Radical Theory and Theory of Communication: Lewis Gordon's Phenomenological Critique of the New World Consciousness

Abstract

The work of Lewis R. Gordon is a unique synthesis of Husserlian phenomenology, critical race theory, existential sociology, and the liberatory thought of Karl Marx and Frantz Fanon. But Gordon does not only synthesize; he also contributes a novel and radical philosophy of the human sciences and a philosophical anthropology that advances thought toward a new, postcolonial humanism. My aim in the present essay is to show that Gordon's work poses a challenge to contemporary communications theorists to engage more concretely than they have already done with the ways in which mass media on a world scale transmit or mediate the spread of dehumanizing postures and processes of thought and action. I carry out this project through an immanent critique and in depth analysis of one of Gordon's most important essays, his “Existential Borders of Anonymity and Superfluous Invisibility” (2000), in which he wrote that “we are witnessing a heightened intensity of state implosivity on a global level as information and other technologies have rendered the totalitarian personality of mass culturation the order of the day.” In that essay, Gordon elaborated on a vitally important concept: “New World Consciousness.” My discussion of Gordon's contribution will be augmented with material drawn from the work of communications theorist Phil Graham's Hypercapitalism: New Media, Language, and Social Perceptions of Value, as well as from Marx and Husserl.