The Experience of Human Communication

Body, Flesh, and Relationship

Frank J. Macke

This book deals with matters of embodiment and meaning—in other words, the essential components of what Continental thought, since Heidegger, has come to consider as “communication.” A critical theme of this book concerns the basic tenet that consciousness of one’s Self and one’s body is only possible through human relationship. This is, of course, the phenomenological concept of intersubjectivity. But rather than let this concept remain an abstraction by discussing it as merely a function of language and signs, this work attempts to explicate it empirically. That is, it discusses the manner in which—from infancy to childhood and adolescence (and the dawning of our sexual identities) through physical maturity and old age—we come to experience the ecstasy of what Merleau-Ponty has so poetically termed “flesh.”

It is rarely clear what someone means when she or he uses the word “communication.” An important objective of this book is, thus, to advance understanding of what communication is. In academic discourse, “communication” has come to be understood in a number of contexts—some conflicting and overlapping—as a process, a strategy, an event, an ethic, a mode or instance of information, or even a technology. In virtually all of these discussions, the concept of communication is discussed as though the term’s meaning is well known to the reader. When communication is described as a process, the meaning of the term is held at an operational level—that is, in the exchange of information between one person and another, what must unambiguously be inferred is that “communication” is taking place. In this context, information exchange and communication become functionally synonymous. But as a matter of embodied human psychological experience, there is a world of difference between them. As such, this book attempts to fully consider the question of how we experience the event of human communication. The author offers a pioneering study that advances the raison d’être of the emergent field of “communicology,” while at the same time offering scholars of the human sciences a new way of thinking about embodiment and relational experience.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 258 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61147-548-7 • Hardback • December 2014 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-61147-793-1 • Paperback • August 2016 • $55.99 • (£43.00)

978-1-61147-549-4 • eBook • December 2014 • $53.00 • (£41.00)

Series: The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Communication Studies

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies, Philosophy / Movements / Phenomenology, Psychology / Movements / Humanistic, Social Science / Sociology / General, Philosophy / Language

The Experience of Human Communication

Body, Flesh, and Relationship

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

This book deals with matters of embodiment and meaning—in other words, the essential components of what Continental thought, since Heidegger, has come to consider as “communication.” A critical theme of this book concerns the basic tenet that consciousness of one’s Self and one’s body is only possible through human relationship. This is, of course, the phenomenological concept of intersubjectivity. But rather than let this concept remain an abstraction by discussing it as merely a function of language and signs, this work attempts to explicate it empirically. That is, it discusses the manner in which—from infancy to childhood and adolescence (and the dawning of our sexual identities) through physical maturity and old age—we come to experience the ecstasy of what Merleau-Ponty has so poetically termed “flesh.”

It is rarely clear what someone means when she or he uses the word “communication.” An important objective of this book is, thus, to advance understanding of what communication is. In academic discourse, “communication” has come to be understood in a number of contexts—some conflicting and overlapping—as a process, a strategy, an event, an ethic, a mode or instance of information, or even a technology. In virtually all of these discussions, the concept of communication is discussed as though the term’s meaning is well known to the reader. When communication is described as a process, the meaning of the term is held at an operational level—that is, in the exchange of information between one person and another, what must unambiguously be inferred is that “communication” is taking place. In this context, information exchange and communication become functionally synonymous. But as a matter of embodied human psychological experience, there is a world of difference between them. As such, this book attempts to fully consider the question of how we experience the event of human communication. The author offers a pioneering study that advances the raison d’être of the emergent field of “communicology,” while at the same time offering scholars of the human sciences a new way of thinking about embodiment and relational experience.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 258 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61147-548-7 • Hardback • December 2014 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-61147-793-1 • Paperback • August 2016 • $55.99 • (£43.00)

978-1-61147-549-4 • eBook • December 2014 • $53.00 • (£41.00)

Series: The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Communication Studies

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies, Philosophy / Movements / Phenomenology, Psychology / Movements / Humanistic, Social Science / Sociology / General, Philosophy / Language

Author

Frank J. Macke is professor of semiotics, rhetoric, and communication theory at Mercer University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Chapter One: Introduction: The Experience of Human Communication as a Threshold of
Relational Consciousness
Chapter Two: Therapy, Vulnerability, and Feeling in the Interstices of Embodied Expression: An Explication of Human Communicative Experience
Chapter Three: The Mirrored Body: Phenomenological Reflections on the Visual Experience of the Reflected Self
Chapter Four: On Contact: The Phatic Function of Communication
Chapter Five: Body, Liquidity, and Flesh: Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, and the Elements of Interpersonal Communication
Chapter Six: The Diabolical Parable and the Devil in Speech
Chapter Seven: Identity, Intimacy, and Eroticism: Deception, Sin, and the Existential Bargain of Adolescent Embodiment
Chapter Eight: An Archaeology of Gender and a Theory of Communication
Chapter Nine: The Flesh of Human Communicative Embodiment and the Game of Intimacy
Chapter Ten: The Dream and the Self: Consciousness, Identity, the Sign, and the Image
Chapter Eleven: Conclusion: The Dawning of Communicology
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

The aim of this book is to show that 'communicology is the human science best able to address the manner and motif in which persons connect and attach to each other.' Drawing on . . . a variety of humanistic thinkers—such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Erik Erikson, and Georges Bataille—Macke challenges the technocratic empiricism that upholds a rationalistic and reductive view of communication and outlines and advocates for an embodied and interpersonal perspective. A seasoned scholar in his field, Macke addresses topics such as intimacy, sexuality, and dreams in some detail. . . .This is a scholarly book rich in insights and interdisciplinary in scope, focused primarily on communicology. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals.
— Choice Reviews

Macke clearly ties together all that he has been quoting, questioning, and theorizing in a way that allows the reader to understand how each of the preceding chapters participates in his ultimate goal of inserting humanness into a field where academic and theoretical thinking has taken control, and offering an intelligent and much-needed inaugural study to inspire continual change in communicology today.
— International Journal of Communication

Frank Macke's book has enormous implications for the human and social sciences generally and for study of communication in particular. The text is a fresh, bold, intellectually challenging, and at times courageous critique of our taken-for-granted social connections and psychological attachments and the disciplines by which we have heretofore repressed or superficially understood these experiences. This is a work of vitality, of embodied corporeality, and it is about the same. Macke's book has the potential to radically alter communication as a concept and field of endeavor.

— Isaac E. Catt, Isaac E. Catt, Visiting Scholar, Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center at Duquesne University, Fellow, International Communicology Institute, and co-editor, Communicology: The New Science of Embodied Discourse

Frank Macke offers a thoughtful examination of a communication theory that unites evidence and ambiguity. Macke articulates communicology as a human science that dwells within the interplay of everyday human existence, unwilling to retreat into a realm above the fray of humanity. Macke contributes significantly to our understanding of communication with this volume.
— Ronald C. Arnett, Duquesne University

Professor Macke asks an embarrassing question: Where is the “human” in communication taught in the American classroom and experienced in the typical family? Cutting through decades of superficial talk about “sharing messages,” he then asks an old fashioned question: What’s the point of talking? With extraordinary clarity and precise scholarship, he helps us understand the psychology of how we come to embody a sense of self-worth and why that emotion matters in the shared community of speech around us: family, friends, strangers. The Experience of Human Communication is a “must read” answer for everyone with a positive interest in today’s society and culture.
— Richard L. Lanigan, Director and Fellow, International Communicology Institute, Washington, DC, and University Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Communicology, School of Communication, Southern Illinois University

We’re so used to saying that ‘one cannot not communicate.’ Frank Macke challenges this maxim: we can not communicate—look around you, see how people try to connect with one another, only to fail. The thrust of Frank Macke’s book is de-structuring and transformative: he takes the suppressed potential of communication understood scientifically and helps to unbracket and liberate it as expressed relationality. In this thought-provoking work, Macke provides insights into the human communicative experience and advances the science of Communicology. Anyone who reads this book will find it a transformative and richly rewarding experience.

— Igor E. Klyukanov, Professor of Communication Studies, Eastern Washington University