DELIVERED WORLD. THE ONTOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE EVENT IN GÜNTHER ANDERS’ CRITIQUE OF TELEVISION

Abstract

As one of the earliest theorists of television, Günther Anders postulated a so-called ‘co-substantiality’ of man, technology and media almost ten years before Marshall McLuhan did. According to Anders, television has remodelled human’s way of being (Seinsweise) and established new modes of experience, unfolding far-reaching consequences for the degrees of reality of different spheres of being itself. These effects result from the characteristics of broadcast TV images, which are simultaneously present and absent and can therefore be described as phantoms. Hence, they are characterized by a peculiar ‘ontological ambiguity’,
which also concerns the metaphysical, ontological, phenomenological, and socio-critical dimensions of the event. In Anders’ understanding, television as a media technology plays a key role in the transformation of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) and the formation of a cultural environment that he labels as a post-ideological land of milk and honey (post-ideologisches Schlaraffenland), an argument that is quite prophetic considering subsequent media-historical developments. When Anders argues that events only become socially significant in their form of reproduction, this points to a change in the dynamics of the cultural-technical production and distribution of events. Furthermore, this very change points to an equally worth investigating coupling of a certain mediality with the criterion of eventfulness, whereby conventional forms of being of the event are displaced. This is because the matrix performance (Matrizenleistung) of broadcast events has comprehensive anthropological consequences. This article intendsto shed light on the formation of Anders’ concept of the event in its relation to that of media-events in its media-historical and philosophical contexts.