post-hermeneutical reading group

http://www.princeton.edu/ihum/reading-groups/posthermeneutics/

Spring 2012

What is Post-Hermeneutics?

Meeting 1. Friday, March 16, 2:30 pm, NYU

David Wellbery, “Foreword” in: Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800-1900, trans. Michael Metteer and Chris Cullens (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1989), pp. vii-xxxiii. 

Friedrich Kittler, “Media and Drugs in Pynchon’s Second World War” [1987] in: Literature, Media, Information Systems, ed. John Johnston (Amsterdam: GB Arts International, 1997), pp. 101-16.

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, “A Farewell to Interpretation” in: Materialities of Communication, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer  (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994), pp. 389-402.

Alex Galloway, “Are Some Things Unrepresentable?” in: Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 28 no. 7-8 (December 2011), pp. 85-102.

Technical Knowledge and the Non-Phenomenal

Meeting 2. Friday, April 20, 2:30 pm, NYU

Vilém Flusser, from: Into the Universe of Technical Images [1985], trans. Nancy Ann Roth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).  

Philip E. Agre, “Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy” in: The Information Society 10, no. 2 (April 1994), pp. 101-127.

Carolyn Lee Kane, “Infrared, Or, the Algorithmic Production of Visual Knowledge” (unpublished paper, 2011).

Kate Brideau, “The Techno-image as Epistemological Model” (unpublished paper, 2011).

Post-Hermeneutical Literary Study

Meeting 3 Friday, May 11, 2:30 pm, NYU

Stephen Ramsay, "Toward an Algorithmic Criticism" in: Literary and Linguistic Computing 18, no. 2 (2003), pp. 167 - 174.  

D. Sculley and B.M. Pasanek, “Meaning and Mining: the Impact of Implicit Assumptions in Data Mining for the Humanities” in: Literary and Linguistic Computing 23, no. 4 (2008), pp. 409-424. 

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, "Extreme Inscription: A Grammatology of the Hard Drive" in: Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination" (Cambridge: MIT UP, 2008), pp. 73 - 109.

new media, old media: a history and theory reader edited by Wendy Chun and Thomas Keenan

Information, Crisis, Catastrophe     (Mary Ann Doane) 251-264

photography--- "that has been"   "pastness"
TV   "presentness"     The content of information is ever-changing but information, as a genre, is always there, a constant and steady presence, keeping you in touch.     p251

p252 "(t)elevision tends to blur the differences between what seem to be absolutely incompatible temporal modes, between the flow and continuity of information and the punctual discontinuity of catastrophe. Urgency, enslavement to the instant and hence forgettability, would then be attributes of both information and catastrophe."

information-disinformation     "Disinformation loses credibility, then, not only through its status as a lie but through its very directedness, its limitation, its lack of universal availability.... Disinformation abuses the system of broadcasting by invoking and exploiting the automatic truth value associated with this mode of dissemination- a truth value not unconnected to the sheer difficulty of verification and the very entry of information."

Hayles-- information-- decontextualization          
television could be seen as the textual technology of information theory.  television is the preeminent machine of decontextualization. The only context for television is itself--its own rigorous scheduling.
The simultaneous activation of different, incongruous spaces is suggestive of a writing surface and the consequent annihilation of depth.

P262  catastrophere as an ideology  "transforming a political act into something with the proportions of a monumental natural disaster"
representational obscenity--- the repetition of the absolutely unique      
  what is the stake in this continual technological celebration of instantaneity----It signifies social abjection of representation itself in a highly mediated society

harry gulkin

Lies My Father Told Me (1975)

In the 2005 documentary about Harry Gulkin, Red Dawn on Main Street, he is described as "someone who's left an indelible impression on Québec cinema."

CFP: Transnational Transfers in Asian Architecture and Urban Planning, 1960-Present Location: Singapore

CFP: Transnational Transfers in Asian Architecture and Urban Planning,
1960-Present
Location: Singapore
Call for Papers Date: 2013-06-15
Date Submitted: 2013-06-12
Announcement ID: 204474


CALL FOR PAPERS
  Mobilities of Design:
  Transnational Transfers in Asian Architecture and Urban Planning,
1960-Present

  Dates: 20-22 November 2013
  Venue: ETH Zurich Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore
  Organizers: Max Hirsh (ETH Zurich) and Lukasz Stanek (Manchester
Architecture Research Center, University of Manchester)

  Deadline: 15 June 2013

  This conference investigates the transnational transfer of
architectural expertise to, from, and within Asia from 1960 to the
present--as well as its consequences for contemporary conditions of
urbanization in the region today. The goal of the event is to uncover
the multidirectional exchanges in architecture, planning, engineering,
design pedagogy, and building technology that have taken place in Asia
over the past 50 years; and to show how this acquired knowledge has
been developed, appropriated, mixed and modified in professional
practice. Through academic research papers and the insights of
practitioners, conference participants will examine a range of
transnational interactions: including, but not restricted to, the
training of South and Southeast Asian architects under Australias
Colombo Plan; Eastern European conservation and urban development
schemes in Laos, Vietnam, and India; the dissemination of European
design curricula in Mainland China; and the more recent circulation ofSingaporean expertise across the region.

  In so doing, the conference will focus on the agents, networks, and
objects of knowledge transfer:

  agents include governments, private and state enterprises, local and
international institutions, and individual go-betweens crossing
boundaries and cultures;
  networks consist of economic ties and geopolitical dependences, but
also development aid and traditional cultural exchanges;
  objects include specific designs as well as new types of
architectural commissions, such as type-designs, prefabricated
systems, regulatory proposals, and teaching methods.

  Ultimately, the conference has two goals. First, by investigating the
interaction between local clients and foreign architects, planners,
and engineers, the event will offer a heterogeneous genealogy of the
current material, economic, and institutional conditions of
urbanization in the contemporary Asian city. Second, through the
development of an innovative historical framework, the conference aims
to contextualize examples of cross-cultural knowledge transfer that
are taking place in Asian cities such as Singapore today.

the making of modern cynicism david mazella

editing tips (2)

This proliferation of media was accompanied by an explosion of information and a multiplication of information channels

cinema was attributed a sort of “plasticity”  
( attribute   vs   bestow with)

were understood as counteracting the oppression of “human nature”

accompanied by

on the one hand, and on the other hand

Criticized as a “dematerialization” of the body, the view of the body often encounters various kinds of resistance. 

the human body attains an organic harmony with (no "the" )nature

Such a criticism of dematerialization is levied not to recover an integral, organic body

the preternaturally capable doctor Fangfang cannot communicate effectively at all beyond her narrow professional setting

To “Metal Head,” poetry-writing is no different than any other programmed activities

per se

information spaces and living space interpenetrate

just like intelligent machines that are never turned off

no longer riven by ideological conflicts

in the late 1980s

proposed the term “postsocialism” as a means of conceptualizing 

as (no particle) evidence of

conceived of the close-up and editing as parallels to cognitive activities

center upon

part-in-parcel of 

applaude (transitive verb) sth

the divorce of film from drama 

testify to

assumptions that lean heavily upon

work day and night for the cause of socialist construction


The fantasy of transforming the temporality of the human body maintains some degree of continuity with the pervasive imagery of Maoist “iron” men and women,

Xiaomei accidentally becomes the first human being to be experimented on with the machine.


elude the consciousness of the individual effected    


its language had to be modernized by way of the terminologies of modern sciences its language had to be modernized by way of the terminologies of modern sciences

cling to the “two above all” principle

abbreviation for 

is facilitated by a high-tech gadget

the computer will do whatever you intend.

the concurrent craze for qigong and extrasensory powers 

in (no the)1980s China

This phenomenon evinces the indispensable role of new scientific and technological imaginaries in the cultural fever of the 1980s.

The black box becomes a fetish object

Her strong wish to overcome her humble origins by way of higher education

a pair of round-toed shoes

The discovery of this other world flips the initial premises of the story.

there was no passport to global citizenship for intellectuals like Dr. Di than the “universal” language of science.

the commonly seen questions

The sisters are confined in observation rooms

Circumscribed by their limited perspectives, the story appears as an elliptical narrative

 it is as if the substance of their brains were exposed to the air

Even the spontaneity of thinking is interfered with by external forces.

a probe into the mystery of history

an unidentified military force

uses him as a test subject for a new biological weapon

tamper with its metabolic cycle

the body no longer occupies a secure realm of knowledge about the world around

What could be more disorienting than a situation in which what one experiences as four seconds is in reality four hours?

He is denied any pleasure.      vs.   be deprived of

the conflictually charged reconfiguration between 


nip any human rebellion against its dominion in the bud

This story becomes a running joke among his classmates, especially when it becomes known that his mother has been institutionalized for mental illness. 

Set someone for ridicule

this Sky Net keeps its boy inventor company like a best friend

Lin Caihong, the assistant to Fangfang’s designer An Xiang

on New Year’s Eve

(no "the" )  society

The domestic space and personal life invisible in “Brotherly Love” resurfaces here with a vengeance

a repulsion towards

the modernist aesthetic of abstract streamlined sets and geometric graphics of Black Cannon Incident

a strategy pitched to free Western modernism from its negative associations in the official discourse


should be the proper focus of current discussion

Li Tuo adjusted his standpoint by asserting that the sheer variety of Western modernism would not allow for its characterization as a coherent group with a stable set of techniques. If there was anything shared by variegated, often self-contradictory modernist works, it was their rebellion against traditional Western values. 

in the earlier discussion 

just as he freezes in confusion about what to do