Book Review: Kittler Now: Current Perspectives in Kittler St... http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2015/05/20/book-revi...

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Book Review: Kittler Now: Current

Perspectives in Kittler Studies

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Friedrich Kittler was one of the world’s most influential,

provocative and misunderstood media theorists. His work
spans analyses of historical ‘discourse networks’ inspired by
French poststructuralism, influential theorisations of new
media, through to musings on music and mathematics. Niall
Flynn notes how Kittler himself defied familiar understandings
of interdisciplinary research and challenges established
research models. The best essays in this volume, Flynn
argues, practice the same expanded form of humanities
research.

Kittler Now: Current

perspectives in Kittler
Studies. Stephen Sale

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Book Review: Kittler Now: Current Perspectives in Kittler St... http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2015/05/20/book-revi...

and Laura Salisbury.

Recent
Polity. January 2015.
Book
Friedrich Kittler’s thought Review:
on technological culture Why
America
has illuminated debates Is Not a
across humanities New
Rome
disciplines and beyond. May 28th, 2015
Attempting to displace
human-centric
Book
conceptualisations of Review:
media cultures, his On the
Commodity
detailed and idiosyncratic historical accounts insist that Trail:
technology and media co-exist with organic life forms. In his The
Journey
work, the materiality of media was a central concern which of a
pushed against prevailing intellectual fashions in Germany at Bargain
Store
the time. Despite identifying as a literary critic, Kittler brought Product
an expanded media historical purview to the field. The kind of from
East to
literary, media, and cultural analysis he practiced belonged to West
neither literary nor media disciplines at the time. This has May 27th, 2015

opened the way for multifaceted understanding of media—a

perspective that is brought to bear on issues concerning Book
systems of knowledge and technological determinism. Recall Review:
The
his famous line ‘Media determine our situation’. Limits of
Partnership:
Kittler scholarship is in good health, with dedicated issues of US-Russian
Relations
Cultural Politics, Thesis Eleven, and Theory, Culture & in the
Society, published in recent years. As the editors of Kittler Twenty-First
Century
Now: Current Perspectives in Kittler Studies remark, the topical May 26th, 2015
interdisciplinary agenda ensures sustained critical attention to
Kittler’s body of work. This volume adds to the growing
Book
English-language literature, with the sense that Kittler’s Review:
emphasis on histories of media technologies brings a fresh Islam:
An
approach to the humanities enterprise. Indeed, Kittler is central Introduction
figure in programmes like German Media Theory, Media May 22nd, 2015

Archaeology, and Cultural Techniques.

Book Review:
The book was conceived following the 2008 event “Media Asian Imperial

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Book Review: Kittler Now: Current Perspectives in Kittler St... http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2015/05/20/book-revi...

Matters: Friedrich Kittler and Technoculture” in London, and Banking

History
was written in correspondence with Kittler before his death in May
21st,
2011. After the editors’ introduction usefully sketches the 2015
trajectory of Kittler’s career, the book is organised into three
sections—focusing respectively on his late turn to Ancient
Greek culture, his work on systems of inscription, and his
relevance for theorising contemporary transformations in
media. The first section also includes two previously of his
untranslated essays, which weave Greek legends with 1960s
rock music. The book examines Kittler’s contributions to
various debates. It is worth looking at a few of these.
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Apple I Keyboard by Marcin Wichary. CC-BY.

John Durham Peters’s essay assesses Musik und Mathematik,

Kittler’s vast and unfinished project. Musik un Mathematik turns
to ancient Greek culture to explain the intersections between
music, mathematics, and love and sexuality. Peters details the
philosophical, media-historical, and sensorial implications of
Subscribe
this, and situates the project in relation to Kittler’s other work.
There are several outstanding criticisms of Kittler’s project: a
retrograde vision of Europe, rigorous if not reflective
scholarship, rough treatment of fellow critics, and an odd style.
Peters counters some of these criticisms from the viewpoint of
style, claiming ‘The books are written from intoxication and,
indeed manifest the double toll of drunkenness: heights of
divine inspiration and fist-fights about trifles”. Kittler’s style thus
produces, in a media historical mode, innovative readings of
classical texts. Peters offers some of his own criticisms, first

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Book Review: Kittler Now: Current Perspectives in Kittler St... http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2015/05/20/book-revi...

asking what the project would look like without the Greeks at
the centre, suggesting that an alternative basis would make for
a different story, and second indicating Kittler’s idealised
understanding of gender. Nevertheless, for Peters, Kittler’s is a
project with immense value, and whose insights have not yet
been fully realised.

The gender line is picked up again by Katherine Biers, who

offers a feminist perspective on Kittler’s views of modern
subjectivity. Biers responds to two cultural texts—Double People are
Indemnity, a classic film noir and Machinal, Sophie Treadwell’s searching for…

expressionist drama—in order to complicate Kittler’s views on

academia Africa
women’s place in twentieth-century social and labour relations.
From the early 1900s, new typewriting technologies, and the anthropology

new roles women played in workplaces, transformed psychic Britain

life. For Kittler, the presence of females in offices had dire
capitalism
consequences for both sexes: “Once she entered the
workplace, the ideal woman became just another body”. The China cities
argument is that Kittler’s approach breaks down when faced
climate change
with the figure of the female typist. Biers isolates an important
omission by Kittler by signalling the limitations of his media culture

deterministic approach in describing modern society. Her democracy

essay, however, focuses on representational, text-based
development
elements of the work she analyses. This type of analysis jars
with Kittler’s own methods—a criticism that can likewise be economics

directed at other contributions to the volume (Partington).

education

In the strong final section of the volume, Alexander R. ethnography

Galloway’s essay incorporates an ethical dimension of our Europe

understanding of computers through critique of Kittler’s theory
feminism
of mediation. He takes Kittler’s claim that (Western) Philosophy
has not worked out an adequate theory of mediation seriously. financial crisis
Galloway thus finds it necessary to distinguish between Media
gender
and mediation—seemingly related terms but actually ‘violently
unconnected’. Both object and the middle are worthy of gender studies

attention. For Galloway, Kittler’s understanding of the history of globalisation

media is conservative by privileging objects. Without having an
health history
object in the world, human or otherwise, computer media are

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Book Review: Kittler Now: Current Perspectives in Kittler St... http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2015/05/20/book-revi...

objects in themselves; what they represent has less human rights

significance. Computer media are thus a different mode of
identity India
mediation. The computer simulates existence. Without this
ground of experience, something else is needed to complete law London

this mode of mediation. Galloway offers ethics a way to media

understand the computer. The ethic of the computer is a
middle east
situated practice. For all the claims about Kittler’s radical
understanding of media history, Galloway locates an important philosophy
weak point in his framework.
politics poverty

In this book, Kittler is painted as a forceful post-humanist race religion

thinker. His achievements include expanding what media
research
theory can be through his pursuit of non-disciplinary energies.
The contributors to this volume acknowledge this aspect of his social media

work, which alludes to art, philosophy, science, and other society

modes of cultural production in an ‘eye-popping manner’.
sociology
Kittler nonetheless defies familiar understandings of
interdisciplinary research and challenges established research technology
models. The best essays in this volume practice such an
terrorism UK
expanded form of humanities research. Whether this approach
can be assimilated as ‘Kittler Studies’, as the title of this USA violence

volume indicates, remains to be seen. Kittler often oriented his war and conflict
work in decidedly non-Kittlerian ways.
women

Niall Flynn is an independent scholar working in Film & Media

Studies. He received an MA in Film Studies from University
College Cork (2012). Flynn’s current research focuses on
models of media history, with a view to understanding digital
cinematic media. Read more reviews by Niall.

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