Centripetal cartoons of Mohammed

There has of course been a huge upsurge in coverage of the widespread controversy and unrest sparked off by the publication and republication of cartoon images of Mohammed. Of course this issue is interesting in terms of free speech and liberal marketplace of ideas in the "global public sphere"--if such a thing truly exists. (A good round-up is provided in Slate.com and a helpful timeline of developments is provided by the BBC.) But it's also fascinating in terms of the centrifugal-centripetal elements of global communications. And that's what I'd like to talk about here.

This is a distinction raised by Harold Innis, a Canadian economist and pioneer historian of economics and communication. Innis believed that the main thrust for societal change is determined by development in communication forms. Innis's idea is that the dominant form of communication determines societal structures (see also McLuhan and Walter Ong for more on this). He focuses on the biases of communication formed through technology determining social organization. As new forms of communication become dominant, the nature of society changes fundamentally to accommodate these developments. Thus, e.g., the nature of oral cultures changed dramatically with the development of writing. Writing-based cultures structured their societies fundamentally differently from their oral-based predecessors. Innis's two most famous works, Empire and Communications and Bias of Communication, were published in the early 1950s and tackled these issues head-on.

It's in Empire and Communications that Innis elaborates on the concepts of centrifugal and centripetal forces. Centripetal forces of communication tend to make a culture or society more integrated over a given area over time; they tend to bring us together in a common "ritual" on consuming and interacting with common media (this is what James Carey is talking about with his Ritual Model of communication).

Centrifugal forces, on the other hand, tend to divide humanity into sets of smaller, more narrowly defined peoples and cultures; they allow a broader array of independent, peripheral cultural entities not fully integrated into a unified, hegemonic or imperial core. Nation-states, empires and other dominating geopolitical entities have always tried to emphasize and reinforce the centripetal forces of communication (through enhancing tight physical and technological channels and networks within the geopolitical unit and controlling the interchange of ideas and ideological debates carried on these networks). But ideas and and ideological debates tend to have a life of their own, and can use these networks to tear apart and undermine the formal forces of integration and assimiliation. (Interestingly, Russian formalist literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin expressed similar ideas in terms of languages, which "do not coexist peacefully, but are rather in a permanent state of competition." He distinguished "centripetal linguistic forces, exerted by official forms backed by the cultural or administrative establishment, from centrifugal forces intent on preserving the existence of unofficial, dialectal forms; he identifies the former with the social processes of political, cultural and ideological centralization.”)

This brings us back to the offending cartoons of Mohammed. This continuing story is, unfortunately, an excellent example of centrifugal forces of modern global communications in action. The series of cartoons, some depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, were first published in a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, back in September 2005. Then things died down a bit, but on January 10, a Norwegian newspaper reprinted the cartoons. At the end of January, the Danish paper apologised; but the following day newsapers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain reprinted the caricatures, in the face of Muslim outrage. By this point the information had been communicated and recommunicated not only through the traditional press but also hugely magnified by the play given the story by the web, cable and satellite news, and the blogosphere. This massive and integrated communication network, which many associate with the powerful integrationist forces of globalization, was now being used as the forum for a clash of ideas and cultures (if not a clash of civilizations). This network is spreading the information about the cartoons and the story of the Muslim outrage, but more fundamentally it's spreading the idea of the clash itself as a major news story in its own right--connoting the idea that, on the one hand, the West hates Islam; and on the other, that Muslims are all radical and resistant to logic and reason.

If there is a centripetal element to this (and this isn't a good thing), it could be in terms of defining and more radically distinguishing between cultural groups that define themselves in terms of being different from, and opposed to, a cultural "other." I'm not saying that this is happening in a permanent way or that it's irreversible. But we do have to take at the long game when trying to understand the big impact of globaization and global media. We always need to remember that all new global communications technologies and networks can act centrifugally as well as centripetally--yes, they can bring people together, but they can also emphasize differences, and pull apart and ultimately destroy political or cultural entities. European imperialism and its attendant institutions were brought down by the ideas of nationalism and independence spread on the imperial channels and networks of communication; Communism and the Soviet Union could not survive the spread of information and ideas carried on the communication networks of the late 20th century. How will communication tear us apart and redefine us in the future?