Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan

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Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan is a writer, media theorist, and historian of science. His research explores how digital technology--as an ensemble of instruments, practices, inscriptions, and concepts--shapes science, culture, and the environment. He's also published on topics including the emergence of the computer screen from geopolitical anxieties, the changing conditions of digital interactivity from Cold War vigilance and to anthopocentric globalism, recent German media theory, the technological infrastructures of spiritualism, decolonial HCI, critical interface studies, and the ideology of smart cities. In addition to serving as Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Digital Media in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London, Bernard has curated for the Technosphere Project at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

He published his first monograph, The Cybernetic Apparatus: Media, Liberalism, and the Reform of the Human Sciences open-access in 2012. A followup work titled Code: From From Information Theory to French Theory is forthcoming from Duke University Press. It examines how information theory and cybernetics shaped the reform of the human sciences in France and the United States after World War II. He shows how conceptions of communication derived from engineering, allied with technocratic agendas, shape the reorientation of research in fields including linguistics, anthropology, psychotherapy, and semiotics. The book offers a revisionist history of "French Theory" as both the humanities' efforts to come to terms with technical ideas of communications and as a neglected predecessor of the contemporary digital humanities.

Bernard's current book project, co-authored with Francesco Casetti, argues for the mutual production of screens and environments, exemplified through four key visual technologies (phantasmagoria, cinema, radar, global positioning systems).

Before joining King's Bernard taught at Yale University, Coventry University, the Humboldt University of Berlin, and the American University of Paris. He also co-programmed and co-curated the Anthopocene Campus of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, named by Artnet as one of the most influential exhibitions of the last decade. He's held fellowships at a number of institutions, including the IKKM (Weimar), the DCRL (Leuphana University), the Institute for Research and Innovation (Pompidou Center), the Whitney Humanities Center (Yale University) and his research has been funded by the Mellon Fondation, the German Research Foundation, the U. S. Department of Education, and the Association for Computing Machinery. He earned a binational Ph.D. from Northwestern University and Bauhaus University Weimar.​ (2021)

Works

Monographs

  • Code: From Information Theory to French Theory, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, forthcoming 2023, 272 pp. Publisher.

Peer reviewed articles and book chapters

  • "Claude Lévi-Strauss et les communications", in Les résonances des structuralismes, eds. Jean-François Bert and Jérôme Lamy, Paris: éditions des archives contemporaines, 2016, pp 113-119. [7] (French)
  • with Lisa Åkervall, "I’ll Be Your Screen", in La galassia Casetti: lettere di amicizia, stima, provocazione, eds. Eugeni Ruggero and Mariagrazia Fanchi, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2017, pp 3-5. [8] (Italian)
  • with Francesco Casetti, "Screen", in Information Keywords, eds. Jonathan E. Abel, Samuel Frederick and Michele Kennerly, New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. [12]
  • “The Bitmap is the Territory: How Digital Formats Render Global Positions.” MLN 136, December 2021, 1093-1113. doi:10.1353/mln.2021.0081.
  • “The Statistical Order of Discourse: How Information Theory Encoded Industrial and Political Discipline.” In Articulating Media, edited by Nathaniel Zetter. London: Open Humanities Press, forthcoming.
  • “Catch the Vapors: Getting Steamrolled by Environing Media.” In Environing Media, edited by Adam Wickberg and Johan Gärdebo. London: Routledge, forthcoming.

Encyclopaedia entries and brief texts

  • with Benjamin Peters, "Cybernetics", in The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, eds. Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Jefferson D. Pooley, Robert T. Craig and Eric W. Rothenbuhler, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. [13]
  • with Erhard Schüttpelz, "Claude Lévi-Strauss", in The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, eds. Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Jefferson D. Pooley, Robert T. Craig and Eric W. Rothenbuhler, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. [14]
  • "The Dura-Europos Roman Shields", in Artwork as Screen, eds. Francesco Casetti, Bernard Geoghegan and Regina Karl, New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2016.
  • "The Radar-Type", in Dispatches: From the Institute of Incoherent Geography, Vol. 1, Pittsburgh: Flugschriften, 2019, pp 113-119.

White papers

  • with Katrin Klingan and Christoph Rosol, "The Technosphere: Signal/Noise Ratios", Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2015.

Book reviews

Translations

  • Bernard Stiegler, "The Tongue of the Eye: What ‘Art History’ Means", in Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media, eds. Jacques Khalip and Robert Mitchell, trans. Thangam Ravindranathan with Bernard Geoghegan, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011, pp 222-235. [16]

Popular media and interviews

  • "Dennis McNulty and Bernard Geoghegan, in conversation", Interview in Topology, Carlow: Carlow Visual Arts Center, forthcoming.

Edited collections

  • with Mark Hayward, SubStance 41(3): "Gilbert Simondon", Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. [17]
  • Critical Inquiry 42(4): "The Spirit of Media", Summer 2016. Special dossier. [18]
  • Critical Inquiry 42(4): "Friedrich Kittler", Summer 2016. Special dossier. [19]
  • Grey Room 66: "Bateson Dossier", Winter 2017. [20]

Curation

  • Technosphere, cur. Katrin Klingan, Christoph Rosol, Nick Houde, Janek Müller, Johanna Schindler, with Bernard Geoghegan and Anna Luhn, Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2015-2019.
  • Life Forms, cur. Katrin Klingan, Nick Houde, Janek Müller, Johanna Schindler, Christoph Rosol in collaboration with Bernard Geoghegan, Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2019.

Audio-visual media

  • "La modernité sans la modernisation", digital video with online distribution platform, 2007. Directed by Bernard Stiegler and produced by the Institute for Research and Innovation (Centre Pompidou). Produced and edited interviews featuring NK Hayles, Bernard Stiegler, André Green, Jean-Luc Nancy, Kevin McLaughlin, Dominique Lecourt and others. [21]
  • "Cultural Technologies: Dialogues on Media, Art and Science", podcast, 2012-2014. Host, producer, editor.

Links