Materialities of Communication (review)

Most American academics—even those who have been forewarned to read the last chapter first—will find this suggestive collection of truly interdisciplinary essays rather difficult. Culled from two German volumes which were themselves apparently the products of separate seminars, the papers sometimes sound like a lovers' quarrel in another tongue, where one does not know the lyrics but certainly remembers the tune. They are progress reports for insiders, and their shortcuts are the result of a shared language and sense ofpurpose. The problem for many on the outside will be the relative unfamiliarity ofthat language—systems theory and postHusserlian phenomenology—and of the methodological assumptions that it entails. The systems theory at issue is not the sometimes dreary functionalism of Parsonian sociology, but rather an emphasis on self-referentiality and autopoiesis derived from the biology of the Chilean Francisco Várela, who contributes a very interesting and elegant chapter on AIDS, and adapted for sociology by the German Nicolas Luhmann, who also has an essay here. The older systems theory—coming from classical mechanics—emphasized equilibrium and the importance of environmental inputs. The new-model systems theory posits that 1) systems self-generate as they differentiate themselves from their environment in order to solve problems, and 2) they maintain internal coherence even as they grow more complex. At stake in the picture is autonomy ofsystems. They are self-created and self-referential, and have themselves as their goal. This way of conceiving systems explains how complex organizations—be they biological or social—can keep on looking familiar in spite of growth and turnover, how they maintain their identity. This notion of organicism does not bear any relation to New Critical thought, for systems are large and refuse closure, and thus cannot be translated into structuralism. By looking at the internal constitution of systems, and not at their interactions with the environment, the systems theorist also renders problematic older maps of causality. Ifsystems are autonomous, then changes in the environment do not determine the shape ofchanges within the system, although they will create the state in which internal changes take place. A shift in the environment might well serve as impetus for transformation, but it will not define the result. Furthermore, this emphatic notion ofsystems independence also undercuts what could be called the classical mechanics of subjectivity, which can no longer be defined as action on the world or the imposition ofwill. In fact, Luhmann makes communication, not individuals, the basic unit of study. It is not people, but communication—the ground of their integration—that constitutes the social system. Discourse lies at the root. What might not be immediately apparent in my brief pass at the theory of autopoiesis, is the very postmodern epistemologica! sophistication of a Várela or