Régis Debray

In 1900, an American of taste was a European in exile; in 2000, a trendy European is a frustrated American--or one waiting for a visa. 0Régis Debray explores America's global cultural ascendancy in this provocative and witty analysis of our contemporary condition. Whereas Europe once foregrounded the importance of time and writing, America is a civilization of spectacle and kinetics, blind to the tragic complexities of human life. A measure of America's success is how its jargon has been adopted by European languages, but there is much more than that to the States' infiltration into all aspects of modern life. 0For Debray, the dominance of American civilization is a historical fait accompli. Yet he envisions a sanctuary for the best of Europe modelled on Vienna at the cusp of the twentieth century, where art and literature flowered in the rich soil of a decaying empire. For decades to come, Europe can still offer a rich cultural seedbed. "Some will call it decadence," writes Debray, "others liberation. Why not both?"

This text is a counterblast to the slightly hyperventilating cultural consumerism of Parisien intellectuals. Debray criticises this world in a refreshing way luring the traveller back to this seductive city.

Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal is a powerful satirical reflection on the economic, social, and ethical conditions existing in eighteenth-century Ireland. Using the character of an unemotional reformer, the essay makes the distressing proposal of selling underprivileged children for subsistence, highlighting the callousness inherent in utilitarian thinking and societal apathy. Swift employs piercing irony, logical mimicry, and measured humor to translate rationality into a moral denunciation, resulting in a text of lasting relevance that denounces unfairness and warns against harsh governmental policies.

"Regis Debray redefines communication as the inescapable conditioning of civilization's meanings and messages by their technologies of transmission and lays the groundwork for a science of the transmission of cultural forms - in a word, mediology." "Transmitting Culture examines the difference between communication and transmission and argues that ideas and their legacies should be rethought not in terms of "communication" from sender to receiver but of "mediation" by the vectors and messengers of meaning. Transmitting Culture stresses the technologies and institutions long overlooked by philosophy and the human sciences in the study of symbols and signs throughout the history of civilizations. Ranging widely from the history of religion and the printing press to the French and industrial revolutions, from the role and place of authority to scientific inquiry, Transmitting Culture establishes a new approach to the cultural history of communication."--BOOK JACKET.

283 p. ; 21 cm