Existential Media

Abstract

Abstract This chapter synthesizes the key discussions in the opening part of the book and provides an outline of the main contours of the project of existential media studies. It argues for a broad media concept and a literal understanding of the postdigital. It describes existential media studies as a philosophically, ethically, and politically motivated project, challenging the forgoing of our shared existential vulnerability, in media theory and beyond. It is a theoretical and ethical methodology in line with the field of critical disability studies. It proposes a different subject for media studies and a different human after posthumanism: the coexister, who remolds existence in humble self-realization and in care for the world, practically and ethically, while also being a cocreator of the contemporary digital limit situation. Deeply entangled, coexisters still possess the capacity to act, choose, respond, and take responsibility, yet within limits and never in isolation. The coexister is the principal inhabitant of the digital ecology, and our principal subject in media studies is not a being in full control. The chapter defines existential media and their four key properties: First, they are world-makers and our infrastructures of being, enabling yet setting limits for our movement and dwelling. Second, they throw us into a particular yet uncertain world, and this involves opening limits: features of indeterminacy, anticipation, and ambivalence. Third, they activate our shared vulnerability and deep sense of dependence and relationality. Finally, they demand responsive action, critique, ethical choice, even an either/or on behalf of the coexisters.