In Between Communication Theories Through One Hundred Questions

This book takes the form of a dialogue. It presents two authors, specialized in the phenomenologу, posing questions to each other and offering complex answers for critical discussion. The book includes both presentation of different communication schools and philosophizing on the issues of communication. The authors debate numerous topics by providing the definition and etymology of communication, examining the limits of communication, and using a poli-logical base of communication. The issue which pervades all domains is that of mediation: how things, such as identities, styles, and bodies are mediated by culture, history, and tradition, and what the limits are of such mediation. This question leads to more complex issues of “mediated mediations” such that an explication of one medium is framed by another medium, leading to a question of meta-language as a fundamental, unmediated medium. This involves some fine points of mediation: perspectivity, discursivity, ethics of communication, ideology, private and public. Throughout the mutual, interrogative dialogue, the authors touch upon, but avoid the daunting commitment to, a theory of metacommunication, as well as the “transcendental” problematic of accessing the numerous theoretical, thematic, and historical aspects of communication.

Tomas Kačerauskas is professor and the head of Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. He has studied philosophy at Vilnius University (Lithuania) and at Freiburg University (Germany). He has published over 100 publications in 7 languages (English, German, Russian, Polish, Slovakian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian) including 5 monographs and translation of M. Heidegger’s “Being and Time” into Lithuanian. His publications are in the fields of philosophy, of sociology and of communication. He was teaching at the universities in Lithuania, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Colombia, Poland etc. As keynote speaker, he was taking part in the international conferences in Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Poland and Ukraine. He is Editor-In-Chief of scientific journal Creativity Studies. He is the leader of international scientific project Conception of creative city within Central Europe. According to Web of Science, his Hirsch Index is 9.

Algis Mickunas is professor of Department of Philosophy at Ohio University, USA. He has published over 40 books and 300 articles in English, Lithuanian, Spanish, German, and Russian, in the fields of philosophy, comparative civilizations, philosophy of communication, and political philosophy. He is a founder of scholarly organizations such as The Husserl Circle, The Merleau-Ponty Circle, Dialogue between Japan and West. He has lectured in Asia, Latin America and Europe, and is a recipient of four honorary doctorate degrees, and a title of Lithuanian Knight of the Cross. He is a member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.