Maurizio Ferraris' Theory of Documentality and Social Media: Media Hacking as Hacking of Cultural Memory
pdf (Русский)

Keywords

Memory Studies Memory Digital Studies Cultural Memory Historical Memory Communicative Memory the Great Gap Digital Memory Documentary Theory Social Media Media Hacking

How to Cite

Tikhonova, S. (2022). Maurizio Ferraris’ Theory of Documentality and Social Media: Media Hacking as Hacking of Cultural Memory. Galactica Media: Journal of Media Studies, 4(2), 84-101. https://doi.org/10.46539/gmd.v4i2.262

Abstract

The article deals with the methodological search for overcoming dualism in the understanding of cultural memory as a basic category of memory studies. This category implies a gap between the memory of living contemporaries and the "dead" memory of institutional narratives. However, the rebellion of living memory against repressive censored texts is a feature of mass industrial societies. The model of confrontation between generational memory and trans-generational memory, laid down by the works of M. Halbwachs and J. Assmann, loses its heuristic in the conditions of the dominance of digital media. The author suggests using the social ontology of M. Ferraris, known as the “theory of documentality”, to overcome this gap. The interpretation of sociogenesis as a result of the formation of social objects based on the recording procedure allows us to rethink the social function of the media. Cultural memory in the theory of Ferraris is equivalent to an array of documentary, differentiated by the ability to generate and maintain social objects into strong and weak. This approach turns out to be productive where the “great gaps” of communication have been overcome, where the social communication system provides wide access to all its types. Social media provides new memory formats by incorporating people and non-human algorithms into its networks. Creation of social memory objects no longer requires specialized institutions; “old”, pre-digital narratives of historical memory are hacked by users in media hacking processes, allowing them to appropriate, edit and inhabit the history of society in personal digital memory strategies. At the same time, the digital nature of new social objects ensures their involvement with each other through social network algorithms, regardless of their own ethical, aesthetic or axiological status.

https://doi.org/10.46539/gmd.v4i2.262
pdf (Русский)

References

Anikin, D. A. (2020). The Frontier Problem in Cultural Memory research. Journal of Frontier Studies, 5(2), 12–25. https://doi.org/10.46539/jfs.v5i2.201 (In Russian).

Assmann, J. (2004). Cultural memory: Writing, memory of the past and political identity in the high cultures of antiquity. Languages of Slavic cultures. (In Russian).

Bacchini, F., Caputo, S., Dell’Utri, M., & Ferraris, M. (2014). New Realism, Documentality and the Emergence of Normativity. In Metaphysics and ontology without myths. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Bauman, Z. (2008). Liquid modernity. Piter. (In Russian).

Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality; a treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday.

Castells, M. (1999). The formation of a society of network structures. In The New Post-Industrial Wave in the West: An Anthology. Academia pbl. (In Russian).

Couldry, N., & Hepp, A. (2017). The mediated construction of reality. Polity Press.

Ferraris, M. (2010). Social Ontology and Documentality. Approaches to Legal Ontologies, 83–97.

Ferraris, M. (2015). Collective intentionality or documentality? Philosophy & Social Criticism, 41(4–5), 423–433. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453715577741

Ferraris, M., & Torrengo, G. (2014). Documentality: A Theory of Social Reality. Rivista di estetica, 57, 11‑27. https://doi.org/10.4000/estetica.629

Halbwachs, М. (2005). Collective and historical memory. Emergency ration, 2(2–3), 40. (In Russian).

Harman, G. (2020). The Only Exit From Modern Philosophy. Open Philosophy, 3(1), 132–146. https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0009

Hoskins, A. (2001). New Memory: Mediating history. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 21(4), 333–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/01439680120075473

Hoskins, A. (2011). 7/7 and connective memory: Interactional trajectories of remembering in post-scarcity culture. Memory Studies, 4(3), 269–280. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698011402570

Hoskins, A. (2016). Media, Memory, Metaphor: Remembering and the Connective Turn. In R. Crownshaw (Ed.), Transcultural Memory, 0, 32–44. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315540573-7

Jensen, K. B. (2011). New Media, Old Methods—Internet Methodologies and the Online/Offline Divide. В M. Consalvo & C. Ess (by), The Handbook of Internet Studies, 43–58. Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444314861.ch3

Lotman, Yu. M. (1992). Memory in cultural coverage. In Selected articles: In 3 volumes. Vol.1. Alexandra pbl. (In Russian).

Migowski, A. L., & Fernandes Araújo, W. (2019). “Looking back” at personal memories on Facebook: Co‑constituitive agencies in contemporary remembrance practices. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 11(1), 1644130. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2019.1644130

Olick, J. K. (1999). Collective Memory: The Two Cultures. Sociological Theory, 17(3), 333–348. https://doi.org/10.1111/0735-2751.00083

Olick, J. K., Vinitzky-Seroussi, V., & Levy, D. (2011). The Collective Memory Reader.

Pötzsch, H. (2018). Archives and identity in the context of social media and algorithmic analytics: Towards an understanding of iArchive and predictive retention. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3304–3322. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817748483

Ralon, L. (2016). Interview with Maurizio Ferraris. 5.

Schwarz, O. (2014). The past next door: Neighbourly relations with digital memory-artefacts. Memory Studies, 7(1), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698013490591

Searle, J. (2010). Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford : Oxford University Press, USA.

Searle, J. R. (1995). The construction of social reality. New York : Free Press.

Servia-Rodríguez, S., Díaz-Redondo, R. P., Fernández-Vilas, A., & Pazos-Arias, J. J. (2013). Mining Facebook Activity to Discover Social Ties: Towards a Social-Sensitive Ecosystem. In I. I. Ivanov, M. van Sinderen, F. Leymann, & T. Shan (Eds.), Cloud Computing and Services Science, 367, 71‑85. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04519-1_5

Sulzhitsky, I. S. (2017). Formation and development of memory studies: A sociological project of M. Halbwachs. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Sociology, 4, 112-122. (In Russian).

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.