Aurel Codoban

Body, Image and Relationship: from Culture of Knowledge to Culture of Communication Aurel Codoban

This book is built around the generally endorsed view that communication has gained a leading place in contemporary culture. The first chapter tries to show that if the body is winning the battle against its soul, it does so in communication only as an image. The second chapter contends that image conquers text, but that behind this image lays the digital texture of codes and programs. The third chapter claims that in communication, being in a relationship becomes more important than the transmission of information, but that in this way the subjective identities of those who communicate tend to be dissolved. And the fourth chapter argues that, consequently, practices and theoretical models of communication are moving from persuasion to manipulation and seduction. The core idea of the fifth chapter is that we live, for better or for worse, in a culture in which communication has taken the place of knowledge: just as modernity culture overrated knowledge, our culture overstates communication. That is why the last chapter, the sixth, is seeking for an ounce of wisdom in a too loquacious culture of communication and in which no one can shut it.