This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Of course, comparing can be understood as a general operation of human identity formation and assurance. Richard Precht aptly describes this circumstance in a popular science publication as the categorical comparative: “Our entire social life is a seemingly endless sequence of comparisons. […] The categorical comparative is innate to humans […].” (Precht 2012, p. 281) But even if the ‘categorical comparative’ should indeed be so fundamental for human self-consciousness as Precht thinks, this does not change the fact that only late, in the 18th century, such a comparison operation was explicitly established on a communicative level of and for cultures.
- 2.
Derrida points out that self-determination is firstly generally only to be understood as a cultural operation, secondly must constitutively refer to more than itself, and thirdly cultural self-determinations always draw from multiple, heterogeneous sources: “There is no self-reference, no identification with oneself without culture—without a culture of the self as other, without a culture of the double genitive and of distinguishing oneself from oneself, of distinguishing that goes along with oneself. The grammar of the double genitive also indicates that a culture never has a single origin. The monogenealogy always presents itself as mystification in the history of culture.” (Derrida 1992, p. 13; emphasis by me) Conversely, it also always applies—and this is precisely what makes the tension of a comparatist-reflexive perspective on culture: “Despite porous or permeable borders and dynamic exchange, cultures must somehow be analytically distinguishable units, otherwise the term in the plural is meaningless.” (Antweiler 2017, pp. 906 f.)
- 3.
That these demarcation operations can also be established quite differently, for example in relation to age, gender, belonging to an ethnicity or by differentiating sub- and mainstream culture, or that the assignment of a person to different cultures is simultaneously possible and this happens depending on context and interest, should be emphasized for safety’s sake. Because I do not want to be understood as if I assumed that topological or topographical differences were the only possible options of a cultural comparison. Nevertheless, they are a very frequently chosen means of constructing units and demarcations in my field of study.
- 4.
This is—at least this much should be conceded here—a recklessly crude statement. Firstly, the question of information content is a social one and not a technical-mathematical one, as with Shannon. So it is always also about interpretations and accordingly non-numerically graspable leeway for what is considered likely and what is considered unlikely in each context (cf. Baecker 2005, pp. 63 ff.). Secondly, this information content cannot be determined beyond specific reference systems of meaning and their norms, but within this system there are limits to the information content, beyond which the mass media would no longer report on facts in the world. Noise would strictly speaking have the highest information value or completely incomprehensible or absurd things have high information values. Here, the formula according to which mass media are more likely to report on something the less likely the occurrence of a fact, has limits of what can be meaningfully said and probably said. The search for the unlikely is therefore in the mass media system tied back to a limited number of selection possibilities and accordingly to phenomena of redundancy (cf. Baecker 2005, pp. 66 f.). Since my primary concern is not this precision, I will not go into it further.
- 5.
Luhmann himself relates these autonomously operating subsystems again through so-called structural couplings between these systems (cf. Luhmann 1998, pp. 776 ff.). Whether this is actually a good solution to the autonomy problem of the subsystems with simultaneous reciprocal relationships is debatable. What I am more concerned with in the following is the argument that it is implausible to assume an autonomously operating subsystem of mass media. The question of structural coupling thus becomes obsolete at least at this point.
- 6.
Luhmann himself also points out an—as he himself puts it—“inextinguishable misunderstanding” (Luhmann 1998, p. 776) in this context, namely that his system theory would assume that segmental or hierarchically ordered societal areas have completely disappeared due to functional differentiation. Luhmann writes: “On the contrary: the chances for segmentation (for example on the basis of organizations) […] increase with the complexity of the social system […].” (Luhmann 1998, p. 776, emphasis by me).
- 7.
Strictly speaking, Tarde is not only concerned with the social of humans, but with that of living beings in general, such as the sociality of ants (cf. Tarde 2009, p. 27). The concept even goes beyond the community formation processes of living beings. Tarde also describes, for example, imitations of chemical processes of hydrogen, the development of hurricanes, viruses, or celestial bodies (cf. Tarde 2009, p. 57). Humans, ants, viruses, celestial bodies, chemical processes—Tarde subsumes all of them under the dictum of imitation processes.
- 8.
The most famous is probably Aristotle’s concept of mimesis, cf. Aristotle 1982. There, it is primarily about artistic imitations of acting people and their systematic recording. In Plato’s The State, on the other hand, it is about the productive imitation as a lesser (crafts-)art, since the sensual world is only imitated. Art that imitates is thus twice removed from the original world of ideas, as it is ‘only’ an image (of the sensual world), which in turn is already only a pale image of the world of ideas, cf.: Plato 1982, pp. 61, 165 ff. Although in both cases it is also about imitation as an anthropological phenomenon. However, this principle is not chosen as the basis for ‘the state’ or metaphysics. Nor are the options of counter-imitation and variation considered as a constitutive part of imitation. In Plato’s case, at least, this plays no role at all, in Aristotle’s case at least no systematic one, although he does not understand (artistic) imitation as mere imitation, but also as a creative act, i.e., in principle also as variation.
- 9.
This implies: ultimately, humanity is on the way to a globalized world, as it is networked by ever larger streams of imitation, cf. Tarde 2009, pp. 18 f., 377. Curiously, Tarde explicitly opposes this consequence of a globalized world inherent in his theory—even in the same book, cf. Tarde 2009, p. 396.
- 10.
In this regard, Tarde writes: “Repetition exists for the sake of variation.” (Tarde 2009, p. 31) The sociologist lifts this idea on the level of ontology: “The heterogeneous is thus at the heart of things and not the homogeneous.” (Tarde 2009, p. 93).
- 11.
For example, a person can perceive something comparatively, but does not have to communicate what they perceive as a comparison. From the constructivist perspective of Schmidt or Luhmann’s systems theory, it is less or only incidentally about perception, but primarily about communication processes or observation modes in the communication process. For me, the difference between perception and communication is therefore important because it allows a distinction to be made between a representation that compares, for example, American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts, and a representation that shows American astronauts in the posture and helmets of Soviet cosmonauts. In the latter case, the mode of comparative observation is not itself the subject of communication, but is nevertheless its basis, as it is then reflected before communication that American astronauts, for example, do not wear stylish helmets. Thereupon—so the fictional scenario—these helmets are compared with other space helmets and the Soviet ones are perceived as the more suitable ones, without these helmets having to be marked as Soviet. Yes, on the contrary, the origin should be kept as quiet as possible in my example (of course, one could also think of an example that marks this operation as a quote or homage). More generally formulated: the comparative observation mode can function both as the starting point of the representation and as explicit content of the representation, without these two levels having to coincide. Accordingly, my corpus of investigation expands, as imitations at the level of perception and independent of imitation representations, which make this imitation explicit, can become relevant.
- 12.
That systems-theoretical or constructivist approaches generally have the problem,—despite all autopoiesis, concession of their own blind spots, relativizations, reflection of media conditions and differences—ultimately sticking to a rather antiquated concept of intention and derived function determinations and therefore cannot capture exactly what media theoretical studies primarily drive, this criticism can be found in all sharpness (and brevity) in the position of Georg Christoph Tholen, cf. Tholen 2002, pp. 25 f.
- 13.
The fact that there were many cooperations besides and thus the idea of an ‘Iron Curtain’ with strict isolation rather sprang from a (also mass media produced) myth, has been pointed out in the research literature for a long time (cf. Badenoch et al. 2009). Specifically in the context of the Space Race, the historian Julia Richers writes: “The then race into space can be considered a prime example of an entangled history.” (Richers 2013, p. 422) Thus understood, despite or rather: because of the confrontation, an approximation, indeed, entanglement of the two power blocs has resulted—both at the level of experience and idea exchange as well as at the level of joint (space) projects.
- 14.
So already at the planning level, we are dealing with mutual references, speculations, and assessments, cf. Reid 2010a, pp. 50 ff.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grampp, S. (2024). Space Race Glocalisation: Terms, Concepts, Methods, Examples. In: Space Race Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43971-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43971-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-43970-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-43971-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)