On the afternoon of May 7, Professor Zhang Xianguang from the School of Communications of Grand Valley State University (GVSU) visited NKU School of Journalism and Communication to discuss cooperation and exchange. He also gave a lecture on “Khora and Media Philosophy” as a guest speaker at the NKU Communication Lecture. The event was chaired by Chen Peng, Vice President of the School.
During the meeting, Zhang Xianguang introduced the basic information of GVSU, its School of Communications and the International Center, and carried out in-depth exchanges with our School on cooperation in student education, faculty exchange and scientific research. Zhang Xiangguang expressed his hope that the two universities could establish a long-term and deep cooperative relationship.
In his lecture, Zhang Xianguang compared media to “Khora”, which can be interpreted as various concepts such as storage, uterus and sieve. Media is like a sieve, with two sides. Any medium that shows one part of the world will also obscure another part of the world. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the part of the world that is obscured when studying media. Media ecology can be divided into ill-intentioned Khora and well-intentioned Khora. The former will manipulate people’s attention and put in too much redundant information; the latter will filter out worthless information through technologies such as search software. The ultimate goal of human transformation of the media ecology is to improve the spiritual ecology. Human beings need to use media in a way that is helpful and harmless, so as to make media a tool to help them grow.
Zhang Xianguang mentioned the concept of “spiritual healthcare” and interpreted the internal logic of spiritual healthcare with the excellent traditional Chinese culture and Western practice cases.
Chen Peng summarized that the study of Khora helps us to understand the phenomena of information overload and information redundancy in the digital age, and solve problems such as how to seek balance between electronic media and the spiritual world in the digital age.
After the lecture, teachers and students of the School exchanged views with Zhang Xianguang on issues such as the concept of Khora and the relationship between human and media. The lecture not only offered an academic feast to the teachers and students, but also opened up for them a new academic scope and thinking dimension.
Zhang Xianguang is currently a professor at GVSU School of Communications and the responsible person of the Study in London Program. He is the co-editor-in-chief of the American academic journal China Media Research, deputy editor and editorial board member of the Canadian academic journal New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, executive director of the Global Rhetoric Society, and executive member of the Society for European Philosophy. He is mainly engaged in interdisciplinary research in the fields of media ecology, communication theory, rhetorical theory and criticism, translation theory and practice, and literary theory. He has been involved in philosophical studies for more than ten years with in-depth researches in interology, Deleuze, Flusser, Virilio, Searle and the Book of Changes. His monograph, Explorations in Interology, is about to be published.
