Svenson - Theorizing Health Discourses

Massaging the Online Discourse

Starting as always in medias res, the online discourse appears as an enigma initially or
grey-zone, an enigma that must be given form through doing a ind of violence to what is
encountered as empty or confusing speech! "n the idiom of #reud, the online discourse
appears to the analyst as a symptom that re$uires an intervention in order to bring forth
that which is suppressed!
The Character of the talk:
The discourse as encountered comes to the reader in a fragmented form, almost as
divergent thoughts and utterances %u&taposed against each other, the thread of what we
assume to be a coherent narrative hidden from view by the interruption of a variety of
concerns, complaints, personal accounts, provocations and outright slams, what in
#reud's idiom might be understood as symptoms! Ostensibly the tal is focused around
the notion of ()atient-centred care* but as observers of the tal we find ourselves privy to
a richer phenomenon! The article appears to have (touched a nerve* and we find engaged
in the online discourse a wide variety of social actors, from patients to academics to
doctors to commentators that are interested in %ust +stirring the shit'!
"n addition to the heteroglot nature of the voices and the varied types one is also
necessarily struc by the tone of the language used! #or e&ample, the third poster uses
language that is more evocative than might be encountered in a public, face to face
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Svenson - Theorizing Health Discourses
discussion! (- hell of a lot of wor to do around health literacy.* indicates the ind of
informal language that will be allowed into the discourse! - high degree of sarcasm is
indicated as well in the many satirical attacs on Dr! /erwic's apparently +utopian'
notions of )atient 0entred 0are!
The character of the tal is striing and given that +online discourse' is conventionally
understood as opening up or constituting a conversation or dialogue, we might as after
what conditions might give rise to a dialogue of this form, a dialogue that is characterized
by interruption, a polyphony of voices, digression etc! 1 a dialogue that we would have
difficulty imagining taing place outside the online medium! Such a dialogue, conducted
outside the medium of the internet we might well imagine would devolve into angry
shouting and2or erupt into fisticuffs! Mc3uhan's famous aphorism the medium is the
message is instructive here!
A Word on McLuhans Medium is the Message
The medium is the message is a famous aphorism attributed to Mc3uhan that simply
stated argues that the characteristics of a medium itself, television, radio etc, not %ust the
contect of what is transmitted over a medium, that play a role and have an effect on
society! One of the more famous applications of what has come to me nown as +media
ecology' is the wor written by 4eil )ostman on the effects of the transmission of news
over the medium of television! Due to television's characteristics as a primarily visual
medium, one oriented to the display of spectacle, )ostman argues that television is
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Svenson - Theorizing Health Discourses
primarily an entertainment medium! The title of his ,678 boo Amusing Ourselves to
Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business demonstrates the problem T9
poses to public discourse, news is reduced to entertainment, which in turn diminishes the
level of public discourse! Satirical +news' programs lie The Daily Show and the 0olbert
:eport substantiate )ostman's claims by pointing out the absurdity and recycling the
tropes of much T9 news! - more apt description of what perhaps goes on is that media
+massage' content! The title of the boo (The Medium is the Massage* is said to have
been a printing error that Mc3uhan capitalized on and punned in various ways (Mass
-ge* for e&ample! Mc3uhan and #iore wrote that (all media work us over completely.
They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological,
moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched,
unaffected, unaltered ;,6<=>5<?!
The $uestion that might be posed with regards to the online discourse is in what way the
content and form of the online discourse being massaged by the medium itself! There are
two layers to the medium here, the internet as medium, and the webpage itself, to which
anyone with access to a computer can contribute to the +conversation'!
Mc3uhan's (3aws of Media* can tae us further in establishing the grounds of the online
discourse! Mc3uhan himself was a man in search of the grounds or grammar of media
and this led him to establish four +laws of media' framed as $uestions that were not
intended to be conclusive but acted as guideposts to these grounds!
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Svenson - Theorizing Health Discourses
Mc3uhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool, phrasing his laws as $uestions with
which to consider any medium>
,! Ahat does the medium enhanceB
5! Ahat does the medium mae obsoleteB
@! Ahat does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlierB
C! Ahat does the medium flip into when pushed to e&tremesB
-s a way of approaching the discourse " eep with the advice of #reud who argues that a
+symptom' ;the online discourse can be read this way? is always a manifestation of some
past trauma or disturbance, " will focus on Mc3uhan's category of retrieval! Ahat does
the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced ;covered over, buried? earlier! How does
the medium, now as speaer, transfer the past into the present! The hysterical element
here should also be stressed! Ahat does the medium +flip' intoB On both counts, the
anarchical character of the internet would seem to tae precedence here! Drisen ;,66<?
claims the following with regards to culture and the internet retrieval and flipping>
-t a cultural level, the "nternet
E intensifies the replacement of logical, linear structures with FparadigmaticF,
nonlinear ones ;and as such it is congruent with rave and techno?
E renders obsolete the Fsyntagmatic modelF of cultural worlds, which depicts them
as tradition-bound, rooted in the past, internally coherent and bounded
E retrieves Fpre-typographic manF, the full human intellect liberated from the
strictures of the boo, and
E flips into a holistic, nonlinear and nonscientific form of rationality!
;http>22fol!uio!no2geirthe2Tetrads!html?

The theme of +anarchy' would be one way of typifying what appears in the online
discourse 1 a lac of structure! -nother way of perhaps discussing what is underlying the
online discourse is a notion of +anti-structure'! This taes us closer to 9ictor Turner's
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Svenson - Theorizing Health Discourses
anthropological wor on :itual! So we have an absence of structure that itself is
structured by the medium of the internet! This itself is interesting! Ae might as, what are
some e&amples of anti-structureB :ituals of all inds course contain this element, and
yes, there does seem to be a purging that is going on with regards to the online discourse,
a freedom from constraints that allows for libidinal forces to emerge! Ahat then might be
a closer analogue of the online discourse that according to the media tetrad would
represent in particular a retrieval of the pastB /ahtin's notion of carnival would seem to
fit!
2) Bakhtin and the carniales!ue nature of the online discourse
Carnivalesque is a term coined by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, which refers to a literary
mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through
humor and chaos.
Bakhtin traces the origins of the carnivalesque to the concept of carnival, itself related to
the Feast of Fools, a medieval festival originally of the sub-deacons of the cathedral, held about
the time of the Feast of the ircumcision !" #anuary$, in which the humbler cathedral officials
burlesqued the sacred ceremonies, releasing %the natural lout beneath the cassock.& !Bakhtin,
"'("$.

n the carnival, as we have seen, social hierarchies of everyday life)their solemnities and
pieties and etiquettes, as well as all ready-made truths)are profaned and overturned by normally
suppressed voices and energies. *hus, fools become wise, kings become beggars+ opposites are
mingled !fact and fantasy, heaven and hell$.
*hrough the carnival and carnivalesque literature the world is turned-upside-down !,.-...$, ideas
and truths are endlessly tested and contested, and all demand equal dialogic status. *he /0olly
relativity& of all things is proclaimed by alternative voices within the carnivali1ed literary te2t that
de-privileged the authoritative voice of the hegemony through their mingling of /high culture& with
the profane. !,ikipedia$

"eading the online discourse as a literar# te$t%
&s there a genre that might 'e of use in understanding (hat is going on in the talk%
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Svenson - Theorizing Health Discourses
)) "eading the online discourse as satire%
/ure in the )hilosophy of 3iterary #orm, tals about literature as e!ui*ment for
liing 1 currently satire on the rise 1 witness the proliferation and popularity of
programs in the Gnited States and 0anada lie the Daily Show, This Hour has 55
Minutes, The 0olbert :eport, not to mention the rise of :eality Television of which a
strong reading would indicate an audience responding with their satiric imagination!
The genre that reflects the carnivales$ue is the 4ovel!
For Bakhtin it is within literary forms like the novel that one finds the site of resistance to authority
and the place where cultural, and potentially political, change can take place.
For Bakhtin, carnivali1ation has a long and rich historical foundation in the genre of the
ancient Menippean satire. 3n Menippean satire, the three planes of 4eaven !5lympus$, the
-nderworld, and 6arth are all treated to the logic and activity of arnival. For e2ample, in the
underworld earthly inequalites are dissolved+ emperors lose their crowns and meet on equal
terms with beggars. *his intentional ambiguity allows for the seeds of the /polyphonic& novel, in
which narratologic and character voices are set free to speak subversively or shockingly, but
without the writer of the te2t stepping between character and reader. !,ikipedia$
+nline discourse, -outu'e ./enr# 0enkins)
So the $uestion arises even further 1 what ind of novelB
The online discourse might be productively read as satire! #laming!
/ecause this is a written form animated by the long dead spirit of 0arnival we need to
ascertain what form of literature it is!
3eads to a notion of Henre, and for that we can turn to Mihail /ahtin and his essay
Epic and Novel in the boo the The Dialogic "magination!
Online discourse as a version of the 4O9D3
)eople's participation in the online dialogue
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Svenson - Theorizing Health Discourses
In other serio-comical genres we will come upon other aspects, nuances and
consequences of this radical shift of the temporally valorized centre of artistic
orientation, and of the revolution in the hierarchy of times. A few words now about
Menippean satire. Its fol!lore roots are identical with those of the "ocratic dialogue,
to which it is genetically related #it is usually considered a product of the
disintegration of the "ocratic dialogue$. %he familiarizing role of laughter here is
considerably more powerful, sharper, and coarser. %he liberty to crudely degrade, to
turn inside out the lofty aspects of the world and world views, might sometimes
seem shoc!ing. &ut to this e'clusive and comic familiarity must be added an intense
spirit of inquiry and a utopian fantasy. (othing is left of the distant epic image of the
absolute past) the entire world and everything sacred in it is offered to us with out
any distancing at all, in a zone of crude contact, where we can grab at everything
with our own hands.*
enacting the Mennipean "atire - the sub+ect is participating in a Mennipean satire in
real-time...
*In this world, utterly familiarized, the sub+ect moves with e'treme and fantastic
freedom) from heaven to earth, from earth to the nether world, from the present
into the past, from the past into the future. In the comic afterlife visions of
Menippean satire the unfettered and fantastic plots and situations all serve one goal -
to put to the test and to e'pose ideas and idealogues. %hese are e'perimental and
provocative plots.*
*%he appearance of the utopian element in this genre is symptomatic, although it is
to be sure, timid and shallow. %he inconclusive present begins to feel closer to the
future than to the past, and begins to see! some valorized support in the future,
even if this future is as yet pictured merely as a return to the ,olden Age of "aturn
#in -oman times Menippean "atire was closely associated with the "aturnalia and
with the freedom of "aturnalian laughter$.
*Menippean satire is dialogic, full of parodies and travesties, multi-styled, and does
not fear elements of bilingualism #in .aro and especially in &oethius %he Consolation
of Philosophy$. %he "atyricon of /etronius is good proof that Menippean satire can
e'pand into a huge picture, offering a realistic reflection of the socially varied and
heteroglot world of contemporary life.*
*0or almost all the above-mentioned genres, the *serio-comical* is characterized by a
deliberate and e'plicit autobiographical and memoirist approach. %he shift of the
temporal center of artistic orientation, which placed on the same temporally valorized
plane the author and his readers #on the one hand$ and the world and heroes
described by him #on the other$, ma!ing them contemporaries, possible
acquaintances, friends, familiarizing their relations #we again recall the novelistic
opening of Onegin), permits the author, in all his various mas!s and faces, to move
freely onto the field of his represented world, a field that in the epic had been
absolutely inaccessible and closed.*
1*ic and 2oel .The 3ialogic &magination)
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