THE STRATEGY OF NOISE CANCELLATION IN THE ORGANIZATION OF THE WORLD
THE STRATEGY OF NOISE CANCELLATION IN THE ORGANIZATION OF THE WORLD

Summary/Abstract: Michel Serres is rather unknown French philosopher who, despite having published almost 40 major works, is still an enigma for the wider critical community. His large opus is mainly dealing with the effect of the concepts of noise and the parasite to different areas of investigation. This article deals with the informational, scientific, anthropological, economic and political dimension of his theory. Although noise is our body, the nature in us, over the centuries the science has been developing sets of protocols of noise cancellation designed to stabilize the order against the perturbations of the environment. This Hobbesian fear of the adverse effects of human nature gave rise to various protective systems: from parliamentary monarchy to cybernetic feedback protocols and commercial noise cancellation headphones, the noise has been widely prevented from infecting the closed system of the governance, economic activity and the bodily behavior. The digital era has been especially effective in mobilizing the autophagic noise diets set to isolate the social body from the harm noise, if left untreated, may produce. Every example of the noisy behavior, be it hacking, political unrest, immigration and terrorism, even the noise from the vehicles on the street and the human conversation has been canceled by installing the surplus noise that as a negative feedback stabilizes the system to its original state. The question the article poses is what kind of society are we heading towards once the threat of noise is successfully deterred.

• Details
• Contents