ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Régis Debray discusses the definition, objectives, assets, and liabilities of mediology-a neologism he created in his 1979 book The Power of the Intellectual in France to encourage research on the technical and organizational mediations of culture. A summary would be somewhere between a dance card and a collective CV. Because mediology is a team sport (but not a combat sport: it has no message to deliver; it studies how messages are delivered, in the English ballistic sense, to deliver an explosive charge, get it to its destination). Dance card: with whom have we danced? With wolves, fairies, princes. … How did we manage to form a group? How can a conviction become an organization when it has no institutional base, and no disciplinary guardianship? Régis Debray retraces this intellectual journey, and the links between mediology and cultural history.
