From Information Theory to French Theory: Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, and the Cybernetic Apparatus

Geoghegan, Bernard Dionysius

doi:10.1086/661645

Cited by 113 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In this passage, Jakobson seems to have a primarily technical view of the communication problem in mind, like that evident in the work of Claude Shannon (see Geoghegan () and Jakobson () for Jakobson's view of “Information Theory”). Like Shannon's (:31) theory of communication, Jakobson appears mostly concerned with the “engineering problem” of language, although he mentions some tropic uses of contact in his definition.…”

Section: Contact Tropes and The Two Phaticitiesmentioning

confidence: 92%

Phatic Violence? Gambling and the Arts of Distraction in Laos

Zuckerman

2016

J Linguistic Anthropol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“Tempted,” as he put it, by the “demon of terminological invention,” Malinowski first coined the term “phatic” as one half of a two‐word compound, “phatic communion.” Since Malinowski, “phatic” has often been used to imply a semiotic equation where mere communicative contact automatically produces positive social relations among those communicating. This article explores a genre of “trash talk” on the pétanque gambling courts of Luang Prabang, Laos to challenge this assumption and clarify multiple senses of “phaticity.” With close attention to talk used not for positive communion but for distraction, I argue that communicative contact as a technical phenomenon must be separated from communicative contact as a sign of other kinds of meaning.

show abstract

Section: Contact Tropes and The Two Phaticitiesmentioning

confidence: 92%

Phatic Violence? Gambling and the Arts of Distraction in Laos

Zuckerman

2016

J Linguistic Anthropol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Many of these ideas had been developed in the crucible of wartime laboratories, including the linking of education to machinic circuits, which had been utilized at scale to train military operatives. After the war, this research was strongly supported by the largesse of Rockefeller and other American philanthropic foundations that promoted an apolitical, technophilic approach to education (Geoghegan, 2011). As Turner and Larson put it, «no intellectual movement dominated the postwar American intellectual landscape as completely as cybernetics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Operational Media: Cybernetics, Biopolitics and Postwar Education

Druick

2020

FdE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article develops the concept of «operational media» to think through the deployment of utility/useful cinema in the context of cybernetically informed educational policy. The paper argues that cybernetic concepts of communication, feedback loops and homeostasis were central to the pragmatic installation of media at the center of postwar mass education. Links are made to the dominance of cybernetic ideas in postwar social science, including social psychology, sociobiology and behaviourism. A consideration of the UN’s operational media allows for a reconsideration of the agency’s communicative mandate as biopolitical and governmental. Educational policies influenced by the UN were doubly concerned with technologized classrooms: cybernetic ideas presented themselves as politically neutral, while offering efficiencies in the delivery of content. Cold war citizenship was thus conceived as a form of training that would pragmatically lead to the rebalancing of a volatile international situation. Carrefour de la vie (1949), made by Belgian filmmaker Henri Storck for the United Nations, is presented as an example of the centrality of mental health for citizenship training in postwar biopolitical regimes. In particular, the tension between the film’s humanist and cybernetic strands are considered. Au Carrefour de la vie is considered as a transitional text, presenting a humanist story of childhood in postwar life that simultaneously prefigures the operation of a controlled society.

show abstract

“…Far from a pseudo-mathematical mystification, as many Anglo-American anthropologists learnt it [33][34][35], Lévi-Strauss' structural method originated in mathematics and in applied group theory, dealing primarily with the algebraic models of kinship structures [36][37][38][39]. Afterwards, it has gone on to be well received by modern scholars seeking to study culture and society by formal means [40][41][42][43][44]. The majority of commentators, either admirers or critics, have retained from the structural analysis of myth only its capacity to disclose stable, common, and probably universal frameworks.…”

Section: Introduction To Structural Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

A Discrete-Event Simulation of Claude Lévi-Strauss’ Structural Analysis of Myths Based on Symmetry and Double Twist Transformations

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents a modeling and simulation approach in order to perform a generative analysis of folktales aimed at validating Claude Lévi-Strauss’ theory and method. To this aim, a discrete-event simulation is proposed. The simulation is based on the development of a set of discrete-event models dedicated to generating a set of folktales from an initial one, according to Claude Lévi-Strauss’ structural analysis based on symmetry and double twist transformations. This paper describes in detail how these discrete-event models have been implemented in the framework of the DEVSimPy software environment by using myths of Native American mythology and folktales of Corsican oral literature. The validation involved the following steps: (i) definition of a reference folktale (according to Claude Lévi-Strauss’ methodology) (ii) generation of a set of folktales by performing their own transformations (iii) generation of a graph allowing to analyze the links that have been created after performing a set of folktales transformations. Finally, the computational validation of Lévi-Strauss’s method is intended to ground a new research that may reformulate structural analysis and elaborate a neo-structural model of canonical formalization based on transformational morphodynamics. The aim is to conceptualize and measure recursively the structural dynamics and the recurrent patterns of current identity transformations in liberal democracies, especially in US and EU contexts where ethnic/racial divisions and migration challenges are becoming more acute than ever.

show abstract

From Information Theory to French Theory: Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, and the Cybernetic Apparatus

Cited by 113 publications

References 17 publications

Phatic Violence? Gambling and the Arts of Distraction in Laos

Phatic Violence? Gambling and the Arts of Distraction in Laos

Operational Media: Cybernetics, Biopolitics and Postwar Education

A Discrete-Event Simulation of Claude Lévi-Strauss’ Structural Analysis of Myths Based on Symmetry and Double Twist Transformations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About