Mark Poster (July 5, 1941 – October 10, 2012)
[ was Professor Emeritus of ]History
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
and Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine
UC may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two
** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme
* Universal Century, one of the t ...
, where he also taught in the Critical Theory Emphasis. He was pivotal to "bringing French critical theory to the U.S., and went on to analyse contemporary media."
"Mark Poster 1941-2012 obituary," article 8 November 2012 by Matthew Reisz in ''Times Higher Education'' magazine, UK
Early life
Poster was born in New York on 5 July 1941, studied at the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universit ...
Wharton School and completed a PhD in history at New York University in 1968.[ His research interests included European Intellectual and Cultural History, Existentialism, Marxism, Critical Theory, and Media Studies.
]
Career
He was known for surveying the work of Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of ...
, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialist, existentialism (and Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter ...
and Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and ho ...
. He applied the ideas of these and other French theorists (including Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as ...
, Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.
Althusser w ...
, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida) to digital new media
New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...
of the late 20th and early 21st century (including television, databases, hypertext and the internet).
Poster sought to politicize the issue of the use and development of the internet by emphasizing its possibilities for liberatory political change, while acknowledging the existence of a deep digital divide, as well as the interests of transnational corporations and national governments.
Poster was also co-editor of the "Electronic Mediations" book series at the University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
Press, which includes almost 40 titles which explore the humanistic and social implications of the internet, virtual reality technologies, video games, literary hypertexts, and new media art forms.
Death
Poster died on 10 October 2012 of pneumonia and is survived by his wife, Annette Schlichter, and two daughters.[
]
Books
* ''The Utopian Thought of Restif de la Bretonne'' (1971)
* ''Existential Marxism in Postwar France: From Sartre to Althusser'' (1975)
* ''Critical Theory of the Family'' (1978)
* ''Sartre's Marxism'' (1982)
* ''Foucault, Marxism, and History: Mode of Production Versus Mode of Information'' (1985)
* ''Critical Theory and Poststructuralism: In Search of a Context'' (1989)
* ''The Mode of Information: Post-structuralism and Social Contexts'' (1990)
* ''The Second Media Age'' (1995). Chapter 2 available a
Postmodern Virtualities
* ''What's the Matter with the Internet?'' (Electronic Mediations series) (2001)
* ''The Information Subject'' (2001)
* ''Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines'' (2006)
* ''Deleuze and New Technology'' (2009)
Notes
External links
Archival collections
Guide to the Mark Poster Papers.
Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
Other
UC Irvine faculty page
UCIspace @ the Libraries digital collection: Mark Poster born digital files, 1985-2009
Interview with Poster
What's Left: Materialist responses to the internet
by Poster
{{DEFAULTSORT:Poster, Mark
Mass media theorists
Cultural historians
20th-century American philosophers
21st-century American philosophers
Postmodern theory
Postmodern writers
1941 births
2012 deaths
People from New York City
Philosophers of technology
New York University alumni
Deaths from pneumonia in the United States