Using modern technology, Patrick Feaster is on a mission to resurrect long-vanished voices and sounds—many of which were never intended to be revived.

Over the past thousand years, countless images have been created to depict sound in forms that theoretically could be “played” just as though they were modern sound recordings. Now, for the first time in history, this compilation uses innovative digital techniques to convert historic “pictures of sound” dating back as far as the Middle Ages directly into meaningful audio. It contains the world’s oldest known “sound recordings” in the sense of sound vibrations automatically recorded out of the air—the groundbreaking phonautograms recorded in Paris by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in the 1850s and 1860s—as well as the oldest gramophone records available anywhere for listening today, including inventor Emile Berliner’s recitation of Der Handschuh, played back from an illustration in a magazine, which international news media recently proclaimed to be the oldest audible “record” in the tradition of 78s and vintage vinyl. Other highlights include the oldest known recording of identifiable words spoken in the English language (1878) and the world’s oldest surviving “trick recording” (1889). But Pictures of Sound pursues the thread even further into the past than that by “playing” everything from medieval music manuscripts to historic telegrams, and from seventeenth-century barrel organ programs to eighteenth-century “notations” of Shakespearean recitation.

In short, this isn’t just another collection of historical audio—it redefines what “historical audio” is.

Publisher Dust-to-Digital, Atlanta/GA, 2012
144 pages, with 164 images
via prohairesis

review (Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times)

FirstSounds.org initiative
Patrick Feaster discusses Pictures of Sound (video, 36 min)
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Principles of Non-Philosophy is a treatise on the method, axioms and objectives of non-philosophy and represents François Laruelle’s mature philosophy.

As well as presenting the method and principles of non-philosophy, it includes a history of the development of non-philosophy, a novel conception of science, a discussion of non-philosophical causality and new theories of the subject and object of thought. Providing an introduction to Laruelle’s novel theory of ‘non-epistemology’ or ‘unified theory of thought’, this volumes challenges the way we think about the traditional philosophical problems.

Bringing together all the elements of his thought developed over twenty years and laying the foundations for his later work, Principles of Non-Philosophy is arguably Laruelle’s magnum opus.

Originally published as Principes de la non-philosophie, Presses Universitaires de France, 1996
Translated by Nicola Rubczak and Anthony Paul Smith
Publisher Bloomsbury Academic, 2013
ISBN 1441177566, 9781441177568
344 pages
via falsedeity

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Sensate is a peer-reviewed, issueless, open-access, media-based journal for the creation, presentation, and critique of innovative projects in the arts, humanities, and sciences. Its mission is to provide a scholarly and artistic forum for experiments in critical media practices that expand academic discourse by taking us beyond the margins of the printed page. Fundamental to this expansion is a re-imagining of what constitutes a work of scholarship or art.

Editors-in-Chief: Lindsey Lodhie, Peter McMurray, Joana Pimenta, and Elizabeth Watkins
Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license

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“Friedrich A. Kittler was the most important, original and controversial German media theorist of his time. Departing from a philological background in German literature and arriving at a theory that combines the questions of technology, discourse and power, his oeuvre has had considerable impact on scholarship in the humanities over the past three decades. In contrast to Marshall McLuhan, who also started his career as a scholar in philology, Kittler’s theory is not anthropological in its epistemological set-up – media are not extensions of man; rather, Kittler’s theory is modelled after a Foucauldian-style archaeology but without Foucault’s ‘blind’ restriction to the medium of print.

Kittler’s works have either ‘produced’ ardent followers or have attracted vitriolic comments. These strong reactions to his works can in part be ascribed to his own academic style, which does not shy away from polemic commentary. Most of it is spurred by Kittler’s early desire to overcome a traditional type of literary criticism that ignores the impact of technology on the process of the production of meaning. And this lack of reflection is particularly apparent in the ‘art of interpretation’ (especially when this ‘art’ is relying on hermeneutics to justify its approach). Kittler’s work instead – strongly influenced by Shannon’s communication theory, Lacan’s writings on language and psychoanalysis and, as mentioned, Foucault’s archaeology of the humanities – attempted from early on to show how the technological dispositive (in various historical periods) is key to the cultural, societal and political environment at any time.

The scholarly articles and essays of this issue set out to introduce Kittler to the reader. The aim is to further a broader reception of his work in the anglosphere, and in particular in Australia, where he remains virtually unknown.” (from the Introduction)

With contributions by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Peter Krapp, Markus Krajewski, Matthias Bickenbach, Niels Werber, and Axel Fliethmann.

Publisher SAGE, November 2011
65 pages

Kittler at Monoskop wiki (incl. source bibliography, in development)

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Meistgenutzte Suchmaschine, weltgrößter Datensammler, teuerstes Medienunternehmen – es liegt nahe, »Google« als Supermacht zu bezeichnen. Und doch greift diese Beschreibung zu kurz.

Unter Bezug auf Michel Foucault sowie die Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie entwickelt Theo Röhle ein präzises, relationales Verständnis von Macht, das den Blick auf die vielfältigen Interaktionen der beteiligten Akteure öffnet und ein komplexes System von Verhandlungen zutage fördert.

Eine zeitgemäße Analyse digitaler Medienmacht an der Schnittstelle von Medienwissenschaft, Informationswissenschaft und Surveillance Studies.

Publisher transcript, Bielefeld, 2010
ISBN 9783837614787
266 pages

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“Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce’s life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more.”

“The greatest literary biography of the century.” — Anthony Burgess, The Observer

First published in 1959
New and Revised Edition
Publisher Oxford University Press, 1982
887 pages
via mistral13

Review of the first edition (Stephen Spender, The New York Times)
Early film on James Joyce by Pegarty Long (1977) (14 min, incl. interview with Richard Ellmann)

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Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengers—one of today’s leading philosophers of science—goes straight to the beating heart of Whitehead’s thought. The product of thirty years’ engagement with the mathematician-philosopher’s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault.

Reading the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whitehead’s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whitehead’s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whitehead’s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language.

“To think with Whitehead today,” Stengers writes, “means to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.”

First published as Penser avec Whitehead: “Une libre et sauvage création de concepts”, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 2002
Translated by Michael Chase
With a Foreword by Bruno Latour
Publisher Harvard University Press, 2011
ISBN 0674048032, 9780674048034
531 pages

review (Bruno Latour, Boundary)
review (Roland Faber, NDPR)

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Since its first publication more than twenty years ago, Eurocentrism has become a classic of radical thought. Written by one of the world’s foremost political economists, this original and provocative essay takes on one of the great “ideological deformations” of our time: Eurocentrism. Rejecting the dominant Eurocentric view of world history, which narrowly and incorrectly posits a progression from the Greek and Roman classical world to Christian feudalism and the European capitalist system, Amin presents a sweeping reinterpretation that emphasizes the crucial historical role played by the Arab Islamic world. Throughout the work, Amin addresses a broad set of concerns, ranging from the ideological nature of scholastic metaphysics to the meanings and shortcomings of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism. This second edition contains a new introduction and concluding chapter, both of which make the author’s arguments even more compelling.

French edition
Publisher Anthropos-Economica, Paris, 1988
160 pages

English edition
Translated by Russell Moore and James Membrez
First published in 1989
Publisher Monthly Review Press, New York, 2010
ISBN 1583672079, 9781583672075
288 pages

review (Joshua Moufawad-Paul, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books)

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L’eurocentrisme: Critique d’une ideologie (French, 1988)
Eurocentrism: Modernity, Religion and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism, alt link (English, trans. Russell Moore and James Membrez, 2nd edition, 1989/2010)
El eurocentrismo: Crítica de una ideología (Spanish, trans. Rosa Cuminsky de Cendrero, 1989)

Die Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft widmet sich den vielfältigen Ausrichtungen der Medienwissenschaft. Sie bildet mit Themenschwerpunkten die aktuelle medienwissenschaftliche Forschungstätigkeit ab und bietet ein Forum für methodische und inhaltliche Diskussionen.

Publisher Akademie Verlag
Edited by Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft (Ulrike Bergermann, Oliver Fahle, Petra Löffler, Kathrin Peters, Claus Pias, Thomas Waitz)
ISSN 1869-1722

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Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 1: Motive (2009)
144 pages
ISSN 1869-1722

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Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 2: Materialität | Immaterialität (2010)
151 pages

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Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 3: Aufzeichnen (2010)
160 pages

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Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 4: Menschen & Andere (2011)
212 pages

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Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 5: Empirie (2011)
188 pages

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Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 6: Sozialtheorie und Medienforschung (2012)
264 pages

Mit einer Dokumentation zum kontroversen Habilitationsverfahren von Friedrich Kittler.

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Doctoral thesis
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, October 2011
230 pages

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The top-secret world that the government created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks has become so enormous, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or exactly how many agencies duplicate work being done elsewhere. The result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe may be putting us in greater danger. In Top Secret America, award-winning reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin uncover the enormous size, shape, mission and consequences of this invisible universe of over 1,300 government facilities in every state in America; nearly 2,000 outside companies used as contractors and more than 850,000 people granted ‘Top Secret’ security clearance.

A landmark expose of a new, secret ‘Fourth Branch’ of American government, Top Secret America is a tour de force of investigative reporting-and a book sure to spark national and international alarm.

Publisher Little, Brown and Company, New York/Boston/London, 2011
ISBN 0316194042, 9780316194044
336 pages

review (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times)
review (Richard Rhodes, The Washington Post)

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Since 9/11 we have been told that terrorists are pathological evildoers, beyond our comprehension. Before the 1970s, however, hijackings, assassinations, and other acts we now call “terrorism” were considered the work of rational strategic actors. Disciplining Terror examines how political violence became “terrorism,” and how this transformation ultimately led to the current “war on terror.” Drawing upon archival research and interviews with terrorism experts, Lisa Stampnitzky traces the political and academic struggles through which experts made terrorism, and terrorism made experts. She argues that the expert discourse on terrorism operates at the boundary – itself increasingly contested – between science and politics, and between academic expertise and the state. Despite terrorism now being central to contemporary political discourse, there have been few empirical studies of terrorism experts. This book investigates how the concept of terrorism has been developed and used over recent decades.

• The first empirical study of terrorism experts • Places the ‘war on terror’ in social and historical context in order to provide a new perspective on an important situation • Explains the shifting social construction of ‘terrorism’

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2013
ISBN 1107026636, 9781107026636
242 pages
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In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981–1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism. Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid memories of her avant-garde queer friends and dramatically recreating the early years of the AIDS crisis as experienced by a political insider. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generation’s imagination and the consequences of that loss.

Publisher University of California Press, 2012
ISBN 0520264770, 9780520264779
179 pages
via I. I. Rubin

review (Emily Douglas, Los Angeles Review of Books)

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In The Interpretation of Cultures, the most original anthropologist of his generation moved far beyond the traditional confines of his discipline to develop an important new concept of culture. This groundbreaking book, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association, helped define for an entire generation of anthropologists what their field is ultimately about.

Publisher Basic Books, New York, 1973
ISBN 0465097197, 9780465097197
470 pages
via Sorin Danut

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The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (English, 1973)
Interpretace kultur: Vybrané eseje (Czech, trans. Hana Červinková, Václav Hubinger and Hedvika Humlíčková, 2000)
La interpretación de las culturas (Catalan, trans. Alberto L. Bixio, 2003)

Der erste funktionsfähige Computer wurde von Konrad Zuse gebaut. Er war 1941 betriebsbereit. Der Erfinder dieser ersten vollautomatischen, programmgesteuerten, frei programmierbaren, in binärer Gleitpunktzahlrechnung arbeitenden Rechenanlage wäre am 22. Juni 2010 hundert Jahre alt geworden. In diesem Buch erzählt er die Geschichte seines Lebens, das wie kaum ein anderes mit der Geschichte der bedeutendsten technischen Entwicklung seines Jahrhunderts verbunden ist – einer Entwicklung, die mit der „Abneigung“ des Bauingenieurstudenten Zuse gegen die statischen Rechnungen begonnen hat…

First published by Moderne Industrie, 1970
Publisher Springer, 2007
ISBN 3540731393, 9783540731399
218 pages

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