Self-referential postmodernity
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Winfried Nöth
Abstract
Contrary to the early media semioticians' claim that semiotics is a metalanguage of the media and the media are a metalanguage of reality, the present paper gives evidence of how the media represent a world that is itself highly mediated. It is argued that media representations involve self-referential loops in which communication turns out to be communication about communication, reports are reports about reports, and mediations are mediations of mediations. Self-reference in the media is interpreted as a symptom of postmodernity with its tendency towards historical self-reflection in scenarios in which even catastrophic current events are being interpreted as mere media events or even déjà-vu scenarios in a culture in which everything seems to have been said and shown before.
© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Introduction
- Post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-semiotics? Sign theory at the fin de siècle
- Postmodernity as the unmasking of objectivity: Identifying the positive essence of postmodernity as a distinct new era in the history of philosophy
- Signs of the times: Mind, evolution, and the twilight of postmodernity
- Conformity and resistance as cultural process in postmodern globalizing times
- Tourism as a postmodern semiotic activity
- Socio-semiotics and the new mega spaces of tourism: Some comments on Las Vegas and Dubai
- Subjectivism, postmodernism, and social space
- The laboring birth of doors
- Self-referential postmodernity
- Semiotics of art, life, and thought: Three scenarios for (post)modernity
- Semiotic approaches to advertising texts and strategies: Narrative, passion, marketing
- Return of the referent: Italian cinema for the new millennium
- The postmodern in music
- Strauss's Capriccio and the terror of time
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: the strange destiny of a singing mystic. When music travels . . .
- Postmodern (applied) linguistics
- Bi-paradigmatic irony as a postmodern sign
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Introduction
- Post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-semiotics? Sign theory at the fin de siècle
- Postmodernity as the unmasking of objectivity: Identifying the positive essence of postmodernity as a distinct new era in the history of philosophy
- Signs of the times: Mind, evolution, and the twilight of postmodernity
- Conformity and resistance as cultural process in postmodern globalizing times
- Tourism as a postmodern semiotic activity
- Socio-semiotics and the new mega spaces of tourism: Some comments on Las Vegas and Dubai
- Subjectivism, postmodernism, and social space
- The laboring birth of doors
- Self-referential postmodernity
- Semiotics of art, life, and thought: Three scenarios for (post)modernity
- Semiotic approaches to advertising texts and strategies: Narrative, passion, marketing
- Return of the referent: Italian cinema for the new millennium
- The postmodern in music
- Strauss's Capriccio and the terror of time
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: the strange destiny of a singing mystic. When music travels . . .
- Postmodern (applied) linguistics
- Bi-paradigmatic irony as a postmodern sign
