kittler introduction

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Kittler E-Special Introduction

Friedrich Kittler:E-Special Introduction

Jussi ParikkaWinchester School of Art (University of Southampton)

Paul FeigelfeldLeuphana University

Abstract

This e-Special Issue of Theory, Culture & Society focuses on the German media theorist

Friedrich Kittlers (19432011) impact across the field of humanities. By including

Kittlers own texts and other scholars articles that continue or comment on Kittlers

work, the editors have sought to address the core aspects of Kittlers provocative

insights into how media technologies underpin our cultural formations. The editorial

introduction sets out key sections on technology, aesthetics, ontology and epistem-

ology, identified as the significant axes where Kittler opens up traditional notions of

art and humanities. The sections also develop a common theme having to do with a

media material understanding of aesthetics and philosophical determinations of the

concept of media from Ancient Greeks to computational culture.

Keywords

aesthetics, code, cultural techniques, German media theory, Humboldt University,

mathematics, media theory, post-human, software

Introduction: Kittlers Media Exorcism

The Kittler-effect: a certain kind of a watershed in terms of FriedrichKittlers impact onmedia studies as a provocateur, historian and a theoristwho denounced software (while writing over 100,000 lines of code him-self), is seen as a techno-determinist (and yet constantly focused on insti-tutions and politics) and, despite dismissals, remains one of the mostexciting and odd theorists, not only in media studies but more broadlyspeaking a technologically contextualized humanities field. The Kittler-effect is a phrasing coined by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young contextualizingKittlers influence in terms of conceptualizations of media. It is not meantto sound heroic though, but also something to trigger critical evaluationsof the themes he brought as part of the agenda: media, technology, materi-ality and historical methods that were not just media history. And it is

Corresponding author: Jussi Parikka. Email: [email protected]

Extra material: http://theoryculturesociety.org/


also about feedback loops back into the many neighbouring disciplines,where it established new possibilities of diagonal thinking. The fact thatphilosophy, literature, etc., now naturally take media into account is in nosmall part down to Kittler. Winthrop-Young also points out that theimitative followers of Kittler are less interesting than his theoretical chal-lenge, whether one agrees with him or not: the emergence of a radicalhistorical agenda for media studies, an upgrading of French poststructur-alism for the media age and also a renewed interest in the so-calledCanadian media theory of the likes of McLuhan and Innis (Winthrop-Young, 2011: 1456). Nietzsches typewriter took part in the forming ofhis thought as he typed. McLuhans media prophecies became prosthetic.For Kittler, ultimately, object-orientation (a programming paradigm heabhorred) meant the necessary escalation towards our being subjects ofmedia technologies. In addition, it is worthwhile to talk about the Kittler-affect. Not just the impact of Kittler on the agenda of what we speak aboutbut the intensity with which it made its way and is being talked about: thecommitment to delirious delight as a path to higher wisdom that JohnDurham Peters (2010: 16) talks about, the outright rejection and despisingof Kittlers style by others, the close attachment of the close followers ofKittler to the amount of mythos created around him. This mythos includesvarious phrases, one-liners and summarizations. Avital Ronell, during hereulogy for Kittler at the memorial in Treptower Park, Berlin (11 Nov.2011), called his books molotov cocktails. The last words assigned tohim: Alle Apparate abschalten! (Roch, 2011). Shut off all the machines.Whether true or not, it is too spot-on to be ignored.

In Kittlers wake it emerges that one of the main questions for thehuman and the humanities is how it is being conditioned by the techno-logical. The analytical question is to understand the epistemology ofculture through its media apparatuses. The ensuing onto-ethical questionis about the exorcising of the spirit of the human from the humanities(a phrase which sounds better in German, referring to the title of hisearly work on poststructuralism: Austreibung des Geistes aus denGeisteswissenschaften; Kittler, 1980). If the more recent media theorydebates have been about exhumation (referring to media archaeology),Kittlers work is closer to media exorcism: to exorcise the spirit fromidealistic illusions of cultural reality and try to understand the materialprocesses in which data gets reproduced, amounting, if the word play isallowed, to XORcism (referring to XOR logic gates), since Kittlersattempt at an ontology of media stated quite early on that only what isswitchable actually is (nur was schaltbar ist, ist uberhaupt; Kittler, 1993:182). This attitude is present in a lot of texts and passages in this collectiontoo, including naming the power that books have over bodies (in thearticle Authorship and Love). This emphasis on the guiding power rela-tion that literature and writing enunciate as a material structuring is soimportant in understanding Kittlers relation to literature and media.

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It was clear that the path Kittler took was different from a majority ofother international directions, diverging from both Habermas andCritical Theory as much as from the Cultural Studies of theBirmingham style (Geoghegan, 2013: 68). All of these were either expli-citly or implicitly accused of naivety when it comes to technology in thecontemporary world or even understanding historical media forma-tions. This also probably led to some of the long-held suspicions towardsKittlers alternative take on contemporary culture, even if it found a newcontext some 1020 years later with the wider emergence of post-humantheory.

This e-collection outlines, through Kittlers own texts and other scho-lars articles, themes in and around his work. This means addressingtechnology and aesthetics as much as ontology and epistemology avariety of conceptual and historical takes on the question of mediabroadly understood. The sections reflect various aspects of Kittlersthought but also develop a common theme having to do with a mediamaterial understanding of aesthetics and a philosophical determinationof what media have grown to mean from Ancient Greek thought tocontemporary computational reality. We also added a section, AfterKittler, that shows that his thought is contextualized by a large bodyof work that is at times called German media theory. Cultural tech-niques is one such key concept that does not merely replicate Kittlersown conceptualizations but opens up new paths to historically situatedanalysis of techniques of knowledge.1 In addition, we selected some inter-views to add to the texts by Kittler, as well as the texts drawing on andcommenting on Kittler, in order to emphasize some dialogical openingsto his thoughts. Gane and Sales text is interesting as it puts Kittler intodialogue with Mark Hansens more phenomenologically grounded mediatheory. John Armitages interview is able to draw out important distinc-tions Kittler himself makes, including his continuous emphasis on theimportance of mathematics for humanities.

Such emphases come out in other sections, too, where Kittler opens uptraditional notions of art and humanities, such as aesthetics. Aesthetics isnot meant in the sense of the esteemed tradition of philosophy of aes-thetic judgement but more in the sense of modulation of ways of percep-tion and sensation. Aesthetics becomes an issue of technologicalmanipulation, art collapses as part of media. The text ThinkingColours and/or Machines is one example of this line of thought.While questioning how the image can continue to exist in the digitalage, Kittler continued to write graphics code. Kittlers scale is broad: itranges from profound studies in German literature, to a close reading ofthe technological cultural history of colours and computer graphics, tometaphysical dimensions of the ontology of media. That question was,according to Kittler, arranged for us by the Greeks and only later sort ofclosed by Alan Turings scheme for the age of computers. Numbers and

Parikka and Feigelfeld 3


mathematics are a continuous fascination for Kittler, as evidenced inpieces such as Number and Numeral, as well as the military even ifwe dont want to over-emphasize this aspect. Kittler for sure had anenthusiasm for military history (see Flower of the Elite Troops in thiscollection) and at times he even had his military-deterministic moments(Winthrop-Young, 2002) but this does not mean he ignored other sorts ofinstitutional contexts, which function alongside as catalysers for (andcatalysed by) media.

Education and universities were among his interests too. For Kittlerthey were perceived categorically as European institutions in a narrativethat arranged constant feedback loops to the 19th century with a gesturethat made him at times look irretrievably romantic and definitelyGerman-biased. This perspective does not dismiss the humanities somuch as it wants to first insert media inside them and then, in someof his writings, insist on the legacy of thinking about numbers, mathem-atics and reality in terms that continue the philosophical project set in theEuropean tradition (see Number and Numeral in this collection). This isa sort of project for Kittler to rejuvenate philosophy by taking accountof its contingent history: a contingent but nevertheless recurrent historyof philosophy not dominated but heavily influenced by media (Gane andSale, 2007: 328).

There is a tendency to divide Kittlers work into three broad phases:the literature-discourse network-analysis of the 1980s, the software andtechnical media studies of the 1990s and the return to the Greeksand the history of European cultural sciences that marks his researchand writing since the beginning of the 2000s (see Breger, 2006). Thisdivision gives only a general indication of the three broad themeswhich need some complementary details acknowledging that a lot ofthe later focuses were already discussed by Kittler in his early days inthe late 1970s and early 1980s (for a memoir-style of insight, seeWinthrop-Young, 2012), but it is worthwhile to note the troublingEuro-Greek centrism that, as Breger (2006) points out in Gods,German Scholars, and the Gift of Greece, included in this collection,reinstalls a variation on the earlier mythologies of the special status ofEurope vis-a-vis the Anglo-Americans. (On Kittler and the anglosphere,see Winthrop-Young in this e-collection and Winthrop-Young, 2011.)

Kittler is primarily known to the international audience for his workon technology, literature and the contemporary constitution of technicalmedia culture that comes out in an array of texts on software, hardwareand power. He is often affiliated with post-human thought (see GanesRadical Post-humanism in this collection). People often stick with theone-liners (such as the infamous media determine our situation [Kittler,1999: xxxix]) without reading the rest of the sentence that demands aproper historical analysis of why this is so.2 It is this Kittler who pro-vokes us to update Foucaults methodology for the media age, and



consider questions of media analysis as grounding humanities disciplines.It is also this Kittler who is spot-on in terms of the impact of informationprocessing for issues of national and transnational organization of net-works. National Security Agency scandals of the past year hark back tothe role of the intelligence agency in the pre-internet era as a specialist indata management, as is analysed by Kittler in one of his shorter, moreforgotten texts dating back to 1986, included in this collection. Thedigital humanities boom that shares the same ground as social mediacorporations and the military rests on this methodological basis: tocome up with effective quantitative forms of data analysis that are lessinterested in exposing power and ideology, but focus more on patternrecognition and handling the massive datasets that define both the infor-mation traffic and its storage. Humanities were already technical beforethe digital became a keyword promoted by media corporations to bepicked up by scholars needing a branding boost.

In other words, the major impact of Kittler and other related scholars(e.g. from the first generation of Kittlers students, Bernhard Siegert andWolfgang Ernst) has been to discover not digital humanities but thehumanities of technical media, exorcising not only the Geist of the humanbut also a short-term infatuation with corporate popular culture. WhileKittler was an ardent fan of pop music (see Winthrop-Young in thiscollection) and even travelled to Pink Floyds recording studio on ahouseboat on the Thames in 2008 to eat strawberries and listen toDark Side of the Moon, he was a fierce opponent of pop culture andcorporate capitalism, from record companies to Microsoft. Moremythos: according to one of the stories that circulate about him,during the 1990s and his later Berlin years Kittler adamantly remindedstudents wanting to study with him that his Chair was against threethings: Microsoft, Hollywood and monotheistic religions. The peda-gogical power of the teacher, as he recognized in a later interview withJohn Armitage, was not only to tell stories of how things had been andwere now, but to restructure different sorts of knowledge agendas.

Kittler had discovered a magical way of debunking magic tricks, oflooking behind the curtain. He let one in on a secret: a hashish-smokingBaudelaire once wrote that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled wasconvincing the world he didnt exist. With Kittler, we can say that thegreatest trick that media technologies ever pulled off was convincing usthat they do not do anything, that they are tools, passive machines,gadgets, ultimately trash. Universities are programs, and we are pro-duced by our schools, by our universities and by our lecturers(Armitage and Kittler, 2006: 24). Indeed, for a theorist who becameaffiliated with post-human theory discourse due to his famous analysesof the so-called Man determined by its media technological appara-tuses, it was emblematic that he called the later refashioning of the uni-fied European Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree inhuman (Roch, 2011).



He was, adamantly, focused on the powers of institutions, as well as thehegemonic standardization of the European university system over thepast ten years.

We wanted to organize this e-issue not according to the aforemen-tioned three-part historical determination and to avoid a chronologicalnarrative of development. Even if one section is titled After Kittler, inthat section the chapters also outline a longer genealogy of media andcultural theory in Germany that cannot be simply said to be markedsolely by Kittlers writings. Instead, the more recent cultural techniqueswritings (Siegert, forthcoming; Winthrop-Young et al., 2013) and mediaarchaeology (Ernst, 2013) are partly projects that hark back to the 1980s,and especially the 1990s, even if, in the wake of Kittler, they gather a newsort of impact in the international arena. This is why it is important to seetexts such as Sybille Kramers in this collection not merely as reflectionson Kittler, but as the expression of a significant theorist in her ownright.3

Indeed, as a way to continue the discussions that the Kittler-effectand affect has started, a range of publications coming out duringthe next year or so will hopefully amount to more than a reproductionof the message. Such forthcoming books include Media after Kittler(Ikoniadou and Wilson), Kittler Diffractions (Bunz and Burkhardt),and Kittler Now (Sale and Salisbury), as well as new translations inFrench which will present yet another exportimport operation: return-ing poststructuralist theory to France but definitely in a modified format,with added information theory and media technology. Similarly, the newbook series Recursions (Amsterdam University Press)4 is easily perceivedby readers and scholars as a post-Kittler series, but it aims to producevariations instead of imitations: to expand on the blind spots inherent insome materialist media theory and to be more reflective in terms of ques-tions of geography of theory and other questions. In terms of mediatheoretical debates, it will be one of the crucial tests as to how Kittlersideas and methods will afford a further expansion of his field so that itdoes not just become a possibility to be activated, but a potentiality to beactualized (to use Deleuzian terminology; see Deleuze, 1994). Kittlerhimself never took a closer look at the internet; however, it remains tobe worked out how these methods can be employed to deal with thenetwork cultural reality, from its hardware cabling to its software rout-ing, from the new protocols for the internet of things to the data oper-ations of globally carefully distributed server farms. The crucialquestions as to the political economic hegemony of corporate power,the role of information in the extended Cold War, the environmentalquestions as well as the technical grounding of aesthetics and the archiveare all areas where many of the debates are going, and hopefully withsome Kittler-effect added.



Notes

1. See the Theory, Culture & Society special issue 30(6) on Cultural Techniques,edited by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Anna Tuschling and Jussi Parikka, fora key collection on this concept.

2. For an elaboration on Kittler and accusations of technological determinism,with an interesting way out of the accusations via Marx, see Winthrop-Young(2011: 1204).

3. The first English translation of a Sybille Kramer book is published in spring2015 by Amsterdam University Press.

4. The series is edited by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Anna Tuschling andJussi Parikka.

References

Armitage J and Kittler FA (2006) From discourse networks to cultural math-ematics: An interview with Friedrich A. Kittler. Theory, Culture & Society23(78): 1738.

Breger C (2006) Gods, German scholars, and the gift of Greece: FriedrichKittlers philhellenic fantasies. Theory, Culture & Society 23(78): 111134.

Bunz M and Burkhardt M (forthcoming) Diffracting Kittler: German MediaTheory and Beyond. Luneburg: Meson Press.

Deleuze G (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. Patton P. London: AthlonePress.

Ernst W (2013) Digital Memory and the Archive, edited by Parikka J.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Gane N and Sale S (2007) Interview with Friedrich Kittler and Mark Hansen.Theory, Culture & Society 24(78): 323329.

Geoghegan BD (2013) After Kittler: On the cultural techniques of recentGerman media theory. Theory, Culture & Society 30(6): 6682.

Ikoniadou E and Wilson S (eds) (forthcoming) Media After Kittler. London:Rowman and Littlefield International.

Kittler FA (ed.) (1980) Austreibung des Geistes aus dem Geisteswissenschaften.Programme des Poststrukturalismus. Paderborn: Schoningh.

Kittler FA (1993) Real time analysis, time axis manipulation. In: DraculasVermachtnis. Technische Schriften. Leipzig: Reclam.

Kittler FA (1999) Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Winthrop-Young G andWutz M. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kramer S (forthcoming) Medium, Messenger, Transmission: An Approach toMedia Philosophy, trans. Enns A. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Peters JD (2010) Introduction: Friedrich Kittlers light shows. In: Kittler FA,Optical Media: Berlin Lectures 1999, trans. Enns A. Cambridge: Polity, 117.

Roch A (2011) Hegel is dead: Miscellanea on Friedrich A. Kittler (19432011).Telepolis, 17 Nov. Available at: http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/35/35887/1.html (accessed January 2015).

Sale S and Salisbury L (forthcoming) Kittler Now. Cambridge: Polity.Siegert B (forthcoming) Cultural Techniques. Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other

Articulations of the Real, trans. Winthrop-Young G. New York: FordhamUniversity Press.

http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/35/35887/1.htmlhttp://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/35/35887/1.html


Winthrop-Young G (2002) Drill and distraction in the yellow submarine: On thedominance of war in Friedrich Kittlers media theory. Critical Enquiry 28(4):825854.

Winthrop-Young G (2010) Krautrock, Heidegger, bogeyman: Kittler in theanglosphere. Thesis Eleven 107(1): 620.

Winthrop-Young G (2011) Kittler and the Media. Cambridge: Polity.Winthrop-Young G (2012) Well, what socks is Pynchon wearing today? A

Freiberg scrapbook in memory of Friedrich Kittler. Cultural Politics 8(3):361373.

Winthrop-Young G, Parikka J and Iurascu I (eds) (2013) Cultural Techniques Special Issue. Theory, Culture & Society 30(6).

Jussi Parikka is Professor in Technological Culture and Aesthetics atWinchester School of Art (University of Southampton). He is Docentin Digital Culture Theory at University of Turku, Finland, and theauthor or (co-)editor of several books. These include DigitalContagions (2007), Insect Media (2010), What is Media Archaeology?(2012) and Geology of Media (forthcoming in 2015). Edited booksinclude The Spam Book (2009, with Tony D. Sampson) and MediaArchaeology (2011, with Erkki Huhtamo). [email protected]

Paul Feigelfeld is the academic coordinator of the Digital CulturesResearch Lab at Leuphana University Luneburg. He studied CulturalStudies and Computer Science at Humboldt University in Berlin. From2004 to 2011 he worked for Friedrich Kittler and is one of the editors ofhis collected works, focusing on source code. From 2010 to 2013 he was aresearcher at Humboldts Institute for Media Theories and is now under-taking his PhD titled The Great Loop Forward: Incompleteness and Mediabetween China and the West. His writing appears in publications such as032c, frieze, Texte zur Kunst, Novembre, PIN-UP and Modern WeeklyChina. He is also an editor for the peer-reviewed web journal spheres,focusing on post-media discourses, digital cultures and [email protected]



E-Special Issue: Friedrich Kittler

Table of ContentsEditors: Jussi Parikka and Paul Feigelfeld

Technics, aesthetics and knowledgeFriedrich Kittler, Thinking Colours and/or Machines

Theory, Culture & Society, December 2006; vol. 23(78): 3950.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/39.abstract

Friedrich Kittler, The Flower of the Elite TroopsBody & Society, December 2003; vol. 9(4): 169189.http://bod.sagepub.com/content/9/4/169.abstract

Friedrich Kittler, Authorship and LoveTheory, Culture & Society, May 2015; vol. 32 (3)

Friedrich Kittler, No Such AgencyTheory, Culture & Society websiteAvailable at: http://theoryculturesociety.org/kittler-on-the-nsa/

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Implosion and Intoxication: Kittler, aGerman Classic, and Pink FloydTheory, Culture & Society, December 2006; vol. 23(78): 7591.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/75.abstract

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, On Friedrich Kittlers Authorship andLoveTheory, Culture & Society, May 2015; vol. 32(3)

Sybille Kramer, The Cultural Techniques of Time Axis Manipulation:On Friedrich Kittlers Conception of MediaTheory, Culture & Society, December 2006; vol. 23(78): 93109.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/93.abstract

Nick Gane Radical Post-humanism: Friedrich Kittler and thePrimacy of TechnologyTheory, Culture & Society, June 2005; vol. 22(3): 2541.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/22/3/25.abstract

Ontology of mediaFriedrich Kittler, Towards an Ontology of Media

Theory, Culture & Society, March/May 2009; vol. 26(23): 2331.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/26/2-3/23.abstract

Friedrich Kittler, Lightning and Series Event and ThunderTheory, Culture & Society, December 2006; vol. 23(78): 6374.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/63.abstract

Friedrich Kittler, Number and NumeralTheory, Culture & Society, December 2006; vol. 23(78): 5161.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/51.abstract

Claudia Breger, Gods, German Scholars, and the Gift of Greece:Friedrich Kittlers Philhellenic FantasiesTheory, Culture & Society, December 2006; vol. 23(78): 111134.

http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/39.abstracthttp://bod.sagepub.com/content/9/4/169.abstracthttp://theoryculturesociety.org/kittler-on-the-nsa/http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/75.abstracthttp://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/93.abstracthttp://tcs.sagepub.com/content/22/3/25.abstracthttp://tcs.sagepub.com/content/26/2-3/23.abstracthttp://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/63.abstracthttp://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/51.abstract


http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/111.abstract

After KittlerBernhard Siegert, Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual

Postwar Era in German Media TheoryTheory, Culture & Society, November 2013; vol. 30(6): 4865.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/30/6/48.abstract

Bernard Dionysius, After Kittler: On the Cultural Techniques ofRecent German Media TheoryTheory, Culture & Society, November 2013; vol. 30(6): 6682.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/30/6/66.abstract

Interviews and ConversationsNicholas Gane and Stephen Sale, Interview with Friedrich Kittler and

Mark HansenTheory, Culture & Society, December 2007; vol. 24(78): 323329.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/24/7-8/323.full.pdf+html

John Armitage, From Discourse Networks to Cultural Mathematics:An Interview with Friedrich KittlerTheory, Culture & Society, December 2006; vol. 23: 1738.http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/17.abstract

http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/111.abstracthttp://tcs.sagepub.com/content/30/6/48.abstracthttp://tcs.sagepub.com/content/30/6/66.abstracthttp://tcs.sagepub.com/content/24/7-8/323.full.pdf+htmlhttp://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/17.abstract

kittler introduction

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