On Speech, Writing, and Other Media: Pilgrimages with Peter Sloterdijk around the Genealogy of Concepts

Abstract

This article concerns the short genealogical history of speech and writing media, which simultaneously takes an advantage of, develops as well as reconstructs, the appropriate points of view and attitudes by Peter Sloterdijk. The object of analysis is a discursive formation on speech and writing shaped in western culture, a formation consisting of arguments and imaginations contained in the Bible, philosophical writings, by Plato and Hegel mainly, and literature, indicated here only very slightly. Social history is eventually discused here, that is the view of revolutions and colonialism through the prism of print/writing medium — through the relationships of power and domination based on this medium. All the discursive and social events have their common resentment background according to Sloterdijk — following Nietzsche he assumes that there are cruelty and perversion that lurk at the roots of culture.

The question is: why does he do that, what new does the historically worn-out interpretational frame let him tell about the media in the past and today?