Embodiment, Relation, Community

In this volume, Garnet C. Butchart shows how human communication can be understood as embodied relations and not merely as a mechanical process of transmission. Expanding on contemporary philosophies of speech and language, self and other, and community and immunity, this book challenges many common assumptions, constructs, and problems of communication theory while offering compelling new resources for future study.Human communication has long been characterized as a problem of transmitting information, or the “outward” sharing of “inner thought” through mediated channels of exchange. Butchart questions that model and the various theories to which it gives rise. Drawing from the work of Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Lacan—thinkers who, along with Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault, have critiqued the modern notion of a rational subject—Butchart shows that the subject is shaped by language rather than preformed, and that humans embody, and not just use, the signs and contexts of interaction that form what he calls a “communication community.”Accessibly written and engagingly researched, Embodiment, Relation, Community is relevant for researchers and advanced students of communication, cultural studies, translation, and rhetorical studies, especially those who work with a humanistic or interpretive paradigm.

“Garnet C. Butchart convincingly shows that we are always in communication and that one of its primary operative functions is immunization, a concept Butchart borrows from Roberto Esposito. Communication, paradoxically, is what restricts and enables, what is both threat and defense, exposure and shoring up, contamination and protection. An indispensable book for those wanting to understand the contribution of contemporary continental philosophy to our understanding of the communicative constitution of reality.”—François Cooren, author of Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion, Incarnation, and Ventriloquism, “Unlike work that has been published in cultural studies, Butchart’s study is not ‘post-phenomenology’ or in any way antagonistic to the tradition of thought that preceded it. It is, simply, the future of the field. It carefully explores some of the most important thematic and problematic concerns in the philosophy of human communication.”—Frank J. Macke, author of The Experience of Human Communication: Body, Flesh, and Relationship, “This is a wonderful book. Drawing upon thinkers such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and others, Garnet Butchart reflects on communication and communicates his reflection in a most honest and graceful manner. As we read this text, our experiences of communication, of being in common with others, are brought back to their very foundation.”—Briankle G. Chang, author of Deconstructing Communication: Representation, Subject, and Economies of Exchange, “Embodiment, Relation, Community succeeds in enlivening the philosophy of communication by inventively crossing traditions and squarely facing the uncertainties of communication. The book's three major strengths are its nuanced interrogation of the imperative to communicate, fluid demonstration of the relation between immunization and communication, and trenchant analysis of the ontologically communicative body.”—Gary Genosko, author of Remodeling Communication: From WWII to the WWW, “This exciting book brings philosophy of communication up to speed with cutting-edge debates in contemporary continental philosophy. Traditional questions of community, body, dialogue, and human contact receive here new and urgent meanings. Butchart’s work is an important contribution to the understanding of communication as an embodied and at the same time collectively shared existential concern.”—Amit Pinchevski, author of By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication

Garnet C. Butchart is Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University.