The crisis of climate change calls on academics
to rise above their disciplinary prejudices, for it is a crisis of many
dimensions. (Dipesh
Chakrarbarty) Image
The challenge associated with digitization in view of new economic
platforms and techno-political networks concerns above all the need for new
institutions operating at the height of this knowledge, i.e. not least
corresponding academic institutions. Image
To pursue media theory in the 21st century in the sense
of a future-orientated research directs the view to the transformation of
immaterial and material goods triggered by digitization, to concrete
media practices and the material foundations of our everyday digital
culture.
Image
Norms were and are an attempt to cling to natural constants, like the
standard meter of the French Revolution, which led medical historian Canguilhem
and his follower Foucault to define post-1790 Europe as a culture of norms instead
of laws. In this sense, I go one step further and say that after 1880 we find
ourselves in an empire of standards. (Friedrich Kittler)Image
First and foremost, it is media technological formats, standards,
platforms, digital infrastructures, and corresponding logistics that set the
course for our economic and cultural activities, as it were, institutionally
(insofar as one understands institutions not only in reduced terms as materially
built bridges, schools, or universities, but as the informal horizon spanned by
shared values and expectations that configures our common actions and
thinking). Image
Especially with regard to the notion of media, infrastructure studies
could benefit from integrating a perspective on cultural techniques, just as
research into cultural techniques may gain insights by taking up arguments from
infrastructure studies. And even beyond that: media theory can be seen as the
field where cultural techniques and infrastructures have a common ground. (Gabriele Schabacher) Image
The pandemic and global warming are just two much-discussed examples of
the planetary dimension of current problems, as well as the need to program or
strengthen corresponding planetary knowledge infrastructures in civil society.Image
The biggest challenge facing critical theory now is arguably the
reframing of the disciplines and critical theory in light of contemporary
conditions and the long-term sustainability of life on Earth. (Achille Mbembe) Image
The Anthropocene proclaims a sudden concern with the exposures of
environmental harm to white liberal communities, it does so in the wake of
histories in which these harms have been knowingly exported to black and brown
communities under the rubric of civilization, progress, modernization, and
capitalism. (Kathryn Yusoff)Image
Especially for a media and cultural theory at an institution “bridging
business culture politics” it is imperative to move beyond the distinction
between cultural and natural history. With our conscious entry into the
Anthropocene we have to include other (intelligent) actors in our reflection
and production of knowledge, as well as to work on a new and planetary
understanding of history and media history. Image
Andreas Töpfer drew the pictures as a response to Armen Avanessian's 10 theses at the Chair of Media Theory at Zeppelin University,
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