-85.
22 For the neuronal and psychic memory, reverting to macromolecular units of the calculation of consistency, see Heinz Forster, Das Gedachtnis: Eine quantenphysikalische Untersucbung (Vienna, 1948). See also id. , 'Quantum Mechanical Theory of Memory', in id. , ed. , Cybernetics: Circular Causal, and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems. Transactions of the Sixth Conference 1949 (New York, 1950), pp. 112-34; id. , 'Was ist Gedachtnis, dal? es Riickschau und Vorschau ermoglicht', in id. , Wissen und Gewissen: Versuch einer Briicke (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 299-336.
23 For the beginnings of this in Italian debates on art of the sixteenth century (in the seventeenth century it is already a commonplace that only the new is pleasing), see Baxter Hathaway, Marvels and Commonplaces: Renaissance Literary Criticism (New York, 1968), pp. 158ff.
24 Clearly this is in accordance with an ancient monastic tradition in- terested in augmenting the intensity of religious experience by avoid- ing communication. At the same time, i. e. in the seventeenth century, the Jansenists equate non-transparency of others' motives with the non-transparency of an individual's own motives.
25 On this, cf. Wlad Godzich, 'Language, Images, and the Postmodern Predicament', in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds, Materialities of Communication (Stanford, Calif. , 1991), pp. 355-70.
? Chapter 6 Ricupero
1 This name might foster the error that this was a political party which had its own organizational identity independently of the outcome of the elections. However, this is not the case in Brazil (with the excep- tion of the workers' party).
2 Reports in all Brazilian newspapers from 3 September 1994.
3 In the conversation, for example, he said: 'The only way in which I can prove my distance from the PDSB is to criticize the PDSB. ' Quoted from the magazine Veja (7 September 1994), p. 32. The magazine spoke of 'Ricupero's striptease' and commented: 'He stripped his
brain. '
4 Cardoso 41. 6% (previously 42. 8%); Lula 20. 3% (previously 21%).
Only those undecided increased, from 11% to 12. 9%.
5 It should be noted, however, that conclusions about other countries with a longer-standing experience of democracy and a less alienated
underclass cannot be drawn from this.
6 The magazine Veja also comments as follows, loc. cit. p. 33: 'It is
obvious that everyone says one thing in public and others in private to people they can trust. What is embarrassing for the minister is that everyone knows from experience that private conversations are much more sincere than public declarations. '
Chapter 7 Advertising
1 This is, incidentally, one of the elements in which advertising distin- guishes itself from art - even if there are borrowings in terms of design.
2 This term appears in a different context (but still directed at para- dox) in Dieter Schwanitz, 'Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy und der Wettlauf zwischen Achilles und der Schildkrote', in Paul Geyer and Roland Hagenbiichle, eds, Das Paradox: Eine Herausforderung des abendlandischen Denkens (Tubingen, 1992), pp. 409-30; id. , 'Kommunikation und BewuEtsein: Zur systemtheoretischen Rekonstruktion einer literarischen Bestatigung der Systemtheorie', in Henk de Berg and Matthias Prangel, eds, Kommunikation und Differenz: Systemtheoretische Ansatze in der Literatur- und
Kunstwissenschaft (Opladen, 1993), pp. 101-13.
3 It should also be noted that the paradox in turn camouflages itself by
using Latin, knowing full well it can no longer be assumed that peo-
ple know Latin.
4 See the report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 16 January
? 1993, p. 11, under the heading: 'Mixed results for sports advertising in the Olympic year: Sponsors remembered much more, but sports sponsorship criticized as well. We investigate. '
5 A must here is Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction: critique sociale de jugement de gout (Paris, 1975).
6 Cf. only Roland Barthes, Systeme de la mode (Paris, 1967).
7 'If a man becomes the object of public attention by favour, the mode, or a great action, ridicule vanishes,' we read in G. Senac de Meilhan,
Considerations upon Wit and Morals (London, 1788), p. 312.
8 For more on this, see Niklas Luhmann, Die Kunst der Gesellschaft
(Frankfurt, 1995).
9 Cf. Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, 'Advertising in the Age of
Hypersignification', Theory, Culture and Society, 11/2 (1994), pp.
23-53.
10 Cf. Richard Miinch, Dynamik der Kommunikationsgesellschaft
(Frankfurt, 1995), pp. 94ff with evidence.
11 Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin of 1 September 1995, p. 28.
Chapter 8 Entertainment
1 It is different, of course, in the case of the dry recounting of winners and losers and the corresponding positions on points.
2 The reference is, of course, to the specially trained 'Kopulier-Katze' ('copulation cat') in Jean Paul, 'Die unsichtbare Loge', Werke, ed. Norbert Miiller, vol. 1 (Munich, 1960), pp. 7-469 (28ff).
3 The objection might be raised that the game concept is only being used metaphorically here, as one might speak of language games, for example. Very well, but metaphor is very often an intermediate stage in the development of general theory. One might just as well say: there is a general theory of the game, of which social games merely represent a special case.
4 Jacques Derrida discusses the ambivalent status of this marking (it is part of and not part of the game, it cannot be played), in The Truth in Painting (Chicago, 1987), pp. 37ff, using Kant's critique of the power of judgement and of the unresolved problem in it of the parerga, the frames, the ornaments.
5 Lennard J. Davis writes about the difficulties with the evolution of this (initially quite implausible) distinction in relation to the emer- gence of modern journalism and the modern novel in Factual Fic- tions: The Origins of the English Novel (New York, 1983). At the same time, incidentally, modern statistics emerges, based similarly
? 6 7
upon being able to distinguish the real reality of individual cases and the fictional reality of statistical aggregates.
'Let me tell you that it is upon this multitude of trivial things that illusion depends', as it says, for example, in Richardson's eulogy, quoted from Diderot, CEuvres (Pleiade edn; Paris, 1951), pp. 1089- 1104 (1094).
We owe the invention of this form of 'inferential entities' - both of the novel and of one's own real life - to the eighteenth century, to a curious dual development in the epistemology of Locke via Berkeley to Hume and Bentham as well as in the novel. It has reached its end in the art form of the novel and now seems to be reproduced only as a form of entertainment. On the eighteenth century and on reforms of the prison system in England inspired by it, based on 'narrative' biographies, and stimulated by literature, see John Bender, Imagin- ing the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eight- eenth-Century England (Chicago, 1987).
Of the many historical treatments of theatre, cf. in particular Jean- Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550-1750 (Cambridge, 1986). The links between the development of the market and that of the theatre in England in the sixteenth century, which Agnew seeks to prove, could also be illuminating for the connections between advertising and en- tertainment in the modern system of the mass media. What is in- volved in both cases is the fact of manipulation which is illusory but is nonetheless seen through, and the individuality behind it which controls itself and has access to its own motives and interests, rather than simply living and suffering through the course of nature or crea- tion. When reformulated in a systems-theoretical way, this parallel of market and theatre is ultimately based on the fact that differentia- tion frees up individuality and forces it into self-regulation.
For many of these, see Baltasar Gracian, The Critick (London, 1681). Cf. Davis, Factual Fictions.
See Jean Paul, 'Regeln und Winke fiir Romanschreiber', ? 74 of the 'Vorschule der Asthetik' (ch. 2 n. 11), p. 262.
On the other hand, the feeling of having wasted one's time with en- tertainment comes from a different world, the Puritans' world of spir- itual pastoral care and of business sense. See the treatment, rich in material, by Russell Fraser, The War Against Poetry (Princeton, 1970), esp. pp. 52ff.
See Ludwig Tieck, 'Peter Lebrecht: Eine Geschichte ohne Abenteuerlichkeiten' (Peter Lebrecht: a story without adventures),
8
9 10 11
12
13
? in id. , Friihe Erzahlungen und Romane (Munich, n. d. ), p. 136. The novel itself pursues the goal of dispensing with tension ('adventures') in order to be readable more than once as a 'good' text. As far as I am concerned: to no avail!
14 On this point, see Schwanitz, 'Sterne's Tristram Shandy' and 'Kommunikation und BewuEtsein' (ch. 7 n. 2).
15 The same applies to the modern 'ideologies' which were emerging at that time, as Davis, Factual Fictions, pp. 212ff, shows. It seems gen- erally to be the case, then, that the latency of the mechanism of gen- eration has a function of facilitating a clear division of self-referential and other-referential references in the texts disseminated by the mass media.
16 As described e. g. in Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (New York, 1947), or in Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington, Ind.