WHAT IS COMMUNICATION? Author: Marthinus Van Schoor Published by Van Schaiks, Pretoria, 1986 Price: R19,50 Reviewed by Eric Louw This bookpresents a theory of communication which can be broadly defined as a conservative-humanistic approach. Ofreal interest is the way in which Van Schoor tries to incorporate the ideas of Kierkegaard and Augustine into communication theory. These ideas could indeed be profitably followed through by thosein thisfield, and so in this regard Van Schoor has made a contribution to communication theory. The incorporation of Ortega into communication theory is a little more questionable, althoughit does serve to reveal the hidden (conservative) agenda in Van Schoor’s book. A problem with Whatis communication?is the way in whichit contradicts its own premises by being dismissive of other paradigms. In the preface to the book the behaviourist and Marxist approaches to communication are simply dismissed in a mannerthat seems morein keeping with what Van Schoor would himself call the rhetorical approach to communication. A true dialogical (Platonic) approach, which Van Schoor claims to be advocating, cannot simply refuse to enagage with other perspectives in this way. Here one can perhaps refer to Habermass’ moresatisfactory appropriation ofthe dialogical approachin which other paradigmsandtheories are confronted and synthesised rather than being merely dismissed as in the Van Schoorcase. Anotherproblem is that the bookfails to even consider some other approaches within the very humanist-philosophical paradigm into which Van Schoor’s theory falls. Semiology/semiotics is ignored, for example. One assumesthat semiology too is not considered worthy of engaging, even in a book on communication theory. Moreserious though is that What is communication? very clearly draws on the ideas of Gadamer and Heideggerin termsofits ontological premises and yet I could find no reference to either of these two writers. What is more, the conservative-existential worldview is rendered more coherently by Heidegger a 74 Critical Arta Vol 4 No 3. 1987 than by Van Schoor, while conservative-hermeneutics is dealt with more successfully by Gadamerthan by Van Schoor. Likewise, the sort of issues that Van Schooris dealing with — i.e. the recipient, interpretation, and hermeneutics — have been engaged by many other writers such as Jauss, the Russian formalists, and the Prague structuralists. Even if Van Schoor disagrees with these writers they are close enough to his field of concern to have expected an engagementwith theirideas, or at least mention their existence. Had he engaged with their ideas (and the notions found in the other paradigms) Van Schoor might have improvedhis theory of communication by learning from these other writers: (i) the usefulness of contextualizing communication;and(ii) the need to see the notions of circumstance andhistory as problematic and contradictory. Aninteresting contradiction in the bookis that Van Schoor claims that Marxists havelittle to say about communication. The ludicrousy of this statementaside, Van Schoornonetheless proceeds to discuss the ideas of RaymondWilliams who is certainly a Marxist. Van Schoor’s discussion of Williams in fact reveals his ignorance of the many debates that have taken place within historical materialism. He nowhererefers to these debates and instead presumesto discuss certain issues and problemsasif he were thefirst to see these. Turningto a technical point: Van Schoor calls De Mana socialist, whereas De Manwasin fact a Nazi-collaborator during World War Two.Professor Van Schoorshouldrealize that there is a vast difference between National Socialism and Socialism. KURAPPI Kunapipi is a bi-annual international arts magazine with special but not exclusive emphasis on post-colonial literatures and aris. four years we have In just published John Agard, Aghe Shahid All, Phyllis Allfrey, Mulk Raj Anand, Thea Astley, Kofi fe | - ree Seatac ta , Stephen Jaysnta Moh, Emecheta, —_— il O Cyprian Buchi Ekwensi, Nissim Ezekiel, Yvonne du Fresne, Zulfikar Ghose, Nadine Gordimer, Gray, John Green, Wilson Harris, David Ireland, Mike Jenkins, Robert Kroetsch, Doris Lessing, Bernice Lever, Dorothy Livesay, David Bob elix Mnthall, Alice Marley, Frank Moorhouse, Michael Morrisey, Munro, Les A. 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