Wilden is credited with one of the first significant introductions to the work ofJacques Lacan in the English-speaking world, particularly in his role as one of Lacan's early English translators.[3][4] Today Wilden's work (and consequent reputation) is arguably more influential in the fields of communication theory,ecology and social interaction. These fields of study evolved out of a long scholarly tradition of "interactionalsemiotics" that originated with Plato'sCratylus. Along with such figures asGregory Bateson (i.e.,Steps to an Ecology of Mind),R. D. Laing (i.e.,Sanity, Madness and the Family), andWalker Percy (i.e.,Lost in the Cosmos), Wilden is considered one of this tradition's contemporary (modern and postmodern) pioneers.[5]
With the appearance ofSystem and Structure (1972), Wilden sought "to establish the necessity of an ecosystemic or ecological approach to communication and exchange in open systems of all types", to use his own words.[6] In hindsight it is recognized thatSystem and Structure was an early contribution to a "theory of self-referential systems". According toNiklas Luhmann, this "theory of self-referential systems" is the secondparadigm change[7] in a "General System Theory" (the first change being the "open-systems" or "systems/environment" shift, a step that initially separated "systems theory" from the traditional "whole-parts" paradigm).[8] Through his teaching and writings, Wilden provided "a contribution to our 'knowledge about knowledge' at an abstract level, as well as supplying ammunition in the struggle with the concrete reality that information is power and that scientific discourse is a hidden weapon in the arsenal of social control."[2] Wilden is also recognized today for his significant contributions toContext theory andSecond-order cybernetics.
Wilden was a professor in the Communications Department atSimon Fraser University from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. He attended theUniversity of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, 1960–1961, 1963–1965; andJohns Hopkins University, earning an MA in 1967 and PhD in 1968. His doctoral thesis was entitledPsychoanalysis and the Language of the Self.[1]
He died at the age of 84 inBurnaby, British Columbia.[9]
Note: the primary source for this section is from the Wilden article in Gale's Biography series.[2]
(WithJacques Lacan)The Language of the Self, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968, revised edition, 1976; reprinted asSpeech and Language in Psychoanalysis, 1981.
System and Structure: Essays in Communication and Exchange, 1st and 2nd ed., Tavistock Publications, 1972 and 1980, French translation, Boreal Express, Montreal, 1983.
(Contributor) D. E. Washburn and D. R. Smith, editors,Coping with Increasing Complexity, Gordon & Breach, 1974.
(Contributor) K. Riegel, editor,Structure and Transformation, Wiley, 1975.
(Contributor with Tim Wilson) Carlos Sluzki and Donald Ransom, editors,Double Bind: The Foundation of the Communicational Approach to the Family, Grune & Stratton, 1976.
"Le Canada imaginaire" French translation of "The imaginary Canadian" by Yvan Simonis; foreword by sociologigist Marcel Rioux., Presses Coméditex, Québec, QC, 1979.
"The imaginary Canadian", Pulp Press, Vancouver, BC,1980.
(Contributor) M. Maruyama and A. Harkins, editors,Cultures of the Future, Mouton, 1980.
(Contributor)Kathleen Woodward, editor,The Myths of Information: Technology and Post-Industrial Culture, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
(With R. Hammer)Busby Berkeley and the Mechanical Bride: From "Flying Down to Rio" to "The Lullaby of Broadway" 1933-35 (videotape montage), Simon Fraser University, 1984.
(Contributor) Paul Bouissac, Michael Herzfeld, and Roland Posner, editors,Iconicity: Festschrift forThomas A. Sebeok, Stauffenberg Verlag, 1986.
The Rules Are No Game: The Strategy of Communication, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.[10]
Man and Woman, War and Peace: The Strategist's Companion, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.
(Contributor) K. Krippendorff, editor,Communication and Control in Society, Gordon & Breach, 1979.
^abc"Biography - Wilden, Anthony (1935-)",Contemporary Authors (Biography), Thomson Gale, 2002.
^ie., as early as 1966, Wilden's "Freud, Signorelli and Lacan: the Repression of the Signifier" (1966,American Imago, 23: 332–66) and his English translation of Lacan'sThe Language of the Self (published in 1968)
