Synopses & Reviews
Always connectand#8212;that is the imperative of todayand#8217;s media. But what about those moments when media cease to function properly, when messages go beyond the sender and receiver to become excluded from the world of communication itselfand#8212;those messages that state: and#8220;There will be no more messagesand#8221;? In this book, Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark turn our usual understanding of media and mediation on its head by arguing that these moments reveal the ways the impossibility of communication is integral to communication itselfand#8212;instances they call excommunication. and#160;In three linked essays, Excommunicationand#160;pursues this elusive topic by looking at mediation in the face of banishment, exclusion, and heresy, and by contemplating the possibilities of communication with the great beyond. First, Galloway proposes an original theory of mediation based on classical literature and philosophy, using Hermes, Iris, and the Furies to map out three of the most prevalent modes of mediation todayand#8212;mediation as exchange, as illumination, and as network. Then, Thacker goes boldly beyond Gallowayand#8217;s classification scheme by examining the concept of excommunication through the secret link between the modern horror genre and medieval mysticism. Charting a trajectory of examples from H. P. Lovecraft to Meister Eckhart, Thacker explores those instances when one communicates or connects with the inaccessible, dubbing such modes of mediation and#8220;hauntedand#8221; or and#8220;weirdand#8221; to underscore their inaccessibility. Finally, Wark evokes the poetics of the infuriated swarm as a queer politics of heresy that deviates from both media theory and the traditional left. He posits a critical theory that celebrates heresy and that is distinct from those that now venerate Saint Paul.and#160;Reexamining commonplace definitions of media, mediation, and communication, Excommunicationand#160;offers a glimpse into the realm of the nonhuman to find a theory of mediation adequate to our present condition.
Review
"Smart and engaging..... This book is an invitation to do media history in the archives; at the same time, it keeps reminding us that the archives ain’t the archives anymore and that any historical account is dependent on the media forms it uses."
— John Nerone, Journal of American History
Review
Gitelman's Always Already New artfully reconfigures our critical thinking about the material, social, and institutional contexts that have produced 'new media.' In this beautifully written book, she brings 'pastness' into an enlightening conversation with our current, complex engagement with the digital datasphere. The MIT Press
Review
"Lisa Gitelman is a brilliant scholar.... [She] uses new historicist, philosophical, and technological observations to make a compelling case."
— M. E. DiPaulo, Choice
Review
"Gitelman's Always Already New artfully reconfigures our critical thinking about the material, social, and institutional contexts that have produced 'new media.' In this beautifully written book, she brings 'pastness' into an enlightening conversation with our current, complex engagement with the digital datasphere." Thom Swiss , interdisciplinary scholar, University of Minnesota, coeditor of New Media Poetics The MIT Press
Review
andlt;Pandgt;"Gitelman's andlt;Iandgt;Always Already Newandlt;/Iandgt; artfully reconfigures our critical thinking about the material, social, and institutional contexts that have produced 'new media.' In this beautifully written book, she brings 'pastness' into an enlightening conversation with our current, complex engagement with the digital datasphere." andlt;Bandgt;Thom Swiss andlt;/Bandgt;, interdisciplinary scholar, University of Minnesota, coeditor of andlt;Iandgt;New Media Poeticsandlt;/Iandgt;andlt;/Pandgt; The MIT Press The MIT Press
Review
andlt;Pandgt;"Gitelman's *Always Already New* artfully reconfigures our critical thinking about the material, social, and institutional contexts that have produced 'new media.' In this beautifully written book, she brings 'pastness' into an enlightening conversation with our current, complex engagement with the digital datasphere."--Thom Swiss, interdisciplinary scholar, University of Minnesota, coeditor of *New Media Poetics*andlt;/Pandgt;
Review
and#8220;At a moment when media theory seems both ubiquitous and amorphous, more necessary than ever, yet often trapped in old paradigms or infatuated with new technology, Excommunication makes a timely and provocative intervention. Thereand#8217;s so much intellectual ferment in this historically informed, radically contemporary volume that it might well be a founding documentand#8212;has the New York school of media theory finally arrived?and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Communicational media permeate every aspect of our lives. But do we really know what media are? And do we really grasp what's at stake in every act of communication? In this book, Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark explore the obscure but fascinating origins and esoteric limits of communicational media and suggest helpful ways that we might be able to experience and use them differently.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;[A] provocative, unapologetic study.... [T]he open-minded reader is rewarded with a stimulating, scathing theory critique. Recommended.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;[T]he authors provide a salutary shaking up of a discourse often at once moribund or moving all too quickly, while also indicating the absolutely crucial importance that the subterranean energies of
soma, the body, still play in these future directions.and#8221;
Synopsis
In Always Already New, Lisa Gitelman explores the newness of new media while she asks what it means to do media history. Using the examples of early recorded sound and digital networks, Gitelman challenges readers to think about the ways that media work as the simultaneous subjects and instruments of historical inquiry. Presenting original case studies of Edison's first phonographs and the Pentagon's first distributed digital network, the ARPANET, Gitelman points suggestively toward similarities that underlie the cultural definition of records (phonographic and not) at the end of the nineteenth century and the definition of documents (digital and not) at the end of the twentieth. As a result, Always Already New speaks to present concerns about the humanities as much as to the emergent field of new media studies. Records and documents are kernels of humanistic thought, after all--part of and party to the cultural impulse to preserve and interpret. Gitelman's argument suggests inventive contexts for "humanities computing" while also offering a new perspective on such traditional humanities disciplines as literary history.Making extensive use of archival sources, Gitelman describes the ways in which recorded sound and digitally networked text each emerged as local anomalies that were yet deeply embedded within the reigning logic of public life and public memory. In the end Gitelman turns to the World Wide Web and asks how the history of the Web is already being told, how the Web might also resist history, and how using the Web might be producing the conditions of its own historicity.
Synopsis
An analysis of the ways that new media are experienced and studied as the subjects of history, using the examples of early recorded sound and digital networks.
Synopsis
andlt;Pandgt;In Always Already New, Lisa Gitelman explores the newness of new media while she asks what it means to do media history. Using the examples of early recorded sound and digital networks, Gitelman challenges readers to think about the ways that media work as the simultaneous subjects and instruments of historical inquiry. Presenting original case studies of Edison's first phonographs and the Pentagon's first distributed digital network, the ARPANET, Gitelman points suggestively toward similarities that underlie the cultural definition of records (phonographic and not) at the end of the nineteenth century and the definition of documents (digital and not) at the end of the twentieth. As a result, Always Already New speaks to present concerns about the humanities as much as to the emergent field of new media studies. Records and documents are kernels of humanistic thought, after all--part of and party to the cultural impulse to preserve and interpret. Gitelman's argument suggests inventive contexts for "humanities computing" while also offering a new perspective on such traditional humanities disciplines as literary history.Making extensive use of archival sources, Gitelman describes the ways in which recorded sound and digitally networked text each emerged as local anomalies that were yet deeply embedded within the reigning logic of public life and public memory. In the end Gitelman turns to the World Wide Web and asks how the history of the Web is already being told, how the Web might also resist history, and how using the Web might be producing the conditions of its own historicity.andlt;/Pandgt;
About the Author
and#160;Alexander R. Galloway is associate professor of media studies at New York University and lives in New York, NY. He is the author of four books on digital media and critical theory, most recently The Interface Effect.and#160;McKenzie Wark is professor of liberal studies at The New School for Social Research and lives in Queens, NY. His books include A Hacker Manifesto and Gamer Theory.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Execrable MediaAlexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, McKenzie Warkand#160;Love of the MiddleAlexander R. Gallowayand#160;Dark MediaEugene Thacker
and#160;Furious MediaMcKenzie Wark