Friedrich A. Kittler: Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1986–) [DE, EN]
Filed under book | Tags: · film, history of technology, literary theory, literature, media, media archeology, media theory, poetry, psychoanalysis, sound, sound recording, technology, typewriter, writing
“Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the hegemony of the printed word was shattered by the arrival of new media technologies that offered novel ways of communicating and storing data. Previously, writing had operated by way of symbolic mediation—all data had to pass through the needle’s eye of the written signifier—but phonography, photography, and cinematography stored physical effects of the real in the shape of sound waves and light. The entire question of referentiality had to be recast in light of these new media technologies; in addition, the use of the typewriter changed the perception of writing from that of a unique expression of a literate individual to that of a sequence of naked material signifiers.
Part technological history of the emergent new media in the late nineteenth century, part theoretical discussion of the responses to these media—including texts by Rilke, Kafka, and Heidegger, as well as elaborations by Edison, Bell, Turing, and other innovators—Gramophone, Film, Typewriter analyzes this momentous shift using insights from the work of Foucault, Lacan, and McLuhan. Fusing discourse analysis, structuralist psychoanalysis, and media theory, the author adds a vital historical dimension to the current debates over the relationship between electronic literacy and poststructuralism, and the extent to which we are constituted by our technologies. The book ties the establishment of new discursive practices to the introduction of new media technologies, and it shows how both determine the ways in which psychoanalysis conceives of the psychic apparatus in terms of information machines.
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter is, among other things, a continuation as well as a detailed elaboration of the second part of the author’s Discourse Networks, 1800/1900 (Stanford, 1990). As such, it bridges the gap between Kittler’s discourse analysis of the 1980’s and his increasingly computer-oriented work of the 1990’s.”
Publisher Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, 1986
ISBN 3922660177
427 pages
English edition
Translated, with an Introduction by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz
Publisher Stanford University Press, 1999
ISBN 0804732337, 9780804732338
315 pages
Reviews: Bruce Clarke (Electronic Book Review, 1999), Alex Magoun (Technology and Culture, 2001).
Grammophon Film Typewriter (German, 1986, 7 MB, added on 2014-6-30, updated on 2019-5-2)
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (English, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz, 1999, updated on 2012-10-13)
Jacques Derrida: Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1996)
Filed under book | Tags: · archive, philosophy, psychoanalysis, technology, time
“In Archive Fever, Jacques Derrida deftly guides us through an extended meditation on remembrance, religion, time, and technology—fruitfully occasioned by a deconstructive analysis of the notion of archiving. Intrigued by the evocative relationship between technologies of inscription and psychic processes, Derrida offers for the first time a major statement on the pervasive impact of electronic media, particularly e-mail, which threaten to transform the entire public and private space of humanity. Plying this rich material with characteristic virtuosity, Derrida constructs a synergistic reading of archives and archiving, both provocative and compelling.”
Translated by Eric Prenowitz
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 1996
ISBN 0226143368, 9780226143361
113 pages
PDF (updated on 2021-11-11)
PDF (article, published in Diacritics, 25:2, Summer, 1995, pp 9-63, added on 2012-9-3)
Charles Harrison, Paul Wood (eds.): Art in Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas (1992) [English, French]
Filed under book | Tags: · 1900s, abstract art, abstraction, aesthetics, art, art history, art theory, autonomy, avant-garde, beauty, capitalism, colour, communism, conceptual art, constructivism, cubism, dada, expressionism, formalism, futurism, happening, impressionism, institutional critique, language, machine, marxism, minimal art, modernism, postmodern, poststructuralism, productivism, psychoanalysis, realism, representation, revolution, romanticism, socialism, structuralism, surrealism, symbolism
“This volume provides comprehensive representation of the theories, which underpinned developments in the visual arts during the twentieth century. As well as writings by artists, the anthology includes texts by critics, philosophers, politicians and literary figures. The content is structured into eight broadly chronological sections, starting with the legacy of symbolism and concluding with contemporary debates about the postmodern.”
Publisher Blackwell, 1992
Reprinted 1999
ISBN 0631165754, 978-0631165750
1220 pages
Review: Patricia Railing (Art Book, 2004).
Art in Theory 1900-1990 (English, 1992, 13 MB, updated on 2015-9-5)
Art en théorie 1900-1990 (French, 1997, 24 MB, added on 2016-6-26)