General intellect, communication and contemporary media theory

Abstract

The rich conceptual space opened by Rafael Capurro’s research on the ethical dimensions of communication and message theory has inspired this investigation of Paolo Virno’s concept of general intellect Virno analyses how contemporary topoi function as conditions of the possibility of thought and language, whereas Aristotle analyses them as modes of argument The contrasts between the two exposes problems with Virno’s conceptions of political possibilities of abstract human capacities of language and thought I torque Virno’s use of topoi by imposing what I call "Virno-Aristotle variations" on the contemporary roles of two kinds of topoi, to suggest a political role for them quite different from Virno’s scheme, and present a more plausible scenario of their actual political entanglements His ideas are also tested by provocations from contemporary media theory: Friedrich Kittler’s argument that the essence of the human has escaped into apparatuses, Claude Shannon’s theory of communication, Noam Chomsky’s conception of grammar, and Jacques Lacan’s notion of the symbolic as the world of the machine I conclude with a brief glance at John Durham Peters’ insistence on the great variety of conceptions of communication, which I suggest generates a corresponding variety of connections between communication and politics, thereby destabilizing or at least complicating not just Virno’s but any notion of privileged connections between a pure potential of human communication and an ethics and politics of freedom.