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
