Cultural Techniques

BERNHARD SIEGERT is Gerd Bucerius Professsor of the History and Theory of Cultural Techniques at the Bauhaus Universitat Weimar and Director of the International Research Center for Cultural Techniques and Media Philosophy at Weimar. Together with Friedrich Kittler, Norbert Bolz, and Wolfgang Coy, he is one of the pioneers of German media theory. He is the author of Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System.Winthrop-Young Geoffrey :

GEOFFREY WINTHROP-YOUNG is Professor of German at the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia.

—Michael Wutz:
“An excellent collection of essays from one of the most widely known and respected scholars of media, media theory, and cultural techniques working in Germany. The scholarship is erudite, sophisticated, and impressively wide-ranging.”

“Siegert’s case studies suggest that human being (Dasein) articulates itself through a strife inherent in the play of ontological difference. This strife demands the construction of distinctions that produce human identity and cultural differences. Siegert assigns the name 'cultural techniques' to this production and maintenance of difference. . . . Cultural Techniques suggests that every technical advance consolidates and reproduces new ensembles of cultural difference. Here, life itself is lodged within a system of differences that defy resolution and remain perpetually open to strategic redistribution.”

—Edgar Landgraf:
“Cultural Techniques displays a stunning amount of historical knowledge, exploring texts and technological innovations that fall into fields such as the history of science, art history, architecture, cultural anthropology, ethnology, literary studies, and philosophy. . . Highly important.”