Michel Foucault, Friedrich Kittler, and the interminable half-life of 'so-called man'
Michel Foucault, Friedrich Kittler, and the interminable half-life of 'so-called man'
This article considers Friedrich Kittler’s deterministic media theory as both an appropriation and mutation of Michel Foucault’s archaeological method. Focusing on these two thinkers’ similar but divergent conceptions of the 'death of man', it will be argued that Kittler’s approach attempts to expunge archaeology of its last traces of Kantian transcendentalism by locating the causal agents of epistemic change (viz. media technologies) within the domain of empirical experience (thus tacitly deriving the transcendental from the empirical), but in doing so, actually amplifies the anthropological vestiges that Foucault hoped to eradicate. The result is an alluring, but dogmatically positivist theory of mediatic causality that, in spite of its best efforts, can only reify, rather than dispel, the image of 'so-called man'.
continental philosophy, media theory, humanism, transcendental, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Kittler
49-68
Sutherland, Thomas
a9a8e23c-232e-47ca-9be6-abeac690bfb2
Patsoura, Elliot
3be9ec62-fb84-4571-b9df-0aaf3f7e7b0b
5 December 2017
Sutherland, Thomas
a9a8e23c-232e-47ca-9be6-abeac690bfb2
Patsoura, Elliot
3be9ec62-fb84-4571-b9df-0aaf3f7e7b0b
Sutherland, Thomas and Patsoura, Elliot
(2017)
Michel Foucault, Friedrich Kittler, and the interminable half-life of 'so-called man'.
Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 22 (4), .
(doi:10.1080/0969725X.2017.1406047).
Abstract
This article considers Friedrich Kittler’s deterministic media theory as both an appropriation and mutation of Michel Foucault’s archaeological method. Focusing on these two thinkers’ similar but divergent conceptions of the 'death of man', it will be argued that Kittler’s approach attempts to expunge archaeology of its last traces of Kantian transcendentalism by locating the causal agents of epistemic change (viz. media technologies) within the domain of empirical experience (thus tacitly deriving the transcendental from the empirical), but in doing so, actually amplifies the anthropological vestiges that Foucault hoped to eradicate. The result is an alluring, but dogmatically positivist theory of mediatic causality that, in spite of its best efforts, can only reify, rather than dispel, the image of 'so-called man'.
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sutherland_and_patsoura_the_interminable_half-life_of_so-called_man
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Published date: 5 December 2017
Keywords:
continental philosophy, media theory, humanism, transcendental, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Kittler
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Local EPrints ID: 495053
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/495053
ISSN: 0969-725X
PURE UUID: 619e1b72-9efa-450a-8164-6e062243462a
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Date deposited: 28 Oct 2024 17:52
Last modified: 29 Oct 2024 03:12
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Author:
Thomas Sutherland
Author:
Elliot Patsoura
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