On systematically distorted communication
'On systematically distorted communication' is the title of a 1970 article by German Philosopher and critical theorist Jurgen Habermas. The article is not one of his most highly cited articles[1]
Some authors to suggest it has not been followed through as a concept. Gross suggests that it is 'a phenomenon he virtually ignores in the later stages of his career, a marginalization that may be the reason that scholars have generally neglected its detailed explication.'[2] While Crossley, for example, notes that 'the concept of ‘systematically distorted communication’ is never properly established and remains overly dependent upon a psychological frame of reference.' [3]
Exposition
Gross argues that the concept is useful and needs rescued from obscurity and reconstructed. Habermas, Gross notes, 'virtually' ignored the concept 'in the later stages of his career, a marginalization that may be the reason that scholars have generally neglected its detailed explication.' As Gross says this is is unfortunate, because without it the concept of 'Communicative action', 'must remain inoperative'.[4] This is because communicative action depends on an idealised notion of rational-truthful communication, which systematically distorted communication subverts.
Nick Crossley argues that Bourdieu’s work 'offers an important framework or problematic' in which 'we can realise, both empirically and theoretically, an analysis of ‘systematically distorted communication’, such as was deemed central to critical theory by Habermas[5] in his earlier work.'[3]
In his original article Habermas had used psychoanalysis as an example:
- In Knowledge and Human Interests Habermas claims that he wishes to extract the form of psychoanalytic criticism for his critical theory but not its content. He wants to establish a form of social analysis and criticism which can achieve a similar type of critique at the social level, as psychoanalysis, in his opinion, achieves at the psychological level; a process which would involve removing the psycho-biological baggage of psychoanalysis and replacing it with sociological equivalents. His account of systematically distorted communication, however, particularly in the seminal paper of that name, remains tied to the content of psychoanalysis, portraying systematically distorted communication as psychopathology. There is therefore a theoretical gap to be filled before we can implement an analysis of distorted communication.[6]
Notes
- ↑ His most highly cited works include Knowledge and human Interests, The theory of communicative action Vol 1 and 2, The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society and Legitimation crisis. Data from google Scholar on 12 July 2011. The works were cited 6561, 5794/5904, 4230 and 4094 times, respectively. By contrast Google Scholare data retrieved on 11 July 2011 showed that the article had been cited 352 times.
- ↑ Alan G. Gross, 'Systematically Distorted Communication: An Impediment to Social and Political Change', Informal Logic, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2010), p. 336.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Nick Crossley (2004) 'On systematically distorted communication: Bourdieu and the socio-analysis of publics', Sociological Review, Special Issue: Sociological Review Monograph Series: After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere, edited by John Michael Roberts and Nick Crossley, Volume 52, Issue Supplement s1, pages 88–112, June: p. 89. Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "Cross" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ Alan G. Gross, 'Systematically Distorted Communication: An Impediment to Social and Political Change', Informal Logic, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2010), p. 336.
- ↑ Habermas, J. (1970a) On Systematically Distorted Communication, Inquiry 13(3), 205–18.; Habermas, J. (1970b) Towards a Theory of Communicative Competence, Inquiry 13(4), 360–75.
- ↑ Crossley, p. 89
