Friedrich A. Kittler (June 12, 1943 – October 18, 2011) was a literary scholar and a media theorist. His works relate to media,

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

, and the

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

Biography

Friedrich Adolf Kittler was born in 1943 in Rochlitz in

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

. His family fled with him to

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

in 1958, where from 1958 to 1963 he went to a

natural sciences Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

and

modern languages A modern language is any human language that is currently in use. The term is used in language education to distinguish between languages which are used for day-to-day communication (such as French and German) and dead classical languages such a ...

'' Gymnasium'' in Lahr in the

Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

, and thereafter, until 1972, he studied

German studies German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German hi ...

, Romance

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

and

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg in

Freiburg im Breisgau Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic German, Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population o ...

. In 1976, Kittler received his doctorate in philosophy after a thesis on the poet

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (11 October 1825 – 28 November 1898) was a Swiss poet and historical novelist, a master of literary realism who is mainly remembered for stirring narrative ballads like "Die Füße im Feuer" (The Feet in the Fire). Biogr ...

. Between 1976 and 1986 he worked as academic assistant at the university's ''Deutsches Seminar''. In 1984, he earned his

Habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

in the field of Modern German Literary History. He had several stints as a visiting assistant professor or visiting professor at universities in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, such as the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, and the European Graduate School. From 1986 to 1990, he headed the DFG's ''Literature and Media Analysis'' project in

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

and in 1987 he was appointed Professor of Modern German Studies at the

Ruhr University The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...

. In 1993 he was appointed to the chair for Media Aesthetics and History at the

Humboldt University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

. In 1993, Kittler was awarded the "Siemens Media Arts Prize" (''Siemens-Medienkunstpreis'') by ZKM Karlsruhe (''Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie'', or "Centre for Art and Media Technology") for his research in the field of media theory. He was recognized in 1996 as a distinguished scholar at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

and in 1997 as a distinguished visiting professor at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. Kittler was a member of the Hermann von Helmholtz Centre for Culture and the research group ''Bild Schrift Zahl'' ("Picture Writing Number") (DFG). Among Kittler's theses was his tendency to argue, with a mixture of polemicism, apocalypticism, erudition, and humor, that technological conditions were closely bound up with epistemology and ontology itself. This claim and his style of argumention is aptly summed up in his dictum "Nur was schaltbar ist, ist überhaupt"—a phrase that could be translated as "Only that which is switchable, exists" or more freely, "Only that which can be switched, can be." This phrase plays both on the concept that in principle any representation can be presented according to the on/off binary logic of computing. Kittler goes one step further by suggesting that, conversely, anything that can't be "switched" can't really "be," at least under current technical conditions. He invoked this doctrine on his deathbed in 2011. Dying in a hospital in Berlin and sustained only by medical instruments, his final words were "Alle Apparate ausschalten", which translates as "switch off all apparatuses".

Work

Friedrich Kittler is influential in the new approach to

media theory Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media Studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly ...

that grew popular starting in the 1980s, new media (german: technische Medien, which translates roughly to "technical media"). Kittler's central project is to "prove to the human sciences ..their technological-media ''a priori''" (

Hartmut Winkler Hartmut Winkler (born 1953) has been a professor of Media Studies, Media Theory and Media Arts at the University of Paderborn Paderborn University (german: Universität Paderborn) is one of the fourteen public research universities in the stat ...

), or in his own words: "Driving the human out of the humanities",This loses something in the translation, since "spirit" is "Geist" in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

, and "

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

" is "Geisteswissenschaften", or "spiritual sciences". a title that he gave a work that he published in 1980. Kittler sees an autonomy in technology and therefore disagrees with

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...

's reading of the media as "extensions of man": "Media are not pseudopods for extending the human body. They follow the logic of escalation that leaves us and written history behind it." Consequently, he sees in writing literature, in writing programmes and in burning structures into silicon chips a complete continuum: "As we know and simply do not say, no human being writes anymore. ..Today, human writing runs through inscriptions burnt into silicon by electronic lithography .. The last historic act of writing may thus have been in the late seventies when a team of Intel engineers lottedthe hardware architecture of their first integrated microprocessor." (Kittler, ''Es gibt keine Software''. In: ders.: ''Draculas Vermächtnis. Technische Schriften''.)

Publications

* 1977: ''Der Traum und die Rede. Eine Analyse der Kommunikationssituation Conrad Ferdinand Meyers''. Bern-Munich * 1979: ''Dichtung als Sozialisationsspiel. Studien zu Goethe und Gottfried Keller'' (with Gerhard Kaiser). Göttingen * 1985: ''Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900''. Fink: Munich. (English edition: ''Discourse Networks 1800 / 1900'', with a foreword by

David E. Wellbery David E. Wellbery (born 1947) is an American professor of German studies, German Studies at the University of Chicago. As of 2022 he is the chair of the department of Germanic Studies and holds the LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson Universi ...

. Stanford 1990) * 1986: ''Grammophon Film Typewriter''. Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose. (English edition: ''Gramophone, Film, Typewriter'',

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

1999) * 1990: ''Die Nacht der Substanz''. Bern * 1991: ''Dichter – Mutter – Kind''. Munich * 1993: ''Draculas Vermächtnis: Technische Schriften''. Leipzig: Reclam. Essays zu den "Effekten der Sprengung des Schriftmonopols", zu den Analogmedien Schallplatte, Film und Radio sowie "technische Schriften, die numerisch oder algebraisch verfasst sind". * 1997: ''Literature, Media, Information Systems: Essays'' (published by John Johnston). Amsterdam * 1998: ''Hardware das unbekannte Wesen'' * 1998: ''Zur Theoriegeschichte von Information Warfare'' * 1999: ''Hebbels Einbildungskraft – die dunkle Natur''. Frankfurt, New York, Vienna * 2000: ''Eine Kulturgeschichte der Kulturwissenschaft''. München * 2000: ''Nietzsche – Politik des Eigennamens: wie man abschafft, wovon man spricht'' (with Jacques Derrida). Berlin. * 2001: ''Vom Griechenland'' (with

Cornelia Vismann Cornelia may refer to: People *Cornelia (name), a feminine given name * Cornelia (gens), a Roman family Places *425 Cornelia, the asteroid ''Cornelia'', a main-belt asteroid ;Italy *Cornelia (Rome Metro), an underground station on Rome Metro *Vi ...

; Internationaler Merve Diskurs Bd.240). Merve: Berlin. * 2002: ''Optische Medien''. Merve: Berlin. (English edition: ''Optical Media'', with an introduction by John Durham Peters.

Polity Press Polity is an academic publisher in the social sciences and humanities. It was established in 1984 and has offices in Cambridge (UK), Oxford (UK), New York (US) and Boston (US). It specializes in the areas of sociology, media, politics, and soci ...

2010) * 2002: ''Zwischen Rauschen und Offenbarung. Zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Stimme'' (as publisher). Akademie Verlag, Berlin * 2004: ''Unsterbliche. Nachrufe, Erinnerungen, Geistergespräche.'' Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn. * 2006: ''Musik und Mathematik. Band 1: Hellas, Teil 1: Aphrodite.'' Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn. * 2009: ''Musik und Mathematik. Band 1: Hellas, Teil 2: Eros.'' Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn. * 2011: ''Das Nahen der Götter vorbereiten''. Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn. * 2013: ''Die Wahrheit der technischen Welt. Essays zur Genealogie der Gegenwart'', Suhrkamp, Berlin. (English edition: ''The truth of the technological world: essays on the genealogy of presence'', translated by Erik Butler, with an afterword by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Stanford 2013.) * 2013: ''Philosophien der Literatur''. Merve, Berlin. * 2013: ''Die Flaschenpost an die Zukunft''. With Till Nikolaus von Heiseler, Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin.

Lectures

''Farben und/oder Maschinen denken''

Ontologie der Medien

Notes

External links

*
Friedrich Kittler Bibliography
complete Bibliography

– Rezension Friedrich Kittler: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Kulturwissenschaft – von Frank Hartmann, 28 November 2000

von Stefan Krempl, 26. Mai 2000

– Medientheorie mit Entlarvungsgestus: Friedrich Kittler – von Frank Hartmann, 22 December 1998

17 April 2005

– Interview mit Kittler auf Telepolis, 24 May 2006.

– Obituary on Kittler, Telepolis, 17 November 2011. *

The Sigmund H. Danziger, Jr. Memorial Lecture in the Humanities The Sigmund H. Danziger Jr. Memorial Lecture in the Humanities is an annual honorary bestowed upon an “established scholar of classical literature, who has made substantial contributions to the critical analysis of classical literature, or has b ...

(Sigmund H. Danziger, Jr Lecture 1993-1994
"We only have ourselves to draw upon""
– An interview by Andreas Rosenfelder
Friedrich Kittler at Monoskop.org
extensive bibliography and reference collection {{DEFAULTSORT:Kittler, Friedrich 1943 births 2011 deaths People from Rochlitz Academic staff of European Graduate School New media Mass media theorists Poststructuralists Philosophers of technology