Figures of the Thinkable in Communication Studies

Abstract

Communication studies are presented as a non-unified area of theoretical interest and research. However, an itinerary has been configured which, although it accounts for the coexistence of various issues and questions based on different theoretical, epistemological and political perspectives, tends to legitimize particular ways of conceiving communication.

In this paper we propose to review some of the notions of communication considered foundational in the field of communication studies. In doing so, we seek to review the thinking that marked the beginning of communication research and to understand which some of the antecedents that make possible the continuity are, not of communication studies, but of a way of thinking about it that is defined by the retreat to conformism and that has allowed, from that place of thought, to associate to communication some notions and interests that make it alien to the sense of the human and that entail, therefore, the risk of dehumanization.

To carry out our work we recover Roland Barthes’ notion of “figure” and, consequently, we follow as an operation the “procedure of the topic” proposed by him; a procedure that “implies a grid upon which surface a topic walks” (Barthes, 2004: 53). Thus, this procedure consists in the establishment of a topic or network of readings in texts that give rise to a series of associations around a theme. These associations arise from the criterion of recurrence that gives rise to the figures. The figures we deal with in this work are the following: communication-information-connection, communication-words-silence.