Literature as Product and Medium of Ecological Communication

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1. This essay is a revised and enlarged version of Michael Giesecke, Literatur als Pro-

dukt und Medium kultureller Informations verarbeitung und Kommunikation, inNach der Sozialgeschichte: Konzepte fr eine Literaturwissenschaft zwischen historischer An-thropologie, Kulturgeschichte und Medientheorie, ed. Martin Huber and Gerhard Lauer(Tbingen: Niemeyer, 2000), pp. 259283.

Information Theory as an Answer to the Challenges of Our Timefor Literature and Literary Scholarship

If we grant the premise that urban-industrial culture is currentlyundergoing profound changes and that the term information so-

ciety brings to a point current developments in our cultureinclud-ing a vision for the futurethen we need to introduce new frame-works to describe not only the economy, but also science, literature,and practically all other cultural phenomena. For one, the phrase de-mands that we conceive of ourselves, our culture, and our environ-ment as information-processing systems, and the resultant proce-dures as forms of information processing and communication. If wesubscribe to this notion, we can, at the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury, identify fundamental changes in the cultural processing of

information. From an information-theoretical point of view, some ofthe arguably most important changes can be represented as in Table 1.

The firstpoint contends that the basic terms of industrial soci-etiessuch as land, labor, energy, and capitalwill be supplementedby concepts deriving from the domains of information and commu-nication. From this perspective, literature is understood as a culturalform of gaining, processing, and representing experience that is fun-

11

Literature as Product and Medium

of Ecological Communication1

Michael Giesecke, University of Erfurt

(Translated by Michael Wutz and

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)

Configurations, 2002, 10:1135 2003 by The Johns Hopkins University

Press and the Society for Literature and Science.


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damentally interconnected. It operates holistically, that is, it draws onall the human media and sensory organs and increasingly functionsas a social cooperationfrequently, with immediate feedback loopsbetween humans and their communities. In contrast to traditionalepistemological and action-oriented approaches, such a model con-ceives of the registration, processing, and representation of informa-tion as a circular and recursive operation. And it becomes, hence,nonsensical to formulate models of reception without correspond-ing forms of representation, and vice versa.2 Pressured by new tech-nological media, artists and scientists instantly reorient themselvesaway from the notions of production and reception typical ofindustrial and print-based cultures. Literary projects on the Internet,among others, frequently do not allow for a strict distinction be-tween authors and users, participation and distance.3

Second, I assume that the kind of information processing that isunilaterally grounded in vision and in rational and standard-language-based media will surrender its privileged cultural positionto the multisensual, multiprocessual, and multimedial processing ofinformation. The basis of the typographic agethe model of mono-medial and technological communication free of interaction, which

to this day underlies most common theories of communication andliteratureis out of synch with our historical moment that centerson the orchestration of various media links and on the improvementof feedback. As the most complex case of interactive, multisensual,and multimedial communication, face-to-face communication (be-tween more than two speakers) offers a suggestive basis for the defi-nition of a multimedial literature, as well as for a multisensual aes-thetic processing of information (and for theories of communicationmore generally). (Typically, computer programming, in modeling its

software, resorts to this situation as well.) In those contexts, what ap-

12 Configurations

2. As Claus-Michael Orth has observed: Understood as a form of media science, liter-ary scholarship cannot limit itself to the technological storage, transmission, and pro-duction of literature, such as the materialities of book production and the history of lit-erary adaptation (i.e., films, etc.). Instead, it must set itself the task of elucidating thesocial and logistical conditions of the production, reception, distribution, and adapta-tion of literary constructions of reality (Literaturwissenschaft als Medienwis-senschaft: Einige systemtheoretische und literaturgeschichtliche Stichworte, inMedienund Kultur, ed. Werner Faulstich [Gttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1991], p. 52).

3. See, for example, Christiane Heibach, Creamus, ergo sumus: Anstze zu einerNetz-sthetik, at http://www.update.ch/beluga/digital/99/heibach.htm; reprinted inHy-perfiction. Hyperliterarisches Lesebuch: Internet und Literatur, ed. Beat Suter and MichaelBhler (Basel/Frankfurt: Stroemfeld, 1999), pp. 101112. See also Christiane Heibach,Literatur im Internet, Theorie und Praxis einer kooperativen sthetik (Berlin: Dissertation.de, 2000), p. 319.


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pears as media is not only speech, but the motion of the entire body,as in dancing.

Third, we must assume that the frequency of feedback will in-crease and that the scenario of cooperation free from interactionthe common ideal of the print market since the Enlightenment

will lose its luster. Consequently, completely different problems,such as the synchronization between communicators, will moveinto the foreground.

Fourth, globalization and the decentered networks connectingpeople and cultures will deemphasize the significance of nationalidentity formation and of hierarchical social systems. The literaturesof industrialized cultures, which derived much of their legitimacy inpast centuries from their role in shaping national communities, willhave to reorient themselves. Their erstwhile focus on public welfare

will trade places with those factors that are important for the sur-vival of humanity.

In such an ongoing process of globalization, the discipline ofcomparative literature will have to redefine its role. I doubt that thisglobalization of cultures and literatures can be understood as the

Giesecke / Ecological Communication 13

Table 1. Effects of The Culture of Information

Reorients literary

Promotes Relativizes scholarship toward

1. Information-theoretical

perspectives on nature and

society

Economic orientation and

one-sided theories of

agency and perception;

dualism of matter and spirit

Collective and circular

structures of production

and reception

2. Multisensual, multi-

processual, and multime-

dial practices and media

Monomedial, language-

based linear media

Multimedial theories of

knowledge and expression,

parallel processing, and as-

well-as-thinking

3. Interactivity, synchronic

feedback, recursivity

Mass communication di-

vorced from interaction

Face-to-face communica-

tion as the situation of

maximal interactivity and

multimediality

4. Decentralized network-

ing of cultures and hu-

mans, globalization

National literatures Global cultural networks

5. Self-perception, self-con-

trol, and latent forms of in-

formation processing

Orientation on external,

general, and seemingly

permanent norms

Interaction between self-

perception and self-control,

and the perception andcontrol of the environment


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simple addition of national cultures and literatures. If not, the tradi-tional notion of a national literature will lose its defining nature.Paralleling the debates in the areas of ecology and politics, the notionof a global community will be emphasized, and the various compar-ative literatures will focus on the literature of the global communityin its multicultural dimensions. Things will get rather eclectic. Aswith literature itself, consistency or stylistic purity cannot be the solecriterion. Certain areas of a national literature will, no doubt, retaintheir monomedial and culturally specific niche. But as a result of itsincreasing general and comparative dimension, literary scholarshipwill distance itself from the predominant literary model of Westernindustrial culturethat is, from the novel of the eighteenth centuryforward; as is well known, this model is anything but multimedial,interactive, and global.

Fifth, for long periods of time, art and literature used to be, ar-guably, the most important catalysts for individual and social self-reflection. For both individual subjects and communities alike, theyserved as vehicles to achieve self-knowledge and, hence, self-recognition.4 Now, for more than a hundred years, we have wit-nessed the emergence of a host of therapeutic and counseling con-

texts and institutions that put the function of self-reflexivity at theircenter. In that sense, art as a means of self-cognition and -descrip-tion has entered a competitive situation. To a younger generation,the interpretive range of self-reflection offered by an older literatureappears frequently naive. Compared with relationship counselingand the interpretation of group dynamics and individual self-char-acterization that are common in everyday conversations (let alonein professional discourses), such a critique is fully understandable. Itwill be interesting to see in what direction literature will move to

compensate for such a loss of exclusive privilege.Upon further investigation, we must also recognize that manytheories currently in vogue do not do justice to the conceptual re-quirements of the information culture for literary scholarship, andfor the social and cultural sciences more generally: radical construc-tivism, for example, is neither multisensual nor multiprocessual. Thesame is true for the concepts of deconstruction that remain caughtin a kind of negative dependence. Systems theory is a sorting filterstructured by patterns of either/or, but of little use in offering theo-

retical models for processes of disintegration or for decentered andlatent networks. It suggests models for the dynamics of complex re-

14 Configurations

4. See Georg Jger, Die Reflexivitt literarischer Kommunikation: Zur Rekonstruktionder literarischen Evolution im 18. Jahrhundert als Reflexivittsgewinn, in Faulstich,Medien und Kultur (above, n. 2), pp. 8694.


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ductions and the formation of systems (as in, How is social/com-municative order possible?), but not for complexity induction,chaos, and processes of disintegration.

Additional Perspectives from the Theory of Communication

In order to understand natural, human, and cultural communica-tion, the model derived from the theories of cognition and informa-tion is not sufficient. In my judgment, the widespread search withinscholarship for a single universal or fitting model is an expressionof the hierarchical logic of industrial culture. For the modeling ofcultural networks, monomaniacal approaches are of no use. Instead,I would advocate approaching the complexity of cultural processes(which take place in numerous media and on numerous levels con-currently) from the perspective of multiple description: we need todescribe the same phenomenon through various practices of de-scription that complement and presuppose one another.

Side by side with an information-theoretical (that is, epistemo-logical) approach, I employ concepts of reflection and networking as asecond and a third model. In the reflection model, information isconstrued as a property of various levels of material beingor,

rather, of different types of media. I understand communication tooperate as reflection, resonance, and pacing between media andcommunicators, and I cannot fathom how any theory oblivious tosuch an ontological and mediatypological component can take cog-nizance of the different materiality of media.

The structural model (the networking concept) acknowledges thatall information interacts with other information, and that its signif-icance derives from (among other things) its position within thisnetwork. Information is, hence, defined as a property of structures

and systems. This model is an elementary part of structural linguis-tics, semiotics, and historical semantics. It also exists in the struc-turalist schools that define literature as an emergent property of spe-cific linguistic structures. From the perspective of communication,the structuralist approach has the virtue of emphasizing the neces-sity of thinking of communicators in terms of a network or inter-linked relationships. Communication in such a model is defined asa process of relation and system building between speakers and lis-teners. In varying frequencies, communicators exchange their func-

tions, oscillating as they do between their double roles as sendersand receivers. Such a model defines literary communication as thearticulation of interactive channels as well as of authors, readers,publishers, and other communicators.

Table 2 below offers a summary of the three models of communi-



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cation and information. Only all three perspectives combined makeit possible to explain phenomena such as the formation of individu-als and cultural communities as communicative processes.

Literature from the Perspective of Information andCommunications Theory

The perspectives summarized above with regard to information,information processing, and communication can also be transferred

16 Configurations

Table 2. Models of Communication and Information

Epistemological/

Ontological information- Structural

models theoretical models models

Information as Property of various

levels of material

being/media

Subject and result

of information

processing

(Emergent) index of

relations, structures,

systems of signs

Information pro-

cessing as (dynami-

cal dimension)

Reflection of one

medium (by means

of a catalyst) in an-

other (simplex)

Reformation of the

information con-

tained in one medi-

um into another by

means of a processor

Umbrella term for

processes of infor-

mation transforma-

tion: apperception/

reception (input),

storage, processing,

reflection/control,

representation

Production/modifi-

cation of sign

chains; linear rela-

tion; formation of

structure and text

on the level of

emergence

Communication as Re-reflection, reso-

nance, pacing be-

tween media (du-

plex)

Parallel processing

of information in at

least two systems of

information (under

possibly advanced

conditions)

Circular, feedback,

recursive relation/

networking of com-

municators. Forma-

tion and dissolution

of systems

Theoretical

preconditions

Typology of material

media and of cata-

lysts/communica-

tors; information

systems (ontologicaltheory of emer-

gence): theory of

reflection media

theory

Reformulation of

the traditional sub-

ject-object based

theory of cognition

through program-ming/cybernetics/

systems analysis

information theory

Structuralism, semi-

otics,systems theory,

synergetics, network

theory, theory of

emergent systems


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5. While Hegel, for example, designates aesthetics as the science of the senses or emo-tion in his introduction to The Philosophy of Fine Art, he clearly subordinates this psy-chological (epistemological) approach to a structuralist, semiotic one: For this reason

to literary information and literary communication. Table 3 suggeststhe concepts resulting from such a transfer.

The approaches to literature and literary communication outlined

above of course simply reformulate, for the most part, familiar schol-arly, semiotic, and psychological frameworks, among others. I amless concerned to open new perspectives than to locate existent ap-proaches (which run frequently side by side) within general com-munication-theoretical considerations. Against such a background,literature becomes recognizable as a special case of reflection, infor-mation processing, and networking procedures. At the same time, intheir various dimensions, such approaches raise direct questionswith regard to literary works and authors, which, in turn, allow for

comparative observations. I, for one, justify my attempts at classifi-cation by contributing to the conceptual convergence of productsthat, as far as scholarship is concerned, frequently remain isolated.Let me also emphasize once more that the three perspectives areequally valid, and that to establish any hierarchy between themmakes as little sense as upholding one when discriminating betweenthe senses. Instead, in the history of aesthetic theory the more likelyscenario seems to be to choose from the various modeling possibili-tiesor from the various sensesand to subordinate all the others

to the privileged one.5

Table 3. Literary Information and Literary Communication

Literary Literary Com- Authors/readers

Concepts information as munication as as

Ontological Polysemous reflector

and the product of

reflection of other

media

Catalyst and

product of specific

cultural processes of

reflection

Reflectors and

interpreters of

phenomena of

reflection

Information-

theoretical

Subject and result of

specific (psychic, so-

cial, and other)

processes of percep-

tion, processing,

and representation

Parallel processing

of literary informa-

tion media through

several processors

Elements of infor-

mation-processing

systems (sensor,

processor, effector)

Structural Emergent property

of specific linguistic/

semiotic relations

Networking of com-

municators through

literary media

Network agents


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consisted in the focused use of visual and symbolic informationwithin scientific communities. Whosoever can keep their sensesseparate, has their wits together, as Peter Utz succinctly put it,thereby bringing the program of enlightened information processingto a point.6

In the current reorientation toward things multimedial, the at-traction of literaryand more generally artisticforms of apprehen-sion has its origin in their multisensory dimension. At the sametime, as is commonly known, this multisensory quality harbors one ofthe most prominent problems of an aesthetic per se. As the liter-ary theorists of the romantic age emphasized above all, aesthetics re-sides in synaesthetic perceptions and their interplay. Yet, few theo-rists so far have resisted the temptation to establish a hierarchyamong the senses; they fear the complexity that comes with the pre-sumption of a principal equality of the senses. Without acceptingsuch equality, however, the principle of multimedial informationprocessing cannot be understood.

Individual authors, no less than the literature of cultural groups(including, presumably, different literary genres), can be distin-guished based on the intensity with which they engage and relate

certain senses.7

In contemporary consulting and communicationsworkshops, it is quite common among participants to find out whattype of sensory learner they are. Each form of sensory learning, it ap-pears, naturally registers in the choice of language. Tactile kines-thetic types commonly apprehend; visual learners arrive at theinsight; auditive learners feel in harmony or resonate, and soforth. Visual learners have a hard time understanding their environ-ment, if they have not visually dissected it; they have a proclivity forthe sciences, but then frequently see themselves confronted with

problems when they want to communicate with professions whosemode of exploring the world is primarily tactile. Hence, this ap-proach also harbors a model of communication: similar hard- andsoftware among the communicators facilitates parallel processing.

Against this background, let us look at a random literary sample.In Chingiz Aitmatovs book The White Steamship, the protagonist(the lad) observes: In winter, we have snows that come up rightto my chin. Gosh, the drifts that pile up! In the forest, you can move


6. Peter Utz, Das Auge und das Ohr im Text. Literarische Sinneswahrnehmung in derGoethezeit(Munich: Fink, 1990), p. 7.

7. See Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproduction, inIlluminations, ed. and intro. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken,1968), pp. 217-251. Michel Serres employs such a cultural-historical heuristic in Lescinq sens (Paris: Grasset, 1985).


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about only on Alabash, the grey horse: he ploughs through driftswith his chest.8 How does the protagonist in this story gain his ex-perience? What kind of experience does this text induce within thereader? What senses must he or she engage in order to repeat thelad/Aitmatovs processes of perception? By identifying with the pro-tagonist, I feel the snow at my chin, which is a strong kinestheticperception. This perception is reinforced through the mention of thechest, which pushes the snow aside. At the same time, I am natu-rally cognizant of the snow drifts.

In the following sentence, Aitmatov retains this kinesthetic sensi-bility, as he travels from the chin via the chest to the legs and thesense of balance: And the winds so strong you can hardly keep [on]your feet. When the waves whip up on the lake, when your shiprolls from side to sideyou should know that its our San-Tash windthats rocking the lake (p. 44). Now that we have become attuned tothe situation in a tactile/bodily sense, we can begin to hearand to seethe consequences of movement:

Grandfather told me that long, long ago, enemy forces came here to capturecontrol of our lands. And at that time, such a wind blew up from our San-Tashthat the enemy couldnt stay in their saddles. They got off their horses but

couldnt even move forward on foot. The wind whipped their faces until theybled. Then they turned away from the wind, but it drove at their backs so thatthey couldnt look around. It didnt even let them hold their ground, and thewind drove every last one of them from the Issik-Kul. Thats the way it was.And now we live with this wind! It starts its blowing right where we are. Allwinter the forest on the other side of the river creaks, howls and groans in thewind. Its even scary sometimes. (p. 44)

Depending on what senses the scenes emphasize, they evoke mem-

ories and images within the reader and trigger various chains of as-sociation.Literary scholarship has been propagating this insight for a long

time and has used it as one of the crucial foundations of the teach-ing of literature. In the simplest case, students are asked to identifyand classify the passages referring to specific senses. In the mean-time, however, our knowledge about the psychology of perception,and especially about the training of such perception, has signifi-cantly advanced. The school of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming),

in particular, has gathered this knowledge and has offered suitable

20 Configurations

8. Chingiz Aitmatov, The White Steamship, trans. Tatyana and George Feifer (London:Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), p. 44. Further parenthetical references in the text are tothis edition.


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training courses.9 I have listed below the characteristics (submodali-ties) that this form of training, in its analysis of visual experience,

takes into account:black-and-white (dis)associated panorama or frame

or colored one or several in motion ordistance of picture pictures freeze-framelight or dark (un)focused in focus: detail ordepth: two- or rich or poor overview

three-dimensional in contrast form: round orproportions: real angular

or distorted

Were one to use this heuristic scheme to reconstruct cognition inthe extract above, one would note that the events described in it, forexample, unfold initially like a black-and-white film that is ratherunfocused and lacks contrast. I am positioned at a distance from theenemy and view them only from behind. Once the wind whip[s]their faces until they ble[e]d, I abandon my dissociated point ofview and see their faces close up in their entirety. The picture gainsin color, contrast, and focus. When the enemy turn[s] away from

the wind, they also turn their backs away from me; they disappearfrom the picture, recede as a blur into the landscape. Obviously, themore precise or microscopic this analysis becomes, the more promi-nent become the various kinds of reading a text.

As long as this process is used as a purely analytical instrument forthe mapping of the environmentasking such questions as, Howhas the author obtained his information? or, What senses must thereader engage to replicate these experiences?it falls short of its pos-sibilities of aesthetic education.10 The text and the process can, how-

ever, also be used as a means for readers to activate, develop, and rec-ognize their individual forms of perception and representation. Howwould different readers experience comparable situations? Whatforms of perception are they unable to repeat? Are there any sur-prises? And what biographical reasons might account for these per-ceptual differences? To return to my example: What does it meanthat, at a certain point and for a short period of time, my eyes/pointof view coincide with the source of the windthat I identify with


9. See, for example, Alexa Mohl, Der Zauberlehrling, vol. 1 (Paderborn: Junfermann,1993).

10. This approach seeks to realize at least three teaching goals: to increase the range ofsynaesthetic perceptions; to identify ones preferred senses and to open new modes ofsensory processing; and to increase capabilities of multimedial representation.


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the hero, with the wind? That is certainly true, but that wind alsochased after the enemies, stabbed them in the back, and remained inphysical contact with them until they eventually disappeared in thedistance.

In the final analysis, both inquiries yield useful results only if wecombine them and alternate consistently and productively betweenone and the other, between the sensory experience of self and other.An information-theoretical investigation of literature must recon-struct self-referential as well as other-referential programs that comeinto play when literary media are processed in parallel fashion. It is,fundamentally, program-oriented.

As the reference to neuro-linguistic programming made clear,contemporary literature has suffered increasing competition for itsfunction of stimulating reflection about individual forms of percep-tion and action. Experiencing a catharsis is no longer the exclusiveprovince of watching a play or reading a novel, but is equally possiblethrough various forms of therapy, self-reflexive conversations withfriends, factual information about psychodynamics in the media,confrontation with other cultures, and in many more ways. Some ofthe reservations expressed concerning narrative literature and books

more generally may well take their impetus from the greater effec-tiveness of these alternate and more direct forms of self-cognition.At the same time, it is evident that the production of therapeutic

forms of literature has mushroomed of late. As media for problem-solving solutions and personal development, writing in metaphorsand creative writingare in these days.11 I see in this trend an inter-esting convergence of traditional, literary forms of self- and world-knowledge and professional forms of counseling that will continuewell past the present boom.

In the preceding pages, I have focused on the connections be-tween modes of perception and representation. In the following sec-tion, I want to dwell upon another specific link between inner psy-chological processing and the construction of literary information.

With the Head and the Gut: Affective and CognitiveInformation Processing

For purposes of information processing and absorption, authorsand their readers can engage not only the higher reaches of the (left)

22 Configurations

11. David Gordons Therapeutic Metaphors (New York: Meta Publications, 1978) is astandard in the field, and also a best-seller in the German translation (1995). I wouldalso recommend Alexa Mohl,Der Zauberlehrling, vol. 2 (Paderborn: Junfermann, 1996),esp. chap. 4 on metaphors. On the creative writing vogue, see Gabriele L. Rico, Writingthe Natural Way(New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1983; rev. ed., 2000).


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brain hemisphere, but also emotion, the unconscious, and psychicformations dating back to ontogenetic evolution. That is what goodliterature does. Ever since we first became cognizant of the art of lan-guage, readers embodied reactions have been seen as a mark of liter-ary quality. Reliance on purely cognitive processing is to be avoided.As a precondition for such physical resonance, both readers and au-thors must distinguish between interior and exterior perception andboth must be able to feel their bodiesfeel their weight and light-ness, to paraphrase Nietzsche. By engaging various psychologicalmechanisms and forms of perception, literature in this respect ismore suggestive and wide-ranging than, say, scientific description.12

The Western industrialized nations are notorious for underesti-mating the affective dimension of acquiring information: its implicitknowledge and largely unconscious formsbut it does take place.Hardly anybody seriously denies it, but it remains under lock andkey, as with family secrets. Analogous to such family secrets, affec-tive acquisition tends to block interaction, instead of releasing addi-tional resources to augment our rational registration of the worldand our conscious forms of linguistic information processing.

The fine arts and literature are two areas within print culture that

have traditionally nourished and engaged these emotional resources.While the authors of specialized publications are solely focused ontheir environment, and while they center almost exclusively on thecerebrum as a resonant space, literature requires the body of thereader, both its conscious and unconscious domains, as a site forcontinuous and continuously refocused stimulation. Reading litera-ture leads to insights about the world through the detour of (alwaysmore or less latent) self-perception. Naturally, similar to specializedpublications, literature also describes the world and communicates

general information independent of the embodied constitution ofthe reader. But if that is the end of its reach, it degenerates: it be-comes flat, plain, simply realistic. If, on the other hand, it man-ages to crawl under ones skin, it can be experienced only individu-ally, filtered through the temperamentand the body of the reader


12. For a recent discussion, see Bernd Scheffer: An understanding of literature, atheory of literature or a poetics, cannot use the medium of language, or texts and theirmeaning, as its sole point of orientation because each encounter with literature in-volves processes that cannot be explained with recourse to an a priori material base:

we are talking about general processes of perception . . . which far exceed linguistic per-ception; we are talking about processes of global, cognitive, emotional, even embodiedforms of the construction of reality (Interpretation und Lebensroman: Zu einer konstruk-tivistischen Literaturtheorie [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992], p. 24). Under the rubric hal-lucination, Scheffer develops the peculiarities of literary, psychic information pro-cessing in various directions.


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(not just that of the author, as mile Zola once observed). It trans-mutes into an inner event that is both cognitive and embodied. It isthis possibility that distinguishes belles lettres from technical andscientific writing. The latters contribution, in fact, resides in the factthat they construe and use readers and authors as generalized idealtypes. Readers can only replicate, verify, or apply the knowledge ofthe author by adopting the point of view of these ideal types. In ex-treme cases, such types approximate the operations of unfeeling,one-eyed scanning machines that theorists of perspective have beendescribing since the Middle Ages, and that found their correspond-ing form in the completely disembodied, modern photographic andoptical measuring devices.

While descriptions in subject-specific journals, therefore, canclaim a kind of fixed or universal legitimacy for those readers willingto accept their norming function, the effects of belles lettres, by con-trast, should be as wide-rangingin terms of both sameness and dif-ferenceas the resonating bodies and souls of the readers. For thatreason, literary education does not aim at a standardization of infor-mation processing, but rather at a sensitization of readers innereyes, ears, tactility, and so forth. Overlaps between the experience of au-

thors and of readers are not achieved because both are based on normedroles, but rather happen because of a more or less haphazard relation be-tween their resonating bodies and their programs of processing the self andits environment. That is one of the essential differences between liter-ary and specialized communication. Social norming processes natu-rally also afford parallel processing within literary communities, butthe need for synchronization in such communities is less pro-nounced than in scientific discourse communities. For that reason,external processing mechanisms in literary communities can take a

backseat to the processing of self and of haphazard coincidences.If our information culture is truly to be developed in the directionof multisensory, multiprocessual, and multimedial applications, wecan learn from the literary modes of information processing. Litera-tures range of affective perceptions and the possibilities of their so-cial and cultural dissemination offer a vast reservoir of experience inthis context. That has always been a point of the defenders of thefine arts, but in the age of the Enlightenment such pronouncementswere of no consequence to the sciences. In the wake of our global in-

formation culture(s), this could change. What prompts me to rein-troduce this idea is the fact that the emphasis on the necessity ofaffective communication, information processing, as well as of self-organized communication (that is, communication not primarilycontrolled by technical norms), is no longer the sole and exclusive

24 Configurations


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province of the arts and literature. Books about emotional intelli-gence advance to the best-seller lists because readers fear for theirjobs.13 Assessment centers test peoples emotional capacities. Cre-ativity, in contrast to functional and rational solutions, is not onlyin demand, but in fact essential, given the changing conditions ofour culture.

In 1995 two research economists, Ikujiro Nonaka and HirotakaTakeuchi, published The Knowledge-Creating Company: How JapaneseCompanies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, a book that has beenwidely acknowledged as a modern classic and has been translatedinto several languages. In their preface they observe:

As we shall see in this book, creating organizational knowledge is as muchabout bodily experience and trial and error as it is about mental modeling andlearning from others. . . . In this book, we classify human knowledge into twokinds. One is explicit knowledge, which can be articulated in formal languageincluding grammatical statements, mathematical expressions, specifications,manuals and so forth. This kind of knowledge thus can be transmitted acrossindividuals formally and easily. This has been the dominant mode of knowl-edge in the Western philosophical tradition. However, we shall argue, a moreimportant kind of knowledge is tacit knowledge, which is hard to articulate

with formal language. It is personal knowledge embedded in individual expe-rience and involves intangible factors such as personal belief, perspective, andthe value system.14

For Nonaka and Takeuchi, tacit knowledge includes not only un-conscious values, norms, and affective judgements, but also latentabilities, the picturing of ideas, and group-dynamic positions:

Tacit knowledge has been overlooked as a critical component of collective hu-man behavior. At the same time, however, tacit knowledge is an importantsource of Japanese companies competitiveness. This is probably a major rea-son that Japanese management is seen as an enigma among Western people.

In this book, we focus on explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge as basicbuilding blocks in a complementary relationship. More importantly, the in-teraction between these two forms of knowledge is the key dynamics of knowl-edge creation in the business organization. Organizational knowledge cre-ation is a spiral process in which the above interaction takes place repeatedly.15


13. See, as the tip of the iceberg, Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (New York:

Bantam, 1995).14. Ibujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company: HowJapanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation (New York/Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1995), p. viii.

15. Ibid.


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The book then provides models for these various knowledge typesand their transformations. Following that, the authors test the mod-els in a series of empirical case studies based on various corporations.What becomes apparent is the crucial differences in informationprocessing between the cultures of the East, Europe, and America.

I would be interested to learn whether literary scholarship has de-veloped a similarly refined set of methods to analyze literaryproduc-tion. The fact that scholarship and (which may be of greater conse-quence) the students of literature have yet to profit from themushrooming interest in creativity and emotion, is of course tied tothe disciplines fear of undermining its own scholarly presumptions:at one point in the future, the profession might distinguish itselffrom serious literature only by the even more boring literature it pro-duces. But it is certainly also tied to the fact that the discipline doesnot seem to have at its disposal appropriate methods for the mea-surement and evaluation of affective perceptions. Whatever the casemay be, if a thoroughly rationalized attitude is unable to grasp theculture-specific differences in industrial processes of production(which prompted Takeuchi and Nonaka to invent entirely new meth-ods and models), literary scholarship (a discipline with similarly un-

bending and traditional forms of analysis) will even less be able torecognize the power of various literatures. What is to be done?At the very least, we should take advantage of the possibilities of

information collection and processingincluding affective learn-ingavailable to us, and modify and acknowledge culture-specificfilters.16 As a starting point for such an inquiry, we might want to de-velop the ability to recognize resonances and affective reactionswithin ones own sphere; to trace mental constructs and their result-ing chains of association; and to distinguish between initial stimuli

and subsequent cognitive processes while reading. Intuitively, ofcourse, many scholars are aware of these distinctions, but in theirlectures they are reticent about this art of reading. Instead, theyseem to expect their students somehow to have already developedthese skills, or to have absorbed them in passing while taking classes.As the view beyond the narrow confines of literature into communi-cation and managerial training demonstrates, we are presently at ajuncture that holds great hope for the future.

26 Configurations

16. I have been working for years on the training of students comprehensive self-reflection. As well, I have been trying to develop models for the measurable collectionof affective data and their evaluation in the context of communicative social studies.For further information, see www.michael-giesecke.de and www.kommunikative-welt.de.


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Literature as a Medium of Social Communication andInformation Processing

So far, I have largely concentrated on individual human forms ofinformation processing. Before shifting to the second basic informa-tion-theoretical conceptthe reflection modelI would like topoint out that the individualized and psychologized approach is inno way adequate, preferable though it may be to other approaches.Literature is, naturally, a medium of psychology-based information,but it also operates in practices of social information processing. Theold idea of seeing social information processes as the simple accu-mulation of individual insights becomes increasingly untenable, es-

pecially in the context of systems-theoretical synergies and thetheory of emergence.If we do away with the typological analysis of literature as a social

medium of communication and information, we are bound to losepossibilities of classification. The various literary genres, for ex-ample, can be understood as media that developed in response tothe needs of a specific type of social system. Letters and poems maywell have circulated at first within small social systems in which thecommunicators knew each other. Epics and heroic songs served to

reinforce the identity of larger groups characterized by tribal and dy-nastic affiliations. Greek drama would be largely unthinkable with-out the development of urban cultures, and even later, various gen-res became more differentiated depending on their conditions ofperformance.

For genres, therefore, not just individuals, but social systems aswelltheir social hierarchy and their representativesfunction ascommunicators. Empirically, this is visible in the very fact that bothproducers and consumers of such art are subject to social con-

straints. Only after a genre has developed to a certain point can it beexported, at least in part, into other social systems and assume itsproductive function. In the wake of new technological forms ofcommunication, in particular, such phenomena of transmissionare especially visible. (I will return to the social location of narrativeliterature in my last section.)

Literature as a Reflector and Catalyst in

Cultural CommunicationFrom this perspective, literature appears, for one thing, as a

medium of information that reflects the structure and the dynamicof other information media. Second, literature becomes a catalyst forprocesses of resonance between communicatorsthat is, particularly



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between authors and readers, but also between readers themselves.Both in-formation processes can be registered by authors, readers, lit-erary scholars, and others, and can be reflected in their relations.From a systemic point of view, recognizing these phenomena of re-flection is part of the information-theoretical, epistemological para-meter. In their imbrication, these parameters illustrate paradigmati-cally their ecological interplay in processes of communication. Notonly does the body register resonances, but information registeredby the body can simultaneously lead to additional resonances.

Generally speaking, the quality of literature is in proportion tothe reflections it mediates: too few reflections make for boring read-ing; too many make for a mannerist effect. Naturally, such valuejudgments are dependent on cultural norms: within the bodies of(young) readers attuned to the fleeting communications practices ofthe World Wide Web, minute descriptions (the convention of epicbreadth) seem to have little resonating effect.

This quality of reflection is particularly visible in shorter literarygenres, such as parables, fables, similes, or fairy tales. But longer liter-ary genres, too, operate with reflectors. The notion of metaphorcan beunderstood that way as well: whatever else it may be or do, it certainly

establishes a comparative relationship between different media.This insight is certainly not new, but if seen in the context of theidea of reflective communication, it can be systematized. Such sys-tematization can proceed, for example, by separating the varioustypes of media or information systems and by laying bare the pecu-liar dynamic of the various reflection processes. Put differently: Howare biogenic factors reflected in psychological and social factors, so-cial factors in psychological and technological ones, and so on? Table4 lists those media typically in use in literary reflection processes.

Biographical narration sets itself the task of enabling the listenerto reenact, in his or her mind and body, the experience of the teller;it wants to catalyze for the listener a repetition of the tellers psy-chodynamic experience. The depiction of physical movement andthe behavior of the protagonist parallel the readers own experienceand allow him or her access to the soul or interior being of the sub-ject. To communicate an impression of the literary observers mentalstate, it may also be sufficient to render the clamor of the street andthe coming and going of people. Animals in Aitmatovs short fiction

lay bare the souls of the people. The Bible uses plants, such as thethorn bush or deeply rooted trees, to distinguish the faithless fromthose firm in their belief. Johann Wolfgang von Goethes ElectiveAffinities is one of the best-known works in the European literary tra-dition to draw upon the relationships in nature as a way of illustrat-

28 Configurations


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ing the relationships among and between men and women. The re-flection of humans in technology, and vice versa, is a popular subject

of expressionism.If literary works employ only two reflectors and/or project in onlyone direction, they strike us quickly as psychologizing, politically ag-itating, simple, et cetera; in those cases, they clearly fall behind spe-cialized publications. As the table template indicates, however, liter-ature can project in more than one direction. Physical movement,for example, can well be communicated through the depiction of amental state. Theodor Fontane illuminates the psychological struc-ture and dynamic of the people living in the Brandenburg region

through the long tree-lined roads and Lake Stechlin. Fontanes otherlarge subject is the reflection of the social in the psychological: hedepicts the Prussian administrative apparatus as a biographical pro-gram of decision-making, even, and in particular, in wholly privatesituations.17 But, as I said before: the challenge for literature is to in-timate a predominant direction of reflection, and yet to oscillate, tochange that direction time and again. (The concept of reflection iswell suited to help us grasp the effects of various literary tropes and,in particular, to classify the notion of metaphor.)


17. As long asEffie Briestremains a favorite examination topic among students, we canrest assured that our universities share structural similarities with the apparatuses andagencies that Fontane was exploring. The similarities between the two make it possiblefor students to process their own experiences in the medium of literature by way of thehistorically remote world of the novel.

Table 4 Media and Literary Reflection Processes

in

of

Psychological

Behavior/Body

Social

Animals

Plants

Remaining nature

Technology

Psychological

Behavior/Bo

dy

Social

Animals

Plants

Remainingn

ature

Technology


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Reflections and re-flections are some of the basic characteristics ofperception and communication, and are not solely an artistic prin-ciple. As with the information-theoretical and epistemological ap-proach, we need to uncover the specific workings of artistic reflec-tionsthat is, of artistic information processing. At this point, I will

limit myself to introducing, in table form, some hypotheses aboutthe differences in reflection operating in specialized prose and innarrative fiction (see Table 5).

Literature as a Cultural Phenomenon

Once we bring these combined information-theoretical, reflection-theoretical, and structural perspectives to bear upon literary phe-nomena, we begin to develop models that satisfy the demands of

cultural studies. The present interest in culture and cultural studies isbased, after all, on the assumption that a strictly discipline-specific(that is, functionally differentiating) description of society can offerfew suggestions for challenges in the future. What we need is an eco-logical, synaesthetic, and multimedial approach; or, to put it differ-ently: a convergence of discipline-specific systems and domains ofknowledge. To attach the cultural studies label to concepts in thesocial sciences, psychology, and other narrowly focused disciplines,simply by modifying them a bit, does not make sense. Rather, we

should be prepared to distinguish between social, psychological, andinformation-technological phenomena, on the one hand, and cul-tural phenomena, on the other. The model proposed here meets thatcondition through the notion of multiple description. Theory de-fines culture as a multidimensional model or ecological network. The

30 Configurations

Table 5. Reflection Differences

Specialized Prose Narrative Fiction

Explicit mention and standardization of Comparative measurements are

comparative measurements, such as unspecified; they are located in individual

lengths, geometrical forms, and perception: the freedom of choice

physical models

Only reflection phenomena that are Reflections do not have to be explicit

articulated and processed count as data

and hypotheses

Rules for comparisons apply No set and normed rules for

(measuring) comparisons exist

The comparison is one-sided: A is Comparisons are reversible. Two media

explicable through B, not the other illuminate one another, which leadsway round to ambivalent characterizations


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various dimensions illuminate one another. Naturally, from the per-spective of an ecological theory of communication, dimensionsother than the ones proposed here are possible as well.18

From an epistemological, information-theoretical perspective, culturalphenomena are multisensual systems that are parallel processing,self-regulating, and multimedial. A structural perspective defines cul-tures (and humans) as multidimensional networksthat is, as oper-ating as a link-up of, not only several systems, but different systemtypes. Networks have no center; they evolve structures by dissolvingexistent links. From a reflection-theoretical perspective, cultural phe-nomena are composed of various orders of media and communica-tors. Any description of human cultures must take into account so-cial (economic), psychic, technical, and biogenic systems, at least. Aselements of culture and a product of natural evolution, humans tooare a composite of various information-processing systems: physical,chemical, biogenic, psychological, and social. The unity of culturesis established through the reflection of systems within one another:structural similarities, repetitions, transferences, resonant rhythms,and so forth. Figure 1 summarizes the ecological concept of commu-nications theory.

Literature as the Product of Cultural-Historical Evolution

So far, I have focused on literature from a primarily systemic, syn-chronic perspective. All three approaches can, however, also be un-derstood from an evolution-theoretical perspective.19 From a reflec-tion-theoretical perspective, I have already drawn attention to thevarying levels of stimulation that specific literary works/genres andother media exercise on generations involved in cultural paradigmshifts. By level of stimulation, I mean to suggest the point at

which the phenomena of resonance within the readers body trig-gered by literary media are becoming palpable.It is reasonable to assume that cultures, eras, regions, social

classes, and authors can be distinguished according to their choice ofreflection types. Shepherds and nomadic cultures (in which Aitma-tov, for example, has his origins) presumably used animals as pri-mary reflection media. Plants played a significant role in the agrar-


18. See, for example, Theo Elm and Hans H. Hiebel, eds., Medien und Maschinen: Lite-ratur im technischen Zeitalter(Freiburg: Rombach, 1991), a collection with numerous lit-erary references.

19. See, for more detail, Michael Giesecke, Abhngigkeiten und Gegenabhngigkeitender Informationsgesellschaft von der Buchkultur (Dependencies and interdependen-cies of the culture of information on the culture of the book), inAudiovisualitt vor undnach Gutenberg, ed. H. Wenzel (Milan: SKIRA, 2001), pp. 213224.


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ian cultures of the Middle Ages and in select periods of Islamic coun-tries. In the age of the industrial revolution, such comparisons typi-

cally recede in favor of technological and social tropes.20 At present,I see distinct signs of a counter-trend. For example, the organizers ofEXPO 2000 attempted to downplay technology by planting numer-ous trees and gardens as a nature-based counterweight; the rhetoricof corporate management these days, similarly, no longer speaks ofleadership, but of nurturing growth.

From an information-theoretical, epistemological perspective, literaryhistory appears as the history of the shifts in social and individualinformation processing. One basic principle in this context would bethe differentiation of linguisticforms of perception, processing, andrepresentation drawn from the ensemble of human experience andbehavior. Literary scholarship has always been concerned with shift-ing network structures between communicators, and the emergence ofnew types. Given the new possibilities of electronic networking, thisinterest is pertinent again.21

32 Configurations

20. I elaborated on these lines of development in my speech at the annual conventionof the German Horticultural Society and the Federal Association of Engineers and LandManagement in Dresden in March 1999. For the complete text, seehttp://www.michael-giesecke.de/giesecke/dokumente/209/.

21. Georg Jger has given formative impulses to this field, sometimes in collaborationwith members of the publishing industry. See, for example, his lecture entitled PrintCulture vs. the Culture of Electronic Processing: On the Mediality of Text, University

Figure 1. Cultures from a communications-theoretical perspective.

Unhomogeneous networks

of different orders of

communicators

(structural)

Ecology as description of

the relations between

Circuits of different orders of

information systems/storage

(information theoretical)

Mirror cabinets of different

orders of communicators/media

(ontological)


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As far as the relationships between literary and other cultural me-dia are concerned, we can delineate historical lines of developmentas well: by now, we seem to have crossed the high point of the sepa-ration of the language arts from the remaining, embodied media,and of the separation of literary communication from face-to-facecommunication. This high point was the work of the novel, the lit-erary product of the industrial cultures of the Enlightenment. Thenovel is a consistently monomedial art form with little feedback,andat the same time, and in many waysthe form most depen-dent on technologies and social conventions: only the novel and theliterary forms derived from it are dependent on the typographicmedium and on distribution within mass markets.22 The novelwould be unthinkable without the theoretical frameworks separat-ing description from interaction, and without corresponding theo-ries of perception (both of which, in their own right, are dependenton numerous social and technological a prioris): its production andreception are isolated events, yet demand coordination. The genre ofnarrative fiction can reflect entire social structures; it does not needto confine itself to simple social systems or psychological structures.It makes possible a collective, aesthetic experience for an unpre-

dictable number of readers, a diverse and undefinable audience thatis yet noninteractive. Without complex technological apparatusesand specific social institutionssuch as publishing and marketingchannels, free-market distribution networks, liberal censorship poli-cies, highly normed social code systems, and readers capable of iden-tifying with fictional charactersthis narrative form would be un-thinkable. That is why poetry, in stark contrast to painting, forexample, did not prepare for the new typographic media.

That is also the answer to the frequent question why narrative lit-

erature plays no real role in my work on the book culture of the earlymodern age. It took more than two hundred years for the new mediumto develop its own forms of aesthetic representation, as well as a suit-able communicative infrastructurenamely, a literary society.23 Put


of Hamburg, winter semester 1997/8. Further, see Monika Esterman, Deutsche Buch-handelsgeschichte in kulturvergleichender Absicht, in Informationssystem und kul-turelles Leben in den Stdten der Edo-Zeit, ed. Shiro Kohsaka and Johannes Laube (Wies-baden: Harrassowitz, 1998); Vittorio E. Klostermann, ed., Verlegen im Netz: ZurDiskussion um die Zukunft des wissenschaftlichen Buches (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1997).

22. This separation and differentiation are, ultimately, at the center of Siegfried J.Schmidts innovative study, Die Selbstorganisation des Sozialsystems Literatur im 18.Jahrhundert(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989).

23. In that sense, the notion of Luthers break in sixteenth-century literature is cer-tainly justified.


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differently, the novel is a genre dependent on numerous enablingconditions that, in turn, are grounded in such basic forms as de-scription and the theories of noninteractive perception and repre-sentation, among many others. These determinants are summarizedbelow:

Typographical production technologies and technological mediaof distribution

Largely nonhierarchical forms of free-market distribution andresilient social networks

Non-interactive and monomedial theories of perception andrepresentation

Socially normed programs of perception and representation, aswell as code systems (i.e., national languages)

Individualized forms of production and reception Complex social systems: publishing and marketing channels,

salons Intramedial modes of reflection and critique (literary scholar-

ship), as well as a liberal policy of censorship Communicators capable of multiple role play (character identi-

fication) and changes in perspectives

The other major literary forms, such as drama, the epic (verse forms),songs, and so forth, evolved in other, earlier cultures. They are moremultimedial and interactive, and hence, in both a technological anda linguistic sense, less dependent on enabling conditions than is thenovel. They existed prior to print, and alongside of it, and will, forthat reason, presumably find their niche in the age of electronic me-dia. It goes of course without saying that these genres have changed

in their interplay with book media and in the context of the forma-tion of nation states; in both their genesis and function, however,they are independent of either one of them.

Therefore, not surprisingly, literary evolution is characterized byboth variation and selection: variation, in the sense of an observableaccretion and modification of literary genres; selection, in the sensethat the literature tied to typography reduces to a minimum sensoryinvolvement and the possibilities of interaction.

Such an extensive retrospective also affords us room for a preview:

it is improbable that the literary arts will, even more than at present,be separated from dialogue and immediate interaction. On the con-trary, what is more likely is that already-existing literary forms willbe integrated into a multimedial environment and that new genres,with a less monomedial orientation, will develop (i.e., variation). No

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doubt, in their capacity as both catalyst and enabling technology,the new electronic media will provide an important basis for suchvariation and integration. What is certain is that the discipline of lit-erary studiesif it aspires to be general, historically and culturallycomparative, and in synch with its timecan no longer use the out-dated, typographically based notion of literature as the basis andnorm for its observations.


Literature as Product and Medium of Ecological Communication

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