The Conditions of Media's Possibility

Abstract

This chapter integrates Michel Foucault's historiographic approach with media history. After describing how Foucault's work has traditionally been used and understood by media historians, four areas of work are used as examples for establishing a more holistic account of the value of Foucault's archaeological and genealogical methods of historical enquiry. They are (1) the work of German media theorist Friedrich Kittler, (2) the Stanford School of the philosophy of science, (3) cultural studies work in governmentality studies, and (4) Giorgio Agamben's application of the Foucauldian concept apparatus. After providing eight questions for orienting Foucauldian historical investigation, the chapter explains how this leads to understanding the interrelated dimensions of power, knowledge, and subjectification as they intersect with the historical establishment of media forms, institutions, and technologies.

The SENSE of Nuclear Physics: New Frontiers, Media, and Collaborations

“…Put another way, if media infuse our lives -as has been recognized for decades by media studies scholars (McLuhan 1964;Couldry 2003), then, by studying the ways that a range of media objects, from communication technologies, to digital tools, to texts are integrated and made meaningful in practice, we can learn a great deal about social dynamics and cultural forms. Simultaneously, many scholars have begun to recognize that scientific practice fundamentally depends on media objects like books, journals (Latour and Woolgar 1986), instruments (Packer 2013), and computers (Winsberg 2010) to anchor scientific research. As a result, there is reason to expect that as in other realms of social life, by studying media objects we can gain significant insight into social and cultural changes in science.…”

“…Broadly recognizing that contemporary life is fundamentally infused with and by media – from computers, to phones, to documents – media scholars have recently suggested that by studying those media, one can learn a great deal about social and cultural changes that are otherwise difficult to observe (Couldry and Hepp 2013, 191). Building on the recognition that science itself is thoroughly and fundamentally entwined with media (Siegert 2013, 107–8; Packer 2013, 11), this article adopts mediatization as a method for studying social change in scientific practice.…”

The Digital Body: Telegraphy as Discourse Network

“…Geoghegan (2013) has suggested that the recent scholarship in Germany devoted to cultural techniques overcomes some of these limitations. Packer (2013a) suggests that a fully Foucauldian media history, a media genealogy, would by necessity deal with the interrelated concerns of power, knowledge, and subjectification that Foucault elaborated in his later work (Foucault, 1985). Media technology didn't just erase the so-called human body in one easy jump; rather, media incorporated the human body; media technology required the human in order to constitute itself.…”