Abstract
This essay explores the negativity of media in the context of cultural, social and philosophical anthropology, namely the ambivalent reactions to the new technologies of radio, film or television, their eschatological critiques between the Wars and after (by Helmuth Plessner, Max Picard, Günther Anders and others), as well as their mythological invocations. This essay shows that these critical reflections of the new disembodying, and yet technically materialized modern media bear a deeper significance going beyond merely residual tendencies or conservative reactions.
In this context and in art, corporeality, the liminal phenomena associated with the physical existence of man (body impressions, ashes, tears, spectres), often become subject to representation and the belief in various paraphenomena is intensified; spectres seem to acquire a more real existence than their actually existing "doubles".