Literature, Media, Information Systems

by Friedrich A. Kittler, John Johnston (Editor)

John Johnston's background combines expertise in modern literature, poststructuralist philosophy, and high technology's production. Like Kittler, he draws on historic fact, anecdote, and literature. From this vantage point he explicates the theoretical and practical consequences of Friedrich Kittler's insights into the social and psychological effects of the processes by which metaphor in one medium is made real by another.

Genres: Theory, Philosophy

204 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1997

About the author

Friedrich Kittler was a literary scholar and a media theorist.

Kittler is influential in the new approach to media theory that grew popular starting in the 1980s
Kittler's central project is to "prove to the human sciences [...] their technological-media a priori" (Hartmut Winkler), or in his own words: "Driving the human out of the humanities",[4] a title that he gave a work that he published in 1980.

Kittler sees an autonomy in technology and therefore disagrees with Marshall McLuhan's reading of the media as "extensions of man": "Media are not pseudopods for extending the human body. They follow the logic of escalation that leaves a written history behind it.

Among Kittler's theses was his tendency to argue, with a mixture of polemicism, apocalypticism, erudition, and humor, that technological conditions were closely bound up with epistemology and ontology itself. This claim and his style of argumention is aptly summed up in his dictum "Nur was schaltbar ist, ist überhaupt"—a phrase that could be translated as "Only that which is switchable, exists" or more freely, "Only that which can be switched, can be."

He studied German studies, Romance philology and philosophy at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg in Freiburg im Breisgau. During his studies, he was influenced by Jacques Lacan's, Michel Foucault's and Martin Heidegger's writings.

In 1976, Kittler received his doctorate in philosophy after a thesis on the poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Between 1976 and 1986 he worked as academic assistant at the university's Deutsches Seminar. In 1984, he earned his Habilitation in the field of Modern German Literary History.

He had several stints as a Visiting Assistant Professor or Visiting Professor at universities in the United States, such as the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Stanford University.
He was recognized in 1996 as a Distinguished Scholar at Yale University and in 1997 as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York.

Reviews

[v · Rating 3 out of 5]

Friedrich Kittler is, to me, one of the most interesting and insightful media and technology theorists you can read. Extending themes from Marshall McLuhan (as well as Michel Foucault, Paul Virilio, and Jacques Lacan), Kittler writes about the determinative powers of media and technology on culture, perception, consciousness (and unconsciousness), and the human/posthuman. He's especially interested in war and the military-industrial-complex's deep influence on culture (all novels are forms of espionage, he opines), so-called discourse networks (technologies, media, and discourses that link up and form each other in less than obvious ways: for example, how do computers fundamentally change the act of writing today?), and analyzing specific technologies down to the blueprint and schematic level (okay this he honestly never follows through on -- neat idea, though). He is also worth treasuring because he totally sidesteps the bland, polemical traditions of American and English media theory that have dominated since the 1970s. He can also be terribly annoying for all the reasons that his post-structuralist forebears (notably and regrettably, Lacan) were: first off, he writes as if he's trying to conquer and exterminate the reader. Ultimately, it's up to you where to draw the line and call bullshit: Kittler I'll entertain, while many of his mentors and mentees I won't.
This essay collection -- which steps back from the broad, cavalier perspectives of his big books, especially Gramophone, Film, Typewriter -- does highlight some weaknesses, however. Kittler's approach to literature, while peppered with amazing, frame-shifting ideas, is fairly close-minded (he doesn't seem to read or respect any literary theorist but himself), conflicted (literature and criticism are, to put it bluntly, impossible under Kittler's theory: there are films and computers and control, but no literature, whatever that may have once been, anymore), and conventional at a basic level (quotes from novels act as evidence for the assertions and theory citations that the fiction is supposed to represent -- Kittler's paragraph-by-paragraph study of literature is hardly anything to write home about as he, like so many others, reduces literature to examples, expositions, extortions). Some essays land better than others; frankly, "Dracula's Legacy"'s dense two dozen pages never equals or surpasses the very simple comment about Dracula you can find in Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, or just overhear in a seminar: you won't understand the importance of typewriters for the book by looking for references to typewriters in the book.
There are some other essays not about literature in here. "The World of the Symbolic" is ghastly, but the rest are fairly clever and succinct.

[Lette Hass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kittler es sin duda, uno de mis autores favoritos para el estudio de los medios. En este libro, el capítulo 3 es excepcional: Romanticism-Psychoanalysis-Film: A History of the Double

[Found Object · Rating 4 out of 5]

Media and Drugs is incredible. The introduction from John Johnston is a great introduction to Kittler's ideas.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erudite and informed, but incredibly idiosyncratic.

For my real academic review you'll have to ask me.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contains "Gramophone, Film, Typewriter" and a nice essay on Dracula, among others. Johnston's commentary is welcome.