Bergson and the Metaphysics of Media

Any message requires a medium, but because media can be speeded up and made more efficient, we also regard them as obstacles in the way of more effective communication. Media are both means and hinderance and this leads to a number of important and difficult problems that cross the borders of media theory and philosophy:

• Can media produce immediacy?
• What must mediation be if it doesn't go away?
• Why is there is always a middle?
• Can the means be considered independently of the content that passes through them?

This book follows the 'metaphysics of mediation' from the philosophy of Henri Bergson into a wide range of intellectual movements that he influenced, from radical forms of Catholicism and phenomenology to the media philosophies of Gilles Deleuze, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Benjamin and Michel Serres.