Block 1 (1.1-1.2), Discussion

Discussion by Andrea Bohlman (AB), Joshua Billings (JB), Melle Kromhout (MK), Peter McMurray (PM) and Stephanie Probst (SP).

PM: It seems fitting to begin with a shout-out to Bernhard Siegert, whose Passage des Digitalen sparked this digital conversation in the first place. In his essay “Media After Media” (2015), he writes:

“Kittler has always been a codebreaker. The fundamental drive behind his analyses had always been the basic assumption that the fictionality of literary characters, or the generality of philosophical concepts, was a mere trick to conceal a real historical person, or some power relation. Behind the masks of humanity, truth, the spirit, you have to discover what in Kittler-German was called ‘Klartext’ (a term from cryptology), the ‘clear text’ of power relations and the materialities of media, which always already determine the situation in which human beings are able to write, to love, to know, to forget” (81-82).

Block 1 (1.1-1.2): Comments, Quotes & Translations

Comments, quotes and translations on the first reading section (1.1-1.2) by Joshua Billings (JB), Melle Kromhout (MK), Peter McMurray (PM) and Stephanie Probst (SP)

PM: Is the latinized transcription of the couplet on p. 51 mis-written? (kû do sa akh – should just be three syllables?)

JB: Yup, good catch — should be ku dos akh

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PM: Some key passages for me were:

• the discussion of the Sirens (43-58, especially 54)
• Kittler re-creates the Siren scene (57-58)
• bows = lyres (and pirates!) (85-88)
• alphabet as image, writing and number (102-104)

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MK: “Sirenen singen, weil sie singen. Rosen blühen, weil sie blühen.” (50) → the medium is the message?

PM: Or maybe just, “The medium is.” ??