Paradise Regained? The Work of Mediation Technology in an Age of Open Communities
Abstract
Paradise Regained? takes up Benjamin’s thought on violence and the role of globally transmitted artifacts in an age of mediation in conjunction with anthropologist Pierre Clastres’s analyses of South American Indian society’s political and power relations. It then speculates on the prospects for the arrival of an open, democratic, mediated community, revisiting and redefining ideas about the role and freedom of individuals and communities in conjunction with the State’s use of violence and coercion in making global society governable.
Author Biography
John Grech
John Grech is an artist, writer, and educator who has exhibited, published, and taught in Australia, Europe, the USA, and Canada. Recent projects include a web site called “Interempty Space” (2007), published by Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed forum for experimental new media projects, and a commentary on the work of Walter Benjamin called “Walter Benjamin in an age of global citizenship,” published in the International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics (vol. 3, no.2, 2007). In 2006, John gained his PhD, which drew extensively on the work of Benjamin, and is titled The Work of Art in the Age of Global Culture, from the University of Technology, Sydney, although John spent much of his time researching his thesis at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis and the Film and Television Department at the University of Amsterdam. After returning to Australia to take up a post as Lecturer in Writing and Media Production at Macquarie University, John recently returned to live in Europe where he and his partner are expecting their second child.