Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation

This book looks at mediation in the face of banishment, exclusion, and heresy, and by contemplating the possibilities of communication with the great beyond. It proposes an original theory of mediation based on classical literature and philosophy, using Hermes, Iris, and the Furies to map out three of the most prevalent modes of mediation today--mediation as exchange, as illumination, and as network. It then examines the concept of excommunication through the secret link between the modern horror genre and medieval mysticism. Finally, it evokes the poetics of the infuriated swarm as a queer politics of heresy that deviates from both media theory and the traditional left.