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Cacography or Communication? Cultural Techniques in German Media StudiesAuthor(s): Bernhard Siegert and Geoffrey Winthrop-YoungReviewed work(s):Source: Grey Room, No. 29, New German Media Theory (Fall, 2007), pp. 26-47Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442774 .

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Signal, character set andsample telegram of thePollak/Virig telegraph.

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BERNHARD SIEGERTTRANSLATED BY GEOFFREY WINTHROP-YOUNG1.Assessing the ituationSince the ppearance inGermany of a media historiography ndebtedtoMichel Foucault, rnstCassirer'sneo-Kantianformula,Thecritique freasonbecomes a critique f culture," as been confrontedith an alternativeformula: The critiqueof reasonbecomes a critiqueofmedia." In thewakeofCassirerand Foucault and shapedby theways inwhich universities avecome toorganize thehumanities and social sciences since the 1990s, acovert war is now being waged. It is a war of succession, its prize nothingless than the throne f the transcendental hat as remainedvacant sincethe abdication of the "critique of reason." This war iswaged in secret primarily because culturalhistory ndmedia history ave forged pragmaticalliance that tendstoexclude anydiscussion of thetheoretical asis onwhich the arties involved onceptualize bothculture ndmedia.Various observers ave noted that heresearch nstitutionsnd networksinvolved inexploringthehistory fmedia and culture are engaged in "arewritingf culturalhistory s a history fmedia,"' which makes itpossible to articulatethehistory fculture-and indeedhistory s such-as asequence of epochs. This approach, however,presupposes thedubiousnotion ofhistoricalguidingmedia (Leitmedien). ong-standing erms ikebook culture, etter ulture, omputer ulture, rdigitalculture refer o asequence of cultures thatmay allegedlybe defined in terms f thesocial,economic, rtistic, cientificetc.)effectsfan alphamedium (print, etter,computer). ut didn'twe have towait for cLuhan's medially producednarcissism,which identifies contingent ulturewith a specific,subsequentlycanonized guidingmedium, toknowwhat theseguidingmediawere, or are?To observemedia as factors fculturaldifferentiationlreadypresupposes a historical canonization ofmedia and themythification ftheir ounding eroes:Gutenberg, dison,Turing.Furthermore, to speak of a "rewriting" is to forget thatmedia stories andhistories have been around foras long as cultural historywith all of its stories.

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InGermany,media history s infact numbrella term hat ncompasses amotley crew ofmethods; as a result, there is a lot of confusion that is partlyintended, artly ondoned, and partly ondemned. To beginwith, there stheconfusionof "media history"with what some prefertocall "mediaarcheology."nfact, he ery itlesdorning hefirstolumes that nthe arly1980sgrewoutofthe Literature ndMedia Analysis" project oordinatedinKassel (and that ere instrumentalndelineatingaGermanhistorical"media science"outside the onfines fsociologicallyorientedcommunication studies) already indicated thatthevolumeswere not aiming forhistory fmedia but for history f thesoul and of thesenses.2The latterwere tobe removedfrom hedomain ofpsychology and aestheticsandtransferred o a "differentite"-that ofmedia. Paradoxically,thetype fmedia history that is currently practiced inBerlin and inWeimar, amongotherplaces, and that oesby thename ofhistoricalmedia studiesdid notenterthefray ith the retenseofproducingmedia histories.Media historiesweren'twritten; theywere found.Nobody in thetwentieth enturyneeded towriteahistory ftelegraphy.he studiesbyKarlKnies andGustavSchottlehad alreadybeen around since thesecondhalf of thenineteenthcentury. eorge Prescott's istory fthetelephone nd the honograph aspublished in1887,John mbroseFleming'shistory ftheradiotube n1919.A numberofaccountsdealingwith the nvention ftelegraphy,elephony,gramophony,adio,thetypewriter,inematography,nd the omputer erein factwrittenby theinventors hemselves,frequentlyn thecontext oflegalsquabbles over the riority f invention. hemedia archeology fthe1980swas, inNietzsche's sense, a gayscience:Rather thanwritingmediahistory,tdugup sourcesthat ad remained ut ofbounds tothehumanitieswithoutworryingbout nyunderlyingconcept fmedia" (an ssuenowadaysraisedbyevery iseacre). Confronted ith insights ntothemedial conditions f literature,ruth,ducation,humanbeings, nd souls-insights thatwere beyond the reach of the hermeneutic study of texts-scholars of literature,philosophers,pedagogues, and psychologistswere toooffended ythe udden invasionoftheir icely cultivatedgardens toask for n orderlytheoreticalustification or he nslaught.Only in thecourseof theuniversity-widenstitutionalizationfmediastudies in the hape ofdepartments, aculties, raduatecolleges,and specialized studyprograms did thesehistorical sciences come intoclosercontactwith thattype f"media archeology"thatfocusedon individualmedia histories.The latternclude thehistory fphotography nd that ffilm; notherwords, specialized areas ofmedia-historical researchthatare therealheirs tonineteenth- nd earlytwentieth-centuryedia histories.Characteristically witha fewexceptions), therelationshipbetween

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specialized historians f film e.g., ractitionersf"Early inema Studies")and thehistoricalmedia studies that mergedfrom edia archeologyfluctuates etweencomplaisant istance nd utter isinterest. ilm studiesmayhave appropriatedtheterms rcheology ndmedia links, ut by turningarcheology nto the label ofan alternativehistoriography fmedia, theyhave rehistoricizednd belittledthe term.2.Cultural echniquesIt is probablyno coincidence, therefore,hat heterm ultural techniques(re)emerged round theturn f themillennium and soonbecome ubiquitous inGermanmedia theory.3he notion of culturaltechniquesstrategically subverts heproblematicdualism ofmedia and culture; it pens upmedia, culture, nd technology o further iscussion by highlighting heoperations roperative equences that istoricallynd logically recede themedia conceptsgenerated y them:4

Cultural techniques-such as writing,reading,painting, counting,makingmusic-are alwaysolder thanthe onceptsthat regeneratedfrom hem. eoplewrote longbefore they onceptualizedwriting oralphabets;millennia passed beforepicturesand statuesgave rise tothe oncept of the mage; nd still today, eople singormake musicwithoutknowing nything bout tonesormusical notationsystems.Counting, too, s older than thenotion ofnumbers.To be sure,mostculturescounted orperformed ertainmathematicaloperations,butthey id notnecessarilyderive from his conceptofnumber.5

Oncewe reconstruct hose perative equences that onfigurerconstitutemedia, the latter an be explained as cultural techniques.Cultural techniques, however, re not limitedtosymbolicpracticesbased on images,writing systems, nd numbers.They also include what Marcel Mausstermedbody techniques";6 hat s,the se culturesmake ofbodies, including rites, ustoms,and habitual acts7aswell as training nd disciplinarysystems, ietetics,orhygienicpractices.From this thnologicalpoint ofview, reading, riting, nd counting rephysical rather hanmental techniques. They are the result of drilling docile bodies, which these days areforced ocompetewith interactiveavigational nstruments.Since antiquity, he uropean understanding fculturehas impliedthenotion that ulture is technologicallyonstituted. he veryword culture,deriving from Latin colere and cultura, contains an eminently practicaldimension by referring o thedevelopment and practical applicationof technologies forcultivating the soil and settling the land.8 InGermany,this ngineering spect ofagriculture as informed henotion of cultural

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techniques since the late nineteenthcentury.9 he corral that separateshunter nd prey and that n the ourse of a coevolutionary omesticationproduces the nthropologicaldifference etween human beings and animals, the furrow rawn in thegroundby theplow, and the grain) ilo arearchaic technologies fhominization.The concept ofcultural techniques,therefore,svehemently pposed to ny ontologicalusage ofphilosophicalterms:Man does not exist independently of cultural techniques ofhominization,time oes not exist independentlyfcultural techniquesforcalculating ndmeasuring time; pace does notexistindependentlyf cultural echniques for urveying nd administering pace; and so on.The notion ofcultural techniques, then, romises toalign culturalhistory ndmedia history y referringack toconcrete ractices nd symbolicoperations. hese practices rangefrom itual ctsand religious eremoniesto cientific ethods ofgenerating nd referencingobjective"data,as analyzedin greatdetail byBruno Latour.10hey include pedagogicalmethodologies aswell as political,administrative,nthropological, nd biological"designs of thehuman."Whether or not thenew studyofcultural techniques will indeedbring bout amedia-anthropological urn Kehre) nhistoricalmedia studiesdepends onwhether cultural techniquesare seen asconceptual extensions ofMauss's body techniquesor as operations thatrequire,firstnd foremost, technical rtifact.imply put, you can't cookwithout some kind ofvessel. The art of cooking-which, according toClaude Levi-Strauss, s themost elementaryf ll culturaltechniques-cannot be derived from a body technique. A pot is not aMcLuhanesque extension ofman, forexample, of thehollow hand: You cannot boil anything in ahollow handwithout losingyourhand in theprocess.Every culturebeginswith the ntroduction fdistinctions: nside/outside, sacred/profane,ntelligible peech/barbarian ibberish, ignal/noise.The fact that they are able togenerate aworld is the reason why we experience the culture inwhich we live as a reality and, more often than not, asthe natural"order fthings. et thesedistinctions reprocessed bymediain the broadest sense of theword. Doors, for instance, process theinside/outside istinction, et they elong toneither ideofthedistinctionand instead always assume theposition of a third. These media are eminentcultural techniques. It is important okeep inmind, however, thatthedistinction etween natureand culture is itself ontingentnd based on adistinction hat sprocessed byculturaltechniques.The latter redatethedistinctionbetweennature and culture: They give rise toacculturationprocesses; theirmisappropriationor transgressivesemay introducedeculturation rocesses; and they ontribute o the pistemological nd aesthetic udgment fwhether something spartofnature or culture.What

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Levi-Strausswrote about the rtofcookingcan be applied tocultural techniques in general: " [T]he system demonstrates that the art of cooking . . ..being situatedbetweennatureand culture,has as itsfunction o ensuretheir rticulation newith theother."11The examination fcultural techniques snotrestricted oobserving herolesmedia play in acculturationprocesses; it s also concernedwith thetenserelationship oprocessesofdeculturation, or hich media can act asvehicles.Media arenot only culture techniques that uspend codes or disseminate, nternalize, nd institutionalize ign and symbol systems; heyalso serve to loosenculturalcodes, erase signs,deterritorializemages ndtones.Three basic consequences follow from his.First,media appear ascode-generatingnterfaces etween thereal that annotbe symbolized ndthe ultural rder. econd, research nto ulturaltechniques annotbe conductedwithoutan analytics fpower.Third, culturaltechniques ave to eunderstood as heterogeneous rrangementsnwhich technological, esthetic, ymbolic, nd political concepts ofone ormore culturesofwriting,image, umber, ine, ndbody interact.3. The StudyofCultural echniques as ParasitologyTo definecultural techniquesas media that rocess theobservation, isplacement, nd differentiationf distinctions s to introduce conceptofmedia that aybe linked oMichel Serres's nderstandingfthe parasite."'12The model of the parasite, as developed by Serres,Derrida, and others,encompasses both theold (agrarian) nd thenew (medialand culturalist)meaningof culturaltechniques.'3 recludingall reductionistimitations fthe onceptto the xclusively echnological omain,themodel of the arasiteallowsus to ombine the erspectivesdeveloped by cultural nthropology,cultural thnography,conomy, olitics,andmedia theory.Themetaphorsof griculturend script, owing ndwriting, eaping ndreadingare deeply embedded inEuropean culture.They appear in theGreek as well as in theJudeo-Christian radition. ccording to Plato'sPhaedrus, living peech is the eed sownby the ensible farmerhonounechongeorgos) n suitablesoil. Incontrast, o sowknowledge episteme) ymeans ofwriting-thatnonautonomous,fatherless, r, nDerrida'swords,"parasitical" brother of logos-is tantamount to "writing in water" (enhydati graphein).14 Logos and water are at odds. The ideal polis must keepits distance from the sea, for the latter is "a briny and bitter neighbour" totruth.The sea swamps the citywith "wholesale traffic nd retail huckstering," reeding shiftynd distrustful abitsofthe oul.'15 errida's conceptof parasitic writing resonates with a historical figure of the parasite: themerchant. The merchant is neither producer nor consumer but instead

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occupies an intermediaryosition.His element is the sea rather han theland.He belongs to thoseparasites that ive birthto relationships y preyingon them. fterall, thePhoenicians, a nation of seafaringmerchants,invented hephoneticalphabet,awriting system hat reciselybecause itarticulates hone remains ndependent fanyindividuallanguage nd canthereforee used to transcribenyother anguage nto ne's own.16 ndeedthere re good reasons to furtherursue Derrida's query"What is a parasite?"or at leastto "reconsider ur logic f theparasite."''7Inhis studyTheParasite,themathematician, hilosopher, nd historianof scienceMichel Serres evolved theconceptof theparasite into multifaceted odel that akes it ossible to mploy othcommunication heoryand cultural theory o rrive t anunderstanding fcultural techniques.18This conceptualization fthe arasite strikes e as particularly nterestingbecause it ombinesthree ifferentspects.First, n information-rmediatheoretical spect is linkedto theFrenchdoublemeaning of leparasite,which can also refer onoise ordisturbance. econd, bycrossing he oundarybetween human and animal, thesemanticsof theparasitebring intoplay culturalanthropology.hird, thereferences oagriculture nd economics inherentn theterm ntroduce hedomainof cultural technology.What strikes me as revealing from the point of view of thehistory of theory,however,is thefactthat erres's conceptualizationof theparasitewas areevaluation carriedout under the influence fClaude Shannon) of theBiihler-Jakobsonodel ofcommunication hat llowedSerres to sketch uta conceptofcultural techniquescapable ofcombiningdifferent ethodsand approaches.Serres's conceptof theparasite emergedin theearly1960swhen logicians were once again discussing what a symbol is. His initial point ofdeparturewas toreplaceAlfredTarski's categorical distinctionbetweensymbol, s defined y logicians, nd signal, s definedby informationheorists, ith the ery roblem fdistinction; hat s, erres inquired ntotheconditionsthat nable this istinction n thefirstlace.The objectofinvestigation formathematics and logic, the symbol as etre abstrait, is constituted by the cleansing of the "noise of all graphic form" or "cacography."'19The conditionsfor ecognizing he bstract ormnd for enderingommunication successful are one and the same.20 ogic, then, ppears tobegrounded n a culture-technical undament hat snot reflectedpon.The conceptoftheparasite implies critiqueofoccidentalphilosophy,inparticular fthose theories f the inguistic ign nd economicrelationships that nprinciplenever venturedbeyond a bivalent logic (subjectobject,sender-receiver,roducer-consumer)nd that nevitablyonceivedof theserelationships n terms fexchange.Serresenlargedthis tructure

Diagram fromMichel Serres,The Parasite, trans. LawrenceR. Schehr (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1982).

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into trivalent odel. Let there e two stations nd one channelconnectingboth.The parasite that ttaches tself o thisrelation ssumes thepositionof the third. nlike the inguistic radition rom ocke toSearle andHabermas, Serres does not view deviation-that is, theparasite-as accidental. We do not start out with a relation that is then disturbed or eveninterrupted; ather, [t]hedeviation is part of the thing tself, nd perhapsit even produces the thing."21e do not startoutwith an unimpededexchange ofthoughtsrgoodsorbits); rather,rom he ointofview of cultural nthropology,conomics, nformationheory,nd thehistory fwriting, heparasite came first. he origin ieswith thepirate rather hanwiththemerchant,with thehighwaymenrather thanwith thehighway.22Systemsthat yway of inclusion xcludepirates,highwaymen,nd idlersincreasetheir egreeof internal ifferentiationnd are thus n a position toestablishnew relations. he third recedes the second. That is thebeginningofmedia theory-of nymedia theory.A third xistsbefore thesecond. A third xists before the others.... There is always amediate, amiddle, an intermediary."23InSerres'smodel of communicationit is not the sender-receiver elationshipthat s fundamental ut that etween communication nd noise.This correspondsto thedefinition f the ulture-technical urn utlinedabove:Fromthe ointofviewofthisturn, edia arecode-generatingnterfacesbetween the real that annotbe symbolized nd culturalorders. "Tohold a dialogue," Serres wrote in 1964, "is to suppose a thirdman and toseek toexclude him."24 hus Serres inverts hehierarchy f the six signfunctionsnJakobson's amousmodel.25 It is not thepoetic or the referential function hat according o thetype fspeech)dominates all the thersbut the haticfunction, hereference o the hannel. In all communication,each expression, ppeal, and type freferencingspreceded bya referenceto interruption,ifference, eviation. "With thisrecognition hephaticfunction ecomes the onstitutive ccasion for ll communication, hichcan thusno longer e conceptualizedin the bsence ofdifferencenddelay,resistance, tatic, nd noise."26The phatic function-that articularfunction f the ignthat ddressesthe channel-was the last of the six functions ntroducedbyJakobsonin 1956. Itsarcheology reveals theculture-technicaldimension of thecommunication concept. Itwas first escribed in 1923 byBronislawMalinowski, though e spokeof"phaticcommunion."27sing the ommunicationemployedduringMelanesian fishing xpeditionsas an example,Malinowski-who in thewake of Ogden and CONTEXTRichards was working (referential)

MESSAGE(poetic)ADDRESSER ADDRESSEE(emotive) (conative)

CONTACT(phatic)Diagram fromRoman Jakobson,"Linguistics and Poetics,: in tyle CODEin anguage,d.Thomas ebeok (metalingual)(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960).

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on a theory fmeaning linked to situational ontexts-developed amodelofmeaning that e called "speech-in-action." Phatic communion,"however, enotes a linguistic unction n the ourse ofwhichwords arenotusedto oordinate ctions, nd certainly ot to xpress thoughts,ut inwhich acommunity s constituted ymeans ofexchangingmeaninglessutterances.When itcomes to sentences like "How do youdo?" "Ah,hereyou are,"or"Niceday today," anguage ppears tobe completely ndependent f the ituational context. et a real connectiondoes existbetweenphaticcommunication and situation, because in the case of this particular type oflanguage he ituation s one of an "atmosphere fsociability" nvolving hespeakers ut createdby the tterances.But this is in fact chieved by speech, and thesituation in all suchcases is createdby theexchangeofwords.... The whole situationconsists inwhat happens linguistically.ach utterance s an act serving the direct aim ofbinding hearer to speaker by a tie of social sentiment or other.28

The situation fphaticcommunion is thereforeotextralinguistics inthecase of a fishing expedition; it is the creation of the situation itself. It is amode of language inwhich the situation as such appears or inwhich language thematizes he basis of relation."Malinowski's discussion of phatic communion bears a remarkableresemblance to Serres's theory f communication,according towhichcommunication is not the transmission fmeaningbut the xclusion of athird. Thebreaking fsilence, the ommunion ofwords is the first ct toestablish linksoffellowship, hich isconsummatedonly by thebreakingofbread and the ommunionoffood."29

Malinowski's parallelbetween the ommunionoffood nd thecommunication ofwords establishes an intrinsic onnectionbetweeneatingandspeaking that is also apparent in Serres's model of the parasite. ForMalinowski as well as forSerres, to speak in themode of "phatic communion" is at firstmerely an interruption-the interruption f silence inMalinowski's anthropologicalmodel and the nterruptionfbackgroundnoise in Serres's information-theoreticalodel. Communication is theexclusion of a third, the oscillation of a system between order and chaos.The linkbetweenMalinowski's phaticcommunion and Serres's "beingofrelation" (i.e., theparasite) is Jakobson'sfunctionalscheme that shortcircuits thechannel (in thesense ofShannon's informationheory) ith

Malinowski's "ties of union": "The phatic function is in fact the point ofcontact between anthropological linguisticsand the technosciences ofinformationheory."30

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ForSerres, then, ommunication snot primarily nformationxchange,appeal, or expressionbut an act that reatesorderby introducing istinctions, nd this sprecisely hat turns eans ofcommunication nto ulturetechniques.As stated bove, every ulturebeginswith the ntroductionfdistinctions: nside/outside,acred/profane,ntelligible peech/barbariangibberish, signal/noise. A theory of cultural techniques that, likeSerres's,was toposit thephatic function s itspoint ofdeparturewouldalso be a history nd theory f interruption,isturbance, eviation. uch ahistory fculturaltechniquesmay serve to reate n awareness for he lenitudeof aworld of as yetundistinguishedthings hat, s an inexhaustiblereservoir fpossibilities,remainthe asic point of reference or very ypeof culture.Iwill illustrate his yusing three xamples that escribe ompletely ifferent onstellations.The first xample involvestwoelementary ulturaltechniques of theearlymodern age, theuse ofzero and thetypographiccode; the second concerns theparasite as amessage of analog channels; andthethird ocuseson therelationship etween noise andmessage indigitalmedia. Ihave to mphasize,however, hat hese xamplesdo not amount toanykind ofhistorico-philosophical hree-step.Case 1: ypographyOn his way to the court of the Ottoman emperor in 1555, Ogier Ghiselin deBusbecq, an ambassadorfor he ustrianmonarch FerdinandI,discoveredon thewall of a temple (to be precise, of a Sebasteion) in the precinct of theHaci Beiram Mosque inAngora (Ankara) a Latin inscription that he identifiedas a copy of the famous ndex rerumgestarum, theaccount of theachievementsofAugustuswrittenby the mperorhimself.Busbecq onlyneeded toread theheading:RERVM GESTARVM DIVI AVGVSTI QVIBVS ORBEM TERRARUM IMPERIO

POPVLI ROMANI SVBIECIT ETINPENSARVM QVAS INREM PVBLICAMPOPVLVMQVE ROMANVM FECIT INCISARVM INDVABVS AHENEIS PILISQVAE SVNT ROMAE POSITAE EXEMPLAR SVBIECTVM.31(Below is a copy of the acts of theDeified Augustus bywhich he placedthe whole world under the sovereignty of theRoman people, andof the amounts which he expended upon the state and the Romanpeople, as engraved upon two bronze columns which have been setup inRome.)

The discovery f thismonumentofoccidental culturalhistory, hich thenineteenth-century istorianTheodorMommsen called the"queen of

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inscriptions,"as bynomeans accidental.Throughout is journey hroughthe alkans andAsiaMinor, Busbecq had been tryingo ommunicatewithclassical antiquity.His media ofcommunicationwere inscriptions ndcoins.His communicationformat as the ectio in thedoublemeaning ofcollectingand reading)-corresponding to theJudeo-Christian raditionof legere hat ombinesthe ultivation f the andwith the racticeofreading. he biblical topos is the tory fRuth theMoabite,who plucked earsof corn leftby the reapers on the field ofBoaz and who was chosen tobe anancestor ofKingDavid (Ruth2: 4).Medieval monastic didactics turnedRuth theparasite into n ideal studentwho-to quote theprologue to thetenth-centuryermons of theabbotofMorimond-by means ofcopying"collects the heavenly bread which is theword of God in order to satisfy thehungerofhis soul."32In lesshumblefashion, hefirstditor f the es gestae speaksof themorethan wohundredGreek inscriptionshat usbecq "harvested ithhiswriting tube (calamo exarata)."33 Difference and deviation have turned into a cultural echnique hat rocesses residues nd leftovers.ulture itselfppearsas a bricolage of spoils. Yet the communication with antiquity envisioned byBusbecq turns ut tobe a laborious enture, ecause the hannel inking imto ntiquity s inhabited y another, ore powerful arasite:theTurks.TheTurksuse coins asweights,or theymelt them own tomanufacture ronzevessels.34More seriously, heTurkish transmission f biblical times ndancientGreekappears to usbecq tobe quite literally eranged:

The Turks have no idea of chronology and dates, and make awonderfulmixture and confusion of all the epochs of history; if it occurs to themto do so, theywill not scruple to declare that Jobwas amaster of theceremonies oKingSolomon,andAlexanderthe reathis commanderin-chief,nd they reguilty f evengreater bsurdities.35Busbecq learns inpassing that istory s a function fcontingent ulturaltechniques.The Ottoman realm is justone ofmany possibleworlds thatwere not realized in the hristian orEuropean domain; in this uotation,the possible appears as the deranged, which is another name for the parasiticaldeviation.Thus we encounter problemthat oncernsthehistory fcultural techniqueson a basic level:namely,that istory s itself n orderproducedbyculturaltechniques. usbecqwrites that heparasitical intrusions of the Turks are toblame for the illegible Greek and Roman inscriptions, uch as theMonumentumAncyranum,he keeps encountering:

I had it [the inscription] copied out by my people as far as itwas legible. It is graven on themarble walls of a building, which was probably

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the ncient residence of thegovernor, ow ruined and roofless. nehalf of it is upon the right as one enters, the other on the left. Theupper paragraphs are almost intact; n themiddle difficulties eginowing togaps; the lowerportionhas been somutilatedby blows ofclubs and axes as to be illegible. This is a serious loss to literature andmuch tobe deplored by the earned.36The comments rittenby conquerors re truly hattering.Busbecq's copy appeared inprintfor he first ime nanAureliusVictorvolume editedbyAndreas Schott n 1579.Humanists like chott, ho commanded the ew typographictorage echnology,ere charged ith removingfragmentsromtone,or from he reach ofbarbarianwritingutensils,and, bymaking use of thenew printmedium and the systemofcourtlylibraries, endering hem egible noughtofacilitate new communicationwith antiquity ndisturbed y anybarbarian nfluence.nder these ondi

tions, however, the real location of the letters on the interior walls of a temple surrounding hereadercannot be addressed.Media lacunis laborareincipient-"in themiddle difficultiesegin owing togaps,"Busbecqwritesinhis letter f 1555.Desunt quaedam-"a lot ismissing," commentstheeditorinchargeof thetypographic eproduction f1579.Where Busbecqhad used a locative adjective in order to speak of gaps, Schott refers tomissing textual units.37Desunt quaedam doesn't point togaps at all but to a signthat chott inall likelihoodhad invented imself:

ANNOS. VNDEVIGINI. NATUS. EXERCITVM. PRIVATO. CONSILIO. ET.PRIVATA. IMPENSA. COMPARAVI. TERQVE. M ..... FACTIONIS.OPPRESSAM. IN. LIBERTATEM. VINDICAVI ... .... DECRETIS.HONORIFICIS. ORDINEM. SVVM................................

................ . esunt quaedam38Finally, only a few scattered words remain in an ocean of dots:

REGIS. PARTHORVM. .....................................

.. . .......................... ..................................A. METS HO V .... ............... A. ME GENTES....THORVM.

ET. MEDORVM ...............................................

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..... IN CONSVLATV.

. ........ Et haec quoque expunxerunt immanes Turcae...........39

Et haec quoque expunxerunt mmanesTurcae-"and this,too,thecruelTurksdestroyed."Or, in amore literaltranslation, xpunged.Was Schottaware of his double entendre that in a bizarre way blurred the distinctionbetween his activities nd thoseof thebarbarian commentators? t is as iftheTurks, nticipating ditorial interpolations, ad already described thegaps as a series of dots.

InBusbecq's account there is left and right,up and down, and a center.The culturaltechnique freading ppears as a physical technique ased ona spatial system of orientation that uses the body of the reader as its pointof reference. ith theedited text, owever,thespeakercan no longer elocated.The space referred obySchott'scommentarys linkedto thegazeof a bodiless subject. To respond to the statement "A lot ismissing" with thequestion "Where?"makes no sense because theresponse"here" isalreadyimplicitnthe omment. ny referenceo three-rtwo-dimensional onumentno longer xists.The space thecommentary efers o isexactlythesame space that is taken up by the commentary on paper and that ismarkedby thedots: the pace of thetext, topological, digitized" space.Schott'sdots uncoverwhat in the ase ofundisturbedtextual ommunication remains idden: that ymakinguse of aparasitical (supplementary)carrier the text refers to a symbolic order based on a place-value system. Anobvious analogue is the ndo-Arabicplace-value system, cultural technique imported y thirteenth-centurytalianmerchants. n the ndo-Arabicnumeralsystem, ens, undreds,and thousands re not explicitlywrittenout; they are always already implicitly coded by the place that has beenassigned to a digit. It is important tokeep inmind that in this numeral system the spatial extension of the paper is an integral part of the numericalsign.This becomes evident in thecase ofzero,which marks thespatialityof thedigit in thesymbolic.Place-value systems re codes thattake intoaccount themedia employedto store nd transmithem. he channel, theparasite, is not supplementary, ut theground fortheoperationalityofnumerals.Digits are signsthat an be absentfrom heir lace (as opposedto Roman numerals that cannot be absent from their place because theyhave no place value). In turn,the dots introducedby Schott as signsformissing textual nits are invisibly resent inevery etterndbecome

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visibleonlywhen the ettersmissing. Just s the nvention f zero allowsus towrite the absence of a digit, Schott's dot is an invention that allows ustowrite the bsence of a letter, hereby urning ealgaps into set of discrete, ountable elements.The real isdigitized,and the textual space isremovedfrom arbariancacography.Brian Rotman has drawn attention to the close relationshipbetweenearlymodern algebra-as a symbolic rderbased on zero-and linearperspective.40 he onlyposition that hereading ubject an assumevis-'a-visprinted text s the same thattheviewing subjectassumes vis-'a-vis perspectivalpicture.It is theposition "of thegaze, a transcendentositionofvision thathas discarded thebody . .. and exists only as a disembodiedpunctum."'41ith this nmind, a second parallelbetween linearperspective and typographic extualorder suggests itself.Just s Leon BattistaAlberti's treatise ella pinturahas the urface f the ainting ct aswindowthat llowsus to see the bjects locatedbeyond by imposing northogonalgrid, typographicdigitization renders the monument-in Foucault'swords "transparent."42azing through heprinted text, e behold thetrue, ndestructible,nd completetext f theRes gestae inmuch thesameway as we catch sight of the true shape of things throughAlberti's window.Whereas thereal still llowed for he ossibility fanecessarilyfragmentedtext, ypographic odinggives rise to thenotion of a necessarilycompletetext.43he third recedes the econd:The typographichannel constitutesantiquity s a communication artnerfor umanist readers.Case II:Analog MediaMy second example concerns a furtherattempt, undertaken about 350 yearslater, o install communication hannel between thepresent ndRomanantiquity,ranzKafka's famous Pontusdream":Very late, dearest, and yet I shall go to bed without deserving it [Kafkawrites tohis fiancee, eliceBauer].Well, Iwon't sleep anyway, nly

dream. As I did yesterday, for example, when inmy dream I rantoward bridgeor somebalustrading, eized twotelephonereceiversthat happened to be lying on the parapet, put them tomy ears, andkept skingfor othing utnews fromPontus"; utnothing hatevercame out of the telephone except a sad, mighty, wordless song and theroar of the sea. Although well aware that itwas impossible forhumanvoices topenetrate these sounds, I didn't give in, and didn't go away.44The dream represents a new version of the old invocation of theMuses.45It is no longer themouth of the Homeric Muse that speaks at the originof language but the background noise of the telephone channel, the signal

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theoretical groundofbeing," as Serreswould have it.No signpenetratesthis noise to reach the ears of the dreamer, just an uncoded signal, thatwordless song that is also "the only real and reliable thing" transmitted bythe hones inKafka'sCastle.46 he message is almost ntirely educed to itsphatic function of referring to the channel as a nonrelating entity (i.e., as aparasite).From a technohistoricaloint ofview, this ongmay be identifiedas the voice of the telephone introduced by Philipp Reis in 1863, a reading,incidentally,upported y the ontext fKafka's letter.47ut the mportanceof thistechnohistorical eminiscence ecomes apparent nly once the ongemanating from the receivers is deciphered as an allusion to the Siren songsof the dyssey,because the atter xplains the lluring nd seductivequality of the song that chains the dreamer to the telephone receivers. It is thelure of death. Kafka moves themythic origin of language (and of culture)from the anthropological domain to that of the nonhuman, where the distinctions between language and noise, animals and human beings are abolished,and which threatens-or, rather, educes-Ulysses with his owndemise. The origin of language has been relocated to the realm of nonhuman signaling technology, and it is there that the dreamer hopes to hear theclassical voice ofRoman antiquity. For the "news from Pontus" are in factnothing but Ovid's Tristia, with which the exiled poet tried to retain hislatinitas by putting into words his despair over being exiled to the BlackSea. This experience of alienation as a distance from humanity, this barbarism in the classical sense, is no longer located in the non-Latin soundsemanating from barbarian mouths; it is now based on the noise of a technical channel that human voices cannot traverse. The conceptual frame thatdetermines theOther as well as the humanity of one's own voice has beenshifted: In the age of technological media, being barbarian (and beinghuman) isno longer efinedby thegeographicaland confessionalboundaries of Christian Europe but by the differencebetween signal and noise. This, however, is a difference that alters the relationship between culturaltechniques nd parasites.The following epictionmay illustrate this: It is an ad for the telegraph

developed by Pollak and Virag that was able totransmit handwritten messages, but thatwas able todo so only because itdefined handwriting as justanother cursive script or cacography.48The Pollak/Virag telegraph handwriting is a signal much like the song of the Sirens. Writing, thatelementary cultural technique, emerges out of anoperation that concerns the channel (the parasite)

Signal, character set andl :M sample telegram of thePollak/Virag telegraph.

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itself: t s thefilteringutofsignalsfrom oise. This is,no doubt, n apocryphal xample that annot claimmore than mblematic alue.Yet, asmylastexamplewill clarify, he logic that tmanages to illustrate ecomesnothing ess than ystemic n thedominantculturaltechniqueof our present: the rderofdigital signals.Case III:Digital MediaIn1968, the aarldndischeRundfunk nd Radio Bremen broadcast a radioplay byMax Bense andWolfgangHarig that resentedClaude Shannon'smathematical theory f communication as an approximationof a naturallanguage.49 ntitled TheMonologue of TerryJo, heplay referredo a girlwho had been found in a boat adrift off the coast of Florida inNovember1961.Though unconscious, she spoke incessantly. he play starts ith acomputer-generatedext hat nnine stepsgradually pproaches thegirl'suninterrupted low fspeech.By staging hediscourse of an unconsciousperson in such a way, the play demonstrates that in the age of signalprocessingmeaning is nothing but "a sufficiently omplex stochasticprocess."50 hannon had demonstratedinhis "MathematicalTheory ofCommunication"how, regardless fanygrammatical eep structure r system ofmeaning, a natural language may be synthesized using a series ofapproximations,whereby the selection of a given letter epends on theprobability ith which it follows thepreceding letterdigram tructure),the twopreceding letterstrigram tructure),nd so on.51 heMonologueof TerryJo tarts utwith a zero-order pproximation; hat s, ll signsareindependent f each other nd equi-probable:"fyuiomge-sevvrhvkfdszuiei-sewdmnhf-mci6wziikmbw." The play thenproceeds via a firstorder approximation (symbols still independent of each other butoccurring ith thefrequencies fGerman text) o a second-orderpproximation (German igram tructure): enie-sgere-dascharza-vehan-stn-wenmen"; and from here o a third-orderpproximationthat lreadycontainscombinations f letters hat ooksuspiciouslyGerman:"zwischwoll mochtemit sond / ch scheid solch uibend lebgross sein und solchselb / ab hoff chluss nichtgeb"; and so on.52 he radio turns nto technologicalmuse's mouth that ivesbirthto language-random selectionsfrom repertoryf eventswith differing requencies, rom noise whosestatistical efinitions an equi-probabledistribution findependent ignsmakes itpossible tointerprethe hannel itself s a sourceof information.Itspeaks.

The step leading from an analog, infinite set of signals to a finiteand limitable set of selectable signals leads to the exchangeability ofchannel and source that s typicalfor heinformation-theoreticalodel

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ofcommunication.Human voicesmay not be able topenetrate thisflurryofparticles,but itdoes allow for hesynthesizing f a vocoder voice.In a 1958 radio essay on Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," ax Bensedescribed the nversion f the ogocentric nderstanding fsignsas a signaturemark of twentieth-centuryedia culture.The claim of traditionalmetaphysical theory that "the word is the carrier ofmeaning" is based ontheassumption that "meaning exists prior towords"; however,LewisCarrollwas willing tomaintain the pre-existencefwords-words understood as pure signals-prior tomeaning."53 s signals,words come beforetheir eaning. Likephysics, esthetics s a sciencewhose primary bject issignals,thephysicalmateriality fsigns.

Thus a completely ewunderstandingfthe orldpermeatinghysics,logic, inguistics nd aesthetics semerging-anunderstanding hich,briefly ut, replaces. beingswith frequencies.qualitieswith quantities*things ith signs.attributes ith functions* ausalitywith statistic.54

"Each and everycommunicative relation in thisworld," Bense wroteinEinfiihrungin die informationstheoretischesthetik (Introductionto Information-Theoretical esthetics), "is determined as a signalingprocess. The world is the sum total of all signals, that is, of all signalingoperations."55 ccordingly,Bense (much likeSerres, and prior tohim)derives a critique of the concept of signals. For Bense, Peirce has to begrounded inShannon; semiotics has tobe grounded in informationheory. With this ignal-theoreticalonception,"henotes, "thesignremainsamaterial construct."56This opens up the possibility of a culture-technical approach to communication theory:The basic operation of those cultural techniquesresponsiblefor rocessing thedistinctionbetween nature and culture,orbarbarism and civilization, is a filtering operation. If the goal of communicationprocesses-be itbreaking read orbreaking ilence-is toestablishsocial ties bymeans of transcending matter and turning it into a sign, thenthis sign firsthas to be produced in the technical real. If the culture-technicaloperationoffilteringhat enerates his ignfrom oise is in the osition ofa third that precedes the second and first,then Serres's work enables us tocomprehend herange nd impact fthe urrent urn fculturaltechniques."We are," Serres writes in "The Origin ofLanguage,"

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submerged oourneck, toour eyes, toour hair, in a furiously agingocean.We are thevoice of thishurricane,thisthermal owl, andwedo not evenknow it. texistsbut itgoes unperceived.The attempt ounderstand thisblindness, thisdeafness, or, as is oftensaid, thisunconsciousness thus eemsofvalue tome.57It is not a matter ofman disappearing but of having to define, in thewake ofthe pistemic ruptures rought boutby first-nd second-order ybernetics, noise andmessage relativeto theunstable position of an observer.Whether somethingsnoise ormessage dependsonwhetherthe bserver slocatedon the ame level as the ommunication ystem e.g., s a receiver)or on a higher level, as an observer of the entire system. "What was once anobstacle (a parasite) forthemessage turns round and adds itself o theinformation."58f xclusion and inclusion,parasite andhost,are nomorethan statesof an oscillatingsystem ra cyberneticfeedback oop, then tbecomesnecessary ncemore to nquire nto hose ulturaltechniques hat,asmedia, processdistinctions.

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Notes1. For example, Sven Grampp, "Erben der Gutenberg-Galaxis: Kulturgeschichte als

Mediengeschichte immedientheoretischen Diskurs," Archiv f?rMediengeschichte 6 (2006):73-86.2. For example, Friedrich Kittler and Georg Christoph Tholen, eds., Arsenale der Seele

[Arsenals of the Soul] ;Literatur- und Medienanalyse seit 1870 (Munich: Fink, 1989); andJochen H?risch and Michael Wetzel, Armaturen der Sinne [Armatures of the Sense];Literarische und technische Medien 1870 bis 1920 (Munich: Fink, 1990).3. For example, see Erhard Sch?ttpelz, "Die medienanthropologische Kehre derKulturtechniken," Archiv f?r Mediengeschichte 6 (2006): 87-110. [Translator's note:Kulturtechniken is translated either as "cultural technologies" or "cultural techniques."While the former ismore common, the latter is used here because it draws attention to thefact?which is of importance to Siegert's argument?that said techniques are not to beviewed exclusively as (artifactual) techno7ogies.]4. See Sch?ttpelz, 90.5. Thomas Macho, "Zeit und Zahl: Kalender- und Zeitrechnung als Kulturtechniken," in

Bild-Schrift-Zahl, ed. Sybille Kr?mer and Horst Bredekamp (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag,2003), 179.6. See Marcel Mauss, "Techniques of the Body," in Incorporations, ed. Jonathan Craryand Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 454-477.7. This, however, serves to establish a problematic proximity between cultural tech

niques and the increasingly popular notion of "rituals." See Gerhard Neumann and SigridWeigel, "Literaturwissenschaft und Kulturwissenschaft," in Die Lesbarkeit der Kultur:Literaturwissenschaften zwischen Kulturtechnik und Ethnographie, ed. Neumann andWeigel (Munich: Fink, 2000), 9-16.8. See Hartmut B?hme, Peter Matussek, and Lother M?ller, Orientierung Kulturwissenschaft: Was sie kann, was sie will (Reinbek, Germany: Rowohlt, 2002), 165.9. A hundred years ago the academic investigation of cultural techniques would havebeen part of the agricultural and geological sciences. Meyers Gro?es Konversationslexikonof 1904 defines Kulturtechnik as "all agriculturally related technical activities that are rootedin the engineering sciences, in particular,

inagricultural engineering." Meyers Gro?esKonversationslexikon, 6th ed., vol. 11 (Leipzig-Vienna, n.p., 1905), 793.10. See Bruno Latour, "The 'P?do?T of Boa Vista: A Photo-Philosophical Montage,"Common Knowledge 4.1 (1995): 144-187.11. Claude L?vi-Strauss, The Origin of Table Manners: Introduction to a Science of

Mythology, vol. 3, trans. JohnWeightman and Doreen Weightman (London: Jonathan Cape,1978), 489.12. Sch?ttpelz also notes this. Sch?ttpelz, 89.13. See Claudia Jost,Die Logik des Parasit?ren: Literarische Texte, medizinische Diskurse,

Schriffttheorien (Stuttgart and Weimar: Verlag J.B. Metzler, 2000). Jost takes her cue fromDerrida's essay on the theory of the parasite and hardly touches upon the work of Serres,which may be because she is pursuing an ethical rather than amedia-theoretical agenda. SeeJacques Derrida, "Subverting the Signature: A Theory of the Parasite," Blast Unlimited 2(1990): 16-21.

14. Plato, Phaedrus 276b-c, in The Collected Dialogues ofPlato, ed. Edith Hamilton and

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Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 521.15. Plato, Laws 704a-705a, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Hamilton andCairns, 1297.

16. The next great rupture in the history of cultural techniques occurred once again at aboundary between land and sea, in Genoa, Florence, and Pisa, the upper Italian centers ofcommerce. The use of Indo-Arabic numerals and double-entry bookkeeping represents ahighly complex writing practice that uses the two-dimensionality of thewriting surface tomaximum effect.

17. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 54. Though he never delivered on his promise to furnish a theory of the parasite, Derrida never completely forget it either. See Derrida,"Subverting the Signature," 16-21.18.Michel Serres, The Parasite, trans. Lawrence R. Schehr (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1982), 53.19.Michel Serres, "Platonic Dialogue," inMichel Serres, Hermes: Literature, Science,Philosophy, ed. Josu? V. Harari and David F. Bell (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1992), 66.

20. Serres, "Platonic Dialogue," 69.21. Serres, The Parasite, 13; translation altered.22. For example, fourteenth-century French legal experts discovered that suppressinghighway robbery would profit the king. Though roads were not royal property they werehors du commerce, which enabled the king to claim a protective function. Highway robberybecame a means for extending the monarch's territorial power beyond his domain?roadsacted as swaths into territories that were ruled over by the local nobility. See Paul Allies,L'invention du territoire (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1960), 157.

23. Serres, The Parasite, 63.24. Serres, "Platonic Dialogue," 67; emphasis in original.25. See Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," in Style in Language, ed. ThomasSebeok (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960), 130-144.26. Bruce Clarke, "Constructing the Subjectivity of the Quasi-Object: Serres through

Latour" (lecture presented at "Constructions of the Self: The Poetics of Subjectivity,"University of South Carolina, 1999).27. "There can be no doubt thatwe have here a new type of linguistic use?phatic communion I am tempted to call it, actuated by the demon of terminological invention?a typeof speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words." BronislawMalinowski, "The Problem ofMeaning in Primitive Languages," in C.K. Ogden and I.A.Richards, The Meaning ofMeaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought andof the Science of Symbolism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), 315.28. Malinowski, 315.

29. Malinowski, 314.30. Clarke.31. Theodor Mommsen, ed., ResgestaeDivi Augusti (Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1865), 4.32. Jean Leclercq, "Saint Bernard et ses secretaries," Revue b?n?dictine 61 (1951): 208-229.33. Andreas Schott, ed., "Ampliss: Viro Augerio Busbequio Exlegato Byzantino, &

supremo Curiae Isabellae Praefecto" (Dedication), in Sextus Aurelius Victor, De vita et

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moribus imperatorum romanorum (Antwerp: Ch. Plantin, 1579), 6.34. The Turkish Letters ofOgier Ghiselin de Busbecq, trans. Edward Seymour Forster(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1968), 49.35. The Turkish Letters, 55.

36. The Turkish Letters, 50.37. Or Busbecq himself? In his edition of the Exemplum Busbequinam (which contains

several copies of the copy), Mommsen reproduces only one anonymous insertion: desiderantur quinqu? lineae. Mommsen, xvi. This seems to suggest that the remaining interpolations are the work of Schott.38. Res gestae divi Augusti, inAurelius Victor, De vita etmoribus imperatorum romano

rum, 70.39. Res gestae divi Augusti, 77.40. Brian Rotman, Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero (Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1993), 14-22, 28-46.41. Rotman, 32. Rotman is quoting Norman Bryson.42. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (NewYork: Pantheon, 1972), 138.43. See Wolf Peter Klein and Marthe Grund, "Die Geschichte der Auslassungspunkte: Zu

Entstehung, Form und Funktion der deutschen Interpunktion," Zeitschrift f?r germanistische Linguisitk 25, no. 1 (1997): 26.44. Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer, 22-23 January 1913, in Franz Kafka, Letters toFelice, ed.Erich Heller and J?rgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth (New York:Schocken, 1973), 166. [Translator's note: InGerman "telephone receiver" isH?rmuschel, literally "hearing shell."]45. See Gerhard Neumann, "Nachrichten vom 'Pontus': Das Problem der Kunst imWerkFranz Kafkas," Franz Kafka Symposion 1983, ed. Wilhelm Emmrich and Bernd Goldmann(Mainz, Germany: Hase und Koehler, 1985), 194.46. Franz Kafka, The Castle, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (London: Seeker and Warburg,1957), 95.

47. See Kafka Kafka to Bauer, 17 January 1913, in Kafka, Letters to Felice, 158; andR?diger Campe, "Pronto! Telefonate und Telefonstimmen," Diskursanalysen I:Medien, ed.Friedrich A. Kittler et al. (Opladen, Germany: n.p., 1987), 86. [Translator's note: In a letter toFelice Bauer on 17 January 1913, Kafka mentions that he just read an old set of DieGartenlaube, a family magazine, from 1863. That set included an essay by Philipp Reis onthe first telephone experiments.]48. Compare with A. Kraatz, Maschinentelegraphen (Braunschweig: Friedr. Vierweg u.Sohn, 1906).

49. In its original version, the text,which was published as part of the series rot underthe title vielleicht zun?chst wirklich nur. der monolog der terry jo im mercey hospital("maybe at first really only, themonologue of terry jo in themercey hospital") consisted onlyof the monologue. For the radio version Ludwig Harig enlarged the script by adding thevoices of the people who participated in the murder.50. Claude Elwood Shannon, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" (1948),in Claude Elwood Shannon, Collected Papers, ed. N.J.A. Sloan and Aaron D. Wyner(Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 1993), 15.

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51. For more on this, see Shannon, 14-15.52. Max Bense and Ludwig Haris, "Der Monolog der Tery Jo," inNeues H?rspiel: Texte,

Partituren, ed. Klaus Sch?ning (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969), 59-61.53. Max Bense, "Jabberwocky: Text und Theorie, Folgerungen zu einem Gedicht vonLewis Carroll," inMax Bense, Radiotexte: Essays, Votr?ge, H?rspiele, ed. Caroline Walterand Elisabeth Walter (Heidelberg: Winter, 2000), 71.54. Bense, "Jabberwocky," 71.55. Bense, Einf?hrung in die informationstheoretische ?sthetik: Grundlagen undAnwednungen in der Texttheorie (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1969), 20.56. Bense, Einf?hrung, 28.57. Michel Serres, "The Origin of Language," in Serres, Hermes, 77.58. Serres, "The Origin of Language," 266.

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