Sacred Channels: The Archaic Illusion of Communication

This book is an original take on the history of communication theory and the cultural imaginary of communication understood through the notions of holy and the primitive. It offers an insight to the shared ground of anthropology and media theory in 19th and 20th century and tracks archaeology of the philosophy of technology that underpins contemporary culture. It is a singular project which focuses in a unique way especially on the ethnological disciplines and their phantasmatic imaginations of a pre-alphabetical realm of the holy and the primitive but reads them in the context of media cultural questions: as epistemic unconscious and as projection of the emerging post-alphabetical condition. Drawing inspiration from work by the likes of Friedrich Kittler, Hörl’s understanding of cybernetics in the post Cold War II interdisciplinary field informs the rich analysis that is of interest to media scholars and anyone wanting to understand the historical and theoretical underpinnings of humanities in technical media age.