Discourse Networks, 1800/1900

by Friedrich A. Kittler, Michael Metteer

This is a highly original book about the connections between historical moment, social structure, technology, communications systems, and what is said and thought using these systems - notably literature. The author focuses on the differences between "discourse networks" in 1800 and 1900, in the process developing a new analysis of the shift from romanticism to modernism. The work might be classified as a German equivalent to the New Historicism of American literary scholars, both in the intellectual influences to which Kittler responds and in his concern to ground literature in the most concrete details of historical reality. The artful structure of the book begins with Goethe's Faust and ends with Valery's Faust. In the 1800 section, the author discusses how language was learned, the emergence of the modern university, the associated beginning of the interpretation of contemporary literature, and the canonization of literature. Among the writers and works Kittler analyzes in addition to Geothe's Faust are Schlegel, E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Golden Pot," and Goethe's Tasso. The 1900 section argues that the new discourse network in which literature is situated in the modern period is characterized by new technological media - film, the photograph, and the typewritten page - and the crisis that these caused for literary production. Along the way, the author discusses the work of Nietzsche, Getrude Stein, Mallarme, Bram Stoker, the Surrealists, Rilke, Kafka, and Freud, among others.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, History, German Literature, Sociology

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

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

[Johanne Stokland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Denne fyren trenge ein oppgaveskrivingstime med Martin

[Steen Ledet · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and impressive work, rich in detail and suggestive in its own poetic fashion.

[Johanne GR · Rating 4 out of 5]

KITTLER !

[Christina]

Because hard stuff to read likes to make think that you feel better about yourself. That you are better, and that the world will be a better place because of the fact you read and understood this book. Because it's the most impenetrably brilliant and impossibly absurd piece I've read. It talks about discourse and, at least for me, quite literally reproduced its own discourse because for months I couldn't shut up about it (the book.) I can't pretend I entirely understand, although I daily pretend to partially do so. It also gives such a great "reading" of the "recording angel" logo that it will get tattooed on my arm, or re-inscripted, as it were.

[Georgie · Rating 2 out of 5]

here is a list of not true things:

'masculine discourse responds thankfully to the stream of milk' (from the 'milk-giving mother')

'the mother as primary instructor is, quite literally, an invention of 1800.'

'around 1800 a new type of book began to appear, one that delegated to mothers first the physical and mental education of their children, then their alphabetization.' all his examples are written by men.