Cultural Techniques -- Berhnard Siegert Full Citation Siegert, Bernhard. Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real. Trans. Geoffery Winthrop-Young. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2015. Print. Meaning Systems Series. Chapter Notes Introduction: Cultural Techniques or, The End of the Intellectual Post-war in Germany (pp. 1-18) Media Theory in Germany Since the 1980s (pp. 1-6) - Critique of reason critique of culture critique of media (pp. 1) - Emergence of "German Media Theory" or rather "Cultural Techniques" from the animosity btwn Media Theory (East Germany) and Cultural Theory (West Germany) (pp. 1) - Variety of labels "media theory", "media analysis", "media and literature analysis"; the last a holdover of researcher backgrounds in lit. departments (pp. 2) - Replacement of focus on author/style with "...inconspicuous technologies of knowledge..."; "cultural techniques" as comprised of these technologies (pp. 2) - "..."materialities of communication" -- the nonhermeneutic non-sense -- as the base and abyss of meaning." (pp. 2) - Shift in focus from representation of meaning to conditions of representation; what constitutes semantics (pp. 2) - Not the writing of media history but its extraction (BS's word via GW Young) from media itself; considered "arcane sources" from the position of the humanities (pp. 3) - Realizing how much there is beyond the hermeneutic reading of text (pp. 3) - Abandoning mass media and the history of communication and opting for the insignificant that underlie the constitution of meaning and elude the usual methods of understanding (pp. 3) - Decisive aspect of the posthermeneutic turn: there is no subject area called "media"; it is not "ontologically identifiable (pp. 3) - If media are outside the "horizon of meaning", then we now have a situation where media history is not a history of media but is a "reference system" for examining larger processes/institutional practices (pp. 5) - media as historically particular and embedded in specific practices (pp. 5) - "Yet at the same time, history is itself a system of meaning that operates across a media technological abyss of nonmeaning and must remain hidden." (pp. 5) - Cultural Techniques and "antihumanism"; US posthumanism (cybernetics) vs. German Media Theory (against textual interpretation and sociological understanding of communication) (pp. 5) - Affinities btwn German Media Theory and Latour (pp. 6) Media After the Postwar Era: Cultural Techniques - 90s-present as a period where media are conceptually turned into cultural techniques; "posthermeneutic" (pp. 6) - No longer critical theory (hermeneutic, anti-tech. ie. not wanted to deal with it) vs. media theory (anti-hermeneutic, analysis through tech.) (pp. 6-7) - German reunification bringing "cultural studies" from GDR into contact w/ the anti-hermeneutic media theories to form "cultural techniques" (pp. 7) - Creation of independent faculties; media as more-than another frame of reference; media could be considered to have their own history (pp. 7) - More "relaxed" attitude toward historical anthropology through media technologies, not "anthropological constants"; Anthropotechnics (pp. 7) - Difference w/ US posthuimanities: in US, posthuman=humans/non-human animals (derrida); outside US, posthuman=humans/non-human technologies - North America: ideology/espoused metaphysics anthropological categories; Cultural Techniques: cultural-/media-technical practices anthropological categories (pp. 8) - Less focus on thinkers themselves and what they have to say about a subject than the media practices of the subjects (pp. 8) - Three phases of what Cultural Techniques were/are: - 1) Cultural techniques are empirical, not the "philosophical idealizations" of US posthumanities (pp. 9) - Cultural techniques as a concept pushes back against "the ontology of philosophical concepts" since it "moves ontology into the domain of ontic operations" (pp. 9) - 2) Cultural techniques breaks with the "middle class" understanding of culture by opening up "culture" to technologies in general; this is a trend since the 70s (pp. 10) - 3) Cultural techniques now encompasses all domains of "graphe" beyond just "alphanumeric code" (pp. 10) - Five further features of cultural techniques: - 1) Cultural techniques = "operative chains that precede the media concepts they generate"; however, these operations require "technical objects" which can execute them (pp. 11) - 2) "To speak of cultural techniques presupposes a notion of plural cultures."; man is no longer the exclusive subject of culture; Vismann and how "objects are tied into practices"; anything can be a "person" (pp. 11) - 3) Cultural techniques should be understood as "chains of operations and techniques" which precede ontological distinctions; about how "nonsense generates sense" (pp. 13) - There's an argument against Macho 2013 (1[st] and 2[nd] order cultural techniques) here (11-14) - 4) Culture is based on the making of distinctions, and cultural techniques precede this; they are based on the distinction between distinction and non-distinction (pp. 14) - 5) Cultural techniques stabilize/sustain/produce conditions/systems & also destabilize/dismantle/erase conditions/systems (pp. 15) - Cultural techniques account for what they exclude, ie. how they filter signal from noise (pp. 15) - Ends off with an outline of the chapters to come (pp. 15-17) 01. Cacography or Communication? Cultural Techniques of Sign-Signal Distinction (pp. 19-32) Serres and Signs - Historical arc of the sign from the 18[th] cen: 1) sign divides aesthetics//science & philosophy fragmentation of the sign 2) maths:symbols & linguistics:signs & communications tech:signals 3) 1950s cross-over btwn aesthetics, linguistics, and communications tech (pp. 19) - 1960s; Serre's tripartite theory of the sign that "moved the physical materiality of the channel... into the centre..."; noise=materiality of the channel and is most important element for Serres (pp. 19-20) - Serre's model from The Parasite (1980) as a means of "arriving at" cultural techniques by employing communications theory and cultural theory at the same time (pp. 20) - Combines three aspects: 1) le parasite has a double meaning as "parasite" & "noise"; 2) parasite crosses human/animal boundary bringing in cultural anthro; 3) the economic/agricultural aspect of parasite brings in cultural technology (pp. 20) - Together we have cultural techniques "...capable of combining different methods and approaches." (pp. 20) - Serres' position as a "critique of occidental philosophy" and its binary model which conceived all relations as a form of exchange (pp. 20) - Serres adds a third figure to the binary model, a third that is a parasite or deviation which is part of the thing itself (see the Shannon diagram of communication) (pp. 20-21) - The parasite comes first in this model, producing the relation; the parasite is "intermediary" that must be present first (pp. 21) - There is no unimpeded communication, "..."a successful communication is the exclusion of the third man"..." (pp. 21) - Discussion of "phatic function" and how in Serre's communication theory this "address to the channel" is primary (pp. 21-22) - Communication not as simple information exchange or expression, but an act that produces order by making distinctions (pp. 23) - Serres' cultural techniques via the "phatic function" as a "history and theory of interruption, disturbance, deviation." - Three examples as follows: Typography - Discussion of Busbecq's epigraphic explorations of the ANE, collection of coins and inscriptions (pp. 24-25) - Difference and deviation as cultural techniques that transform spoils, leftovers, and residue into unified culture (pp. 24) - The contingent cultural techniques of history-making; the example of Ottoman Turkish reuse of Antiquity for their own purposes, refiguring the material of the past (pp. 25) - Busbecq's copy of Res Gestae which interpolates the fragmented inscription with dots (pp. 26) - Transformation of the cultural technique of reading into a "physical technique" of spatial orientation w/ the reader's body as reference (pp. 26) - The dots revealing the "place-value system" of the textual communication transmission channel (like 0 in indo-arabic numerals) by registering the blank space (pp. 27) - The channel itself is not supplement but necessary "ground" for the operations (pp. 27) Analog Media - Example of Kafka's "Pontus dream"; an attempt (among many) to "install a communication channel between th present and Roman Antiquity." (pp. 28) - Shifting origin of language from human communication to "nonhuman signalling technology" (pp. 28) - Being human no longer as a difference of location but the difference between noise and signal; this shifts relation between cultural techniques and parasites (pp. 30) - The example of Pollak/Virag and their transmission of handwriting by telegraph by understanding writing as a specific waveform shape, an operation that "concerns the channel" (ie. a technical operation rather than a signifying operation or code) (pp. 30) Digital Media - Example of a radio play by Max Bense and Wolfgang Harig (pp. 30) - The radio demonstrating the "birth of language" from noisse as a process of statistical approximation; the channel itself as a source of information which can speak by being processed (pp. 31) - The exchangeability of channel and source typical of information-theoretical models of communication (pp. 31) - Aesthetics as a science of signal, the materiality of signs (pp. 31) - The possibility of a cultural technical approach to communication theory: communication as a means of establishing social ties by turning matter into sign; the sign must be produced in "the technical real"; the cultural technical operation of filtering as preceding the relation by generating sign from noise (pp. 32) 02. Eating Animals -- Eating God -- Eating Man: Variations on the Last Supper, or, The Cultural Techniques of Communion 03. Parlêtres: The cultural Techniques of Anthropological Difference 04. Medusas of the Western Pacific: The Cultural Techniques of Seafaring 05. Pasjeros a Indiaa: Registers and Biographical Writing as Cultural Techniques of Subject Constitution (Spain, Sixteenth Century) 06. (Not) in Place: The Grid, or, Cultural Techniques of Ruling Spaces 07. White Spots and Hearts of Darkness: Drafting, Projecting and Designing as Cultural Techniques (pp. 121-146) Designing as Cultural Technique - Outlining the usual understanding of "design" as disegno with two sides: the internal idea work and the external making work (pp. 121) - Emergence of this discourse in the Renaissance (pp. 120) - How this discourse legitimizes the "artistic genius" view of design (pp. 120) - What it means to speak of design as a cultural technique (pp.120) - Extracting design from its "anthropocentric origin" in Florentine Renaissance (pp. 12) - The disegno definition of design as a result of material practices: discursive, technical, institutional (pp. 120) - Also going past discourse analysis to look at design as a "recursive chain of operations." (pp. 122) - To do this, we should be looking at "material cultures, practices, and workshop conditions." Storage, archiving, supporting surfaces, utensils, correction procedures, etc. but also the "discursive rules" that arise from institutionalization (pp. 122) - Turning the usual understanding of drawing as unmediated or most immediate on its head: drawing as most mediated, ie. arriving through a protracted disciplining process (pp. 122) - Following Latour's insight on science: 1) what was attributed to the mind of the designer should be attributed to "..."the hand, the eye, and signs...""; 2) signs should be treated as media rather than signs (pp. 122) - Favouring the exteriorized processes of thinking, forming, and shaping (pp. 122) - Viewing design as an "immutable mobile" a la Latour; bringing together a whole series of movable operations which can act on a single thing while retaining its unity (pp. 123) - Going beyond the teleological view of design as linearily becoming a mental activity (pp. 123) - The textual descriptions of renaissance design reveal a more complex picture of drawing that as simple externalization of ideas (pp. 123) - Understanding "design as a cultural technique, then, involves our subjecting it to the historical apriori of technologies, materialities, and visualization strategies...[]...hollow phrases invoking "artistic creativity" must yield to an analysis of concrete sign practices." (pp. 123) Leonardo Da Vinci: Designing as Experimental System - Calling into question the distinction between technical and artistic design (pp. 124) - Using Leonardo's water studies as an example of how the distinction is untenable, but also how design process is "...rooted in an experimental system..." (pp. 124) - Leonardo translates the form of water into a code of lines; how the design procedure appears as instruction; the transfer process is what's important (pp. 124) - How Leonardo sites his studies: water coming into contact with boundaries and edges; boundaries "articulated by the interaction between moving elements" (pp. 125) - The artist and engineer both subject water to "certain arrangements" as a means of perpetuating certain effects (pp. 128) Symbolic World Orders - The examples of the Kabyle house (from Bourdieu) and the medieval mappa mundi as "symbolic world orders" (pp. 129-131) - They spatialize densely intertwined narratives rather than communicating any specific knowledge (pp. 130-131) - Eg. the mappa mundi does not reference any geography, but rather organizes "narratives of salvation" - The upshot is that both of these demonstrate how in these close systems "spatial codes cannot be separated from structural symbols..." there is no "white space" for a subject to emerge within the dense weave of everyday narratives (pp. 131) Cartographic Self-Design - The previous discussion is a point of comparison to this discussion of the `modern European subject [] a project designed by designs." (pp. 131) - "self projection" which happens on a "planetary scale" (pp. 131) - The empty space of modern maps, the unmapped space, as the site of subject-making through the future intention; "I will go there" (pp. 131) - The map as the design for a literary "I", then the lit. "I" as map for one's own ego; the "occidental subject" as something designed, a project or "projectile" (pp. 131) Design as Project(ion) - To distance from the disegno interpretation means to take design as a "project, projection, or projecting." (pp. 132) - Goes to Heidegger (significantly, 1938) for an example that follows his previous derivation of projecting, how he develops it out of a theory of science as procedure which moves forward to "seize the unknown" which requires a "basic projection" as its ground plane (pp. 132) - BS sees a similarity between MH's projection and Alberti's understanding of perspective projection as procedure requiring an underlying grid (pp. 132-133) - "Projection involves moving from body to image." (pp. 135) - All the practices of projecting are united by "...the basic act of conquering the world..." (pp. 135) - This is the intersection of "...central perspective and navigation..." which unleashes the European dynamics of "invention" (pp. 135) - The overtones of "seizure" and occupation in invenire (pp. 135) - "Imperialism is applied planimetry" (pp. 135) - Economy of design: design as a speculative act which as an inherent risk; financial operations of "borrowing, investing, planning, inventing, betting, reinsuring, and risk-spreading" as the cultural techniques from which subjectivity emerge (pp. 135) Loxodromes - Discussion of navigation, how travel becomes a matter of design; movement is regulated by "operative calculations" upon a projected grid map (pp. 136) - Optical Consistency Between Workshop and Globe - Discussion of the Ptolemaic grid use in renaissance painting, specifically fresco painting and how it "reveals the cultural technique of optical consistency" (pp. 137) - This is the mechanical transfer of cartoons to walls and the requisite scaling that happens (the spolvero technique, pp. 138); it is a "disciplining of hand and eye" (pp. 137) - the wide variety of assistants and workers that together produced the fresco; the spolvera allowed for division of labour, specialization, and the mentorship relationship in painting work (pp. 139) - noting how fundamental drawing was to the practice of renaissance artists; that (a la Nietzsche) tools work on our imaginations (pp. 141) - This technique produces a distinction between the draft (cartoon to be transferred in a state of possible alteration) and the final executed fresco (not alterable); mechanical reproduction and its techniques of "scaling, transferring, and impressing" brought forth the idea and from there the concept of artistic genius a la disegno (pp. 142) Exiting the Project - Example of how the linear, open-endedness is re-enclosed into a discursive whole again by filling the blank space; in the example of Juan de la Costa's draft map, it's filled with religious imagery (pp. 142-143) - The Permanently Projected World - We are dealing with media with coded variables (pp. 144) - Discussion of the Spanish and Portuguese maps, all based on a single, unfinished, constantly updated padron real (pp. 144) - BS calls it a "virtual map" that is never used as one since it's "in a permanent state of design" (pp. 144) - The padron real as a form of "virtual knowledge" which controls specific ships and its own updating by means of a feedback loop (pp. 144) - It is the "mutable immobile" underlying all "immutable mobiles" (pp. 145) Concluding Remarks on the Genesis of Design - Design emerging not from the disconnect between intellect and action (as usually understood), but in the meeting of two cultural techniques and media technological constellations: the geographic grid, and the grid-based techniques of scaling proportion and transfer (pp. 145) -08. Waterlines: Striated and Smooth Spaces as Techniques of Ship Design -09. Figures of Self-Reference: A Media Genealogy of the Trompe-L'oeil in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life -10. Door Logic, or, the Materiality of the Symbolic: From Cultural Techniques to Cybernetic Machines