the mass media and their relationship with the postmodern culture

THE MASS MEDIA AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE POSTMODERN CULTURE ORLATE MODERNISMAs a manner of Social Suicideby Miguel-Angel Materazzi *andInés Josefina Puig **The real way to be a subversive is to have access to the massesProf. Dr. Miguel Angel MaterazziNo statute of limitations on MiserablenessThe city seen as an ideology. Any city is able to become another citywhenever love transforms it. Any city is able to become a number ofcities according to the number of people in love who go wanderingabout (.).Any city is able to become another city whenever love paints both thewalls and people's faces at dusk. Anyone is the very face of love (.)Now, if love escapes and doesn't come back, the burden of autumn fallsover the city which has been only left with sorrow and the statues oflove.Mario Benedetti"Cada ciudad puede ser otra" (Any city is able to become anothercity), fragments.Postmodernism -We had rather calling it "late modernism" or "lowspiritedmodernism", is a name that has been given to a series ofmanifestations dealing with architecture, music, philosophy, and thearts at large, a kind of culture which is peculiar to our times,wherein visible traits can be detected among economic, political, andsocial traits, plus, of course social interactio.Out of Modern culture, let's say, from the 18th and the 19thcenturies, political, economic, and industrial revolutions have beenborn; the ideal of rationality as a basis for functionality andproductivity that, in turn, represent the humankind's progress asconceived to be under the influence of the West -thus a progress aptat creating new instruments for both production and thinking, apt atconsidering an articulation of the ensamble of society into classesdefined by their place within the realm of production, and theircapacity to enjoy production goods. These, and other elements havebeen expressed within a culture aiming at both attuning art with thesocial development, and rebelling against artistic conventionalismand norms that perpetuate time-honored, established social forms. Ourshas been an 'affirmative' culture, the affirmation of which startsfrom opposition and criticism. Of course, it has not been a monolithicculture -neither society has been, and this is why, within the societythere have occurred rebellions even beyond criticism up to the pointof challenging either the very essence of art (that has been the caseof the Dada movement) or the creative process of art (that has beenthe case of Surrealism). In other words, the depth of those avantgardesmakes it difficult for the Postmodern Culture to devise new

ebellious postures that, up to date, have not been in a position toreach the high grade of radicalization of Modernism.Perhaps the hallmark of this time has been to take care of technocracy(in one hand ), against the development of warmer and more stablishedhuman being relationships ( in the other hand ).So we can see thefollowing paradox : young people (childs and adolescents ) who becamespecialists in to disguise their deepest feelings and , particulary,their empty feelings. They, often commite suicide attempts in theframe of a disfunctional family with emotionally aloof and distantnarcissistic bonds (many times in narcissistic and histrionicpersonality disorders ).But, those families may pay, frequently,expensive and sofisticated treatments of medical carefulness andrehabilitation.Thus, when those young people come back to their home,find again a "nest" without cre and warm. So they must facetheir empty feelings and to seek other "partners" like the Media , forexample. Many times they meet in TV series or movies the pssibilityof an identification with postmodern adolescents character ( likethemselves ) who indirectly " invite " to steal something or to cuttheir necks or wrists. This behavior is "teaching", let us say, everymorning or afternoon. The characters say how to do it and what kind of"tool" could be used.In a TV movy about a group of young women very fond of magic, one ofthem manifestated her intention to buy a book about " white magic ",but also comunicate to her partners the impossibility of do it forlack of money. A group mate told her : " ¡It doesn ·t matter. We havefive fingers disscount!", ( in allusion of a stealing ), and lateradded : " All the humanity and even the animals do it ! ".Thisexample, show us how , consciously or unconsciously, the Post ModernSociety try to teach a suicide of itself. In the following paragraphswe will intend to reflect and to think about this idea and the sourceswho inspired this paper.After WWII, different authors told us that a new type of society hadarisen, and, according to them, this new type has been called postindustrialsociety, consumerism society, multinational capitalism,neocapitalism, wild capitalism, massmedia-driven society, and so on.Names that, indeed, point out to a characteristic differing from thecharacteristic the former period was endowed with. Currently, socialclasses as they had been devised by the industrial society are nolonger valid. Conflicts do not arise among classes any longer, theyarise between people and the establishment -i.e. huge organiztionswherein power does not depend of any social class but is exerted bygovernments and bureaucracy. This implies a fragmentation of theaction that, before, was amalgamated into social classes -hence, wecannot talk about exploitation any longer, we have to mention analignment, a consequence of a super-adaptation to the system through amanipulation of the Massmedia Culture that controls the "apparatus"..We could say that this new order brings about the demise of theculture monopoly caused by the major countries of the western world.This, coupled to the arising of the culture of countries pertaining tothe so-called Third World that had been damaged by the European modeland the arising of the so-called sub-cultures thanks to antiestablishmentmovements. That is, progress based on science andtechnique is suffering a deep crisis. followed by a simultaneouscrisissuffered by several elements pertaining to the Culture of Modernism,namely: the cultural unity (as regards the universal values of itsproposals, the authority of scientific rationality -i.e. the

intrinsical goodness of technology, the rational foundation of anyaesthetic model. All this leads to a de-categorization, so to speak;that is, being prone to a fragmentation against the cultural patternsuniversalization promoted by the mass media while evidencing a pseudogoodnessthat manipulates us.Marshall McLuhan, in his book Understanding Media: The Extension ofMan, proposes a great many statements -there is one, however, that Iconsider to be fundamental: the message is the mean -that is, from myown perspective, this statement induces us to think that reality isboth positive and human, and that all the "setting" surrounding uslends some tonality to life.Anyhow, I would like to clarify that, even though I have a deeprespect for this author I disagree with him at times. Now, if wefollow a research conducted by Oscar Masotta about a correlationbetween the mass media and the artistic activity we can observe somepoints: for one thing, worldwide, the manufacture of TV sets, sincetheir mass irruption in 1948, has reached astronomical figures. Now,let's consider the style of two creators, Ranschenberg and Tinguely(in the 50s and early 60s), a style called super-realism thatincorporates what we could call a market-oriented super communicationor the over saturation of consumerism and, from a certain point ofview denounces the underlying authoritarianism by alerting usagainst it. If we follow this trend of thought, we could reach thecamp works of art: they have to do with a naïve style endowed with acertain caricature of Romanticism due to a constant inversion ofvalues, the conversion of bad taste into good taste, a style thatmakes fun of everything serious, with a touch of a somewhat decayedinnocence, and a rather frivolous judgment. In other words, we caninfer that this "new aesthetic object" is bound to constitute a newand original message on the one hand as well as allowing an inspectionto be performed about the conditions ruling the way any message isconstituted, on the other hand.Whenever we deal with the mass media, and the mass media entourage itis like trying to either work with music, computing, poetry oroperating within criticism itself by means of informatic models. AsUmberto Eco would say "both the notions about the number ofinformation, and antropy become inseparable".So, we must have a critical posture, we must analyze contents, analyzethe idea that, within any communication-related situation not only thevisible contents are simply forwarded but also it should be noted thatthose contents are "articulated" -that is, they form part ofstructures that are unlikely to be visibleNow, if the communication process is something else than simplytransmissing the signifié of concepts, this is because there exists anefficacious "size" of the signifier inasmuch as the message forwardingprocesses include either a fundamental sense, that is the messageproper, or a sign devoid of a specific material substrate because thissubstrate reacts upon both the very concept and outside the concept aswell -and this is why that substrate is efficacious with regard tobehavior.As Oscar Massotta put it: "Grasping any message could become adifferential process with regard to the qualitative characteristics ofthe channel involved, and the appearance of any new medium could causea progress or a change in the discrimination grade of differences".Anibal Ford states that refraining from confusing the study of the

media with an eulogy for the media is important. Or criticize withoutany knowledge about the media and their relationship with people isalso important.So, it is also important to take into account both a socialmassmediatization, as well as an alternative-oriented opposition tothis, in order to avoid that studies on mass media do not dodgeculture and communication policies -because that would be a "nice"way for not exploring here the social injustice comes from.It should be taken into account that the ups and downs we can observein the constitution of the culture-communication-plus-media realm arereal strong when it comes to production while, however, they are weakas far as their epistemological foundations are concerned -acharacteristic, at that, of the so-called transversal knowledge, andthis we say without falling into the postmodern skepticism.Peirce speaks about: a) the indicial, that is the realm of body andcontiguity, and: b) the educational, that is the realm of conjectureand hypothesis, a non-deductive and non-inductive territory. Both areimportant for studying the media.In a connected consideration, M. McLuhan says that our currentelectronic times with their unavoidable evocation of simultaneitypresents a first, serious threat to the 2,500-year long predominanceof the left hemisphere.Thus, we should not be surprised when we seethat students whose right hemisphere has been TV-educated for 18 yearsface problems when dealing the the left hemisphere-conceived schoolprograms.Indeed, within the current strings of dislexia and other culturelinkeddifficulties, 90% of victims are men. These problems are adirect result from the pressure that not only TV but also otherelectronic media exert on us with the idea that we come back to theright hemisphere.Kerckhov points out that the virtual image accepts a point of view butthis is not a once-and-for-all process or, in other words, an imagebecoming a stable and reliable reference. The image of the body thateither an interactive screen or a virtual mirror reflect is not theimage of a unique being. It is the image of an open , protean,tentacular net people go through.F. Roustang states that, as can beexpected, Lévi-Strauss, as an anthropologists, stays within the socialand collective field. Lévi-Strauss, however, opens the way that Lacanwill take in the future, when he says that, as this is the case withlanguage, the social field is an autonomous reality; symbols are morereal than the things they symbolize. The signifier both precedes anddetermines the signifié. So, Lévi-Strauss establishes the autonomy ofa concept that, in the future, Lacan will name "the symbolic".Thereafter, Lévi-Strauss will resort to the structural linguistics toput in mathematical terms the unconscious mental structures that canreached at through institutions or, better, by means of the language.Thus, it would be sufficient to replace "institutions" by both Oedipusand the law. Thanks to such a way of expressing mathematicallylanguage aspects which reveal the unconscious, Lévi-Strauss considersthat excluding everything pertaining to feelings, desires, andbelieves is possible. Psychoanalysis allows the same -i.e. gettingmore involved with all that enhances affects, imagination, that whichhas been lived, the unspeakable, the unfathomable.

Such a perfect construction, however, is only able to stand upprovided the identity of two irreconcilable definitions is maintained:on the one hand, the symbolic -facts that create exchanges and arelinked to the significant language. On the other hand, the definitionreferred to the algebraic sign that, by definition, cannot and mustnot mean anything.Lévi-Strauss tells us that there exists a "floating signifier", thatis an excess signifier that has still not been used to signify, towhich a symbolic value zero will be attributed, as a pure symbol, thusapt at acquiring any symbolic content.Life -I should say people and paths, have sustained me, giving me thepossibility to envision reality in an operative way, and not a destructuredway.So, in my analysis I will start from the invention capacity, the"micro-aspects", the marginal aspects, through what could be called an"explored drive" -in other words, an inventive capacity to articulatecommunication, culture, and the mass media.It is rather easy to watch how the social injustice, violence, and thedestructuration of institutions appear suddenly through the multipleimages that A. Ford calls "the TV tribe" -as well as the market ofloneliness. As already pointed out, the field of articulation isstrong as far as production is concerned but weak as far as itsepistemological foundations are concerned, a feature to be found inany transversal knowledge.We have to read the history of social transformations from thepeople's level, and not at the heroes' level -I insist: let us notresort to either nostalgy-tinged responses or the low-spiritedmodernism's skepticism, and let us avoid the possibility of beingabsorbed by economy-based forecasts. Instead, let us resort totransversal, transdisciplinary strategies.The distinguished neuropsychologist and psycholinguist Oliver Sackscasts some light over the "postscriptural" writing in a short storythe title of which has been translated in Spanish as "The man whoconfused his wife with a hat"(1987). His main character, Dr. P. onlyexpresses himself by means of formal gnosis -i.e. the capacity to theabstract; he never resorts to concrete gnosis -i.e. the capacity torecognize someone's face. Dr. P constructs his world as if it were asoftware, by means of distinct and computer-like schemes features -thus, it would seem that cognitive sciences suffer from a similaragnosia. So, in an apparently naïve way, he will impugn thedisplacement the scientific knowledge produces over feelings,continuous judgment, the personal, the particular, the concrete, thereal. Sacks criticizes (not in an Hegelian way) the concept of theconcrete as something primitive, as something that has to beelevated, through the writing, to abstraction and generalization.Conversely, Lévi-Strauss considers that science is an ascent to theconcrete.We have already seen that Peirce deals with the indicial -that is therealm of the physical and the contiguous, and deals with abduction -that is, the realm of conjectures and hypothesis.

clashing between our own cultures, and among our cultures and theFirst World and/or certain aspects of the East to be found inarticles manufactures in South Eastern Asia that are so widelysold on the poor Latin American markets.In other words, this is a non-homogeneous globalization. It is muchcloser to the cultural promiscuity that was found in the BuenosAires, end-of-XIX-century tenements (conventillos), than closer tothe Victorian asepsis that was devoted to funcionality and thehomeostatis that, ideally speaking, underline McLuhan's "village" -aspects that are also found in the ways that many "communicationlinkedutopias" try to solve social conflicts starting from systemsthat "formalize" communication. However, communication systems areunlikely to solve the problems affecting this world of ours wheresymbols are more than enough but too little food.We need frames of reference for a general reasoning to explain ourpeculiar global society, however our cultures are exceedingthemselves in the observation of the particular , and the privateaspects of the "case" at stake that is now always either framed orgeneralized as it should be. The crisis of the macro systems -well,the crisis of explanations thereof takes the case to narrativeaspects, it not only implies a greater ethic demand about itsutilization but also it means avoiding that the case becomes analibi to conceal the structures and networks of power.Communication, information, and the mass media are going to play acentral role when it comes to covering the needs of local types ofknowledge as far as territory and symbol are concerned, without decontextualizethose types of knowledge from the globalizationprocesses. Society possesses other communication and informationnetworks as well as networks dealing with the construction of meaning-in other words, society keeps establishing the difference betweenfact and symbol.There exists a crisis of otherness. Something goes wrong wheneverviolence appears instead of communication.The development of technologies increases the possibility forloneliness -loneliness becomes possible whenever it is accompanied, orcompensated by an imaginary, illusory relationship: fiction.Each time you get much more used to the illusion of being submergedwithin the world. as a result, the relationships with people get moreand more difficult.Should be cast a glance at the production of thinkers and writers fromthe 20th century modernity, and compare it to the production ofthinkers and writers from the 19th century we find that perspectivehas been radic ally flattened, and the field of imagination has beenreduced. The 19th century thinkers were, at the same times, friendsand foes of modern life, they struggled tirelessly hand to handagainst the many ambiguities and contradictions of modernity. Themain source for their creative capacity could be found into theirinner strain, and their being ironical toward themselves proper.Their 20th successors have preferently oriented themselves towardrigid polarizations and rough totalizations. Modernity isaccepted with a "neo-olympian" estrangement and disdain: it isconsidered as a closed, monolithic structure unlikely to be shaped orchanged by modern humans. It should be noted that the fundamental

polarizations have occurred at the very beginning of the 20thcentury.Any future adaptations will demand, so to speak, wide social andpolitical turmoils inasmuch as the modernization of the futureadaptations always thrives within conflicts, within an atmosphere of"uncertainty and permanent agitation". Within such atmosphere, theculture of the late modernism, or low-spirited modernism will keepdeveloping new visions and expressions with regard to life since thevery economic and social impulses that, tirelessly, transform oursurrounding world -for good or not, will also transform the innerlife of people who live in, and keep it moving.Let us recall Marvin Minsky when he extolled a future physiologicalreconstruction, saying that[1] "this means that [people] will havewithin their skulls all the space they may need to implant additionalsystems and memories. So, little by little, we will be in a positionto learn more, year in year out, to add new types of perception, newways of reasoning, new thinking or imaging habits".So, the mega-design of neurosciences is no longer limited to theshaping of either the structure or the infrastructure of anindustrial "object" -instead it regenerates the impulses of theneurotransmitters of a live "subject", so that a king of cognitiveergonomy be set up,the last type of neuroleptic connection that couldbe called the infrastructure of behavior.Converting, so to speak, the body and its vital energy, in acontemporary of the era of the teletechnology of instant transmissionis, at the same time, abolishing the classical distinction betweenthe inner and the outer realms in favor of a "most modern" type ofcentrality. well, we could call it a hyper-centrality, the hypercentralityof a "present" time (not to say an "actual" time) thatreplaces definitively the difference between periphery and center.Until some time ago, to be present meant to be near (or next to)another person, physically, through our look, our voice, our beingable to touch his or her body. Now the massmedia proximity, based onelectromagnetic waves, discredit the value of nearness.Instead of acting, we -sorry for the neologism, "teleact", that is wesee, listen to, speak, and imagine that we touch or even feel at adistance, a nice way to alter our propioception wherein the essencialnotion of being and acting, here and now, losses every possiblemeaning.Let us also recall Nietsche when (in Zarathustra) he presents a model"to understand this type of person: in principle you have to realizewhat is his or her first physiological condition that is what I callthe Great Health. We new men or no-named man, difficult to convince,that have been born too early for a future the demonstration of whichhas not been done yet, we need a new aim, a new means and I refer to anew health: more vigorous, more acute, more long-lasting, more daring,and more joyful than all classes of health have been up to now".According to this philosopher: "A Great Health will be necessary, ahealth that you possess but that you have to conquer time and timeagain because you have to sacrifice it. Supermen are dangerouslyneeded whose compensation should be an unknown country the borders ofwhich nobody has seen until now, a far away land further than allpossible countries".

other words, the fundamental principle of science is: we cannotdemonstrate that anything is true -never. All we can prove is thatsomething is false.It is Francis Fukuyama's contention that, in the contemporary world,all cultures tend to come together into the ideal of capitalism andliberal democracy, by giving momentum to socially diverse communitiesfor them to head towards the creation of liberal, capitalistdemocracies as the last stage of the historical process. F.F.'sexpansionist ideology goes the same way as globalization with a markettotalitarian vocation.What Samuel Huntington calls the clash of civilizations is thecontrary to the end of Fukumaya's end of history: S.H.'s is a call fora stoical resignation inasmuch as we cannot cause the planet to becomea Wall Street branch by supporting the idea that the Occidentalpredominance is threatened and that religions -not the differentaspects of economy, could become the social classes of the XXIcentury.The physicist who launched the quantum theory, Max Plank, said: "Thefact is that there exists a unique point in the vast word of mind andmatter, wherein science, thus the causal methods for research areunapplicable not only due to practical motives but also due to logicalmotives. That point is the individual ego. It is a tiny point withinthe universal realm of the being but, in itself, it is a pointcomprehending one's own emotion life, the will, and the thought. Thisrealm of the ego is at the same time the source of our deepestsorrows, as well as the source of our most sublime joys".Hungtington's thesis is rooted on the clash of civilizations -thus, itobjects that supremacy be awarded to a globalized world most capableto corner into insignificance all the nuances, all the differences,all the singularities. As far as he is concerned,the Global Villageconceals much more than revealing due to the fact that it is aimed ata Western hegemony based on the technologic expansionism, the economicprevalence, and the military superiority.Huntington is against all this. Instead, he is interested in theresistence energy the principle of heterogeneity offers tohomogeneity.He stresses the importance of that energy, places great emphasis on itbecause he thinks that an Occidentalized world is an improbablething -however, he nonetheless acknowledges the Occidental culture:its values, its meaning, its rightfulness, as well as the need thereis that its decadence be counteracted, in the event that religions areset to take up the niche ideologies have left vacant. In other words,Occidental values would become a vertebral axis for cultures.Instead, thinkers such as Cornelius Castoriadis consider that a comeback to religions is no viable a possibility in Occidental societies.The islamic integrist reaction, as well as the religious persistencein India are different phenomena because, here, we are dealing withsocieties that never came out of the relegious heteronomy. In oursocieties a come-back to religion not only has a marginal characterbut is also artificially swollen by some intellectuals who resort toold ghosts to express something.

The Davos Club members, that is the worldwide capitalist leaders whomeet every year to celebrate their ideas' success and health, shouldnot forget that they are now surfing the crest of the wave but rockswhere waves break are at hand, any time.In Umberto Eco's and his co-authors' "The sign of the three", Eco hasSherlock Holmes saying that the extreme lack of noteworthy successescould be, per se, a singular event apt at giving us a clue inasmuch, aSherlock could say, "there is nothing more unnatural than a commonplace", so we can see that, in Eco's vision, good old Holmes iscautions whenever he assesses circumstances: he advises that thereshould not be skipped over because, at times, such an evidence is mostconvincing -for example, when you discover a trout in your milk. This,however, is a very deceitful evidence: investigators have to be mostcareful because evidence could give the impression that they areaiming some definite place but, should the investigator switchhis/her point of view, the evidence at stake could beaiming just the other way round now. Holmes-Eco insists in theimportance of following several possible explanation lines -you shouldnever loose any alternative. Starting from the reconstruction ofalternative explanations that adjust themselves to the facts, you haveto go on towards a guessing trend that, actually, is the "regionwherein probabilities are being evaluated, and the most unlikely oneis chosen" -i.e. this is the scientific use of imagination that hasalways a material basis to start speculating.You can reach the truth by contrasting an hypothesis with otherhypotheses. Now, weighing alternatives does not imply only acomparison in terms of probability, because explanations should beconsidered in terms of possibility thereof. The possibility, however,is not only determined by the viability of successes suggested: it isa remnant left whenever alternative possibilities have been consideredto be impossible. Hence "when all the other eventualities fail, theremnant -even though it seems highly unlikely, must be the truth".First of all, the "Holmes" analytical process is an exercise of logicwherein you do not resort to the empirical world direct. It would bean hypothetical-deductive method that, constantly, sets up aninter-relationship among logical -mostly deductive, considerations. Inother words, this is a foretaste of the relationship between theoryand research as sociology points out to.The intellectual community supports and fosters the protection ofindividuals against the mega-corporations so that a betterdistribution of riches, in an attempt at eliminating poverty andprotecting the environment is obtained.It could be said that the idea is proposing a song against reificationthe lyrics of which are humanized. That has been a centuries-longanalysis line eagerly looking for the positive aspect of the humandevelopment in liberty. Civilization has ripened through intellectualsbecause they were more concerned about their fellow men and women thanabout themselves proper -that is, they were ahead of their time,endowed with a higher Weltanschauung for humankind.The mass media, supported by a wild capitalism are unable to gag thethinking people who report either the mass media manipulation or thetransformation of subjects into objects -insofar as capitalism triesto have alleged environmentally-oriented however economy-based lawsenacted, on the basis that: a) any human action has an economiccorrelation, b) consumption speeding-up is a fact pervading the link

etween people and capitalism, and c) society's indifference, or deepindividualism with regard to poverty, are the symptoms of an economicasepsis.However, being a servile subalternate is not precisely the best way toforward us towards a better quality of life. We will achieve a betterquality of life if we use our freedom and our liberty through the useof the critical thinking so that we are in a position to fight thepotentially lethal discrimination, manipulation, and dogmatism.Homer as well as Virgil, Socrates as well as Hegel, Aristotle as wellas St. Tomas Aquinas, Rousseau as well as Marx, Jules Verne as well asSartre, Herman Hesse as well as Carlos Fuentes, Dante Alighieri aswell as Umberto Eco, Victor Hugo as well as Emile Zola, Chesterton aswell as John Cronin, Edgar A. Poe as well as Mark Twain, FeodorDostoevski as well as Anton Chekhov, José Hernández as well as WalterBenjamin, Niccolò Machiavelli as well as Michel Foucault, as well asthe thousands of unnamed intellectual did not only learn the lyrics ofthe song but heard the whole music of the song. That is, they wentbeyond the overture of the opera.According to I. Prigogine, it has been said that the division betweenthe two cultures: the humanistic sciences, on the one hand, and theexact sciences on the other hand, was due to the fact that the "nonscientists"did not read Einstein's works while the "scientists"lacked literary culture.Indeed, there is a contraposition stemming out of the fact thatScience's ideal is a universal, intellectual schema while humansciences are based on a historical schema linked to the concept of newsituations overlapping other structures.The literary creation is entirely based on time, and a great amount oftime that you have been living within, for one thing. From thisstandpoint the 2-culture dilemma is important. The fact that abstractart was born from the need to renew the artistic envisioning hasproduced a dicotomy: for example, Kandinsky and Mondrian wereinspired by theosophy -that is, an anti-scientific dimension, whileMalevic and Beckett, in the realm of literature, have described thehuman loneliness stemming from a scientific standpoint.Indeed, a dicotomy has been produced between the human, existentialsituation wherein time is essential, and the vacuum-like, untemporalvision of physics even though physics has been enriched by thecontribution of the quantum mechanics and relativity.Hopefully, however, such a dicotomy could be surpassed withoutattacking science with any positivist means or attacking art as if itwere an artifact devoid of any actual content. Dicotomy could besurpassed by evidencing how a cultural unit coming from the indepth ofscience, thus presenting a fresh belief in science itself, a belief,at that, apt at surpassing such an antagonism.Says Starobinski: "Today, there does not exist any field -physicalsciences, humanist sciences, artistic creation, legal institutions,political economics, the problems of which do not appeal to either theantagonistic notions of order and disorder or to the more flexiblenotions of equilibrium and lack of equilibrium". That leads us toconsider that those concepts are indispensable to understand theconcept of realities within ourselves and within our environment aswell.

hierarchical reasoning is a sensory reference of the left hemisphereof the brain, while the auditory-tactile is a sensory reference of theright hemisphere -i.e. a look into the myth intuition of the primitivehumans. The physiology of the eye could have inspired the first stepsof linear logic.Cash and the compass -the leading technologies of the XV century,illustrate the first figure-background-style transformations of thearchetypes from the visual space to the acoustic space, from thetangible to the intangible, from the domain of the hardware to thedomain of the software. In other words the leading technologies of theXV century could be understood as analogous to the current role thecomputer is endowed with nowadays. Currently, an acceleration in thechange from the visual space technologies to the acoustic spacetechnologies has been observed.Robotism -if you prefer, the right hemisphere-ruled thinking, is thecapacity to be a conscious presence in many places at a time. This isthe right hemisphere mode, the dominant mode of the brain for themechanical, extended capacities of our bodies, harmonized to a solemoment and to a sole place. The massmedia of the future will place anemphasis on the extensions of our nervous systems forasmuch as theseextensions can be separated from the body to be converted intocollective systems. The new population norms shall foster a change:that is, switching from industries-cum-chimneys to computerizedmarketing information. Particularly in the USA and Europe, videorelatedtechnologies will issue the predominant social norms duringour XXI century and centuries to come. For example, the new,ulticarrying telecommunication company, devoted to move any kind ofinformation to the speed of light, will generate, on a continuousbasis, products and services tailored for individual consumers thathave previously pointed out their preferences through an unending database. Users will become producers and consumers simultaneously.Says E. Fischer "Poetry is indispensable, however I would appreciateknowing why". This charming paradox has been taken by Jean Cocteau toshow that, in today's world there still is a need for art even thoughthe function of art seems doubtful.Painter Mondrian has talked about the possible "disappearance" of art.It is his contention that reality could eventually be able to displacethe work of art the essence of which lies, precisely, in replacing theequilibrium that reality lacks currently: "Art is bound to disappearas life becomes more well-balanced.Art as a "substitute of life", art as a medium apt at setting upequilibrium between the human being and the surrounding world. well,this is an idea encompassing a partial recognizance of the nature ofart and the need there is for art -and, since in the best developedsociety it is unlikely that an unending equilibrium can exist betweenhumans and the surrounding world this idea also suggests that notonly art has been necessary in times past but also that art willalways be in demand.Originally, art was a magic help to dominate the actual world -actual,yes, but unexplored. Within magic, in a latent, germination way,religion, science and art mingled. Little by little, this magicalfunction of art has disappeared: the current function of art lies inclarifying social relationships, enlightening men more and moreimmersed in more and more opaque societies, helping humans torecognize and modify the social reality.

It is no longer possible to represent any highly complex society, withtheir multiple relationships and their social contradictions by meansof a myth. In this kind of society -which demands a precise knowledgeand a general consciousness of all aspects involved, it will be moreand more necessary to break the rigid norms of times past wherein themagical element was still in operation, to arrive a at more open formsof freedom -for example, the freedom that you can read about in anovel. One of the following elements of art is likely to predominateat a determined time, according to the stage society has arrived to:at times, the magically suggestive element; at times the rational andenlightened element, at times the fantastic intuition, at time adesire to sharpen perception.Even though art both alleviates and keeps us awake, even though artboth clouds or illuminates us, art never limits to a mere descriptionof reality. The function of art lies in enticing human beings, inallowing the self to get identified with someone else's life, andobtaining what does not exist but could be likely to exist.I understand that the essential function of art lies in changing theword -with no magic whatsoever,no: only by illustraring andstimulating action. Well, anyhow I understand that we will never beable to get rid of certain magical residue: in all the forms of itsdevelopment, in dignity and joke, in persuasion and exaggeration, insense and nonsense, in fancy and reality, art has always arelationship with magic. Sort of.Art is necessary for people beingable to know the world and change it. Thus art is also necessary onaccount of its inherent magic. Art is almost as old as human beings.It is a kind of work -and workd has always been a peculiar activity ofhuman beings.Said Marx: "The working process is an activity aimed at adjustingnatural substances to human needs: this is the general, indispensablecondition for the material exchange between humans and nature, this isthe everlasting condition imposed on the forms of social life -that isto say, it is common to all social forms".Humans take possession of nature by transforming it. Work is thetransformation of nature.Humans also dream of operating magically upon nature, be endowed withthe power to change object, and giving them new forms through magicalmeans. In imagination, this is the equivalent of what work means inreality. From the dawn of times humans are wizards.At the time Goethe was writing Faustus, 90% of the inhabitants of thegrand duchy of Weimar were illiterate. Art and literature were theprivilege of a most reduced minority. Conversely, the industrialsociety needs people who can read and write. All kinds of knowledge -plus the need for more knowledge, have grown at the same time asindustry. As Walter Benjamin said this has always been a demand thathas not been satisfied -and will take time to be satisfied.André Breton said that a work of art is valuable if and only if futurevibrates within. Now, apart from this Avant-Garde's anticipation ofthe future there exists a need for conquering again the lost terrainthat, nowadays assumes the need for entertainment.Taking advantage of such a demand is the essential aim of both theproducers and distributors of the "mass art". In this capitalistworld, the immense possibilities offered by the mechanical

eproduction allow us to enjoy and distribute good books massively,reproduct good paintings massively, "canning"good music, and run goodmovies before millions of movigoers. However, this world has alsodiscovered there were huge benefits in producing artistic narcotics,and the dream vision becomes commercialized: the poor girl marries amillionnaire, the young, humble, guy becomes a hero by vanquishing allpossible obstacles and ennemies. In other words, fairy tales getupdated and are launched on the market. and all this happens in a timewhen writers and artists fight against the old clichés, taking greatpains to find how to reproduce a new reality.As Thomas Mann could say: this is an unsufficient divorce: for onething there exists the necessary search for new means apt atexpressing new realities: getting conscious that our artistic meansare exhausted, we are tired of them, we are looking for new ways, onthe one hand. On the other hand, we can say, with regard to humanmasses that, as far as they are concerned, the ancient art is, forthem, something absolutely new -hence they have to learn how todistinguish between good and useless. That is their bon goût has notbeen configurated as yet, so their ability to appreciate quality isstill to be created.Art is a servant to culture unified by something else than education.That is culture, as a concept does not implies art. Any community aptat adding art adds humanity to culture.As baron Munchhausen boasted to have done, this culture must enjoy theability to fly, and the ability to dream. That will be the only meansto perform all the "voyages" we are craving for, we will be able todeal successfully with everyday life and, eventually, we could seethat imagination has achieved power.Lyotard says that science quarrels over narrations because narrationsare, chiefly related to fables while science is not only reduced instating useful discoveries but science also works in search of truth -a way to attain philosophy. Whenever such meta-discourse resorts toany possible narration such as the dialectics of spirit, thehermeneutics of sense, the emancipation of the reasoning subject, thenwe can say that science is "modern".Giving legitimation to knowledge by means of a meta-narration impliesa philosophy of History. The validity of institutions ruling thesocial links is questioned.Postmodernism would represent incredulity with regard to metanarrations.The coming society is not so based on a Newtoniananthropology -i.e. structuralism, theory of systems: it is much morebased on the practical side of linguistic particles, so knowledgechanges status, a fact that began by late 1950s jointly with thereconstruction of Europe.Phonology, linguistic theories, communication problems, cybernetics,computer science, modern algebra, computers and their languages,memory problems, data bases, and telemathics witness such a trend. Theincidence of those technological transformations on knowledge issimply huge. It could be said that knowledge is affected in its mainfunctions: a) research, and b) knowledge transmission. Themultiplication of information-related machinesis affecting, and will keep affecting the dissemination of knowledge,as it has been performed with the available means for thetransportation of sound and image media.

The time-honored principle stating that acquiring knowledge could notbe separated from the formation of persons is being forgotten littleby little. A useful relationship has been set up among knowledgesuppliers and knowledge users, and knowledge becomes a value (just assuppliers of goods and users of goods do). Knowledge will be producedto be sold, and will be consumed to be valued within a new production.It will be a fixed asset any longer.Dashing within the orbital field of Earth to place communicationsatellites and/or data banks out there is fine -however, who issupposed to have access to them? Who is going to define the channelsand/or what data can be accessed or not? We can have many morequestions like these, a way to make the transformation of the natureof knowledge much more complex -all of this is likely to exert adirect action on government powers. A fact that forces us toreconsider our relationships based on fact and rights with themega-corporations. The problem lies between telecommunications and thecivil society at large.E. Trias offers us a unified table wherein key ideas by Frazer, Freud,Jakobson, Lévy-Strauss, and Foucault are coordinated inasmuch as thoseideas have a commun factor: the opposition between term pairs -that isa binary opposition with, however, a certain coordination among thoseideas. Indeed, the ideas pertaining to the above mentioned thinkersare of a binary nature: similarity/contiguity;condensation/displacement; combination/selection;metaphora/metonymy; identity/difference, that the communication mediahave analyzed.In brief, Trias sais that magic is the realm of similarity/contiguitywhile science is the realm of identity/difference.We have to take care not to fall into the scientific pedantry inasmuchas it can generate what Jakobson would call "aphasia" since it canaffect the metaphoric development of the discourse as well as itsmetonymic development. If we resort to Peirce and Chomsky it would belike searching, within the magical thinking, rational ways to makeeasier new thinking ways so that we could benefit from a widerunderstanding of communication-related phenomena.Within a theory of science, and an aesthetics simmetrically different(hence. complementing themselves), there exists a moment where a splitoccurs between a type of science expelling similarity while keepingmetaphor to hand it over to poetry that is, as Shelley would say,"the lawmaker of the world". From that moment on, you can say that artand literature are like storerooms where the similarity-driven poeticthinking can grow up nicely.Mention should be done of tolerance that allows some censoredactivities to blossom as art, activities linked to other denied orrepressed activities such as hallucination, onirism, magic that havebeen widely worked by both psychoanalysis and semiology. It would be,however, a repressive tolerance, giving a lesser emotional meaning toartistic and literary activities.Language is materially used as a physical object, playfullymanipulated, that underneath its problematic "meaning" reveals itscharacter of material sign. Antonin Artaud cause us to remember themateriality of the sign by reflecting upon the "gesture" character of

a language that conventional prejudices have deemed to be "senserevealing".Says Deleuze that sense, if it exists, is an "effect ofsurface": it is the result of combining corporeal and materialstrengths from either a gesture, a sound, or an iconic order.De Saussure demonstrates the duality of "the acoustic image and theconcept" any sign encloses. What we should look for is how viablecould be any discourse that, instead of manipulating images playfullycould be able to complete a free and playful construction withconcepts. It should be considered whether we could arrange an exercisecompletely opposed to the scientific exercise. In other words, settingconcepts free from their contexts, achieving a de-contextualized use,so to speak, to organize a "ludic language".Benjamin -whose thinking is akin to Horkheimer's, and Adorno's,members of the Frankfurt School of Philosophy, points out to thesecularization process that has taken place in the Modern Age, andcriticizes the notion of progress: thanks to the Enlightenment, wehave been able to uncover religion's covering up of both reality andthought so that we have been in a position to face the world's needand misery, to realize that there is no such thing as an egualitarianjustice. and to get aware that enlightenment itself is now a newreligion.Benjamin is deeply interested in culture, with a special attentiondevoted to literature, and the arts in general inasmuch as theyexpress the most positive traits of each period, they anticipatefuture proposals with regard to the realm of aesthetics. Benjamindefends the art as a constitutive part of culture, and even links artto ethics because art evidence in its manifestations the socialcontradictions, a transforming world, a struggling world the action ofartists causes us to get aware of, while artists keep fighting withthemselves to attain higher and higher levels apt at givingthem a higher degree of conceptual capture for grasping, andexpressing, social problems.That is, Benjamin has started to purify-plus-poeticize the philosophiclanguage that forces the reader to stop at each sentence andreflecting about it. Previously, he had to do this too -i.e.meditating before chosing how to express his ideas and their form. Hehad to reconstruct his inner dialog before transfering it into words.It is my contention that poeticizing the mode to express ideasstemming out of a moment spent in reflection, as a result of arigourous inner thinking is an essential characteristics of Benjamin'swork.Mircea Eliade thinks that humans, through their techniques, replacetime -that is, the human work replaces the "work" of time, human workcooperates with nature in that sense that human work helps nature toproduce faster and faster, human work modifies the modes of thematter, so to speak, and human work transforms humans into sucklingsof the alchemy sources: indeed, alchemy lies at the origin of modernchemistry -and what did chemistry do? stripping substances from theiralchemy-originated sacred character. A chemist is devoted to the exactobservation of physical and chemical phenomena, his/her systems areaimed at penetrating the structure of matter while an alchemist wasdevoted to the "passion-marriage-and-death" of substances aimed at thetransmutation of both matter and human life.If you wish, it could be said that, from this standpoint, chemistryentails a "degradation" due to a secularization of matter.

We consider that, before judging them, it is indispensable tounderstand all the cultural, exotic or archaic phenomena from theirown ideologies, whichever are their way of expressing those phenomena:through myths, symbols, rites, social behavior, whatever. As far asthose phenomena are concerned, creation is a sacrifice, and you canonly give life to what has been created if and only if you transmityour own life to your creation -be it through blood, pain, tears,sperm, soul., thus creating a system that could be called asdevelopmental disparity.In this culture of late modernism we may think that not only themodernism"is dying".Also many young people make a suicide attempt asthe latest unsuccessful oportunity to decide about their lifes. Whatever be, the successful suicide represent a new copy of TV movies, asad repetition of feelings of despersonalization. We say again thatthe suicide is a new failure of human creativity.The match point ...Through the electronic media,the power seeks to restrict the phsicalcontact of bodies,reducing trips,avoiding gatherings, causing peopleto stay permanently at home-i.e: the control space for the bodieswherein subjects are "locked up" of their own free will so thatcollective meeting situations are preventedProf.Materazzi-No statute of limitations on Miserableness[1] All quotations are back translations into the English language,inasmuch as the authors worked with booksReferencesAdorno, W., Sobre Walter Benjamin, Madrid, Càtedra, 1995.ADORNO, W., HORKHEIMER, M. Dialéctrica de la ilustración, Madrid,Trotta,1994.BACH G.R. Psicoterapia intensiva de grupo (Psychothérapie intensive degroupe) Buenos Aires, Hormé, 1958.BENJAMIN, W., La metafísica de la juventud, Mexico, Paidós, 1995BOOK P. El espacio vacío (L´espace vide), Madrid, Península, 1973.ECO, U., SEBECK, Th., El signo de los tres (Dupin, Holmes, Peirce),Madrid, Lumen, 1990.EISENSTEIN S. El sentido del cine (Le sens du cinéma), Buenos Aires,La Reja, 1962.ELIADE, M., Herreros y alquimistas, Madrid, Alianza, 1983.FISCHER, E., La necesidad del arte, Buenos Aires, Planeta, 1994.FORD, A., Navegaciones, Buenos Aires, Amorrortu, 1996.FOUCAULT, M., Esto no es una pipa, Barcelona, Anagrama, 1989.GABBARD,G-Psychodynamic Psychiatry-Washington-1994

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* Prof.Consulto Dr.Miguel Angel Materazzi-Psiquiatra y Psicoterapeuta-UBAPresidente- Fundación Finteco sociedad miembro de la WPA y WFMH**Prof.Dra. Inés J.Puig- Psiquiatra y Psicoanalista-Prof.Titular dePsiquiatría de la Universidad UCES--Directora del DepartamentoPsicosocial de Univ.UCESmaterazzi@arnet.com.ar/--materazzi@terra.es/--inespuig@arnet.com.ar