Dans le cadre du colloque Mapping New Territories in Intermedial Studies: A Research Forum organisé par le Centre for the Study of Transcodification at the University of L’Aquila (Italie), j’ai l’occasion de présenter avec Sébastien Fevry (UCLouvain) une communication qui s’intègre dans un panel que nous avons préparé avec Jean-Marc Larrue (UdeM). La communication intitulée: “From the remediation model to the concept of radical mediation, and beyond…”
Le panel se tiendra en ligne le 5 décembre à 8h30 à 9h45 (heure de Montréal). Le programme complet du colloque est accessible en ligne: https://imori2025.mystrikingly.com/
La présentation de notre panel est la suivante:
“From the remediation model to the concept of radical mediation, and beyond..”
Remy Besson (CRIalt-UdeM) and Sébastien Fevru (UC Louvain)
Around twenty-five years ago, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin published Remediation: Understanding New Media (1999), which had a significant impact in both Europe and North America, in the fields of media studies and information and communication sciences. Our work offers a re-examination of this seminal moment for Intermedial Studies. Our historiographical approach is based on the idea of revisiting these founding works in order to explore new avenues for intermediality. However, we do not limit our understanding of Grusin’s work to the late 1990s alone. We are also interested in his 2015 paper on radical mediation, in which he challenges his own theoretical assumptions and proposes an approach that goes beyond the simple framework of representation issues. In this joint presentation, we will present our own historiographical reflections, which form the starting point for an issue of the journal Recherches en communication (UCLouvain) currently being edited and coordinated by us. We will thus take an up-to-date look at the researches being conducted on Richard Grusin’s writings.
Beyond radical mediation: from excommunication to the theory of atmospheres
Jean-Marc Larrue (Université de Montréal)
Although Richard Grusin’s 2015 article on the concept of radical mediation did not have the same impact as Remediation: Understanding New Media (1999), which he co-authored with Jay David Bolter, it nonetheless marks a major milestone in the development of intermedial thinking. By freeing himself from the representational paradigm that was at the very foundation of the remediation model, Bolter arrived at this simple conclusion: only mediation is immediate.
Beyond the conceptual reframing that it implies, this development raises a fundamental question about the links between intermedial dynamics and communicational logic. This is illustrated by the concept of excommunication proposed by Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark in 2013. Excommunication is a form of transmission outside or beyond the communicational framework as we understand it today, and I suggest that one of its most accomplished manifestations is found in the theory of atmospheres.