Abstract:  So far, the mediumistic study of media has gone through a series of turns, including the formalturn and the material tumn that emerged in recent years. The formal tum is somewhat ambiguous. It is not somuch interested in revealing the fomal cause of each medium as in viewing each medium as a fomal cause,thereby articulating its psychic and social impact. The material turn is a response to and a criticism ofimmaterialism, and a reaction against the trend of virtualization. The difference between material andnonmaterial is a difference in energy levels. What exactly is the essence of media? Perhaps the fomal turn andthe material turn are both off the mark. French phenomenologist Michel Serres takes us back to humanism andinspires us to understand media using the human body as the point of departure. He puts fonwardexternalizationism," which is distinct from MeLuhan's "extensionism." This view gives a new meaning to theancient Greek maxim, "Know thyself." The human body is both the source and the destination of myriad media.Our pure and simple body appears in all media. All media return to our pure and simple body. In an era whenaction is increasingly becoming tele-action, when social interactions are increasingly disembodied, bringinginto focus the corporeality of media and investigating the multifaceted relationship between media and the bodyconstitutes an "untimely" (in a Nietzschean sense) theoretical intervention. In this sense, the corporeal turn inmedia theory is veritably going against the fashion but has been willed into existence by the total situation.

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