[-empyre-] A question concerning the electrification of digital objects

[Gregory Ulmer]

As a footnote to this engaging discussion, regarding terminology, I
introduced "electracy" a couple of decades back  to continue this useful
identification of technologies of communication with "apparatus" theory:
orality, literacy, electracy.  The term is a portmanteau of "electricity"
and "trace" (Derrida), extrapolated from "literacy."  Tel Quel media theory
introduced "apparatus" (dispositif, Gestell, set-up) to clarify the
relation of technology to historical context as "social machine" (desiring
machine:  alphabetic writing, photography, computing) are part equipment,
part institution formation.  The motivation was to counter technological
determinism, and also the claim that equipment is a neutral by-product of
science and engineering initiatives.  The importance of  "apparatus" as
desiring machine is to note that the invention streams of technics and of
practices of language are distinct and even independent, forming an
interdependent matrix.  The Classical Greeks invented not only alphabetic
writing but also School (and related practices of method, concept,
propositional logic and related metaphysics), Selfhood, the democratic
State... All this is in Havelock, Goody, Ong -- the original
grammatologists.  Some people still talk about "media literacy," as if
literacy were "alphabetic orality."  In much of the discourse of
continental philosophy, concerned with "the  closure of Western
metaphysics," it is helpful to notice that a synonym for "metaphysics" here
is "literacy."  It is useful to remind ourselves that every dimension of an
apparatus (not only  technology, but institutions and their operating
practices, identity behaviors individual and collective) require invention.

Greg Ulmer

On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 1:52 PM, Quinn DuPont <isaac.q.dupont at gmail.com>
wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Dear Sally Jane, et al
>
> At the risk of responding so quickly, turning a cocktail party into a
> hushed dialog over in the corner of the room, I simply can’t contain
> myself!
>
> It is like you have read my mind! Although I have only read Auroux’s
> English work (a few articles, here and there), I think the reference is
> absolutely spot on. And, as you reference, Auroux and his concept of
> grammatization is critical to Stiegler, who I think is very much part of
> this discussion (and, for the week on MEMORY, I hope becomes part of our
> dialog). Especially in Stiegler’s *Decadence of Industrial Democracies*
> this process of grammatization comes through epochal shifts, from orality
> to writing (yes, Ong!), from writing to printing, and… to the contemporary
> computer? (for my own research, this is the coming epoch of ubiquitous
> cryptography: digital objects so tightly wrapped we’ve excluded, perhaps,
> even the trace of the voice?)
>
> There is a short passage in Derrida’s Of Grammatology (which lies behind
> Stiegler and Auroux) where he claims to be enraptured by “cybernetics” and
> DNA (the “writing” of life). I’m far from a Derridian, but I can’t help but
> think that Derrida was foreshadowing the grammatization process, which I
> see as a technicized version of the ideality of Goodman’s notation.
>
> I’ll return the favour of citations with another: Friedrich Kittler’s
> splendid analysis of “The Mother’s Mouth” as an important technology for
> forming the “discourse network” 1800 (Discourse Networks 1800/1900, 1990).
> Van Helmont’s 1667 “Short Sketch of the Truly Natural Alphabet” offers, I
> think, an interesting attempt at discretizing the voice by literally
> fitting the Hebrew letterforms into the mouth apparatus
> (here’s an image:
> https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/62c84c30-49e0-4f95-9cc2-f7e79b548c36/d3de9ea5dfbf58e4d31e333d2abbef28
> )
>
> ~ Quinn DuPont
>
> On October 8, 2014 at 12:41:08 PM, sally jane norman (
> normansallyjane at googlemail.com(mailto:normansallyjane at googlemail.com))
> wrote:
>
> > I like the fact/ way you're seeking to develop connections across the
> discretisation of architectural/ algorithmic systems and of language/
> linguistic systems, as per Kramer's argument. Am wondering how this /
> Kramer's work (which I don't know, other than that she's an architect) fits
> in with that of language specialists (more names, can't help it) like
> Sylvain Auroux (La Révolution technologique de la grammatisation), for whom
> grammar emerges as a cognitive tool that modifies modes of communication,
> more or rather than as a describer of natural spoken language. His focus is
> thus not on the "notational" breakdown of orality to the visual (cf. also
> Walter Ong?), but instead on the advent of mechanisation and automatised
> language processing through tools that extend from historical construals of
> "grammar" to computational "expert" systems. I get a little nervous when
> orality and musicality are too categorically opposed to visuality and
> calculability, even though I realise we must sometimes resort to
> cut-and-dried conjectures to get thoughts moving. Auroux's thinking is no
> doubt anchored in a (French?) tendency - I'd say gift, in his case - for
> trying to freely span and bridge pre- and post-digital cultures, whilst
> mobilising an extremely robust set of disciplinary perspectives.
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu




-- 
* Gregory L. Ulmer *
http://users.clas.ufl.edu/glue
http://emeragency.electracy.org/
http://heuretics.wordpress.com
* University of Florida *

*Not to follow in the footsteps of the masters, but to seek what they
sought.*
Basho
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