26 - kittler, friedrich. “technologies of writing. interview with friedrich kittler”

8/20/2019 26 - Kittler, Friedrich. “Technologies of Writing. Interview With Friedrich Kittler”.

1/13

Technologies of Writing: Interview with Friedrich A. Kittler

Author(s): Matthew Griffin, Susanne Herrmann and Friedrich A. KittlerSource: New Literary History, Vol. 27, No. 4, Literature, Media, and the Law (Autumn, 1996),pp. 731-742Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057388 .

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2/13

Technologies

of

Writing:

Interview

with

Friedrich

A. Kittler

Matthew

Griffin

and

Susanne Herrmann

Perhaps

we

could

begin

with

your

book

Discourse Networks

1800/1900.

Why

the

new

edition? What

changes

have

you

made

to

the book and how

do

they

reflect

on

your

general

project

for literary

studies?

I

didn't

change

a

lot

in

terms

of the

book's basic

approach

to

literature

and

literary

studies

as

technologies

of

writing.

I

made

a

few

more

references

to

politics

and extra-Germanic literatures. The third

edition

was

more

the desire

of

the

publisher.

Nonetheless,

I

am

happy

that the

book,

which

virtually

had

me

blacklisted,

is

suddenly

finding

readers after

having

caused

such

a

scandal

ten

years

ago

in

literature

departments?the

book

almost

cost

me

my

position

in

Freiburg.

It's

strange

for

me

how

a

complete

outsider-book

can

become such

an

insider-book,

in

the

sense

that the

whole world?and

I

don't

just

mean

universities?is

talking

about the

materiality

of

communication.

I'm

fascinated

when

I

see

exhibitions

like

the

ones

in

Marbach

or

Paris,

dealing

with

the writer's

tools-of-trade,

his

writing

material.

These

exhibitions

take

Nietzsche's

comment

on

his

typewriter

as

their

point

of

departure:

Our

writing

materials

help

write

our

thoughts.

It

wasn't

exactly

the

most

common

practice

ten

years

ago

to

place

that

thought

at

the

center

of

a

Nietzsche

interpretation.

Apparentiy

the

computer

has

had such

a

widespread

effect that

everyone

is

aware

now

that so-called

normal

writing, although

not

quite

over,

has

definitely

ceased

to

represent

the

state

of the

art.

That's what is

suddenly

being

reflected

upon

in

the

literary

sciences.

The

book

was,

so

to

speak,

ahead of its

time,

because

at

night

after

I

had finished

writing,

I

used

to

pick

up

the

soldering

iron

and build

circuits.

I

knew what

was

in

store.

I

understood

what

an

electric circuit

was

because

I

was

making

a

lot of

electronic

music

back then. And

now

that

it's

become

clear

world-wide

where

the

trend

is

heading,

the

book

has

gained

its

actuality.

The

books

popularity

could

be

said

to

correspond

to

poststructuralisms

rise

within the academy. You yourself came to the Humboldt in 1993. Like

poststructuralism,

cultural

studies is

on

everyone

s

lips

these

days.

What do

you

understand

by

cultural studies?

New

Literary

History,

1996,

27: 731-742


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3/13

732

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

The

concept

of cultural studies is not as new as it

may

seem. There

are,

in

fact,

five

such

institutes

for

Kulturwissenschaften

in

Germany;

the

one

at

the

Humboldt

has

existed

some

thirty

years.

That

was,

of

course,

something

else

back

then. I

don't know

what

it

was

like.

It's

not

our

job

to

rehash and

work

through

the

past.

We're

not

interested

in

decon

structing

ourselves

ad

infinitum

like

some

of

the

human

sciences have

been

forced

to

do in

recent

years.

We

understand ourselves here

in

the

institute

as

an

attempt

to

pose

cultural-theoretical

questions

in the face

of

technology.

Does

cultural

studies

still

think

of itself

as

a

continuation

of

the

sociophilologic

based

sciences,

if

one

considers

their

division

into

disciplines

such

as

English,

French,

and

German

literatures,

and

so

forth,

to

be

obsolete?

Yes

and

no.

I

think

we

all

understand

that

the

movement

away

from

the

philologie

basis

can

create

monstrous

problems.

For

example,

I

did

a

recent

seminar,

Aesthetic

of the

Colonies,

and it worked

for the

students

as

well

as

myself

because

we

could

automatically

expect

a

certain

philologie

competency:

everyone

could

speak

the

languages

and

had,

for the

most

part,

read

the

books.

There

has

always

been

in the

philologie

disciplines

a

firm,

that

means

mega-technologic,

basis for

work.

In

cultural

studies

every

canon

drifts

away.

There

is

no

referential

model,

no

standard,

and

no

curriculum.

You're

essentially

free

to

do

what

you

want,

and

you

have

to

hope

that

the

students

also

have

the

philologie

basis

which

you

yourself

bring

as

a

transition

figure.

How does

the

study

today of

culture

differentiate

itself rom,

say,

the critical

theory

practiced

by

the

sociologists

of

the

Frankfurt

School

in

the

sixties,

if

one

takes

sociology

to

be

the

study of

society

n?

I don't believe that cultural studies is a social science. Either we're

products

of

the

reactionary

turn

or

we're

right.

Sociology

cannot

be

an

ersatz for

philology.

If

you

abandon

philology

just

because

the

philolo

gists

don't

reflect

upon

their

own

medium,

you

don't

necessarily

have

to

abandon

the

one

positive

thing

about

philology,

namely,

its

reference

to

a

specific

medium,

to

talk

instead

about

a

nonspecific

society

which

no

one can

grasp.

That's

the

reason

why

we're

here

at

this institute.

The

philological

sciences

work

almost

exclusively

with

books

but don't

write

a

single

word

on

the book

in

the

course

of

its

historical

transformations.

Just

because

you

broaden

your

analysis

from

the

medium

book

to

include

the

numerous

media

that

constitute

a

culture,

you

don't

have

to

throw

everything

away.

Even Luhmann

is

at

wit's

end.

He

is the

best

German

thinker

at

the

moment,

but

what

society

is,

no

one

can

say.

Luhmann

declares

it

to

be

useless

for his

purposes.




4/13

TECHNOLOGIES

OF WRITING

733

Niklas Luhmann's

system

theory

is one

of

themost

commonly

applied

methodolo

gies,

next

to

Derrida's

deconstruction,

at

the

moment

in the

philologies

in

Germany?with,

however,

an

important

difference.

Luhmann

s

concept

of

system,

in

contrast

to

Derrida

s

concept

of

text,

returns,

it

seems,

to

a

hermeneutic

theory

of

analysis

which shuts

something

out.

. .

Of

course,

he shuts

something

out:

the

observer's blind

spot.

He can't

take that into

account.

He has

to

constantly

change

his

position

so

that

he

can

see

yesterday's

blind

spot.

The

problem

is that he

naturally

can't

spot

the

new

blind

spot,

which

has

allowed

him

to

spot

yesterday's

blind

spot,

and so on. He takes all that into consideration, but he doesn't

make

a

philosophical

mountain

out

of

a

molehill,

unlike

Derrida

who,

with

every

sentence

he

writes,

wants

to

have

his cake and

eat

it.

Is Luhmann

s

blind

spot

the old blind

spot

within the

philologies?that

they

don't

reflect

upon

their

own

medium?

Is

this the

spot

or

site

cultural

studies takes

up

as

a

theme?

I

am

thinking

of

the

Pergamon

Museum in Berlin

as a

prime

example

of

a

blind

science

at

work. Schliemanns excavations

are

the dark

side

of

nineteenth-century

colonial

politics.

You have described

your

project

as an

archaeology of thepresent. How does cultural studies avoid the blind spot of

past

archaeologies?

We

all,

Derrida, Luhmann,

and

myself,

work

using varying

methodolo

gies,

which

in

turn

stem

from different fascinations.

Luhmann,

in

contrast to

Derrida

and

myself,

is

less

interested

in

crises,

catastrophes,

and

violent

upheavals. Although

he

thinks in

terms

of

contingency,

certainty plays

a more

important

role for

him. Derrida and

myself

are

more

interested

in

the

irruption

of

an

event

into

apparent

structures

or

the foundation-less foundation

of

something

which

afterwards

functions

as a

structure.

The artifacts

in

a

museum, for example,

are

first acquired,

then

the

museum

stands there

without

revealing

the fact that

what

it

houses

is in fact the trail of

a

campaign.

Luhmann would

probably

celebrate the reduction and attenuation of

contingency,

the

reduction

of

white

noise,

in

the finished

museum,

whereas the

moment

of

violent

endowment,

the

ur-scene

of

inscription,

would

be

of

more

interest

to

me.

These

two

theoretical tendencies

are

also evident

as

archaeologic

tendencies in the

Pergamon.

First,

there is the

fragmented

ruin

of

the

Pergamon temple,

which

glorifies

history

as a

process

capable

of integrating

ruptures

and

breaks.

Second,

you

have the

immaculate,

fully

reconstructed

Ishtar Gate

from

Babylon,

which is

an

attempt,

brick

by

brick,

to

reconstruct

a

totality

at

the site

of

a

ruin

or

diaspora.

The result is

a

simulacrum

of

knowledge.

Those

are

for

me

two

examples of

an




5/13


6/13

TECHNOLOGIES

OF

WRITING

735

Franco-Germanic

way

of

thought

couldn't

quite

maintain itself in

California.

You

could

explain

Goethe,

Val?ry,

or

Descartes,

but

no

one

really

wanted

to

know

so

much about

them. What

the

undergraduates

at

Stanford,

for

example,

wanted

were

short

formulas. Then

I

realized that

they

were

right.

They

had

to

work with

the

Japanese

and

Chinese

cultures

as

well

as

European,

because Asia

is

actually

closer

to

California

than

Europe.

They

couldn't

hold

every

single

European

country

under

a

magnifying

glass.

There

were

also

some

physicists

among

the under

graduates

who

simply

wanted

to

learn about

German

history

and

literature.

They

asked

me

what

I

thought

about the

theory

of

relativity.

Since

I

didn't know

a

thing

about

relativity,

I

went

to

the

library

and

started

reading.

I noticed then

that

the

technological

transformation

of

what

we

know,

in

terms

of

literary

science,

is

the

only thing

that

can

be

transmitted

and,

in

fact,

comes

across,

indeed,

justifiably

comes

across,

because

literary

science,

in

short,

means

translating

and

applying

the

structures

of

the

Gutenberg

age

to

those

structures

of the electronic

age.

We

transport

those

things

that

are

similar,

and

the

other,

which

can't be

carried

over

and

communicated?that

is,

the

poet's

Geist,

the

state

of his

soul?we leave

out.

The typewriter, for instance, changed the nature of writing. That was

the

beginning

of

the end of the

word's

monopoly

as a

medium.

In

Berkeley, they

have

the

Mark

Twain

library

with

all

of his books about

the

typewriter.

Twain

had

purchased

one

for

himself,

and

I

worked

that

into

my

writing.

Back

then

the

story

about the

typewriter

interested

the

Americans.

In

Germany, nobody

wanted

to

hear about

it.

Edison,

for

example,

is

an

important

figure

for

American

culture,

like

Goethe for

German

culture.

But

between

Goethe

and

myself

there is Edison.

Germans

don't

like

to

hear

this,

but

naturally

Americans do.

I

still

find

it

remarkable

that

in

the

libraries of

American

universities

the books of the

engineering

and mathematic

departments

stand back

to-back

with

those

of the

philologies.

So

you

read

a

little Goethe for

tomorrow's

seminar

and

then

you

want

to

find

out

about the Fourier

transformation

or

entropy

so

you

go

over

and read

a

well-written

article

in

a

natural

science lexicon.

If

you

had checked

ten

years

ago

in

a

German

encyclopedia

you

would have

found

a

small,

miserable article

about

entropy

and

a

long

article

on

Goethe. The

relationship

seems

to

me

to

be much

better

balanced

in

America.

When

Thomas

Pynchon

was

twenty-three

and

a

literature

student

at

Cornell,

he could browse

through

the

library

and read

up

on

entropy

and

Bolzmann. That's

probably

how

he would

have first

encountered them?later

he

studied

physics.

The

transdisciplinary,

straight

through

the

disciplines,

in

con

trast

to

the

interdisciplinary,

was

much

easier in America.




7/13

736

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

Discourse Networks

1800/1900

erases the boundaries

between the

sciences.

The

book

is

broken

up

into

two

sections:

1800

and 1900.

The

first

epistemic

break

around

1800

occurs

when what

you

call

the

Republic of

Scholars

dissolves

in the

wake

of

standard

alphabetization.

Your

periodization

into

Renaissance/classical,

modern,

and

roughly

postmodern

corresponds

in

large

to

Foucault's

division

of

European

culture in The

Order

of

Things.

The

end

of

the

third

of

these

periods

coincides,

as

Foucault

states,

with

the end

of

man

as

the

central

figure

of

knowledge.

Around 1900 the medium

book's

monopoly

on

the

word

is

broken

by

new

media

such

as

the

gramophone

and

film.

The result is that

language

becomes

perceptible

as a

medium. Mathematic

formulas from

Euler

and

Bolzano

serve as

epigraphs,

or

mathemes,

to

each

section. How

would

you

characterize these

two

equations?

(Kitder

goes

to

the

blackboard.)

I

had the

following

in

mind:

a

sine

curve can

be

derived

from

Euler's

equation,

that

is,

it's

an

equation

for

analog

output;

Bolzano's,

on

the

other

hand,

is

digital.

I

originally

had

mottoes

from

Borges

and

Casta?eda,

but

I

thought they

were

too

poetic.

So

I

hid

myself

behind

the formulas. Euler's

formula,

which

is

actually

more

complex

than

the

simple

sine

wave

I've

just

described,

was

indeed

a

breakthrough

in

mathematics.

Both

equations

appeared

some

seventy

years

prior

to

the discourse

networks which

they

describe. Euler's

formula

is from

1735,

and Bolzano's

nonconvergent

sum

is from

1830.1

wanted

to

place

both

systems

in the

shadow

of their

mathematical do

ability.

Euler

had described functions

of

growth

such

as

constant

growth

and

compound

interest,

which

are

in

effect the

organic

models intro

duced

by

Goethe

and

Herder

in

their literature. How does

something

grow?

How

does

an

individual

grow

more

independent,

more

intelli

gent,

more

free? Goethe's

question,

for

example,

in

Wilhelm

Meister

is a

question

of

compound

interest. Around 1900

the

discrete

systems

from

Bolzano

to

Claude

Shannon

begin

to

appear.

The model is

almost

too

simple,

because

it establishes

a

binary

opposition

between

binary

and

nonbinary.

I

think

it

could be made

a

little

more

complicated today.

Everyone

wants to

know what

the discourse

network

2000

looks like?

I'm

not

in

such

a

hurry,

besides

it

can't be

written.

I

would

be

more

interested

in

1700

because

one

can't

just

leave it

at

the

Republic

of

Scholars.

Dissertations have been written here in the

past

few

years

which make

it clear

that

the

late

baroque,

that

is,

the

age

of Leibniz and

Descartes,

is

not

so

simple

as

Foucault and

myself

have made

it

out

to

be.

These

figures

are

part

of

our

present.

The mathematics

upon

which the

gramophone, film, or radio are based come from this time period. I'd

like

to

write

a

book about Descartes and modern

geometry?from

Descartes

to

computer

graphics.




8/13

TECHNOLOGIES

OF WRITING

737

You mention

the role

of

literature

in

processing

and

transmitting

new

technolo

gies.

Goethe's Elective

Affinities could

be

said

to

be

an

interdisciplinary

model

of

discursive

force-fields.

Goethe

picks

up

the

new

theory

of

electricity

and tries

to

use

it

to

explain

the

new

social

code

arising

around 1800 with the modern

state,

bureaucratization,

and the nuclear

family.

Pynchon,

one

of

your

favorite

writers,

also

transports

elements

of technology

in

his

writing. Gravity's

Rainbow

describes

a

discourse

network in the

twentieth

century

which has its

optimal

expression

in the cinema. The V-2

rocket,

at

the end

of

the

novel,

on

a

trajectory

from

Swinemunde

toward the

Orpheum

Theater in

L.A.,

describes the

transfer of

Nazi

military technology

to

the

Hollywood

culture

industry.

What

are

the

contradictions between

the

two

media novel and

film

in the

twentieth

century,

if

for

example,

you

consider

the

novel

a

nineteenth-century

art

form?

Can the

novel

do

anything

besides

describe

its

own

obsolescence?

Would

you say

a

few

words

on

the

novel

and

film

as

media?

The

human

sciences of

the nineteenth

century,

such

as

statistics,

administration, cameralistics,

and

so

forth,

are

carried

over

by

Goethe,

as

we've

said,

into

literature.

The

novel takes

part

in

the

development

and

rise

of

the

new

sciences of the

eighteenth

century,

for

example,

population

administration,

in

contrast to

the old sciences like

medicine

and

other medieval

faculties.

The

whole

experimental

research of

the

nineteenth

century

attempts

to

find

out

how

one can

measure

and

record

movement.

I

am

still

interested

today

in

the

development

of

the

gramophone

and the

early

telegraph's

stylus,

as a means

in

the first

place

of

recording

natural

phenomena

which

are

too

fast

to

be

observed.

Film

dealt

in the

beginning

with

recording

the

movement

of

bodies.

A science

which

no

longer

dealt with individuals

or

subjects,

as

the

administrative

sciences of the nineteenth

century

had

done,

rather

with

naked

bodies,

joined

up

with

the

new

medium film. The

sciences

that deal

in

turn

with

the

organization

and

control

of

the

individual

require

the

bourgeois

subject.

Media

theory

can

dispense

with the

notion

of

man

left

over

from

the

human sciences.

The

technological

media,

in

postmodernism's gay apocalypse,

are means

of

revelation,

but

the

object of

that

revelation

can

also be

a

thorn in

the side.

Apocalypse

in ancient

Hebrew

denotes,

as

Derrida

-writes,

the

ritual

unveiling

or

revelation

of

a

part

of

the

body,

the

head

or

eyes,

also

a

secret,

the sexual

organs.

In

Grammophon

Film

Typewriter

you

describe

Edward

Muybridge's

photographic

series,

Animal

Locomotion,

which

was

originally

commissioned

for painters as studies of bodies in (slow) motion. Muybridge, however, couldn 't

completely give

up

the old medium

paint.

He made

a

few

touch-ups

to

the stills

. .

.




9/13

738

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

Right.

Those

are

the

Stanford

pictures.

When his

models

are

facing

the

camera

they

have

on

bathing

trunks,

but

when

their

backs

are

turned

to

the

camera

they're

naked.

They

spin

the

entire

time?he

had

them

turning

pirouettes?so

you

can

imagine

the

uncanny

effect. The

swim

trunks

are an

early

animation

trick. For

the

same

project

in

Pennsylvania

he didn't

bother.

They

weren't

intended,

like

the

Stanford

pictures,

for

educational

purposes.

The

blind

spot,

since

Conrad,

has been

the

heart

of

darkness

in

Western

civilization.

Blindness, however,

for

Nietzsche is a

precondition

of

themedium: he

bought

a

typewriter

because

his

eyesight

had

become

so

bad. Flaubert

tells

of

sitting

the

entire

evening

spellbound

with

book in

hand,

hitting

a

reading-high. Today

people

sit

for

hours in

front of

their

computers

surfing

the

Web.

Can

one

speak of

a

process

of

a

medium-induced blindness

?

That

the media influence

bodies

through

emergence

and

immersion,

on

that

point

we

both

agree.

However,

I

don't

believe

in

the old

thesis

that thus the media

are

proth?ses

of

the

body,

which

amounts

to

saying,

in

the

beginning

was

the

body,

then

came

the

glasses,

then

suddenly

television,

and from the

television,

the

computer.

The

mythology

is that

everything

frees

itself

from

the

body,

dissolves and

submerges

in

it

again,

in

the

sense

of

emergence

and

immersion,

virtual

reality,

cinemascope,

and hallucination. Your

theory

may

be

true

for

some

of

the

entertain

ment

media,

but

I

think

to

be

able

to

describe

a

general

media

history,

it

would

be better

to

work,

like

Luhmann,

systematically

from the

independent

histories of the

technological

media.

The media

don't

emerge

from the

human

body,

rather

you

have,

for

example,

the

book,

and

the

military generals

in

considering

how

they

can

subvert

the

book

or

the

written

word,

come

up

with the

telegraph,

namely,

the

telegraph

wire;

and

then

to

offset

the

military

telegraph,

they

come

up

with

the

wireless

radio,

which Hitier

builds into his

tanks.

In

England

Alan

Turing

or

Churchill

ponder

a

way

to

beat

Germany's

radio

war,

and

they

arrive

at

the

computer

to

crack

the

radio

signals?and

the

German

goose

is

cooked,

that's

the end

of the

war.

A

history

like

this

doesn't

need individual bodies

or a

subject

that

expands

in and

through

the

media?such

a

history

can

do

without

the

subjective

agency

of

a

historical

actor.

Rather,

I

think,

it's

a

reasonable

hypothesis

to

say

that

the

media,

including

books and

the

written

word,

develop indepen

dendy from the body. Even then, if you want to, you can describe how,

through

advertising

or

commercial

means,

the

media

influence and

separate

bodies.




10/13

TECHNOLOGIES

OF WRITING

739

This is not

exactly

themost

typical

media

critique

in the

philologies.

Horkheimer

and Adomo's

chapter

on

the

Culture

Industry:

Enlightenment

as

Mass

Deception

still

seems

to

be read

as

the suitable

description

of

our

current

cultural

landscape.

The

technologies

which,

in their

view,

make

man possible

also make

possible

the

literal end

of

mankind in

Auschwitz and

Hiroshima.

In

contrast to

the

Frankfurt

School's

pessimistic

assessment,

one

has

the

technological

positivism

of

media theorist

Norbert

Bolz 's

remark: The

face-to-face

conversation

does

not

function

better

than

a

teleconference.

On

the

contrary,

the

more

technological

the

communication

is,

the

more

progress

communication

is

making.

I don't want to tie myself down with the question, apocalypse now or

not.

I

think

Dialectic

of Enlightenment

is

quite

clear

on

that

point.

Horkheimer and Adorno

treat

Goebbels

's

war

propaganda

and

Holly

wood

propaganda

as

two

facets

of the

same

phenomenon.

One is

military

and the other

commercial,

but

the

authors

examine them

as

parallel

aspects.

That's the

appalling

thing

about

the

book. But it

also

makes

sense

because

it

establishes

a

sort

of

system

theory.

It

would

be

nonsense

to

say

that the

technological

media

are

all

fatal and

apocalyp

tic

because

the

apocalyptic

dangers

which

we

constantly

activate

and

engage

are

not

only provoked

by

the

media

but

can

also be

discovered

by

them. For

instance,

no one

would

know about

the

hole

in

the

ozone

without the media.

On

the

one

hand,

we're

probably

the

first

humans

to

have

torn

a

hole

in

the

ozone?maybe

men

in

the ice

age

did

too,

we

don't

know?while

computers,

on

the

other

hand,

are

the

one

tool

with

which

we can

describe

and

analyze

the

ozone

layer.

Without

the

computer

we

wouldn't

know

what

an

ozone

layer

is.

Horkheimer and

Adorno's

critique of

the

technological

media

as

the

tools

of

Apollinian

control,

or

instrumentalized

reason,

is

decidedly

lopsided:

they

refuse

to

acknowledge

theDionysian

aspect

of

the

new

media

as

anything

other

than

self

destructive.

You

know the line

from

The

Who's

Tommy

:

that

deaf,

dumb,

blind

kid

sure

could

play pinball.

Well,

it's still

not

clear

to

me

what

happens

in

your

version

of

history

as

media

history

to

the

project

which

relies,

as

Walter

Benjamin

wrote

about the

Surrealists,

on

theDionysian

forces

of

intoxication

inherent in

a

medialized

body.

I've

always

liked

playing pinball.

It's

a

way

of

acquiring

quicker

reflexes.

The

discovery

made

by

Helmholtz and

Du

Bois-Reymond

showed that

the

nerves

are

the

slowest

electrical

connections

on

earth.

Some

ten

meters

per

second,

and

no

faster,

which

is

why

a

driver's

reaction

time,

0.1

seconds,

is so slow. And that's

perhaps

also

why

you

have

to

train

on

pinball

and other

machines,

in

a

technological

advanced

society

or

culture

.

. .




11/13

740

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

The

problem

is more

simple.

Let me

reformulate

my

statement.

Most

of

us

in

the

philologies

don't

know how

to

use

the

computer

for

anything

other

than

text

processing.

It's

a

sad

situation.

I'm

finally

able?for

the

first

time?to teach

courses

in

programming

here

at

Humboldt.

Programming?isn't

that

another

form of alphabetization?

Yes,

indeed,

and

quite

an

exciting

form. Have

you

ever

had the

experience that what you write on paper actually happens? When you

program

a

computer,

something

is

constandy

happening.

It's almost like

magic.

You write

something,

strike

enter,

and

then what

you

just

wrote,

happens,

assuming

there

are no errors

in

your

program.

It's

a

form

of

alphabetization

on an

entirely

different

field,

which

also entails other

routines. You

learn

not

only

to create

paragraphs

and

footnotes,

but

also

what

a

regression

is

and how

to

solve

problems.

I

see

this

as

being

positive

for

cultural studies.

I

can't

imagine

that

students

today

would

learn

only

to

read and write

using

the

twenty-six

letters of

the

alphabet.

They

should

at

least know

some

arithmetic,

the

integral

function,

the

sine

function?everything

about

signs

and functions.

They

should also

know

at

least

two

software

languages.

Then

they'll

be able

to

say

something

about

what

culture

is

at

the

moment,

in

contrast to

society.

Under

society

falls

much

more,

such

as

how

to

behave

or

what

to

wear,

which

are

also

part

of

culture.

I

think, however,

we

understand

culture

in

terms

of

a

system

of

signs.

Cultural

studies

refers

to

and

examines

the

most

important

sign

systems.

What

happens

in

this

new

program

to

the old model

of

critical

thinking?

That

comes

of

its

own.

When

you

compare

your

computer

program

with

your

literary

essay

or

paper,

you're

already thinking

critically.

Critical

thinking

can't

be

taught.

I

can

teach

people

to

think

historically,

and that

in

itself

is

quite

critical

. .

.

sometimes.

A lot of

what

we

have

touched

on

here

goes

back

to acts

of

pure

violence,

for

example,

the

founding

of

the

museum.

What

we

can

learn

from

history

is

that

structures

aren't

eternal.

To

return,

however,

to

the

concept

of

the

various

code

systems?if

the

practice

I

have

just

described could

really

be

imported,

as

far

as

possible,

into the

human

sciences,

not

just

as

information science for the humanities or liberal arts student so that

they

can

get

a

position

in

data

entry

if

they

can't

find

a

job

in

teaching,

rather

so

that

they acquire

a

methodological

model

for

themselves.

There

don't

seem to

be

so

many

practical

applications.




12/13

TECHNOLOGIES

OF WRITING

741

/ have

problems

with terms like the

information

highway.

As an outsider it

seems

to

me

that

despite

the

outstanding

technological

advances,

the

content,

that

is,

the

message

of

the

medium,

often

remains banal.

What do

you

expect

from

a

global

network

like the Internet?

What

Iwant

from the

Internet is

information

you

can't

find in

books.

The

Web

represents

the

sociocollective

knowledge

on

computer

tech

nology

much

better than books

ever

could,

because books

would have

to

have

thirty

volumes

to

describe

something

in

depth. Today

electronic

elements

lead

a

double

life,

once

in

tangible

form

as

silicon and

again

as

a

logical

abstraction, as a computer

description

of itself with all the

relevant

data,

not

only

as a

diagram

on

the

wall,

but

also

as a

simulation.

You

can

click

on

the

circuit X

and simulate

its

behavior

in

a

real

computer.

New

computers

are

designed today

based

on

modules,

which

are

stored

in the

computer's

memory.

You

can run

the

computer,

which

you

want

to

later

build,

as a

simulation.

A

virtual

computer?

Exactly.

There's

no

other

way

to

do it. At

the

moment

there

are

five

million transistors in a computer's hard drive, and that means you can

make

five

million mistakes

to

the

tenth

degree.

You

recently

published

an

article with the

title There Is No

Software.

What

happens

with

the discourse network between hard- and

software of

literature

and

theory

?

We

can

definitely

learn

something

in

the humanities.

When

I

think

back

on

my

old

literary

criticism,

the

good

essays

are

actually

didactic

pieces

in

programming.

How did Duke Carl

Eugen

von

Wurtemberg

program

Friedrich Schiller?

I

didn't

write about

Schiller's

sentiments

or

religion,

because all

I

had

was

a

bare-bones model:

educators

and

princes

program

the novelist for

a

specific

civil

function

in

the

state.

You

don't

need hardware

or

an

understanding

of

technology

to

grasp

that.

What

you

need is

a

fundamental

understanding

of

concepts

such

as

hardware,

programming,

automatization,

and

regulation.

In

cultural

studies,

a

structural

engineer's

way

of

thinking

is

useful,

rather

than

an

adaptation

which remains

entirely

on

the

surface,

like

you

with

your

Frankfurt School

.

.

.

One

final

question

about

programming.

Goethe's amanuensis,

J.

P. Eckermann,

is

responsible for

an

image of

Goethe in

conversation

which has

informed

German

literature

for

some

two

hundred

years.

Would

you

say

that the interview

itself

has

the

quality

of

a

programmable

discourse

network ?




13/13

742

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

If

you

can describe it well

enough

and make it

plausible,

so that it

doesn't

just

remain

a

metaphor,

then

I think

it's

an

important

task.

The

description

of

discourse

networks

always

involves

a

knowledge

of

pro

gramming. Turing,

in

his theoretical

writings

on

the

computer,

con

standy

draws the

parallel

between

education

and

programming.

On

the

one

hand,

how

do

you program

the

machine

and what

should

it be

capable

of? On

the

other

hand,

what do

you

do

with children?

He

always

emphasizes

the

parallels.

It's

at

points

like these

that the

problems

of

cultural

studies

can

be

brought

together

with the

problems

of

technology.

New York

University

(Translated

by

Matthew

Griffin and Susanne

Herrmann)

26 - kittler, friedrich. “technologies of writing. interview with friedrich kittler”

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