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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 theorizations of new media, through to musings on music and mathematics. Always controversial and relentlessly unpredictable, Kittler's work is a major reference point for contemporary media theory, literary criticism and cultural studies.
This is the only book of essays currently available in English on an important thinker whose influence across disciplines is growing. The volume situates Kittler's ideas, explaining and critiquing his sometimes difficult writing, and using his theories to undertake innovative readings of old and new media. It also includes previously untranslated work by Kittler himself. Contributors include Caroline Bassett, Steven Connor, Alexander R. Galloway, Mark B. Hansen, John Durham Peters and Geoffrey Winthrop-Young.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Editors' introduction
Section I: Grecian 2000
1. Friedrich Kittler - The God of Ears (Translated by Paul Feigelfeld and Anthony Moore)
2. John Durham Peters - Assessing Kittler's Musik und Mathematik
3. Stephen Sale - Thinking By Numbers: the role of mathematics in Kittler and
Heidegger
4. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young - Siren Recursions
5. Friedrich Kittler - Preparing the Arrival of the Gods
Section II: "Our Writing Tools are also Working on our Thoughts"
6. Steven Connor - Scilicet: Kittler, Media and Madness
7. Katherine Biers - The Typewriter's Truth
8. Gill Partington - Films in Books/Books in Film: Fahrenheit 451 and the
Media Wars
Section III: Theorising New Media
9. Alexander R. Galloway - If the Cinema Is an Ontology, the Computer
Is an Ethic
10. Caroline Bassett - Staring into the Sun
11. Mark B. N. Hansen - Symbolising Time: Kittler and 21st Century Media
Notes Translated by Paul Feigelfeld and Anthony Moore
About the author
Stephen Sale is a PhD candidate at the London Consortium
Laura Salisbury is Senior Lecturer in Medicine & English Literature at the University of Exeter
Summary
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 theorizations of new media, through to musings on music and mathematics.
Report
"Friedrich Kittler was one of the most daring intellectual figures of the late-20th/early-21st Century. This brilliant collection of essays responds to his ground-breaking work on media, mathematics, music, poetry and war. It is a must-read for anyone seeking to question the status of the 'human' in a world populated increasingly by media and machines."
Nicholas Gane, Warwick University
"Kittler's radical intervention in the Humanities has long been one of Anglophone academia's best kept secrets, partly because as a chain-smoker he disliked traveling on planes, and partly because much of his work has yet to be translated from German. This welcome volume not only offers two essays by Kittler himself, the other contributions here, by some of the most vitally important media studies scholars today, help import Kittler's provocations to the history and theory of cultural technologies into English-speaking academic discourse."
Peter Krapp, UC Irvine
"While media studies are currently strengthening their impact on the critical debate in the Anglophone world, it remains an open issue how to describe their specific question and, hence, their place in the humanities. Friedrich Kittler has been one of the few where to look for a comprehensive answer. This is the one point the volume addresses, beginning with the excellent introduction to Kittler's work by the editors. Even more important in Kittler Now is, however, how his work is debated and adapted, critically modified and in some respects even radicalized in the ongoing, new, reception in England, the US and elsewhere. The volume presents engaged and competent essays which unfold Kittler's famous "question of technology" to the humanities in often unexpected and critical, in very different and yet always exemplary ways."
Rüdiger Campe, Yale University
"Friedrich Kittler's media histories changed German media studies profoundly. His legacy has been felt across Europe.This collection brings together some of the best scholars on Kittler to assess and develop his work, and to place it against contemporary English-speaking media theory and philosophy. Especially valuable is a section on Kittler's late work on music and mathematics, including two of his own essays from that still untranslated body of work. Rather than place Kittler historically, the authors bring his questing, testing method to life for the next generation."
Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London
