| Description |
465 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 411-454) and index. |
| Summary |
"The book begins by calling close attention to the importance of the telephone in Nazi organization and propaganda, with special regard to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. In the Third Reich the telephone became a weapon, a means of state surveillance, "an open accomplice to lies." Heidegger, in Being and Time and elsewhere, elaborates on the significance of "the call." In a tour de force response, Ronell mobilizes the history and terminology of the telephone to explicate his difficult philosophy. Ronell also speaks of the appearance of the telephone in the literary works of Duras, Joyce, Kafka, Rilke, and Strindberg. She examines its role in psychoanalysis--Freud said that the unconscious is structured like a telephone, and Jung and R. D. Laing saw it as a powerful new body part. She traces its historical development from Bell's famous first call: "Watson, come here!" Thomas A. Watson, his assistant, who used to communicate with spirits, was eager to get the telephone to talk, and thus to link technology with phantoms and phantasms. In many ways a meditation on the technologically constituted state, The Telephone Book opens a new field, becoming the first political deconstruction of technology, state terrorism, and schizophrenia. And it offers a fresh reading of the American and European addiction to technology in which the telephone emerges as the crucial figure of this age"--Publisher description. |
| Contents |
A user's manual -- Delay call forwarding -- The local call : storm trooper to Heidegger -- Dial B for being -- The subject of philosophy : other to SuZ-- The conference call : Weber, Fynsk, Borsch-Jacobsen -- Derrida to Freud : the return call -- The nervous breakdown -- The case of Miss St. -- On the way to lainguage : Laing to Heidegger -- O mouth! That trembles through the silvery willow -- Seit und Gespräch wir sind : immortals to terrestrials -- On pain : Heidegger to Trakl -- The call of the colon : the stone, themelancholicc, the schizo -- The televisual metaphysics : Frankenstein, AGB, Hölderlin -- The young thing : woman to woman -- The dummies of life : Rilke, America -- Birth of a telephone : Watson, dead cats -- The autobiography -- Tuning the fork : Bell, Watson -- "God's electric clerk" -- The Bell translation : Kant, Helmholtz -- Micrographia : Gizeh, Kiangsu -- The bio -- Electric portraits -- Canadasein -- The returns : The deaf, AGB -- The Bell nipple -- The black box : after the crash : the click: the survival guide -- Last call: F., Duras -- Priority call I : non-contact hermeneutic stunts -- Priority call 2 : the circuit -- Verifying the line : Bio², 388 -- Against apartheid -- Silence -- Classified -- Crisis hotlines. |
| Subject |
Oral communication -- Philosophy.
|
|
Oral communication -- Philosophy. |
|
Oral communication. |
|
Oral communication -- Psychological aspects.
|
|
Oral communication -- Psychological aspects. |
|
Technology -- Psychological aspects.
|
|
Technology -- Psychological aspects. |
|
Telephone. |
| Added Author |
Eckersley, Richard, book designer.
|
| Other Form: |
Online version: Ronell, Avital. Telephone book. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, ©1989 (OCoLC)551352184 |
| ISBN |
0803238762 |
|
9780803238763 |
|
0803289383 |
|
9780803289383 |
| Standard No. |
9780803289383 |
| Sudoc No. |
U5001 T088 -1990 |
|
