The September 11, 2001 Jihadists attack on the West and the subsequent wars on
terrorism indicate that war may be a permanent condition of life in the contemporary
world. This implies that to understand contemporary society, culture and
communication requires an understanding of war because war could perhaps
provide a perspective through which to understand the world. The aim of this study is
to provide such a perspective and to critically explore the link between war and
communication. However, in approaching a study of war one is confronted with a
pervasive pacifist anti-war ideological bias. To overcome the bias the study adopts a
critical strategy: firstly it deconstructs the taken for granted assumptions about the
positive value of peace and then it reconstructs and traces the contours of a Western
tradition of philosophical thought that considers war as being an integral and
formative aspect of human identity and communication. Chapter 2 uncovers the
limitations of the pacifists' discourse on war. Chapter 3 traces the Western tradition
originating in Heraclitus that considers war as formative experience of being human.
Chapter 4 traces war and killing as formative of language and communication. Using
these insights a careful reading and interpretation of how war informs the thought
and functions in the texts of selected social theorists of the twentieth century.
Chapter 5 traces war as an agonistic structure in the works of Johan Huizinga on the
role of play and in the political theory of Carl Schmitt. Chapter 6 explores the idea of
war as a model of society in the works of Foucault. Chapter 7 investigates the central
influence of real and imagined war on Marshall McLuhan’s theory of the media.
Chapter 8 explores the way war structures the thought of Lyotard on the postmodern
condition. Chapter 9 concludes by drawing implications on how a perspective on war
contributes to development of communication theory and understanding life in the
postmodern condition. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. Communication )
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:umkn-dsp01.int.unisa.ac.za:10500/10446 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Sonderling, Stefan Prof. |
| Contributors | Goosen, D. P. Prof. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (viii, 353 leaves) |
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