Stefan Heidenreich on Mon, 4 May 2009 05:47:08 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> Debating German Media Theory in Siegen |
The greyroom-issue on (n)GMT is indeed remarkable. Not so much for its content, but for documenting how most of the Kittler school got stuck in media-historical footnotes and some try to escape by replacing media with other terms. After (re-)creating Media as a fashionable academic topic in the late 80s it quickly became apparent, that much of what came up as so called media-theory was mere blabla around a buzzword. I remember Kittlers looks of despair after being interviewed by Hartmann or his sighs after reading Grau's dissertation. It sounds quite funny to find these two being named as examples of media theory. The main difference might indeed be addressed as Geist. Maybe I got Florian and Geert initially wrong there. In terms of Geist as a philosophical phantasy of power (hegelian and academic in general) there was not much present. In terms of Geist as an awareness to belong to a tradition of thinking and the urge to ground the proper thoughts within these fundaments - certainly yes. But not like Hartmann by assembling philosophical statements about media, but in doing just the opposite: by asking how media wrote philosophy and returning to philosophical thought from there - through Foucault's back-door opened by the key McLuhan lost, if you like ;) In one sense the term German Media Theory names something that did not happen. As there was just a heightend academic awareness around a buzzword (Media) in a language (German). I am still a bit puzzled by the fact that the core group did not manage to develop the common hypothesis of a media apriori further (debatable as it is, but at least a clear-cut approach) and to apply it to our present. But very much like Geert I see a huge potential left, in looking backwards, assembling and translating thoughts and texts, as in looking forward and developping thoughts further. But it just seems very likely that the keywords "German" and "Media" might lead to a collection of buzzword blabla. Reminds me to finally reply to a letter from Cornelia Vismann, who remains to be one the most insightful academics of the initial group. S Edward Shanken schrieb: > Until recently from the other side of the pond, I have a different > view of these matters. <...> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org